Originally written for July 27, 2021
Over the last few months, I’ve been watching a lot of The Walking Dead. A long time ago, I stopped at the season 7 mid-season finale where AMC stops running episodes because they don’t want to compete against late-season NFL and the playoffs, as well as to milk out the ratings, which honestly isn’t a bad idea. However, when they stopped midway through season 7, is when I basically embarked on the process of selling my own home, moving, lots of changes in life, and so forth. I never watched again, regardless of how compelling and interested I was in the Negan storyline.
Prior to the arrival of #2, both mythical wife and I had the same idea to watch a bunch of television and movies that we’d been sitting on, because we knew that once we were dealing with two kids, our television time would evaporate like rain in the desert. Amidst my list of things to watch was to finally, catch up on The Walking Dead. It was a daunting task to embark on two and a half seasons, and naturally midway through my journey, Netflix dropped season 10, and at the time I’m writing this, season 11 is knocking on the door for its eventually premiere. But it was a show that I never didn’t enjoy, so I figured while I still had time left, I should try and catch back up.
Anyway, without spoilers despite the fact that this show is old as fuck now, I got through the Negan arc, and I have soldered onto to the arc of the Whisperers. And as diabolical and nefarious things said Whisperers have done so far, I can’t help but get this feeling that they just aren’t as good of antagonists as Negan was. Which is often times a common pattern in all sorts of long-term stories, to which I would like to officially coin as the Shishio Effect, which is defined as a series that has at one point and antagonist that is leaps and bounds superior than any other antagonist prior to them, and unfortunately more importantly, after them, which leads to a quality bell curve in the overall timeline of said series.
Named after the antagonist Shishio from the Rurouni Kenshin anime television series, which is probably one of my earliest observations of said effect, plus the fact that naming it after him makes it way more unique and memorable for all zero of my readers. But throughout the 95 episodes of the television series, Shishio and the Kyoto storyline was somewhere in season 2, went for about 30 or so episodes, it was some of the most compelling and marathon bingeable anime in history, but after the story arc was over, the show struggled tremendously to get back to that level and instead began this slow decline until the plug was inevitably pulled on the series.
Other good examples of the Shishio Effect would be the Trinity Killer in Dexter season 4, Gus Fring in seasons 2-4 of Breaking Bad, and in the case of The Walking Dead, Negan. These guys were unmistakably the baddest motherfuckers in their respective properties, and all of the shows struggle to get back to the levels of intensity and interest once their respective storylines conclude.
I mean seriously, the guy who played zerocool in Hackers was the guy that followed the Trinity Killer in Dexter, some generic white supremacists followed Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, and now we have the Whisperers following Negan and the Saviors after like two and a half seasons of The Walking Dead? All of them are weak successors to the mantle of big bad that their predecessors had laid down, but it can’t really be their faults, entirely.
High potential properties at high risk for future Shishio Effect-ing would be just about every Marvel Cinematic Universe property that is moving onto the next phase; after working with Thanos, everyone else is going to seem kind of pathetic in comparison. And after a guy like Killmonger, the Black Panther franchise is going to have double the difficulty, especially after the passing of Chadwick Boseman. But still high risk for Shishio-ing, all the same.
Regardless, I will solder through, because while my second child doesn’t sleep at night, I’ve been gradually chipping away at the remaining episodes of The Walking Dead at night, as I am determined to clear this fucking series out of my queue, so that I can feel liberated to move onto something else. But make no mistake, the series has been feeling like it’s been sputtering since the story has moved on from the Negan arc, and I couldn’t help but feel like it was watching Rurouni Kenshin all over again.
