A wishlist for how to make The Walking Dead universe better

I’ve seen every episode of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. And I have ideas for how to make both shows better.

I have watched a lot of The Walking Dead in my life. Nine seasons of the main show and five seasons of the spinoff have given me a lot of zombie drama to absorb. While I love the show, there are some things that could be better.

Let me be clear – I am not talking about what I want to see happen to the characters of TWD in season 10 or FearTWD next year in season 6. I am talking about how the showrunners and writers of both shows can accentuate the two shows’ strengths while tightening up some weaknesses – weaknesses that more than a few critics have harped on.

Here’s the list, in no particular order.

Have a more uniform runtime

With the exception of 90-minute-long specials, episodes should be under an hour (including commercials). This isn’t because my DVR can’t adjust, or because I can’t spare five extra minutes, but if the running time of each episode is at 44 or minutes before commercials, it could lead to tighter storytelling and pacing. Both shows occasionally struggle with pacing that’s just a tad too slow, and cutting a few minutes could solve that problem.

Go easy on the tricks

The good news is that TWD showrunner Scott Gimple seemed to get the message after the Glenn/dumpster fiasco, but every now and then the show gets a little too cute, usually when bailing a character out of a situation that would appear to be a sure-fire death (see: Split, San Antonio). While I am sure some miracle saves would occur in a real zombie apocalypse, and while we’ve all already suspended disbelief a fair amount to watch a show about dead people roaming around, there still needs to be some grounding in reality.

Give us more of a geographic sense of the world

I understand that sometimes TV shows can’t reference the specific locations of real places, lest a horde of fans begin showing up, but sometimes it’s hard to tell where in Virginia or Texas our survivors are, especially in relation to other characters. We can’t always tell if it would be reasonable for a car to take characters from Point A to Point B on a single tank of fuel. I get that some vagueness helps the writers keep from painting themselves into a corner, but some perspective would be nice.

More explanation on some things would be nice

Like, where did Strand and Al learn how to fly a plane? Sure, the shows do sometimes lay out how a character had X life skill from before the fall, or learned it after (Rosita telling Sasha how ex-boyfriends taught her survival skills is an example of this), but it’s not always clear. One or two lines of exposition would help.

More humor

I love the episode of The Walking Dead which introduces Jesus – “The Next World” – because, by TWD standards, it’s funny. The show can be a slog at times, due to all the death and violence and loss suffered by the characters, so a few laughs can help make it an easier watch for the viewers. Entire episodes don’t have to be funny – one of my favorite funny lines from another dark TV show, The Sopranos, kicked off a heartbreaking episode in which a favorite character was whacked – but just a bit of humor sprinkled in between zombie killings, shootouts with hostile survivors, and speechifying would be nice.

Less dourness

Fear is more upbeat than the parent show, to be fair, but as noted above, both can be depressing. Adding more humor, as I just asked for, would help, but the overall tone of individual episodes could be more positive here and there, funny jokes aside. Yeah, I get it – the post-zombie world is going to be sad and dark. Survival will be a daily struggle, loved ones will have been killed, most of what brings modern society joy (art, music, et cetera) will have almost no place in the world. But there’s room for balance, and more positivity would help.

Finally – be less predictable.

To be fair, both shows have avoided some predictable elements. Cliffhangers have seemed to be relatively rare (although the Negan cliffhanger was such a big one, it had a huge impact), and many mid-season and season finales have avoided the death of big characters. Some have avoided death completely. But both shows can be predictable in other ways. One habit that needs to be broken – killing a character off right after something good happened to them. Or similarly, killing a character off after moving them from the background to the spotlight. When Talking Dead is cracking jokes about “so and so had a big arc and good things happened to them, they’ll be dead next week!” that means the show is too easy to predict.

Look, I still like both shows. I don’t watch just because I write about them here – I started writing here because I was already watching both shows and wanted to contribute to this site. That means I am voluntarily spending an hour or so each week on these shows (especially since I don’t write about every episode). If I am going to do so, I want the shows to put forth the best possible effort.

While both shows are good overall, each program has had bad episodes or even bad seasons (which The Walking Dead and FearTWD have certainly had) and there’s room for improvement. Hopefully, my ideas above could help with said improvement.