To figure it out, we grabbed a stopwatch and went through both seasons to find out what percentage of each had hot zombie action. We started the timer whenever a zombie scene started up, and kept it going until the scene either ended or it started getting distracted by intra-refugee squabbling. And it turns out we weren’t imagining a net loss of undeaddery: There have been fewer zombies this year. In total, the six-episode season one had roughly 47 minutes total of zombie action in 292 minutes of episode run time, which means that they accounted for 16 percent of the season. Meanwhile, this first half of season two (seven episodes) had 40.5 zombie minutes in 319 minutes of run time, which is 12.7 percent.

– Alexandra Martell, NYMag.com.

That is some good zombie SABR right there. I’d be interested in expanding that research, too — it felt like way more of the first season of The Walking Dead occurred under threat of imminent zombie attack, whereas most of the second season has happened at this stupid farm that is for some reason invisible to zombies and/or unbound by all the rules for keeping zombies at bay that were carefully laid out in the first season.

Most notably: Are the zombies no longer attracted to loud noises? Because though the (SPOILER ALERT) climactic zombie massacre at the end of the mid-season finale last night was pretty awesome, I was led to believe that much gunfire would draw the attention of every zombie in a 10-mile radius. But this season they’re going out in the woods taking target practice like it’s no big deal, even though we know there are zombies in those woods. What gives?

When you outline a zombie scenario, you set up your own list of rules: The Walking Dead’s zombies aren’t smart or fast, but they’re persistent, they can survive on non-human meat, and they’re attracted to the sounds and smells made by living people. Once that general set of rules no longer seems to apply, it sort of trivializes the whole thing and the show just becomes a silly soap opera about terrible actors who whisper really loudly.

Also, why don’t they get more crossbows? I guess it’s pointless now that the loud-noise thing doesn’t matter anymore, but for a while when it did matter, they only had one crossbow, and the crossbow-wielding dude was by far the most badass and valuable zombie-killer. They’re in the south; there’s got to be a sporting goods store around somewhere. You have to figure these people with the wherewithal to survive the zombie apocalypse can get their hands on another crossbow or at least a slingshot or something.

For obvious reasons you want to minimize your close-range hand-to-hand combat with infectious zombies. There are so many ways to do that besides just sort of hoping you can stab them or bludgeon them with something before you get desperate and shoot them.

Mostly, though, the show has gotten stupid in its second season because it has spent almost the entire time focusing on the characters and I could hardly care less about them.

Even when it became clear that the creators of Lost had no real plan and were grasping at nebulous mystical ideas, I still wanted good endings for most of the characters. If on the next episode of The Walking Dead, every single character besides Darryl and Glenn became a zombie, and the rest of the show was just Darryl and Glenn eluding zombies and sometimes killing them with crossbows, that’d be fine by me. And even Glenn seems like he might be getting lame.

Just a whole show about Darryl crossbowing zombies and eating squirrels would be better than seeing Andrea rebel against Dale’s misguided parental efforts to keep her away from the self-destructive Shane. T-Dog seems like he might be OK but he doesn’t get enough screentime anymore for us to know.

Lastly — and this is just a nitpick, I realize: When they’re talking about bad stuff that happened in the past, why do they only refer to the stuff that has happened on screen? Like, “Oh, those zombies killed Amy!” It’s the zombie apocalypse, bro. That dude in the CDC called it humanity’s extinction event. Pretty much everyone you ever knew and loved is dead or a zombie. Why do you keep harping on that girl who spent five minutes in a boat with Andrea in one episode of Season 1?

Point is, the show kind of sucks now. I’m going to keep watching, because I’m a sucker like that. But I’m going to do so begrudgingly, and just so I can keep saying how stupid it is. WHY IS THIS SHOW ABOUT ZOMBIES SO UNREALISTIC?