Creating a sense of ambivalence within a show is generally a quality of a good show, with good writing, good acting, etc.
But what about meta-ambivalence? In “The Walking Dead,” I feel a growing sense of contempt for Rick’s wife and son, Lori and Carl. She is constantly making terrible decisions and reacting poorly to every new challenge, and Carl is a whiny little idiot. Seriously, if they weren’t Rick’s family, they would have already been killed several times over.
But I don’t want them to die solely because that would necessitate several episodes of Rick pining for his lost family while the current zombie-fighting frat struggles (again) with its identity. And that would get pretty dull…
So the only course of action I see is to kill every living person in the show and start over with a fresh, new group of humans. What’s the chance of that happening in Season 3?
