The Walking Dead's Pitiful Attempts at Moral Ambiguity

"Quiet, Rick. If we pretend we're a clever show, maybe they'll all believe it!"

Let's just get right to the point. The Walking Dead is not a clever show, as much as it tries to be. Although avenues from which to mock this show abound, I'd like to focus on just the one, for the purpose of this post: the incessant, trite attempts at moral ambiguity. To do this, all we really have to do is ask ourselves the same question, at pretty much every moral dilemma the show presents. That being... "are both sides really the same?" 

A Negative Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Sucks

Surprise! No wait. No one's surprised.

Frankly, this whole endeavor is hilarious. Hollywood's recent trend of unnecessarily splitting the final chapters of various stories into multiple segments is an obvious cash grab, but in Mockingjay's case, you get something unintentionally meta: part 1 is always a commercial for part 2, but the plot of Mockingjay is already literally about making a commercial. The irony makes the whole thing just impossible to take seriously.

A Negative Review: Interstellar Sucks

You don't say...

In yet another installment of Nolan's trite, pretentious glob, people and magazines and web sites have already found much more interesting adjectives to use about the former's most recent movie, though obviously, theirs are notably and profoundly positive; the movie in question: Interstellar. I've stopped becoming surprised by this point when this happens, because if there's one thing Nolan knows how to do, it's how to market his material. And let me tell you: I couldn't watch more than 5 minutes of television or browse some form of social media without running into either a trailer or some type of discussion. In any case, as is the usual, the prevailing term is "insanely brilliant" and "Kubrick-esque." Oh dear.

A Negative Review: If I Stay Sucks

Pictured: Chloë Grace Moretz delivering some of her more effective acting in If I Stay

Meet Mia Hall: she's sort of like a Disney princess, but in real life – she gets to have everything that every shy girl her age wishes she had, but at the cost of her parents dying. She has perfect, indestructible hair; the cute older boy in high school who's also a musician instantly sees how special she is on the inside and pursues her; and her deadbeat parents are worldly enough to always supply her with the perfect, textbook answer to all of life's problems. Unsurprisingly, then, this movie is generic like no other – it's so busy basking in its own pretentiousness and blandness that it often forgets it has a plot to get through. 

A Negative Review: Suits Sucks (partially)

I've long since learned not to take anything on USA seriously, but Suits is, more or less, pretty good for how bad it is. Great actors, bizarre movie references, witty dialogue… it has a lot going for it. On the other hand, however, its Rachel Zane is one of the most revolting characters in recent TV history and is an absolute joke in the face of equalism. Without further ado:

Hm.

A Negative Review: The Amazing Spiderman 2 Sucks

Caption to come later.

First, let's acknowledge that this movie has mind-blowing CGI – everything looks fantastic. Anyway, now that all the good things about the movie are out of the way...

A Negative Review: The Blacklist Sucks

Uhh, no wait, sorry, wrong story. 

It's simple, really – there's the Megan Boone character, and the James Spader character, and everyone else is pretty much forgettable. The show itself is more or less serialized, where the usual gang of idiots is out and about solving various crimes, although their actual contribution as opposed to plain luck is usually equivalent to that of Scooby Doo and his gang. Basically, though, what kills this show is that it follows an archetype so specifically that most episodes can be wholly predicted within the first few minutes. Before a demonstration, however, here is a short summary of the two relevant characters: