The Fall of The Walking Dead | How Scott Gimple Ruined One of Television's Most Popular Series

foreign I'm back with another video today I'm doing something a little different I'm taking a break from House of the Dragon to discuss the fall of what was once one of television's most successful series The Walking Dead at its peak The Walking Dead averaged over 13 million viewers per episode but since then it's lost over 90 percent of its audience as the show limps towards its series finale well they call it a finale but it's really not one because to see the conclusion of the overall story you're gonna have to watch three separate spin-offs but we'll get to all of that a bit later so what's the biggest reason for such a precipitous drop the person most to blame is the former showrunner of The Walking Dead and currently the chief content officer of the franchise Scott gimple he captained AMC's Flagship series and steamed ahead into infamy the Titanic took a little over two and a half hours to sink for gimple it was about two and a half seasons of foolish decisions poor writing and a lack of understanding of what the show was all about at its core The Walking Dead was a story about a father and a son surviving in the Apocalypse that's what Robert kirkman's graphic novels were all about our final image in the comics is an older Carl with his daughter and that's why gimple's inexplicable an inexcusable decision to kill off Carl in the TV series tore the heart out of the show he claims he did it because he needed to give Rick a reason to keep Negan alive but the source material provided all of that for him Rick kept Negan alive in the comics and Carl didn't have to die now I know the audience decline began before Carl's death and I'm going to get into the bad decisions that caused all of that in a bit but I had to put the death of Carl first because I think it did the most irreparable damage to the show it just destroyed its essence now this is some conjecture on my part but I believe that Carl's death on the show enabled Andrew Lincoln to more easily cut the cord with The Walking Dead yes Andrew Lincoln is from the UK and he had been filming in America for nearly a decade he wanted to spend more time with his family but in many ways Rick's real story wrapped up with the death of Carl and at that point too the show had no end point in mind so it was easier for him to leave The Walking Dead at that point in the comics Rick took on the scaled down role in the later issues this could have easily been worked into the story if they hadn't killed off Carl and perhaps Andrew Lincoln might have still returned for a few episodes each season I mean he is coming back for a spin-off and that brings us to another problem which was that there was no plain conclusion of the main part of the story if they had one in mind they could have worked around a lot of other problems when you don't have a destination the story becomes Meandering and old conflicts are just continually recycled and in some cases they even had characters continue to flip back and forth between philosophies at one moment Morgan was a stone cold killer then he became a pacifist then he flipped back and forth again it just didn't make any sense Breaking Bad is the perfect example of a show that knew its destination and everything they did Led them to that point AMC asked Vince Gilligan to do more seasons but he refused he just wanted to tell the story and not drag things out like we've seen on The Walking Dead another big problem was that the entrance of Negan onto the show wasn't as well received by the audience as they had expected Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a very good actor but the material he was given during the first couple of seasons was cheesy over the top at times and unbelievable he just swaggered around like a post-apocalypse Fonzie gimple who was the showrunner at the time is to blame because since Angela King has taken over Direct Control of the show Negan has become a more complex balanced and interesting character one that the few fans left actually enjoy now negan's entrance onto the show though is when a lot of fans began to leave but it wasn't just the way the character was written but also due to the dark season 7 premiere were two fan favorites Glenn and Abraham were both brutally killed in the comics only Glenn died when Negan forced everyone to kneel down in front of him but even two key character deaths wasn't enough for them they had Negan torturously driving Rick around in an RV and making him fight his way back to it through walkers and then Negan almost made him cut off Carl's hand and finally they took Daryl captive at the end of the episode it was just an unappealing overly indulgent dark episode that alienated a lot of the audience and then this cumbersome storyline took two full seasons to resolve they dragged it out much too far and that whole period that also included the death of Carl cost them 60 percent of Their audience the other 30 percent gradually drifted away over the course of the past three seasons then there were the mind-numbing bottle episodes they would start a season and only focus on a few characters in each episode then bring most of them together in the last one or two of each half season and when you don't see characters for weeks the audience loses interest in them and the narrative becomes weak and unfocused bottle episode should only be used rarely they should be safe for something unique or big like on Game of Thrones when they would have a large-scale battle but when you implement this technique season after season you're taking your audience out of the story what Scott gimple did here I feel is a blueprint on how any showrunner or network should not handle a TV series and notice I didn't even include here much of the bad writing which there was a lot of gimple did huge things wrong he forgot what the show was all about and killed off a critical character who was Central to the story they had no plan on how to end the series and drag things out too long like the original Negan story arc and then there were the brutal bottle episodes and now after this whole mess they won't even give the fans a proper ending in the finale they're planning not one spin-off for the show but three to complete the story this is the main one with Rick and Michonne Maggie and Negan will be traveling to New York for whatever reason and the real double jump the shark moment is Daryl in France that's right he's going to land in another continent during the zombie apocalypse Maybe drogon who flew off in the terrible Game of Thrones finale we'll take Daryl to Paris I hope those people who are still watching The Walking Dead get some sort of enjoyment out of the final episode and there's some closure for them but it looks unlikely Scott gimble destroyed any chance of even a mediocre ending a long time ago it's an insult to the fan base to make people watch three spin-offs to see the end of a story that started 12 years ago and it's hard to ruin a series in nearly every way possible but gimple managed to do that anyway that's it for this one I'll be back with another house of the dragon video on Sunday if you enjoyed it hit the like button and as always listen to karaxi's And subscribe I want to thank everyone for watching and I'll see you soon foreign

Channel: Reel World

Views: 5,360

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Id: 2W9fAWGVk7k

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 18 2022