Why I stopped watching The Walking Dead despite being a hardcore fan

The Walking Dead recently reported its lowest ratings since Season 1. The zombie-drama on AMC has been a centerpiece of the network, and a juggernaut in TV viewership since its premiere. But fans may be losing interest. I certainly did.

Having been on board The Walking Dead since Season 1, I could’ve been considered a die-hard fanboy. I’ve even written episode-to-episode recaps for multiple seasons, and participated in all the message boards and defending the show to anyone who bad mouthed it. But despite being such a lover of The Walking Dead series, I stopped watching the show somewhere prior to the mid-season finale of Season 8.

Filled with dread

Any television series, despite the genre or subject matter, needs to excite the audience to tune in week after week. The content needs to give audiences something to look forward to; either anticipation of what’s to come, the revelation of a cliffhanger, or just a general interest in seeing their favorite characters again and again. And don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t need to be a happy excitement, but a general interest to continue watching.

The Walking Dead stripped all of this away for me with their continuation of a broad conflict that is seemingly never-ending. There was no joy or excitement to tune in week after week, but rather a sense of dread that felt torturous. Tuning into the show every week felt more like a chore, a necessity to find out if my favorite characters survived or not. The end of each episode saw a sigh of relief, which quickly transformed into dread again by the next Sunday.

Every episode seemed to put the main cast of characters through the most horrible and brutal experiences, loss, turmoil and just all around terrible-ness. After questioning and reflecting on how The Walking Dead was making me feel, I decided I’m better off without it. This waiting around for things to improve was stressing me out. So I cut ties.

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But there are more reasons as to why I stopped watching The Walking Dead than just my own personal experiences.

Never ending conflict

When The Walking Dead started, a Zombie apocalypse was the premise and major conflict. Later on, the show became about the characters, trying to survive in the setting of a Zombie Apocalypse, and the zombies themselves became more of a B-villain. But as each season continued, the survivors and our main cast of characters seemed to only come across villainous characters, who were progressively worse, and who increased the terror quotient exponentially each time, killing or torturing the heroes every season.

While the who, how and why’s vary from season to season, it’s almost always the same case. From the Governor to Terminus to Negan, it’s gone from worse to worst every single time. And given the world it is, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight to this premise.

And in such a situation, is it any wonder that the show is losing audiences? There’s only so much conflict audiences can take, without any upside or resolution in sight. Fictional stories usually follow highs and lows, peaks and valleys in terms of the pacing of storytelling. The bad things must make way for the good. The good things emphasis and make the bad things more effective. But when it’s just bad things befalling the characters constantly, with little to no hope or possibility for a reprieve, then why continue experiencing something so emotionally draining?

The Walking Dead has built itself as a show that is set in a hopeless world where survivors try to carve out hope and survive; both physically and emotionally. But the number of storylines that satisfy the constant conflict, are now far and few in-between. So much so that there’s a running joke that as soon as a character realizes their true purpose, or has a reflective moment about their lives, they are immediately killed off.

I’m probably not returning to The Walking Dead anytime soon, however, for the sake of the current audiences that are still sticking it out, I hope the writers realize that they can’t keep beating a dead horse into the ground. I hope they either end the show on a high or create more interesting storylines that aren’t all reliant on constant doom and gloom to be effective.

Are you still watching The Walking Dead? Let me know in the comments.