Huayu: From an ordinary person to a happy director

Chapter 145 A skinny camel is bigger than a horse
Those two years should have been the proudest time for AMC: on the one hand, "Breaking Bad" had an unbeatable reputation and won many awards; on the other hand, "The Walking Dead" had the highest ratings and dominated the market in terms of revenue.

There are many interesting connections between the two Ace series. For example, the red sports car driven by Glenn in the first season is the same model as Walter White in Broke Bad. The "gangster" Daryl said to Beth, "My brother and I met", is none other than Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad. And the half face of "Uncle Chicken" Gustavo that was blown away in the finale of Breaking Bad Season 4 was also made up by the crew of The Walking Dead. Thinking back on these interesting stories now, it always seems like a lifetime ago.

As the series entered its fifth season, The Walking Dead became more and more profound and complex, and Shi Lei further realized that "how low a person's lower limit is, how high his upper limit will be."

The Alexandria community that appeared later is not only the foundation for Rick and other protagonists to settle down, but also a sign that the story has entered the "deep water zone".

"The Walking Dead" is still good to watch at this point, but it made a mistake that almost all long-form works make: it did not stop before the audience became aesthetically fatigued - for a blockbuster project that everyone can benefit from, "quitting at the height of success" requires not only wisdom and vision, but also courage and determination - he can't blame the crew, after all, there are too few people who can do this.

By the sixth season, there were more and more characters and story lines, and the series had begun to show some fatigue. Many viewers were waiting for an opportunity to "exit"... Then, that man came.

At the end of the sixth season, a promotional tactic that now seems to be a "bad move" was used: the newly introduced villain Negan knocked a member of the main group to death, but the audience was not told who it was. In order to prevent spoilers, the crew also deliberately filmed the scene of each person being knocked to death.

Judging from the results alone, this strategy was very successful. In the months between seasons 6 and 7, everyone was guessing who Negan had killed, and the topic of "The Walking Dead" reached a new level.

But in the long run, this gimmick squeezed out other discussion space during the cross-season, making the audience focus more than 90% of their attention on suspense. Its nature is equivalent to draining the pond to catch all the fish and giving a shot of chicken blood at an inappropriate time that is likely to have the opposite effect.

As a result, people already know that Negan first knocked Abraham to death, and then knocked Glenn to death - the suspense was revealed, there was an accident, and it was very painful. It was like a long-term announcement but no lubrication was done before the show was done. The pain far exceeded the pleasure, and this feeling, coupled with the increasing aesthetic fatigue, resulted in the largest-scale "quit wave" in name.

The reason why I use the word "nominally" is because the audience's exit is a long and silent process.

So, let’s talk about everyone’s “quitting the game”.

The actual viewing rate of the seventh season is not low. At that time, each review of the seventh season on Renren.com could easily get tens of thousands of views, and some key episodes could get tens of thousands of views. Considering the fact that there is very little traffic on the resource website, the number of viewers did not plummet as everyone said - the real abandonment of the pit is not "I won't watch it if I say so", but more "I slowly forget to watch it/don't want to watch it anymore".

The real low point was the eighth season. In order to recover the declining ratings, "The Walking Dead" did a lot of bad things in this season, including but not limited to: various bloody and unreasonable plots during the total war period, excessive OOC performances of Rick, Daryl and other characters, and the forced death of "Young Master" Carl.

In comparison, controversial topics like Negan being left alive are nothing... The number of readers of articles on Renren has slowly dropped to only a few thousand in the past two years, and the ratings of the season finale have also dropped to around 800 million - although this data is still the best in the same period, it is indeed not comparable to its heyday. The crew certainly hopes to reverse the decline, so in the ninth season, they used a bigger trick: let the soul protagonist Rick offline and softly restart "The Walking Dead".

It should be said that this decision did work. The episode S9E5 earned everyone's tears. The subsequent appearance of the grown-up "Princess" Judith and the new story also brought some freshness.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. The subsequent Whisperers chapter was still not exciting. More importantly, "The Walking Dead" was never able to break out of the homogeneous "cycle" of being similar, so that some issues that were not problems before, such as "rationality" and "scientificity", became problems.

At the same time, "The Walking Dead" has many common disadvantages of similar long-form works: it is too long, fewer and fewer old viewers watch it, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for new viewers to get into it. This downward trend is inevitable, and the "cyclical law" is there, and there is no way to resist it.

Finally, before the end of the tenth season, he received the news that "The Walking Dead will end in the eleventh season". The tenth season will add 6 episodes, and the eleventh season will have a total of 24 episodes, which will be broadcast in three batches.

There are 30 episodes in total for the two seasons, which is actually almost the same as three seasons. When it really came time to say goodbye, everyone gave this long-running drama enough face.

Shi Lei believes that the eleventh season is better than the previous ones, largely because the story of the Federation chapter finally breaks away from the past pattern of "death battles" between people and begins to explore how to rebuild human social civilization in the end times from a larger and deeper level. The watchability has been significantly expanded.

Although the ending of the story still seems hasty, there are not many faults to pick on in terms of creation. Many problems are not unique to the eleventh season, they just have to be borne together.

Shi Lei went from understanding in the beginning (it is understandable that you gave up the game), to getting angry later (I won't watch it anymore, but you come here to say something and step on me, aren't you annoying), to being calm now (it doesn't matter, as long as you are happy), this is probably what is meant by "not being surprised by praise or criticism".

In fact, most people who say these things don't have any malicious intent. They just want to find some fragments of past memories in the audience who are still watching the show. He also thinks that the few people who do have malicious intent are just hating because of love (some people who want to show their "superiority" are stupid)...

Shi Lei's experiences and feelings just prove how popular "The Walking Dead" was back then. Otherwise, where would all the "pasts" come from?

The crew said something very right in the production special: "We changed the rules of the television industry and the rules of genre films. I really feel that the mark of The Walking Dead has appeared in many works since then, because before that, we had never seen this type of film on TV."

(End of this chapter)