Can THE WALKING DEAD be Fixed?

I've had a lot of problems with AMC's The Walking Dead right from the start. Atrocious dialogue, derivative scenarios, disappearing accents, unlikeable leads, huge leaps in logic, poor pacing and we won't even get into how incredibly predictable the show has become or, more accurately, was right from the start.

With the first season finale coming up this weekend, it should have been time for the network to ballyhoo the overblown coverage from the likes of Entertainment Weekly (how many "best new shows on tv" are you allowed per season?) and a horror fanbase that seemed more than willing to overlook all the show's faults in order to bask in the glow of a tv show... about zombies... on a real (for cable, at least) channel.

Unfortunately for AMC, news that show co-creator Frank Darabont had let go of the entire writing staff and was planning to go with more of a BBC model in which scripts were assigned to freelancers started dominating the discussion, even bringing some of the more vocal critics of the show to the surface with some preparing a laundry list of issues that a new group of writers might be able to fix.

If you ask me, this seems more like a move for Darabont to exercise greater creative control over the show than any kind of admission that, so far, the writing stinks.

As somebody who never read the comic, the show has had an unfortunate chilling effect on me. Despite trusted friends encouraging me to pick up the recent mega-collection of issues, I have zero plans to wade into the source material. With too much exciting reading staring at me from my bookshelf, a watch pile of DVDs that seems to grow by the day, and the ever-expanding list of stuff on Netflix Instant View, I have to admit that once the season finale airs I'm hoping The Walking Dead will just shuffle on by and not notice me.