I think a lot was taken away from Lydia's character when they toned down or entirely took away the abuse angle. Lydia in the comics suffered a lot of abuse at the hands of the Whisperers and her sexual deviancy was a good portrayal of that. In the comics she was a character you couldn't trust and you got the impression that she could just flip out at any moment. She would get very jealous of Carl and was extremely demanding of his attention. And though the adults allowed her to stay with them most everyone was pretty weary of her.

The show treated her more like a kid that was being saved from a bad situation and I simply didn't buy into that angle as much. I didn't really like that in the show the adults were trying to become parental figures to her while at the same time they were being attacked by the group of people she used to be with.

I understand why the show would want to stay away from some of the themes that the comic had but at the same time I think eliminating those themes took a lot away from who Lydia was. If they were going to do that I would have preferred for them not to call the character Lydia at all and you could just accept her as someone completely unrelated to the character from the comic.

 

I think them killing off Carl made it easy for Andrew Lincoln to leave the show. So one character death took away the core of TWD. I never connected with any of the Henry stuff. He was just Dollar Store Carl. Kang though deserves credit for getting herself out the best she could, from the mess Gimple left her.

In the comics they killed just Glenn. So when Abe got Lucilled comic readers thought that was the end of it when watching the show. That episode itself was just way the over top. I loathed it. You had that strange scene where Negan is driving around with Rick in the RV, and then they come back with him demanding that Rick cut off Carl's arm. It was just much too much and I think it turned off a lot of people.

 

Maybe part of the reason they toned down Lydia's character is that Henry was the fill-in for Carl and we didn't have a connection with the new character. Her coming on strong to him would've just come across as creepy. All of that did work in the comics because we had taken a long journey with Carl and he finally found someone that understood the darker elements to him, and enabled him to come to terms with the lost eye etc.

 

I look at it as two separate Lydias. So I can divorce myself from it. Just like we have a different show Carol than comic Carol. Both worked in their own elements. I don't believe comic Lydia could've worked without Carl around. And, like you said, I found her to be a good character for the TV show, but she wouldn't have been a good fit on the comic side.

An example of a poor comic to TV adaptation was Tyreese. Comic Tyreese was formidable and one of Rick's primary people. On the show he was useless and a waste of screen time.

 

Yep if the WB trailer is any indication than the second season is indeed going to be terrible. It just showed one scene where the characters were facing one another acting out a scene without any type of expression on their face. Looked like a fan film.