r/dataisbeautiful • u/rickyresq OC: 1 • 24d ago
OC [OC] The Walking Dead lost 87% of its audience. Breaking Bad never had a down season. Per-episode Nielsen ratings, 2008-2022
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u/Zealousideal_Cap7012 24d ago
This is dope. Wow the walking dead was huuuge for a while.
Would love to see more shows added for comparison.
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u/heyItsDubbleA 24d ago
I forget what season it was, but AMC absolutely milked the saviors arc and so many people got bored of it after Negan made his amazing appearance.
For those that didn't read the comic, the arc was actually much much shorter with only a few back and forth trips before it ended.
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u/OhMyTummyHurts 24d ago
I still remember the fan backlash during Negan’s introduction episode when they wouldn’t reveal who he killed until next season
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u/weasol12 24d ago
Talking Dead that night was fun. And then the new season started and you could tell the show's writing had fallen off a cliff. I've tried rewatching it multiple times and can't make it passed the Daryl "Easy Street" episode no matter how hard I try.
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u/crookeddy 23d ago
I understand that no show can be good forever, but I don't know any other show that fell off like TWD. Like... WTF happened?? They can't even build tension anymore.
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u/heyItsDubbleA 24d ago
I honestly didn't care that much and thought it was cool how they did it. Then when it was revealed I thought it was a nice sendoff for a character that had a relatively cheap death in the book.
Everything after was kinda crap though
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u/OhMyTummyHurts 24d ago
I didn’t care that much either, but I was bothered by the fact that Both Abe and Glenn were killed instead of letting one of them grow into a more prominent character with a more complete arc instead of dying early or “on-schedule” in the comics like they succeeded at doing with Carol
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u/Bemxuu 23d ago
Pretty much my beef with that episode. In a world where Carol gets to live because of her popularity killing both Abe and Glenn just to show the s gets real ... Really? Were they THAT unpopular?
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u/Akatshi 24d ago
The formers death was so bad in the comic though, basically randomly happened in one frame
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u/evilbrent 24d ago
That was part of the tension in the comics though, the ever present feeling that any of the characters could and would just die at any time and there wouldn't be a good reason or time to mourn..
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u/Line-Noise 24d ago edited 24d ago
That's actually when I stopped watching. The season ended on that cliffhanger, I said "Fuck that!" and never watched another episode. I still don't know who he killed.
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u/DuckyHornet 24d ago
He killed the show
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u/Narwahl_Whisperer 23d ago
He really did. Bah Gawd the Negan seasons were a fucking slog. I toughed it out until Rick had his chance to actually kill Negan and he didn't. That, and they killed the tiger, which pissed me off. I was over it once Rick didn't kill Negan.
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u/crookeddy 23d ago
Negan's redemption ark is actually pretty much the only piece of decent writing since those peak days.
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u/Dr__Sloth 23d ago
Same. I think there was the Glenn fakeout death not long before that too, so when they left on that cliffhanger, I honestly just had had enough.
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u/SucculentVariations 23d ago
Thats when they lost me. They did a Glenn fake out death cliff hanger only to actually kill him right after but with another cliff hanger. I was so annoyed I stopped watching.
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u/rilliu 23d ago
Yeah, the Glenn fakeout death annoys me so much! I quit watching sometime after that because they kept jerking around the audience emotions in what felt like a really dumb, incredibly contrived way.
Poor Carl's mundane death is one of the last things I remember from the show. After every impossible thing he survived, getting bit offscreen was such a letdown.
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u/3vs3BigGameHunters 23d ago
If I recall correctly, and I may not, the actor who played Carl was about to come of age where the actors union would have forced the show to give him a raise and that's why they killed him off.
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u/kingfischer48 23d ago
They didn't trust the audience to stick around, it HAD to be another cliffhanger. IF i remember correctly this was a midseason break. The second half of that season works much better if they ended with the brutal killing of Glen, and let the audience sit with that for a few weeks before the second half of the season came back.
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u/8eSix 24d ago edited 23d ago
It was probably already super obvious to everyone else except me, but that was the moment I realized that AMC only cared about views and profits. They went for a cliffhanger to build the next season instead of going for a pure shock moment.
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u/Sancticide 23d ago
How did you avoid spoilers? It was like everywhere for a while. That's impressive, really. See, I watched the next 2 seasons and it was wild, but then they did this whole revenge plan and showed up with a damn army from all the towns under the Saviors' tribute system, but then they just kind of let Negan monologue out in the open and he got away, like some Saturday morning cartoon villain. THAT'S when I was done, because I knew Negan was their prize cow.
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u/auntieup 24d ago
That is still the only time I've ever gone from being a passionate weekly fan of a show to quitting the same show for good in the middle of an episode.
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u/khonsu_27 23d ago
Me and my brother were pretty diehard and after that cliffhanger we never watched another episode. Not even ep. 1 of the next season. I just looked online to find out who died.
The show was already on some bullshit with dumbass cliffhangers and terrible writing, but after that I couldn't take it anymore lol.
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u/Shin_curry 23d ago
I kept watching until he ended up killing who he does in the comics. But all the fake outs of the character death previously and the character being the predominant reason for watching, after I found out who Negan killed in the show, I just turned it off and never watched again.
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u/spectra2000_ 24d ago
I also stopped watching the moment Negan showed up, despite people continually telling me he was the best villain in the series.
I don’t know. I just got really bored with it all.
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u/heyItsDubbleA 24d ago
Yeah half the problem was just the pacing. They added so much fluff that the actual story suffered. Up until the saviors they pretty much kept it in line with the books except with who lived and died (some for the better, some not so much). The pacing was pretty much right where it needed to be. They added a little bit here and there, but it was like an episode and not 3/4 of a season...
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u/soulsoda 24d ago
For me, it was all the extras dying to random ninja tree walkers. Shit got old hella fast. Writing also took a nose dive with constant fake out deaths and then giving real deaths when they definitely should not have (like Carl).
Like these are people who've somehow managed to survive like 4-5+ years in a zombie apocalypse and they die to random tree walkers. Who are slow aggressive and constantly groaning once awoken.
Or just the mathematics of zombies should have made it an entirely manageable problem that would have solved itself within a decade.
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u/JasperDX7 23d ago
The format was what killed it for a lot of people, myself included. Starting a season off with the main story and then forcing us to wait until the last episode of the season to get a "conclusion/ 2nd cliff hanger" was stupid. It worked for a few seasons but then once it became apparent that we'd have to sit through the same BS every season, people started losing interest. After Negan killed Glenn it just continued to feel like they were wasting our time with cheap tricks to try and keep us watching.
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u/TheCenterOfEnnui 23d ago
In kept reading online about Negan, how amazing of a character he was in the comics, blah blah blah.
And then it was like...meh.
I stopped watching around the time when that Alpha's group came on. At that point I was just bored. ANOTHER weird group that they had to fight, OK, whatever.
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u/The-Nimbus 23d ago
There was a load of issues with the show from that point on, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan himself was brilliant. He did a bloody fantastic job. But yeah, the show did go downhill.
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u/reoze 24d ago
I checked out immediately after the cliffhanger with Glenn about to die under a dumpster just for him to pretty much just get out and walk away after the mid season premiere. From what I heard it remained pretty uninspired after that point.
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u/karnyboy 24d ago
I started to get annoyed after the S8 intro when it felt that every character death became predictable and every major character kept having their "speech" moment and the conversations between characters were always attempting to be poignant, when sometimes some natural human conversation would have been better.
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u/DopeAbsurdity 24d ago
Season 2 is four comics worth of material stretched out into thirteen terrible episodes.
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u/heyItsDubbleA 24d ago
2 was slow for certain. But I felt like that was a deliberate choice to really build the cast more than the books did. It was nowhere near as egregious as it got after the Woodbury arc and beyond.
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u/Aquatic-Vocation 23d ago
Season 2 was like that because the network cut the budget by 25% and doubled the episode count from season 1.
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u/GoldenRain 23d ago
The first season was superb. The second season had twice as many episodes with half the budget for the season. So 25% budget per episode.
So it basically turned into a soap drama at a farm.
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u/8eSix 24d ago
I always felt like The Walking Dead could've been a GOAT television series if it kept a formula of 6 tight episodes a season with zero down time. The show had just way too much down time. Like way too much. I watched that show religiously up until Rick left and at some point, the only episodes that started to matter were season premier, mid season finale, mid season premier, and season finale. Seasons were 16 damn episodes long
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u/farmallnoobies 24d ago
It was legitimately good for a bit. And then it got really bad. Intolerably bad. I forced myself to sit through an extra 2 seasons hoping it would recover and it only got worse.
Stopped and never looked back.
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u/holiwud111 24d ago
Yeah, they tried to milk it for FAR too long. Between that and the spinoffs I got bored with TWD right when it's ratings tanked.
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u/farmallnoobies 24d ago
They kept killing off the good characters and replacing them with worse ones that were acted and written more poorly.
If they cycled in better characters, it could've continued to be great. But that tends to be very difficult.
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u/huge_clock 24d ago
Kind of became a little soapy in that way. You need some consistency. Plus they killed off all the wrong characters. In the comics Rick loses his arm and Karl has a major character arc swing and almost becomes the main character. They let Rick become the centre of the show and when they lost Andrew Lincoln it fell apart quickly.
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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter OC: 2 24d ago
Breaking Bad: When did you realize he's not the good guy?
Walking Dead: When did you realize it's not a good show?
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u/BenevolentCheese 23d ago
That time at the end of season 2 when Rick fired 52 straight rounds out of a double barrel shotgun without a single reload.
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u/thispartyrules 24d ago
I understand why they made it a little different from the comics, but they took the comics and added far more characters, groups and plotlines. In the comics, some of the stopovers were mercifully brief, like they didn't spend inordinate amounts of time hanging out on a farm before that went tragically wrong.
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u/ThePhysicistIsIn 24d ago
I dunno I thought it was all downhill from the pilot.
The pilot was great, season 1 was good, then they fuck around on a farm a whole season, and it gets worse from there.
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u/SaxRohmer 24d ago
yeah i checked out at the farm as well
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u/GameOfThrownaws 24d ago
The season was fairly bad but IMO the scene toward the end with Shane arguing with Rick and then letting the zombies out of the barn was really good. It was a very strong payoff after a lot of slow buildup across that season and the acting was incredible.
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u/UrghAnotherAccount 24d ago
After the farm I gave them 1 season to pull it back but nah it was a terminal dive.
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u/huge_clock 24d ago
I watched it to the end just because but yeah it really fell apart well before the end.
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u/juridiculous 24d ago
Dude they had a show on, just to talk about the show at its peak.
I’ve never seen another series get that level of hype.
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u/Realtrain OC: 3 24d ago
"Talking Dead" right? Like it was just literally a few people reacting to the episode the just aired?
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
Working on it. Next candidates: Better Call Saul — same universe as Breaking Bad but the opposite arc (huge premiere, long slow bleed), and Lost, which peaked at 23.5M, bigger than anything on this chart. What else should make the cut?
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u/Arturo_Binewski 24d ago
Lost was on network TV so not entirely comparable. I’d say The Wire and Sopranos
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u/LateralEntry 24d ago
Wow I’m surprised BCS viewership dropped, I thought it got better and better
Maybe people were expecting more breaking bad and it doesn’t really deliver until much later, starts as a family drama
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
BCS is one of the next shows I am adding. The quality kept climbing while the audience shrank, which is exactly the tension I want to chart.
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u/AlsoIHaveAGroupon 24d ago
BCS overlaps with the slow decline of linear TV viewership. This is Nielsen ratings and does not include streaming.
The later seasons of The Walking Dead in this post's graph overlaps with the same. Some of the decline in TWD is people losing interest, but some of it is people cutting the cord and watching it on streaming instead.
If we look at like NCIS, a show that's been one of the highest rated shows on TV consistently for a long time, in 2015 when TWD was at its peak, NCIS got between 14.8 and 19.0 million viewers in the US for every episode. TWD's last season in 2022, NCIS got between 5.8 and 8.0 million viewers (and was the #3 show on television).
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u/GameOfThrownaws 24d ago edited 24d ago
I'm pretty confident that's what happened. I was a massive breaking bad enjoyer and I didn't particularly enjoy BCS, aside from a couple episodes here and there, for like years on end. It was well made and it wasn't like actively terrible or anything, it was just a bit boring compared to BB I just wasn't really into it and only continued watching out of a sense of duty from them making my favorite TV show of all time, and maybe a bit of hope that it would get better. And god damn did it get better. But I imagine a huge number of people like myself decided not to make that initial slog.
It's funny because I remember around season 2 or 3 or so, I was thinking to myself man, I'm kind of only watching this anymore hoping to catch some cameos from my beloved breaking bad characters or something. And by season 5 and 6 I didn't need that at all. Then right toward the end they literally brought in Walt and Jesse for an episode and I didn't even give a shit. Because BCS was so insanely good by then on its own two legs.
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u/SaxRohmer 24d ago
slow bleed for BCS is crazy to me. i’d expect a drop off at the beginning but it really ramps up after a few seasons
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u/SeparateLawfulness53 24d ago
Parks & Rec. Had a similar trajectory to Breaking Bad - first season wasn't very popular then it became one of the most iconic shows of the era.
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u/1RedOne 24d ago
Do Lost and also Seinfeld! You could do Seinfeld, the Office and Friends as well, to show three eras of sitcom which nearly overlap
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
Love the sitcom eras idea. Seinfeld, The Office, Friends as three eras of the sitcom is a great concept. Adding it to the request list.
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u/pirate-private 24d ago
basically inverse to quality, as usual. had a phenomenal and suspenseful zombie genre start but turned lackluster soap opera quick, which apparently didn't hurt its popularity.
GoT was actually a good show minus a few parts, brilliant in the early seasons.
breaking bad was just overall high quality but 2008 is not a comparable starting point.
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u/mr_glide 24d ago
Breaking Bad knew when to stop
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u/BarrelStrawberry 24d ago
Game of Thrones knew when to stop... just didn't know how to stop.
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u/leaflock7 23d ago
this!!
GoT could have been one of the greatest shows but the poor thing got massacred at the last seasons . and that end... oh dear..39
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u/Admiral_Skye 23d ago
I thinkt he ending could have worked, the season just needed more episodes to work up to it. That said some of the subversions for the sake of subverting (e.g. killing the white walker) felt a bit like an ass-pull to show girl power rather than something paying off setup.
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u/WEEEE12345 23d ago
I’m of the belief that the ending was GRRM’s planned ending, but with really (really, really) poor execution.
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u/moldyolive 22d ago
Nah the when was most of the problem. If they put all that plot in 30 episodes instead of 8 and maybe gave the writers time for revisions it would have crushed.
And by the spin off popularity despite absolutely butching the brand it still had viewership legs.
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u/heyyou_SHUTUP 24d ago
Exactly. Shows with intriguing plots that build it up and end satisfactorily are great. The one I usually think of when comparing to Breaking Bad is Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. A nice hook that builds its story over the course of its run and brings all of the different elements together for a nice ending.
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u/DMala 24d ago
Vince Gilligan very obviously had the complete story of Breaking Bad in his head on day one. Maybe not every detail, every episode, every line of dialog, but he knew where Walt was going and how he would get there at the very beginning.
Frank Darabont might have had a similar plan for the Walking Dead, but we'll never know because all of that went away when they fired him. After that it was a hodgepodge of showrunners mashing different ideas together, sometimes vaguely following the comic, sometimes not. But clearly nobody had any idea where it was going or how it would get there. At its best, it was really fucking good, but the consistency was never there. And those last few seasons just went off a cliff. I watched it religiously in the early days, but I never even made it to the end.
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u/ReaverXai 24d ago edited 23d ago
I think it's actually the exact opposite, he had the "Mr. Chips into Scarface" high-concept, but the skill of the team at writing TV and the flexibility to make the show evolve over time is really the masterstroke:
- Gilligan going to kill off Jesse in S1 when he started writing
- Fring was only introduced because Tuco's actor had scheduling conflicts
- Saul clearly evolved over time from total background character to literally driving plots and the companion piece
- Mike's character was created as a last-minute because Bob had scheduling conflicts
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u/Mescallan 23d ago
While all that may be true, none of those individual characters are part of Walt’s core arch, they could easily be different actors or characters while Walt’s arc into self indulgence/ego being planned from the start
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u/peter_r_the_frozen 23d ago
Okay but the comment above stated Gilligan had the complete story of breaking bad in his head. Which is just completely false.
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u/coolstory 23d ago
Yeah, Breaking Bad was actually pretty famous for being organically written. Aside from all the above examples, Vince Gilligan said he most regretted adding the machine gun flash-forward at the beginning of season 5, because the writers had no idea what they were going to do with it, and apparently had a nightmare of a time writing it into the plot.
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u/catgotcha 23d ago
Nope, not at all. He had the general idea of "high school chemistry teacher breaks bad" as the general arc, but he did not have a full six-season story in his head. The Gus Fring story was supposed to be the end of the show – he even said so himself. Jesse, as we know, was supposed to bite it in the beginning.
I'd say that Vince was just a master of storytelling. You tell him "the story needs to go this way", and he'll figure out a way to do it and do it masterfully.
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u/the__storm 24d ago
Wow, I didn't realize The Walking Dead was anywhere near that popular. I would've guessed it was much less watched than Breaking Bad, and not even in the same universe as GoT. I guess we all live in our bubbles to some degree.
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u/stathow 24d ago
big issue with GoT is that it was on HBO so many more probably watched but not exactly legally
breaking bad was not the most popular when it aired but surged at the end and certainly after it finished airing
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u/KoalaTHerb 24d ago
That and everyone had watching parties. It would be 10-15 people for 1 "viewing"
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u/ItsAGoodDay 24d ago
Nielsen ratings don’t know about your viewing party because it’s literally people filling out surveys of what they watched and then they extrapolate the data. Maybe these days they get your tv to spy on you for them.
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u/jld2k6 23d ago edited 23d ago
With regular cable before smart TV's they also had volunteers all over that would use a device that monitored what they watched and listened to (it worked for radio as well)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_People_Meter?wprov=sfla1
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u/DisgruntledMtnBoy 24d ago
You're right. It was even discussed while the show was airing.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/apr/04/game-of-thrones-most-pirated-tv-show26
u/minimuscleR 24d ago
HBO so many more probably watched but not exactly legally
in Australia it was extremely popular, but only available on Foxtel, which had such bad bandwidth that it was 480p during season 7 for the first few days. The battle of Winterfell was literally impossible to see even with a good monitor, because the quality was so bad.
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u/Duck_Mafiah 24d ago
GOT was bigger because it was during the height of Pirating.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
At its peak it was routinely the highest-rated scripted show on TV in the 18-49 demo, beating everything on broadcast. Basic cable's biggest moment.
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u/ithinkitslupis 24d ago
They had a second show just talking about the show, 'Talking Dead'. That's how I knew it must be extremely popular.
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u/millenniumpianist 24d ago
I remember there was some study or something showing how GOT vs. The Walking Dead viewership correlated a lot with urban vs. rural living. I'd imagine this was circa 2017 or so. Obviously there was overlap in both directions, but it definitely feels like GOT was the more popular cosmopolitan choice so depending on your social circle it's certainly possible The Walking Dead felt less popular to you
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
Do you have a link to that study? If the data is out there I would love to see whether it holds up.
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u/flipmessi2005 24d ago
the linear metric just refers to who watched it live, so GOT doesn’t benefit from a lot of the people who would watch it later on demand or stream it (which was massive by seasons 6-8). Just in America season 8 averaged 46m viewers with every platform rolled in
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u/Goldeneyes92 23d ago
I live in Europe and here Game of Thrones was way way bigger. I only heard about the Walking Dead a few times when it ran. Only 2-3 people I knew watched it. 30+ people watched Game of Thrones. So I do think Game of Thrones was bigger worldwide than TWD. Which was bigger in the US.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 23d ago
Correct. These are US Nielsen first-airing numbers only. A global version would look quite different.
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u/ayodio 23d ago
That's because this is US viewing figures only, I doubt the walking dead is bigger that GoT in any other way, I also think that worldwide Breaking Bad is bigger the TWD.
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u/Yearlaren OC: 3 24d ago
Wow, I didn't realize The Walking Dead was anywhere near that popular.
Around that time it was like a zombiemania: the walking dead, zombieland, left 4 dead, cod zombies, 28 days later, the last of us, shawn of the dead, etc.
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u/ARazorbacks 24d ago
Breaking Bad and GoT were both a single storyline with an end. They told their story and ended the show.
The Walking Dead turned into a sitcom. They had to come up with new bullshit and new stakes every episode wothout end. Before long every story line was the same one, but with some different pieces plugged in.
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u/lees395 24d ago
I dropped it after the third cycle of find a place, clear out zombies, things are going well, new humans appear, they all turn on each other, get out before the zombies get you, on to the next place
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u/Sad-Bonus-9327 24d ago
Walking dead became to predictable with every new season nothing really changed. They carried the plot of rick and the other against the world simply for too long. It's became fucking boring. Never watch GoT cause not much into fantasy, dragons and incest but breaking bad was and is the GOAT of all time favourite series.
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u/nothing_in_my_mind 23d ago
TWD was like this in Season 1. I don't get the people who say Season 1 was peak but then it fell off.
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u/B1astHardcheese 24d ago
For the colorblind among us, which is which?
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
u/B1astHardcheese, Good feedback. I'll work on that. Starting in 2008 is Breaking Bad, 2011 is The Walking Dead, and late 2011 is GOT. What would make this easier for colorblind to understand?
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u/Criplor 24d ago
The main thing for colourblind readers is to give the colours different brightness. If you're colourblind, you can still doferentiate light from dark. You can still do separate colours for other readers, just make sure to change the brightness between colours as well. If you can distinguish the colours after useing a greyscale filter, you've probably made it colourblind friendly.
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u/FVCKEDINTHAHEAD 24d ago
Also different patterns - solid line, line of thick/long dashes, then a dotted line.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
Good call. Dash patterns as a second encoding on top of color is going on the v2 list. Helps everyone, not just colorblind readers.
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u/B1astHardcheese 24d ago
More distinct colors ... of course no solution is going to be perfect since colorblindness has near infinite variations ... but for me ... something like basic primary colors, red, blue, and yellow would be perfect (though that only works with three points of data LOL) but thinking of complimentary colors would be a good place to start, also having more "difference" in the hues/shades of the colors is something else to think of (like the red and green in the second one here is very distinct (even though I am red/green colorblind, the difference in the vibrancy, brightness, contrast, or whatever it is, makes them both distinct instead of muddling them together).
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u/B1astHardcheese 24d ago
Thank you all ... I don't know why I didn't think of using the years to figure them out ... but here we are.
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u/cleversmoke 24d ago
I'm not color blind and can say the choice of colors is not read friendly for a line chart. Can use dot lines, dash lines or dash lines with diamonds, if you're going to use this type of color palette.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
Update: fixed. The new palette is vermillion / blue / orange / purple, checked against red-green and blue-yellow colorblindness simulations so every pair stays distinct. It is live on the interactive version: https://rickyresq.github.io/three-fates
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u/B1astHardcheese 24d ago
That's awesome ... also big respect to you for hearing about an issue and actively working to fix it. That's much rarer than it should be, so super props to you!
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u/killreaperz 24d ago
Glen getting his head caved in was the end for me, didn't like Negan or his gang and didn't like where the story was going. Never thought I was missing out by not watching any more.
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u/bleeeeghh 24d ago
A lot of people quit there. Also because everything got so stretched out and was so slow.
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u/killreaperz 24d ago
That was my one other frustration, it became the classic zombie trope of slow it all down to a crawl, otherwise pretty much all the zombies would have fallen apart and died by now.
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u/Big_Wave9732 24d ago
At first the show was people vs zombies. Over time it migrated. Eventually the zombies were a subplot and it was "What strange violent group will they come across this week?"
I feel bad for Andrew Lincoln. He exited the show in a helicopter to places unknown.......and then nothing for like the next four years. No movie. No spin off. By the time the next project was ready, no one cared.
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u/imperabo 23d ago
Even in the first season it became people vs their own stupidity creating problems out of thin air. That's when I jumped.
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u/IrrawaddyWoman 23d ago
For me it was that it was just so repetitive. “Oh look, we found a safe place. Oh no! A group of bad guys we have to fight! Well, we lost someone, now let’s move on.” Wash, rinse repeat. Over and over. There was no bigger picture, and no end game. Thats on top of the sloooow story telling and the characters getting less and less likable each season.
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u/CankleDankl 24d ago
I stopped when Eugene revealed he doesn't actually know a cure. Kinda realized then and there that the show would be an infinite cycle of "find someplace safe, make it safe with some strife here and there, meet asshole human people, war with asshole human people, home gone now because zombies." Or something of the sort. With characters dropping like flies here and there as a cherry on top. I just couldn't watch anymore after realizing that
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u/berodem 24d ago
both of these things happen in the source material (comic book) and they're handled much better. if you're interested in revisiting the TWD then I can't recommend kirkman's original work enough. it's leagues above the show in terms of quality.
the comic book is pretty similar to the show at the start but the timelines diverge pretty quickly. from what I recall they're entirely different stories after Negan's defeat
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u/shlam16 OC: 12 23d ago
Nothing wrong with that part. It's one of the few times they actually stuck to the source material.
Carl being killed because they didn't want to pay him as an adult. That's where the series ended for me. Because Carl was supposed to be the MC of the story pretty much from that point onwards.
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u/blu3teeth 23d ago
Same. But only because the producers spend the preceding months saying Glen wouldn't die, then immediately killed him first episode back.
I just massively lost trust in the entire series. Quit then, and never looked back.
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u/Fappy_as_a_Clam 24d ago
I was ok with Glenn dying, but the cliffhanger was so stupid that I stopped there.
Honestly it was already not very good by then, it was just long monologues in the woods about how things arent how they used to be followed by a surprise attack from an enemy/zombie
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u/OathofBling 24d ago
They went on to make Negan a main character, good guy, and hero.
People still watching TWD have something wrong with them.
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u/Rocktamus1 24d ago
Even weirder, he went on to leave with Maggie. Glenn’s freaking wife
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u/MsMarvelsProstate 23d ago
Episode 1 of that spin off should have been going to take a leak and her shooting him in the back of the head.
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u/ggouge 24d ago
I stopped watching the walking dead when negan showed up. Well when Glen died. That was just a little too much for me.
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u/Yo_Mr_White_ 24d ago
Same
I felt like the show was going nowhere. It was just fighting bad guy after bad guy
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u/werewere-kokako 24d ago
I heard Glenn was going to die, so I stopped watching. If I didn’t see it, then it didn’t happen.
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u/hercule_pyro 23d ago
meanwhile the wire avoids all this content by just not having had an audience while it was running
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u/crookeddy 23d ago
Breaking Bad had the good sense to actually end. TWD would have easily been making these top 100 shows lists if it actually ended near its peak.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 23d ago
That is the chart's whole argument. Breaking Bad told its story in 62 episodes and stopped. TWD ran 177, and the long decline after the peak is the entire red line.
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u/Owlmechanic 24d ago
A lot of people took a break after the bleakness of glenn/abraham - might have returned later but then you do and its the utter star trek level unbelievable culture of the scavengers (these people are like 2 years out from the apoc and they now have their own dialect, appearance, and heirarchy that is based on nothing... for children that played scrapper I could kind of see this level of bizarre but as it wasn't, totally ridiculous).
Then they killed Carl, I was like "So guess they completely lost the plot" because without Carl's overarching coming of age arc all the show really is comes down to "Settle, human drama, convenient zombie overrun to cap the season so it doesn't last TOO long and gives some shock, repeat". like literally every season - nothing overarching. The book got it - that there was a point. Each cycle you could watch carl grow into both himself and the amalgamation of all those around him. now nothing progresses.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 23d ago edited 23d ago
Update: by request, Better Call Saul and Lost are now on the site. Also added: an updated palette with dashed/dotted lines so colors are not the only difference, a log-scale toggle, and an episode-number axis so you can compare trajectories from S1E1. https://rickyresq.github.io/three-fates/
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u/openfolio_dave OC: 16 23d ago
This actually explains why producers don't always care if a show doesn't maintain its quality. The monetization comes from the area under the curve. So if you can launch with a strong concept and monetize it even if the quality declines later it's still a commecial success. Meanwhile if you're a purist and it keeps getting better on a less populist concept it doesn't make as much money for the fat cats.
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u/oyvindi 23d ago
Breaking Bad stopped when it made sense to.
Never seen Walking Dead, but likely, like a lot of other series, they keep milking it to the very end, and make things up on the fly.
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u/stormy2587 23d ago
The thing about the walking dead is that it also had source material that was running concurrent with the show.
So ending “when it makes sense” is kind of hard when you have story arcs you can adapt already out there and a built in audience that are weekly readers of the comic who want to see it adapted for TV.
It was sort of the opposite problem of GOT where they ran out of source material then just made the cliff notes version of how the plot should wrap up.
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u/Simple_Purple_4600 23d ago
One got better and the other tried to make us accept Coral as a leading character
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u/Webcat86 23d ago
One lesson here is that Breaking Bad was a shorter, much more focused show. On my latest rewatch I remember being surprised at how much had happened by season 2. Vince knew from the outset that it was only going to be 5 seasons, and that shows in the writing.
More writers and networks should consider this lesson.
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u/TheRedNaxela 23d ago
Walking Dead had higher viewership than both Game of Thrones AND Breaking Bad?!?!?
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 23d ago
Yes. TWD's peak beats both shows. Per-episode numbers are in the chart and on the site.
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u/but-I-play-one-on-TV 24d ago
I stopped the walking dead after halfway through the prison season. It just became tragedy porn after a while
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u/dPaul21 24d ago
I stopped watching because I liked when it was Humans vs Zombies. It then became Humans vs Humans in a Zombie world, and I just got tired of that very quick.
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u/mboop127 OC: 10 24d ago
Please do not let AI title your post or write the words. It's so easy to write your own and they're so much better.
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u/grilledCheeseFish 24d ago
I knew it was claude/chatgpt as soon as I saw the title
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u/Cymbal_Monkey 24d ago
How? It looks totally fine to me.
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u/rainydays2020 24d ago edited 24d ago
AI often wants to craft a title based on take away interpretations. So instead of something descriptive like "neilson viewership for three TV shows, 2000-2010" it says something like "three shows, three fates" to indicate that the visual provides a contrast between the three. If they were coverging lines that all end at the same high point it might be something like, "three shows, three paths to popularity." I personally really don't like this as it biases the viewer's perspective toward seeing the same pattern as the author. A better starting point uses a neutral , descriptive title in which the viewer is open to being critical of the creator's perceived pattern or, alternately, they may see their own pattern. Titles like this also omit important information that explain what you're looking at: in this case we have to read the subtitle (or third title?) to know what only one axis is showing us.
Edits: autocorrect typos galore/clarity
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u/Nerfbeard123 24d ago
While theres still a lot of truth to this, i dont think this takes into account the fact that cable viewership has been declining overall. Like its sort of unfair to compare walking dead viewership now to where it was 10 years ago, because nobody watches cable now. I'd like to know where TWD stands in proportion to other tv shows right now. I say this as someone totally ambivalent to TWD
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u/ConsistentAmount4 OC: 23 23d ago
I would have liked to have seen this as individual dots, the line connecting the end of one season is distracting and borderline misleading.
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u/stumpyturk 24d ago
I left the Walking Dead when that dude with the bat with chicken wire walked out of the jail cell in a basement. Just turned it off and never went back
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u/beatlemaniac007 23d ago
The walking dead had higher viewership than GOT? For real?
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u/Suspicious-Whippet 23d ago
I don't think people remember how big Walking dead was, people were going nuts even after the first episode. Online and in real life. And it grew bigger and bigger until it jumped the shark, or killed the Glenn if you will. The hate for that shit was off the charts. They really, really, really should have changed that from the comic, he was the most liked character in the show.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 23d ago
Yes. TWD's peak episode drew 17.29 million, GoT's drew 13.61 million. GoT climbed every season; TWD peaked early and bled out.
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u/Peter_____Parker 23d ago
I wouldn’t even say it peaked early, the peak was like 7 years after it started. They were just greedy and instead of ending the shoe and bringing it to a nice conclusion when they should have the milked everything they could from it
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u/LightBulbMonster 24d ago
The walking dead was an amazing show for a couple seasons. And then like six seasons where Rick is constantly weeping. Like every episode is walking a long time and Rick having an emotional time over something. I lost interest pretty quick. Fear the walking dead was way more fast paced and I really got into it.
Side note.... Remember when they blew up the biker gang sent by Negan to bring the group in and they blew them up with a rocket? And later every turn was met by bigger and bigger groups until negan was there? Why the fuck didn't they break the windshield and fire another rocket?! We know they had more. I just don't get it.
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u/MissingVanSushi 24d ago
It's like in Fallout. I'm gonna save the mini nuke for the end game.
Saving it.
Saving it.
Saving it.
Saving it.
Saving it.
Saving it.FUCK I BEAT THE GAME!!!
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u/explicitlarynx 23d ago
Wait, does that mean millions watched the BrBa finale, having seen like 1-2 episodes before?
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 23d ago
Yes, basically. By 2013 a lot of people had binged the first four seasons on Netflix, then caught the finale live. It drew 10.28M while season 5 as a whole averaged 4.32M.
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u/iRevLoneWolf 23d ago
The walking dead was still going in 2022? I thought it ended in like 2016
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u/RGCarter 23d ago
It's practically still running, as a bunch of spinoffs have been ongoing with the same people from the core cast.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 23d ago
Yes. It ran until 2022. The chart covers every episode through the final season.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago edited 24d ago
Data: Nielsen linear first-airing figures for all 338 episodes, compiled from TV by the Numbers and ShowBuzzDaily via Wikipedia episode lists. Caveat: TWD seasons 9-11 come from a different source than seasons 1-8, so treat the tail accordingly. Tools: Python for the dataset, hand-built SVG and JS for the charts. Full interactive version with scrollytelling, season report cards, and an IMDb ratings layer.
Interactive version: https://rickyresq.github.io/three-fates/
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u/jarena009 24d ago
100% inverse correlation of when it peaks/plateaus versus when Rick leaves the show
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
Good eye. The decline started before he left, but his exit steepened it. The interactive version is getting event annotations — Negan arrives, Rick leaves — so you can read the story right off the lines.
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u/CCV21 24d ago
This one YouTuber called Friendly Space Ninja did a video discussing the downfall of The Walking Dead
He's very adept in the video explaining how The Walking Dead became what it is.
That video aged like fine wine.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 24d ago
Stranger Things is the one everyone asks for and I would love to include it, but Netflix drops whole seasons at once, so per-episode ratings simply do not exist. There is no honest way to put it on this chart. The interactive page is getting an FAQ that explains exactly that.
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u/JimJav 24d ago
If creating graphs is something you enjoy doing, just a tip to make the colors more distinct for us color-blind folks, and/or write the show title at the end of each line rather than in a key so it’s easy to tell which show belongs to which line. Really intriguing data, though!
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u/Pirkale 23d ago
As a mildly colour-blind person, thank you for managing to choose 3 colours that I cannot for the life of me tell apart. So, this data is not beautiful.
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u/rickyresq OC: 1 23d ago
Fair callout. The site was just updated with a new palette built for colorblind readers. Every series also has its own dash pattern, and the comparison chart labels each line by name, so nothing depends on color alone. https://rickyresq.github.io/three-fates/
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u/cavedave OC: 115 22d ago
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/rickyresq!
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