The Walking Dead was once a television show that peered high across many TV dramas. Everybody and their grandma tuned in to watch it week by week, and if you didn’t then you were missing out on groups of people obsessing over it the next day. Whether you liked the show or not was irrelevant. The ratings it received did the talking. When the show first aired in 2010 it accumulated 5.35 million viewers in the first episode and steadily inclined to a peak of 17.29 million viewers in Season 5. This peak, however, was in 2014 – and for a variety of reasons didn’t last.
As time has passed, The Walking Dead through Season 6 to 8 has undergone the most disappointing decline in quality, resulting in the Season 8 finale earlier this year bringing the show viewership close to what it received in the very first episode in 2010. Hard to fathom considering the history of the show – showrunner Scott Gimple consistently failed to handle the storylines coherently, alongside his terrible dialogue choices which left the characters feeling robotic, and perhaps the worst crime of all, his insistence on incorporating unnecessary shock value deaths, had ultimately brought the show to its lowest point.
So why am I discussing all of this? It’s because Season 8 has finally wrapped up its tedious all-out-war arc recently, providing a much-needed clean slate for the series. More importantly than the end of this arc however is that after five seasons, Scott Gimple has finally stepped down as showrunner in favour of long time writer for the series, Angela Kang to take over.
Kang has been with the show since Season 2, and has written some of the better episodes throughout the series. She has no specific style, so to speak, unlike Gimple who was known for his slow and sombre episodes which grew stale quickly, Kang has written some of the better episodes in the series that held a lot of emotional depth between the characters such as ‘Secrets’ or ‘A’. She’s shown a lot of understanding of the characters, and that is what makes her a suitable candidate to takeover as showrunner.
What Kang brings with her is a completely fresh outlook on the series since Season 4, and with it a much better vision of what the show is actually is. Having watched the first three episodes of Season 9, one can see the heavy emphasis on a brand new start. It’s evident the cast and crew know how rough the show has been for the past three years and is fortunately revamping itself for the better. The logo, which has decayed over the course of each season has been rebuilt with overgrown moss added to it, and the introduction sequence has now opted for a animated style which surprisingly looks great.
Kang’s input on the series is excellent to say the least, considering the hand she was dealt having to fix the fire Gimple left burning, and it’s easy to see that she resonates with the characters when writing them, making them a delight to watch on-screen again. I personally haven’t felt this way since the first half of Season 5, witnessing Rick and the crew finally come together after four seasons of pain and misery, making the decision to fight against Terminus. This was such an incredibly captivating moment for the series and it felt like this was an all new chapter for the show, and truthfully it should have been.
Now in Season 9, the character’s dialogue no longer feels like meaningless filler to pad out an episode, and from the three episodes that have aired, conversations with the characters are setting up nice story arcs, creating nice interactions which feel authentic and currently, actually developing them. Thankfully, viewers will be pleased to know that the grunting one-word Daryl of Season 7 and 8 has bitten the dust. The crossbow survivor has become a proper character once again, with genuine conversations between him and the other survivors.
The departure of the murky grey filter, omnipresent through the last few seasons of the show, is another improvement for Season 9. Colour has finally returned to the show – and boy is it enjoyable to see the actual world of The Walking Dead in a natural light. How the world is portrayed now feels like the same world you saw in Season 1. You could absolutely argue that the grey filter in Season 7 and 8 was appropriate for the war with Negan, but when that very war is such a bore to watch, the filter is simply meaningless. If the story is weak, then you at least expect to enjoy the visuals, but unfortunately this has not been the case.
With Season 9 the post-apocalyptic world is exciting to watch on-screen again (and very reminiscent of The Last of Us, so bonus points for that) through much better cinematography, which feels as if careful planning and effort has actually been put into the show again. Season 9 Episode 1 harkens similar shots to that of Season 1 Episode 1. Each episode is structured evenly and paces itself accordingly to keep the show entertaining, not once did it feel like I was watching something pointless, but rather something that left me wondering where that particular scene was going to lead. Kangs improved direction for the series shows and definitely makes it The Walking Dead enjoyable to watch once again.
The current season is far from perfect of course – the biggest factor fighting against the success of Season 9 is whether it can withstand the departure of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) in just two more episodes, followed by Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan) leaving a few episodes later. It will be extremely interesting to see whether Kang has got what it takes to carry the show forward without its lead character, and it’ll be even more interesting to see whether the show further departs from the comics into a completely new entity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghzXaqoCGMA
Season 9 has saved The Walking Dead from the repetitive, uninspired messed it has become over the last three years, but what’s going to be interesting will be witnessing whether Season 9 saves the show in the long run. Before Angela Kang stepped in, it seemed almost guaranteed that the show would be canned by the end of Season 9. Now, I’m not so sure. The viewership so far isn’t doing so hot, but that was to be expected considering where it picked up from. Reviews from fans and critics have been much more positive, and this could potentially boost the viewership back up again.
Season 9 is a vast improvement of the previous few series and definitely shows signs of a promising future for The Walking Dead, should it maintain the level of film-making quality – however there’s no guarantee it will, and could very well collapse once more. Regardless of how The Walking Dead has been perceived over recent years, it’s important to recognise that if a show can turn itself around for the better and improve upon itself in the space of one season, then it deserves a second chance.
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