I'm sure many will say Glen under the dumpster but for me it was when Rick’s gang escaped the prison with only plot armor keeping them alive whilst all the extras in non-speaking roles died.

I’ve said it before, but I really feel it was Season 7 that was the culprit. That’s not to suggest the show didn’t have its problems before, or that there weren’t earlier things worth complaining about, such as the Glen dumpster sequence.

But remember where the phrase “jumping the shark” originated: it referred to a Happy Days episode where a character literally water-skis over a shark. In the strictest sense, the phrase doesn’t simply mean that a show has deteriorated in quality, it suggests the introduction of bizarre, gimmicky, attention-grabbing elements that go wildly against the tone of what came before. Many shows eventually succumb to this tendency, and it’s a familiar feeling when you see it happen. It’s a sign that the writers have truly run out of steam and are simply flailing around.

Only by Season 7 do we meet a community run by a Shakespeare-quoting dreadlocked “king” with a CGI tiger. Only by Season 7 do we visit an island populated by a throng of gun-toting women who shoot any strangers on sight. Only by Season 7 do we encounter a group that lives in a junkyard and speaks its own code language.

And then of course there’s Negan himself, the smirking, arrogant supervillain given to saying things like “hot diggity dog” and “easy peasy lemon squeezy.” Jeffrey Dean Morgan isn’t a bad actor by any stretch, and his character wouldn’t be out of place in a different genre. But in a relatively serious zombie-apocalypse show that has for the most part avoided camp, his presence is really jarring.

I know some of this was in the comics, some of it wasn’t. I don’t much care. What’s important is that in all the previous seasons, the major characters had at least some semblance of believability. Now they’re cartoons. And so far from what I’ve seen in Season 8, it’s not improving.

@Kylopod said:

I’ve said it before, but I really feel it was Season 7 that was the culprit. That’s not to suggest the show didn’t have its problems before, or that there weren’t earlier things worth complaining about, such as the Glen dumpster sequence.

But remember where the phrase “jumping the shark” originated: it referred to a Happy Days episode where a character literally water-skis over a shark. In the strictest sense, the phrase doesn’t simply mean that a show has deteriorated in quality, it suggests the introduction of bizarre, gimmicky, attention-grabbing elements that go wildly against the tone of what came before. Many shows eventually succumb to this tendency, and it’s a familiar feeling when you see it happen. It’s a sign that the writers have truly run out of steam and are simply flailing around.

Only by Season 7 do we meet a community run by a Shakespeare-quoting dreadlocked “king” with a CGI tiger. Only by Season 7 do we visit an island populated by a throng of gun-toting women who shoot any strangers on sight. Only by Season 7 do we encounter a group that lives in a junkyard and speaks its own code language.

And then of course there’s Negan himself, the smirking, arrogant supervillain given to saying things like “hot diggity dog” and “easy peasy lemon squeezy.” Jeffrey Dean Morgan isn’t a bad actor by any stretch, and his character wouldn’t be out of place in a different genre. But in a relatively serious zombie-apocalypse show that has for the most part avoided camp, his presence is really jarring.

I know some of this was in the comics, some of it wasn’t. I don’t much care. What’s important is that in all the previous seasons, the major characters had at least some semblance of believability. Now they’re cartoons. And so far from what I’ve seen in Season 8, it’s not improving.

THIS!!

You hit the nail right on the head.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Season six is when it really started going downhill for me and season seven was just horribly boring (in my opinion of course). And here we are three episodes in to season eight and still nothing has happened. I'm so bored of this show. The only reason I hang around and watch is because I'm still kind of hoping the writers will get this show back on track to how it used to be but I feel like I'm in for more disappointment. Oh well..........I thought the first few seasons were great but this show has definitely run its course. Just painful to watch anymore.

I think Glen's dumpster was the defining moment but there were a couple of nudges along the way as far as this show losing it goes:-

The first one was the start of Season 5 - they really blew their load on the whole terminus set up far too quickly. Seems like once they'd done that nothing particularly interesting happened for the rest of that season, we got that prolonged Beth storyline and the start of the now trademark splitting up the characters for episode after episode with virtually nothing happening inbetween the first episode to mid-season, then mid-season to finale...

Then that stupid scheme at the start of season 6 which they then again managed to use to split the characters up and give us boring filler episode after boring filler episode.

Thus far, it appears consensus is tending towards all being well in TWD up to end of season 4.

Since then, we've had shots taken at each subsequent season, and most at season 7.

I'm really appreciating all of your contributions to this conversation. I did like this show, I like it less now, and I was trying to put my finger on why.

Now, what baffles me is, if we audience can see/feel the difference, why can't the writers/actors? We seem to know what we like, why don't they?

Let's get Rick, Daryl, Carol, Maggie, Michonne and Carl back together. We know Tara is down with us. Bring along Ezekiel if he'll tone down the grandiose rhetoric; Morgan if he can keep his shit together (because, after all, Morgan was the first one to lend Rick a hand, even before Glenn); Aaron's down with us; and heck, even Jesus, if he can get his head straight. Just get the gang back together to kick some ass, settle things down, and build a life of peace for the group.

All together now... They Down With Us. .

@DRDMovieMusings said:

Thus far, it appears consensus is tending towards all being well in TWD up to end of season 4.

Since then, we've had shots taken at each subsequent season, and most at season 7.

I'm really appreciating all of your contributions to this conversation. I did like this show, I like it less now, and I was trying to put my finger on why.

Now, what baffles me is, if we audience can see/feel the difference, why can't the writers/actors? We seem to know what we like, why don't they?

Let's get Rick, Daryl, Carol, Maggie, Michonne and Carl back together. We know Tara is down with us. Bring along Ezekiel if he'll tone down the grandiose rhetoric; Morgan if he can keep his shit together (because, after all, Morgan was the first one to lend Rick a hand, even before Glenn); Aaron's down with us; and heck, even Jesus, if he can get his head straight. Just get the gang back together to kick some ass, settle things down, and build a life of peace for the group.

All together now... They Down With Us. .

Kill any three excluding Rick and his boy from that list and I'll be a little happier, the threat of death to anyone needs to come back to the show, we just know certain members of the group won't die, and if they knock one off it won't be until the last episode of the season, they just trudge along to escaping bullets and bites like superheroes.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

Flex some literary muscle here and break it down for me. Let's see what we can collectively come up with.

It doesn't need to be one singular moment. The show has gradually introduced increasingly unbelievable elements, even for a zombie show, over the past ~2-3 seasons. As the show has increasingly become comprised of ridiculous, cartoonish, and, for lack of a better word, stupid characters, it has become very hard to suspend disbelief for those of us who haven't hawkishly read the comic series for years. General audiences have therefore begun to lose interest in this show as evidenced by the decreasing # of people tuning in this season.

There was therefore no single shark jump. The dumpster was absurd, but this is a show of absurdities masquerading as a real human drama. It's the shedding of this "mask" of realism which has made the show nigh unwatchable, not some stupid plot device like they pulled with Glenn.

@Kylopod said:

I’ve said it before, but I really feel it was Season 7 that was the culprit. That’s not to suggest the show didn’t have its problems before, or that there weren’t earlier things worth complaining about, such as the Glen dumpster sequence.

But remember where the phrase “jumping the shark” originated: it referred to a Happy Days episode where a character literally water-skis over a shark. In the strictest sense, the phrase doesn’t simply mean that a show has deteriorated in quality, it suggests the introduction of bizarre, gimmicky, attention-grabbing elements that go wildly against the tone of what came before. Many shows eventually succumb to this tendency, and it’s a familiar feeling when you see it happen. It’s a sign that the writers have truly run out of steam and are simply flailing around.

Only by Season 7 do we meet a community run by a Shakespeare-quoting dreadlocked “king” with a CGI tiger. Only by Season 7 do we visit an island populated by a throng of gun-toting women who shoot any strangers on sight. Only by Season 7 do we encounter a group that lives in a junkyard and speaks its own code language.

And then of course there’s Negan himself, the smirking, arrogant supervillain given to saying things like “hot diggity dog” and “easy peasy lemon squeezy.” Jeffrey Dean Morgan isn’t a bad actor by any stretch, and his character wouldn’t be out of place in a different genre. But in a relatively serious zombie-apocalypse show that has for the most part avoided camp, his presence is really jarring.

I know some of this was in the comics, some of it wasn’t. I don’t much care. What’s important is that in all the previous seasons, the major characters had at least some semblance of believability. Now they’re cartoons. And so far from what I’ve seen in Season 8, it’s not improving.

You said it perfectly. I agree it was some time in season 7. If you forced me to pick a moment, it would be the fight with the spiked walker at the garbage patch kids lair. I was like, WTF is this crap? If not one moment, then I would say the way they have bungled the character of Negan. This show has had some awesome villains, but Negan, who is supposed to be the baddest of them all, is just annoying. The Governor, terminus, even the guys they met at the prison in season 3(?) were better villains than Negan.

Now, what baffles me is, if we audience can see/feel the difference, why can't the writers/actors? We seem to know what we like, why don't they?

I think the root of the problem is that the show’s premise was limited from the start, preventing the plot from having a forward orientation. A lot of zombie stories, such as the Romero films or the 28 Days Later series, deal with stages of the apocalypse: we see the gradual breakdown of civilization as the zombie plague spreads and increasingly cannot be contained by military forces. TWD skipped over all that and started at the end, after society has already all but collapsed. That’s part of what made the series intriguing at first.

The problem is that there wasn’t much room for the story to grow from there. The end of the first season pretty much put an end to any possibility of the characters finding a cure to the zombie plague, and apart from the predictable fake-out with Eugene in a later season, it never pursued that path again. The show also has consistently avoided any implication that the walkers contain traces of the people they once were. They are, for all intents and purposes, just a dangerous natural force like a storm or a fire.

So all that was left to do was have the main characters look for places to settle down and deal with the sociopaths who prowl the area when there’s no central government to protect people against them. That’s a fairly limited setup, and in a way the series deserves praise for how much it was able to get out of this premise and for as long as it did. But it made the show’s writers desperate to be constantly upping the ante, making the situations increasingly outrageous so that the story didn’t simply go in circles. It makes me wonder how the series will ever reach a satisfying conclusion.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

Flex some literary muscle here and break it down for me. Let's see what we can collectively come up with.

When Negan arrived last season.

SPOILERS!!!!!!!

After the dispatch of Glenn and Abraham , it was anti-climactic.

@Kylopod said:

I’ve said it before, but I really feel it was Season 7 that was the culprit. That’s not to suggest the show didn’t have its problems before, or that there weren’t earlier things worth complaining about, such as the Glen dumpster sequence.

But remember where the phrase “jumping the shark” originated: it referred to a Happy Days episode where a character literally water-skis over a shark. In the strictest sense, the phrase doesn’t simply mean that a show has deteriorated in quality, it suggests the introduction of bizarre, gimmicky, attention-grabbing elements that go wildly against the tone of what came before. Many shows eventually succumb to this tendency, and it’s a familiar feeling when you see it happen. It’s a sign that the writers have truly run out of steam and are simply flailing around.

Only by Season 7 do we meet a community run by a Shakespeare-quoting dreadlocked “king” with a CGI tiger. Only by Season 7 do we visit an island populated by a throng of gun-toting women who shoot any strangers on sight. Only by Season 7 do we encounter a group that lives in a junkyard and speaks its own code language.

And then of course there’s Negan himself, the smirking, arrogant supervillain given to saying things like “hot diggity dog” and “easy peasy lemon squeezy.” Jeffrey Dean Morgan isn’t a bad actor by any stretch, and his character wouldn’t be out of place in a different genre. But in a relatively serious zombie-apocalypse show that has for the most part avoided camp, his presence is really jarring.

I know some of this was in the comics, some of it wasn’t. I don’t much care. What’s important is that in all the previous seasons, the major characters had at least some semblance of believability. Now they’re cartoons. And so far from what I’ve seen in Season 8, it’s not improving.

Yes, I agree with all this. Last season, 7, turned the tide.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

Thus far, it appears consensus is tending towards all being well in TWD up to end of season 4.

Since then, we've had shots taken at each subsequent season, and most at season 7.

I'm really appreciating all of your contributions to this conversation. I did like this show, I like it less now, and I was trying to put my finger on why.

Now, what baffles me is, if we audience can see/feel the difference, why can't the writers/actors? We seem to know what we like, why don't they?

Let's get Rick, Daryl, Carol, Maggie, Michonne and Carl back together. We know Tara is down with us. Bring along Ezekiel if he'll tone down the grandiose rhetoric; Morgan if he can keep his shit together (because, after all, Morgan was the first one to lend Rick a hand, even before Glenn); Aaron's down with us; and heck, even Jesus, if he can get his head straight. Just get the gang back together to kick some ass, settle things down, and build a life of peace for the group.

All together now... They Down With Us. .

we audience can see/feel the difference, why can't the writers/actors?

I do think Andrew Lincoln is bringing his all! He seems to me the only one. I adore him. Lennie James is bringing it, too. Maybe Reedus. But the others are going through the motions now. Maybe they are just bored, or tired.

The first had to be when the people of Woodbury joined Rick’s group at the prison only to first get killed off by a plague and later on the rest all jumped in the same bus when the prison fell to be eaten by the walkers on the road. That was a very convenient way to get rid of all those new members of Rick’s group.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

Flex some literary muscle here and break it down for me. Let's see what we can collectively come up with.

Jumping the shark suggests the show has reached the point where the creators themselves don't even care about what they're doing anymore and the problem with applying that to TWD is that those behind it have practically never cared. Frank Darabont certainly did but after he left, the show tanked really hard for two seasons. One could call season 2 the jumped-the-shark moment, except what was really happening was that AMC made a mess of things then assigned an utterly talentless showrunner. Simply stated, under Glen Mazzara, TWD was one of the worst things on television. But once he was gone and Scott Gimple took over, the show radically improved. Season 4 is incredibly uneven and still beset, at various points, by most of the problems of the Mazzara era but they were doing good episodes on a regular basis throughout it and sometimes even very good ones. The improvement in the quality of the work was night-and-day. The last really good ep of the series was the first 2/3 or the season 5 opener and after that, Gimple's effort at a reformed TWD just ended and those Mazzara-era habits rapidly--and entirely--consumed the show.

As I've noted in the past, every long-running series gets into those stuck-around-way-too-long seasons, when the show is creatively dead but still drawing good enough ratings to continue getting renewed. TWD entered this stata with season 5. If one is looking for a jumped-the-shark point, that one--with the caveats I've just outlined--works as well as any. Every year, it just gets worse.