5 Reasons Why Rick And Michonne’s ‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’ Will Be Undead On Arrival – Forbes

Post updated below with my Much Better Version Of The Walking Dead on 1/30/24.

I keep forgetting about The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live and then something pops up to remind me. This time it’s the final trailer for the Rick and Michonne spinoff series. In it, we get a glimpse at what’s to come with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) as they navigate various perils and the massive, militaristic CRM.

That group—or at least its military wing—is led by Major General Beale (Terry O’Quinn) who audiences will remember as Locke from Lost. Rick was taken by the CRM back in Season 9 of The Walking Dead when Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) basically handed him over in order to save him and guarantee her own place in the community (if not a better haircut).

Here’s the trailer:

Now, I realize that a lot of The Walking Dead fans are super excited about the Rick and Michonne reunion after all these years. I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade and I totally understand why a lot of people who cared deeply about this relationship and these characters are hyped.

I just can’t really share in that excitement. Maybe I’m too jaded, but after all these years of The Walking Dead, it’s pretty hard to get excited about any of it. Here are my reasons. Maybe you share some of them. Maybe you think I’m a monster for even expressing such ghastly opinions. Either way, read on . . . .if you dare!

1. I don’t really like Rick anymore.

I’m trying to decide when—and why—I stopped liking Rick, but the more I think about it the more I question whether I ever really liked him to begin with. Maybe back in Season 1, before we really got to know the character. Maybe through the end of Season 2, when he got a bit authoritarian. I definitely started to dislike him in Season 3 when they gave him a “mental illness moment” (a frustrating tendency in TV) that had him acting completely nutty after the deaths of Shane and Lori (he got better!) Looking back on my past writing, I was already pretty upset with The Walking Dead by Season 3. Yes, that season had some terrific moments, but between Andrea (ugh) and Michonne refusing to talk and Rick changing personalities, I was already noticing a lot of cracks in the seams, as it were.

In any case, the point is I’m not that big of a Rick fan. He was never a very good leader. He was far too emotional and impulsive to ever truly lead. He was the one who agreed to attack the Saviors and murder them in their sleep without even bothering to figure out what was going on first. He’s responsible for the deaths of Abraham and Glenn and plenty of others. If anything, I feel antipathy for the character. Andrew Lincoln is fine in the role, but like some of the other actors in this franchise, I think he over-acts a lot of the time (and we won’t even get into the various fake southern accents). So yeah, it’s a bit hard for me to get excited about the return of a character who they should have just killed off.

2. I still haven’t forgiven Michonne for leaving the kids behind.

Unlike Rick, I genuinely like Michonne. She’s been one of my consistently favorite characters ever since she ditched her vow of silence. Yes, she drove me crazy in Season 3 because she withheld so much crucial information when Andrea was screwing everything up with the Governor, but she quickly redeemed herself and has remained one of the toughest, most badass characters on the show ever since. Her relationship with Carl (Chandler Riggs) was a high-point for the entire franchise. Her katana skills and cool hair and Gurira’s acting chops all conspired to make her one of the greats, up there with Daryl and Glenn (Steve Yeun) and so forth.

But then she abandoned her kids. In the middle of a life-or-death war between the survivors and the Whisperers, she left Judith and Rick Jr. behind to go find Rick. I get that she loves him and that he’s been gone for a long time, but the clues she finds indicating that he could still be alive (but lacking one of those handy Fear The Walking Dead walkie-talkies, alas!) were not enough to justify this abandonment. Maybe it’s because I’m a parent, but I would not leave my kids in such peril to find their mother, and I would not want her to do that for me if the tables were turned. I know this was just done so that they could write her off the show but it would have made more sense if she’d been captured, because really she ought to have returned to Alexandria, helped her people out and then taken Daryl with her to find Rick.

Of course, if she’d taken Daryl they couldn’t have milked two separate spinoffs out of these three characters . . . .

3. Rick and Michonne simply don’t have that much romantic chemistry.

People always get really mad at me for saying this, but I just don’t think Rick and Michonne have romantic chemistry at all. They have friend chemistry. They are good pals, steadfast companions, and I’m sure they’d fight and die for one another in a heartbeat. But the show basically time-jumped them together an episode after Rick’s previous love interest, Jessie, was killed off.

One minute they’re just friends and Rick is desperately, dangerously obsessed with Jessie, and the next minute they’re lovers and then later we time-jump a few years forward and they have a kid together. I’m not saying the show did a bad job establishing their relationship as friends, but it did a terrible job at establishing their relationship as lovers.

To this, many people say “Well TWD isn’t a romance show!” Well, you don’t have to be a romance show to have plausible romantic chemistry. This is a zombie show about people. It’s supposed to be character-driven. In a lot of ways, the undead hordes are just a moving set-piece for the dramas and friendships and relationships between these people we care about. So yes, I do think chemistry matters and I don’t think this show is very good at establishing it and that makes the premise of The Ones Who Live a lot weaker than it ought to be.

And no, this has nothing to do with Rick being white and Michonne being black, though this is another thing I’m accused of whenever I say this. (Glenn and Maggie—a mixed-race couple—are the best couple in the show’s run).

(In that reddit link at the top of this entry, people make a number of false claims about me including a weird one suggesting I reviewed World Beyond without watching it. I reviewed the first season of that show, which I watched, but didn’t review the second season because I didn’t watch it. Not the strangest rumor/lie spread about me, though!)

4. The chronology is all wrong.

Remember when Black Widow came to theaters but it was after the character had already been killed off in Avengers: End Game. This isn’t quite that bad, but it’s still pretty weird timing-wise. In a sane universe, Michonne would have tracked down Rick during a season of The Walking Dead. Rick would have returned on the main show, and in the finale the two of them would have returned to their friends and families.

I guess that’s not how it works out sometimes, but it all feels a bit like too little, too late. The main show has ended. Daryl is off Luarenting about France. Maggie and Negan are in a fraught semi-courtship off in NYC. Carol is hunting down burly motorcyclists hither, thither and yon. Morgan is off lollygagging in Geographically Vague Fear The Walking Dead-land. Rosita, well, I’m still pretty broken up about Rosita, my favorite of all the show’s female characters.

The Ones Who Live is late to the party. I’m not sure what emotional resonance it can achieve when everyone else—including audiences—has moved on.

5. The Walking Dead has lost its mojo.

Okay, three for the price of one in this last point, but they’re all at least semi-related. First off, the spinoffs have been a mixed bag at best. Dead City started off bad and while it improved by the end, it was still not something I would ever watch twice. Negan really carried that show but it was still predictable, paint-by-numbers entertainment that dragged out the Negan/Maggie story after it had basically resolved in a satisfying way in the main show.

Daryl Dixon was both better and worse in different ways. It had some really top-notch production values, a nice musical score and even one really great episode, but overall the story was pretty terrible and implausible and even the grizzled, rough-around-the-edges charisma of Norman Reedus failed to make it shine. If only the scripts could match the cinematography! “Escort kid to community in the apocalypse” was just done so much better by The Last Of Us.

Finally, The Ones Who Live is a terrible name for a TV show. It’s got Gimple-speak written all over it. The little “We’re the ones who live” bit at the very end of The Walking Dead’s series finale basically ruined what was almost a great ending. Daryl driving off into the sunset on his motorcycle was so perfect and beautiful and forlorn, and then they smack us in the face with that stupid We’re the ones who live nonsense! It’s pretty much a perfect summary of why this show has lost its mojo. Those genuinely good moments are so often disrupted by something stupid and corny.

So that’s my cynical take. My “old man shakes fist at clouds” take. I’m sure some fans will be very angry that I have these opinions. That I should harbor such blasphemous thoughts! The horrors!

Oh well! I wish I was more upbeat about this show, but AMC hasn’t really earned it at this point after so many years of mediocrity or worse. And that, dearest readers, is all I have to say about that. I have spoken.

Update 1/30/24

Okay, so maybe I do have more to say. I wanted to at least comment briefly on my alternative vision of what The Walking Dead, in its latter years, could have become if spinning off smaller series hadn’t been AMC’s vision and instead we stuck with the main show for a little bit longer—long enough, at least, to reunite the main cast.

Mistakes made along the way—like killing off Carl—are bygones now. We will let them be. But let’s pick up the thread with a theoretical Season 12 of The Walking Dead. Our heroes have defeated the bad guys of the Commonwealth and have rebuilt Alexandria. The two communities, along with other settlements and survivors, hold sway over the region and live in relative peace.

Daryl has gone off to search for Rick and Michonne. Maggie has left to rebuild her old community. Negan has returned to live with Annie and her people, free from the judgment that he (rightfully) suffers amongst the Alexandrians. In Season 12, things start to go wrong, and we have only the kids to blame. Well, sort of.

Judith, a teenager now, is tired of waiting for her parents to return. One night, she sneaks out of Alexandria and sets out with her trusty cowboy hat, revolver and katana—and Dog!—and goes off to find Daryl, whose last location she’s learned thanks to a recent radio communication. Since gas magically works now, we’ll have her take a motorcycle. Now she has a piece of each of her “parents” as part of her kit: Revolver, katana, bike. What she takes from Carol is tenacity and the willingness to strike out on her own no matter what anybody thinks. Carol, of course, will set out after her once she realizes she’s gone, though Judith will have planned this so that Carol is away when she leaves. She’ll have a few days head-start.

Meanwhile, Maggie tracks down Negan to help her find Hershel who was taken from her by the Croat. Basically we get the same Dead City plot but as part of Season 12 rather than its own spinoff. The villains in Manhattan will be the same villains that Daryl also encounters, as we will combine the stories of Dead City and Daryl Dixon into one.

We will, however, replace Laurent and the French people with Judith and Americans. When Judith finds Daryl, he’s found clues about Michonne’s whereabouts and has tracked down his quarry to Manhattan, where the vicious Croat and his people reign almost uncontested. The story plays out from here, with Daryl now having to choose between following his leads and playing babysitter to Judith, though she’s more than capable of handling herself as a highly trained young woman now. The paths of Negan/Maggie and Daryl/Judith won’t cross until the very end of the season, which is also when Carol will finally show up.

To be fair, I haven’t worked it all out. This is mostly me taking the two post-TWD spinoffs and roping them back into the fold, combining the shows back into the main show so that we can have a more sensible, comprehensible plot. There’s no reason for Daryl to be in France and no reason for him to be protecting or transporting a kid unless it’s Judith. Having Daryl looking for his lost friends makes more sense also, and having him and Judith make that search together is even better.

Season 13 opens to Michonne, getting closer and closer to her quest’s end. We learn some about where she’s been all this time. The rest of the season plays out with Daryl and co. overcoming the Manhattan bad guys thanks to Negan finally sacrificing his own life to save Judith. Maggie and Hershel return to their community and promise to send word to Gabriel, Aaron and the rest about where Daryl and Carol are headed. Judith refuses to go back. Hardened by Negan’s death, she continues alongside her adoptive parents to find her father and other adoptive parent.

With the Croat out of the way, they’ll find the person that will lead them to the CRM: Jadis, who has been held captive by the Croat after a CRM mission gone wrong. All the stories and characters involved in this season will converge at the CRM. Rick and Michonne will be reunited first, but without the arrival of Daryl and co. they would never make it out alive. Lots of tense battles, hard choices and near misses ensue. If I had it my way, Daryl and/or Carol both end up dying in the rescue effort, but Rick and Michonne and Judith escape. Or maybe Daryl and Carol survive but decide not to go back, opting to stay with the CRM in order to establish friendly relations between the CRM and the Commonwealth and Alexandria.

Season 13 is the final season of The Walking Dead, with the ragtag group returning to Alexandria and reuniting with all their friends there. Only, what’s this!? Saruman has taken over Alexandria and it’s up to our returning heroes to fight him and his brutish thugs off! The Sackville-Bloody-Bagginses have taken over Bag End!?

When they at last overthrow the wizard’s tyranny, Rick and Gandalf board a ship to the Grey Havens. Judith marries Samwise Gamgee and they have 18 children. Everybody lives happily ever after.

The End.

This post was originally published on this site