Walking Dead Has Officially Killed All Of The Good Background Actors In Hollywood

I’m going to avoid any in-depth analysis of a show that’s already been running for eight seasons, given that this blog has been running for three weeks. I will just dive into one thing that’s been catching my eye. The acting has been terrible, just terrible. By terrible, I mean laughably terrible. For a while I didn’t know if it was the writing, or whether some scenes just weren’t edited well, and I do think all of that has something to do with it. However, my friend and I were talking about it and I think we cracked the code: the Walking Dead has not only killed off many of its good actors, but more importantly it’s killed off all of the good background actors.

The Walking Dead runs through actors like they’re saltines at a soup factory. No show in history has made its talent this expendable. For a while it seemed like every episode saw somebody you knew die. In fact, that’s largely still the case. The difference now is that I don’t think people care because everybody who’s died this year has been terrible at their job. I’ve tried to find clips to prove my points, but you either have to watch the show or just believe me. I don’t know what it is exactly, but every actor who has a small speaking part, or a small dying part, just sucks. I’m really sorry to say that, and I don’t mean to be a dick. Maybe they just weren’t put in a position to succeed, but they suck.

I don’t really know where the show goes from here. I mean I think they’re trying to wrap this thing up, so your choices are limited in terms of bringing in new characters. And apparently, you killed so many fucking extras and small speaking parts that now you’ve really put yourself in a pickle.

All of your good small-speaking-part actors are dead, so they can’t come back. So now you’ve got to pull up your non-speaking extras to speaking parts, and god damnit I’m sorry, but they haven’t proven they’re up to the task. The problem with pulling your nonspeaking actors into speaking roles is then who’s going do all of your nonspeaking speech-reacting and dying? So all of your non-speakers are speakers, and now you’re forced to just pull people off the fucking street to fill in. It’s crazy because it doesn’t seem that long ago that this show was full of people who, remarkably, could act. Most of those characters are now long dead, but they sure were nice while they lasted. Let this be a lesson to you fledgling shows and show runners: if you mow down actors like they’ve personally wronged you, and you do this for eight seasons, eventually you’ll run out.