The holidays have finally come and gone, and we all survived the Mayan apocalypse. What does that mean? It means we’re about a month away from our return to the zombie apocalypse, and the long-awaited mid-season return of AMC’s The Walking Dead — showrunner Glen Mazzara’s final work on the show. Excited as fans are to see TWD come back, the latter half of this season will be bittersweet, as many have credited Mazzara for revolutionizing what was merely popular and beginning to flounder, subsequently turning The Waking Dead into a truly formidable piece of horror entertainment.
The following sneak peek features that brand new group of survivors we were introduced to before the break, with their version of Rick arguing with the rest:
And be sure to check out all the lightning quick shots in this brand new promo trailer. It looks like someone made it into the prison…
The Governor’s still amazingly crazy, even minus one eye.
As for the controversy, it all revolves around TWD making another showrunner transition. Shortly after the announcement Mazzara was not returning after the close of Season 3, Sons of Anarchy creator and showrunner Kurt Sutter took issue with the decision. “Without him, that future is dim,” Sutter said within a statement that included several colorful criticisms about AMC, and how they run their network. The Walking Dead creator and executive producer Robert Kirkman responded to this, and several more offhand remarks by Sutter, with the following:
@sutterink is brilliant and Sons is my favorite show on TV. Still, it’s upsetting to see him ranting about things he knows nothing about
Sutter’s latest response comes in the form of a twelve minute video, where he clearly addresses his views on the show, and Kirkman’s role in it.
“Robert is an amazing visual artist and a graphic artist,” Sutter says, “ he knows very little about TV. And the reins keep going back to him in this process, and he doesn’t know how to run a show.”
Sutter continues:
The show has tremendous following, has legs. They’re going to plug somebody else, some pour soul, in there…my sense is they won’t even hire a show-runner. They’ll throw a s—load of executives at it and a poor sap on the writing staff…And that poor sap will ultimately be just expediting the notes and the vision of non-creative people, or at least non-creative TV people.
That’ll work for a minute. In Season 4, when this will all happen, the numbers will be big, and people will show up. Will it continue to do well? No. My sense is that without somebody like a Glen Mazzara running that show, eventually it will lose focus and the narratives will run out of steam, and it won’t be able to build off of itself, and it will suffer.
The Walking Dead returns to AMC on February 10th with “The Suicide King”, finishing off the season under the guidance of Mazzara. In the meantime, plenty of people have opinions about the direction of the show, but who really has a right to judge where it’s going? Many fans were upset over the departure of former showrunner Frank Darabont, only to later decide Mazzara was the best thing to happen to the show. Whatever comes next, it’s bound to be interesting — both on and off screen.
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