The Walking Dead- CONTAINS SPOILERS!

[Totenkindly]

Just finished s07e04.

I think the episodes this season have been better written than most in the past, although The Kingdom episode was rather weak. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a lot for the role of Negan, he's possesses the ominous charm necessary to make the role work.

But yeah, I just feel like a huge pall hangs over the season so far. Maybe that's the point. But I find myself kind of depressed watching it even when it's well-done. The screws are being tightened over and over and I'm really not sure how they'll get out of this... other than just grabbing all their crap and leaving Alexandria. I mean, they could just LEAVE. And make sure they ran fast and hard and never came back.

About the weakest part of the episode -- Father Gabriel was just kind of pathetic. Go away, dude. And Spencer isn't worth much either.

I was talking about this with a friend @ work and we both agreed this had been the moment someone should have taken one for the team. Basically accept that your community is screwed, so either you high-tail it and run west, or you have someone snipe Negan and his second/third in command (which is doable) -- Neagan really was vulnerable a ton in this episode, he could have been killed point-blank -- kill as many Saviors as you can in the fight that follows and/or otherwise run west to the rendezvous point and leave. Yes, Alexandria is lost, and most of your community is likely to die; but you just took out Negan and without his charisma the Saviors are severely weakened. And maybe the remaining communities then have a shot. And maybe you can come back later.

Negan depends on fear to protect him -- fear of someone getting killed, and fear of the community being destroyed. As soon as you accept both of those things are a given and embrace you are probably going to die, then you're free to take him down, he has no more power.

Rick just lying down and taking it pretty much just screwed everyone + leaves Negan in power.

 

[Totenkindly]

s07e05 could be titled "Maggie preps for war." Her resolve is being forged and tempered and hardened. It's not a far cry to see her eventually take over Hilltop, deposing the spineless Gregory.

Then you see Carl and Jesus doing something stupid. I can see Jesus pulling it off; Carl is just one of those annoying characters who seems like he should have a purpose but the acting -- while not abysmal -- is not compensating for the weak writing of the role.

I also get young love, but I think free-street rollerblading is a bad call when you live on Zombie Street USA.

 

[Totenkindly]

s07e06
Tara + Heath episode.
Tara finds yet another community that has been touched by the Saviors.

Some of the writing/acting seemed a bit rough.
Things get better in the last 20 minutes once they focus on plot/action.
Hard to know what effect this will have on Alexandria, after all if they are being introduced to the series, it needs to have some kind of impact.

At least one recap seemed to miss a major plotpoint -- Oceanside lied when they said they would let her go; Tara didn't "try to escape," her two "guides" actually had orders to cap her outside the camp, the one had pulled a knife on her and that's why Tara went up to the walker, and then they actually fired on her when they knew she had realized she was going to die. This is the issue Cyndi had... that everyone makes excuses to kill everyone else "in order to survive" and it's what Heath was complaining about as well. The Saviors, rather than "saving the world" by imposing order, are actually instigating a dog-eat-dog world.

 

[Totenkindly]

S7e10 - highlights were Winslow and Jadis. It's kind of easy to suspect where the plot is going, though (back to the Pismo Beach Bunnies)! They need guns. We already know where lots of guns are.

Nice reunion with two folks, and one withholds information as an act of love. Still watching mainly to see how this plays out. It's kind of typical Walking Dead -- there are some good moments, and then there are the occasional stupid/insensible moments, and somehow the overall thing doesn't amount to as much as it suggested it might. But I can't really say that is the actors' faults because they do what they need to do and typically do it well enough.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I found the first half of the latest season to drag, overall. A lot of extended episodes, and while I would normally be happy about that, I felt they were filled with extraneous information that didn't really add anything or move the story along. This show has a bad habit of long scenes with characters looking thoughtful and talking about not much of anything, and this is supposed to be passed off as character development, when half the time it's really cliche, trite dialogue about "what kind of people we are" how "we're different" from the real bad people, how "we survive" etc. Yeah, as the audience, we know the main characters are good, if not perfect human beings making tough choices. Especially with the presence of Negan, I feel these sort of reminders are unnecessary. They work better during the seasons between "big bad" villains.

Now, giving the audience the sense of the main protagonists being stuck in place with a great threat looming...season 7A kind of succeeds in doing that. It just all seems a little too extended, and considering this is all occurring within a week or less of the season premiere, I feel like they didn't convey just how swiftly things should be moving along. Poor pacing.

This show's pacing always works a lot better when watching the episodes back-to-back, especially that whole stretch from Season 4 up to the mid season finale of season 6. According to the timeline, that all happens within 2 months! Then it's something like another 2 months before they meet Jesus.

I want to see more of the cultures of the different communities, more of the politics between these factions. I did enjoy the glimpses inside the Saviours' main compound.

I won't reveal anything about the second half but it seems to be an improvement (so far). Either way, its worlds better than Fear.


I'll have to find the link to the semi-official timeline. It really is profound how much these people have gone through in so little time. The Governor is killed less than half a year before they meet the Alexandrians and Negan.

 

[Totenkindly]

Yeah, in the first half they were releasing a few longer episodes that ended up feeling like "more of" rather than useful.

you're right about the chronology, and it's kind of the problem with drawn-out shows. years pass for us, but not for them. It's like Lost, where the first three seasons (which had the bulk of the series' episodes) only took about 100 days or so in story time but 1000 days of real world time.

 

[Totenkindly]

Pretty decent episode starring Eugene out of all people (and some more Dwight) this past week.
I like how they are approaching Eugene's character, they and McDermott really seem to have a handle on what drives him.

 

[Totenkindly]

Morgan drives me nuts. One can write that kind of character but it has to be handled differently or he just gets frustrating/enigmatic versus contributing to the overall dramatic tension of the storyline. Even though i think I get what happened tonight, I still want to punch him in the face.

Elijah gets a little frustrating too. Again, it's possible to write a character that evokes sympathy, but he just comes off as dumb sometimes.

And in other news, yeah, one more extremely predictable demise.

 

[Totenkindly]

Meh, kind of a lame season finale. All the hype was just hype.

There were a few rather awesome moments and one actual surprise, but on the whole was either predictable or just meh... and it was touted as the conclusion of something whereas it doesn't really conclude anything as hoped. They really needed to just wrap stuff up and move onto the next chapter, but that did not happen.

At least the episode did end with a nice tribute back to Glenn. And they touched on Abraham in some of the scenes.

 

[Totenkindly]

More fighting over profits.

What Robert Kirkman's Lawsuit Against AMC Could Mean For The Future Of 'The Walking Dead'

In the past few weeks, AMC has been hit with two pretty major blows by the creator of The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman.

The first came when Kirkman and his company Skybound Entertainment signed a deal with Amazon, making Amazon Video the new home to any new shows Kirkman and his team dream up.

Then, this Monday, we learned that Kirkman as well as series producers Glen Mazzara, David Alpert and Gale Anne Hurd are suing AMC, stating that they're not receiving a fair share of the show's massive profits...

At the heart of this latest suit is what's known as 'vertical integration' in the TV business. Traditionally, two parties create and air a television show. A studio creates the content and signs a deal with a cable or network channel to air it, with a cut of the licensing fees going to creators and talent.

This used to be enshrined in FCC regulations set up in the 1970s, but those rules were overturned by Bill Clinton after industry lobbyists pressured the president to deregulate. Now, for instance, AMC Studios can produces the shows that air on AMC Network. This is what's happened with The Walking Dead. In a more traditional situation, the studio and the network would negotiate, ultimately working out licensing fees that both sides (hopefully) believed fair.

In the case of The Walking Dead, however, AMC was effectively negotiating with itself. The lawsuit alleges that the company ended up lowballing the fees, ultimately taking money from the creators' pockets in the process...

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

Season 7 just started streaming on Netflix about a week ago. I watched the whole thing over the weekend. Overall, I agree with [MENTION=7]Totenkindly[/MENTION] that the show isn't as good as it used to be......Another thing - I know their relationship is old news, but I still don't like Rick and Michonne together. It ruined Michonne's character.

 

[Population: 1]

I just revisited the first episode. Man what a difference. Something definitely was lost when they got rid of Frank Darabont. The entire atmosphere changes when that cinematic feel is gone. A lessening of scope I guess. You obviously forget that after seasons without it but revisit that first season and you’ll rediscover it.

 

[Totenkindly]

I just revisited the first episode. Man what a difference. Something definitely was lost when they got rid of Frank Darabont. The entire atmosphere changes when that cinematic feel is gone. A lessening of scope I guess. You obviously forget that after seasons without it but revisit that first season and you’ll rediscover it.

I liked first season a lot.

I thought there was dead space in season 2 (trapped on the farm), but there was also some great stuff in there... and Shane's arc is pretty classic. Esp in the episode where he and Otis make a run for supplies and it's handled as flashbacks... just great TV. It also showed some balls from a writing POV.

I think things soured for me sometime during Season 3 after the birth of Judith. Rick goes insane and passively wanders around nutjobbing things, and the series didn't really seem to know what it wanted to be, and the Governor stuff just wasn't nearly as good as they pretended it to be. (And, well, also the ruination of Andrea as a character... gawd.)

Since then, it's simply been some decent moments interspersed with as much crap/fluff/aimless junk and an occasional character murder. Any time it feels like things might go somewhere, the next episode typically derails it.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

This show is only good binge watched, otherwise there is a terrible narrative flow if you're watching weekly. It kills any sense of pacing. And in general I think they do a terrible job of conveying the time passed and the pace.

 

[Totenkindly]

I guess the lack of commentary shows exactly how high this show now places on the viewer shit list.

I've been struggling through it mainly to just be aware of the plot but have otherwise lost a lot of interest. This second half of season 8 has been typical TWD crap from this crappy writing staff. Occasionally a scene can be good, and occasionally there's even an interesting episode... but it never lasts; soon enough, everything goes right back in the crapper. (It's not the actors' faults either, they're doing as well as to be expected; it's a writing / story direction problem.) It's also a "big picture" problem, they just really are clueless in regards to pacing and overall direction. I heard Gimple's getting kicked after this season, and I think at this point that's probably great... except they'll probably replace him with someone worse.

My thoughts in the back half of Season 8 (spoilers abound):

Episode 9: Carl's death. My big complaint is that this show doesn't know what to do with characters until they kill them, then the writers pat themselves on the back for being so BRAVE to kill a character. Case in point again -- they didn't do anything useful with Carl for season after season, so now they killed him off. That being said, this was a surprisingly meaningful episode. Plot momentum, characterization, etc. Fuck these guys.

Episode 10: Basically the massacre of the junkyard folks. Another good episode, and it's driven by Simon, Negan's charismatic flippant second who decides he's got his own program and goes against Negan's expressed wishes to murder the entire group except Jadis (who somehow escapes). Can the good wave continue???

Episode 11: no, it cannot. A shitty episode centered around Gabriel, where he basically almost gets the doctor to safety and then at the end of the episode the doctor pointlessly dies and Gabriel is recaptured. What's the point? I'm not sure. It sure wasn't suspenseful. Gabriel also triumphs in a host of "coincidences" that suggest God is blessing him, until the very end when God shits on him by killing the doctor pointlessly. I guess there is no god or something? But we figured that out in Season 2-3, why do we need another reminder? The other shit part of this episode is the schizo Tara and Daryl show -- Tara spends the first part of the episode trying to murder Dwight who seems to actually be on their side while Daryl defends him (srsly, she even chases him through the woods and tries to shoot him in the head), but then when Dwight defects back to the Saviors (MAYBE in an attempt to help lead them off?) suddenly she becomes the best proponent of the guy that murdered her girlfriend, while suddenly Daryl now wants to kill him with his bare hands. This continues through the next 2 or more episodes, where the writers bizarrely have Tara defending him and Daryl wanting to hunt him down and kill him like a dog. Whatever, this is too much sound and fury for SOMETHING THAT SHOULD JUST BE COMMON SENSE to reasonable people. Jeeez. Also that shithead Eugene gives Negan an idea of infecting all their weapons with walker blood, which despite the fact that people commonly coat themselves in walker blood to escape walkers, now apparently it's so virulent that if you get any in your bloodstream you'll die. I don't really know what the science of this is anymore. But fuck you too, Eugene, you coward.

Episode 12: Some interesting stuff, like with newcomer Georgie. Also, Rick goes solo and separates Negan from the saviors, in an attempt to murder him. Their cat and mouse game (where Rick momentarily wields a flaming Louise) is interesting, and here's where Negan first learns that Simon wiped out the junkyarders against his express orders, but it also ends very predictably and of course Negan escapes somehow... except for the very end when we realize that Negan did not actually escape but was captured by... wait for it... Jadis. Okay, maybe this will be interesting? Okay episode, unbelievably. How did they manage this?

Episode 13: The episode opens with ten minutes of Simon's Saviors storming Hilltop, with Maggie's group fending them off. This is actually decent enough. Maybe this will be a good episode? Nope. Now Carol has a talk with Tobin, who was wounded in the battle -- a heartfelt conversation where he has high hopes for the future and she is dour about everything, and then... yes, you guessed it.... he has been infected from his knife wound so he succumbs and then rises and starts a chain of zombies chowing down on half of the hilltop defenders who are sleeping in the mansion. It's all so dumb... and predictable. Tara who was wounded claims she isn't turning because Dwight shot her with a CLEAN bolt on purpose (to keep her from getting hit by a dirty weapon), Daryl won't hear it, again lots of stupid arguing from people who held each other's position just 2 episodes back. Meanwhile Ben steals an AK-15 despite being underage and not passing a licensing check, goes to the Savior prisoner pen to murder whoever killed his brother, and instead of just spraying them down from outside the cage of course unlocks the cage so he can go in, get knocked down, and the baddies steal the gun and flee... well, half of them. The other half stay, to join hilltop conveniently to replace all the folks the writers just killed in their sleep back in the mansion. It's just one of those episodes where you're groaning half the time because people are saying things that mark them for death in the next five minutes OR do really stupid things that you know will get a bunch of people killed OR you can see how clumsy the writing is in manipulating the plot to get to a certain position.

Episode 14: Rick is still too pissed and wimpy to read Carl's letter to him, so he goes after the fled Saviors to kill them all despite Michonne telling him not to., Ben has run off to kill them...and Elijah calls Carol a coward for not wanting to chase after him. So Carol goes after Ben (with half-crazy Morgan in tow -- yes, he's gone nutty again), but they split up and then Morgan almost kills Rick because hes CRAZY again but doesn't, so they can both be captured by the rogue Saviors and tied up. Rick promises the saviors they can join hilltop if they bring him and Morgan back. Morgan isn't having none of it and goes on a crazy rant that almost gets him shot... except about then the walker horder shows up and invades the bar. Nasty Long-Haired Savior dude who instigates all the trouble for the last 6 episodes runs off, Rick and Morgan break their bonds, Rick tells the other Saviors to go ahead and get out (pretending to be their friends), and THEN STARTS KILLING THEM ALL -- DESPITE WHAT MICHONNE TOLD HIM, and ANOTHER PRISONER SAVIOR ASKED HIM, and WHAT CARL PROBALBY WOULD HAVE WANTED -- I mean, he actually murders them all and/or gets them eaten by walkers. Meanwhile, morgan chases Long Hair and tosses him out into a walker herd and then pulls a metal gate shut -- AND THEN, he holds the guy from HIS side against the gate so that all the walkers can run up and start gobbling him up. It's sick shitty stuff, it's basically what happened with Noah, except Glenn (the watcher) had a heart and Morgan is just crazy psycho morgan forcefeeding Long Hair to the zombies. Rick, also, is a shithead, with no remorse. He finds one savior who is still alive (though dying), and as the guy says " Why did you do this? We could have all gone back..." Because any reasonable person saw that SOME OF THESE SAVIORS actually did want to join hilltop and just ran off because they were scared.... but Rick caps him in mid-sentence. The tone of this whole segment is supposed to be some kind of character development, I guess, but it doesn't come off this way -- it just comes off as Rick being a dickhead and with no humanity left in his soul, inspiring loathing rather than pity or concern. It's a real low moment for the show, close to the needless double-bashing of Glenn and Abraham a season and a half ago, and pretty much should spell the deathknell of Rick as a hero. Anyway, Rick and Morgan get back to hilltop all covered in blood right after Carol has brought the kid back home safely (and everyone cries), then Rick finally reads Carl's note and cries, while Michonne is far too forgiving. Meanwhile, there's also some bullshit subplot with Jadis, where she somehow ends up letting NEGAN GO with his bat, and cries to herself in her little room under the junkpile because she's now alone; yes, they waste about 20 minutes on that subplot as if it were supposed to be meaningful, but all it does is reset the plot again because Negan is back at the Saviors by episode's end. We do find out Negan's wife was named Louise, so he's attached to his bat because it's the last piece of her he has left -- but i think the viewing audience figured that out long ago without it even needing to be said!

Two more episodes to go. Basically anything MEANINGFUL that has happened in the last six episodes could have been condensed to probably 2-3 episodes. The writers have no clue what the hell they are doing, and they can't set up a moving plot to save their lives. This Negan crap should have been done by the middle of Season 8, if not the beginning.

 

[Stigmata]

I guess the lack of commentary shows exactly how high this show now places on the viewer shit list.

I've been struggling through it mainly to just be aware of the plot but have otherwise lost a lot of interest. This second half of season 8 has been typical TWD crap from this crappy writing staff. Occasionally a scene can be good, and occasionally there's even an interesting episode... but it never lasts; soon enough, everything goes right back in the crapper. (It's not the actors' faults either, they're doing as well as to be expected; it's a writing / story direction problem.) It's also a "big picture" problem, they just really are clueless in regards to pacing and overall direction. I heard Gimple's getting kicked after this season, and I think at this point that's probably great... except they'll probably replace him with someone worse.

My thoughts in the back half of Season 8 (spoilers abound):

Episode 9: Carl's death. My big complaint is that this show doesn't know what to do with characters until they kill them, then the writers pat themselves on the back for being so BRAVE to kill a character. Case in point again -- they didn't do anything useful with Carl for season after season, so now they killed him off. That being said, this was a surprisingly meaningful episode. Plot momentum, characterization, etc. Fuck these guys.

Episode 10: Basically the massacre of the junkyard folks. Another good episode, and it's driven by Simon, Negan's charismatic flippant second who decides he's got his own program and goes against Negan's expressed wishes to murder the entire group except Jadis (who somehow escapes). Can the good wave continue???

Episode 11: no, it cannot. A shitty episode centered around Gabriel, where he basically almost gets the doctor to safety and then at the end of the episode the doctor pointlessly dies and Gabriel is recaptured. What's the point? I'm not sure. It sure wasn't suspenseful. Gabriel also triumphs in a host of "coincidences" that suggest God is blessing him, until the very end when God shits on him by killing the doctor pointlessly. I guess there is no god or something? But we figured that out in Season 2-3, why do we need another reminder? The other shit part of this episode is the schizo Tara and Daryl show -- Tara spends the first part of the episode trying to murder Dwight who seems to actually be on their side while Daryl defends him (srsly, she even chases him through the woods and tries to shoot him in the head), but then when Dwight defects back to the Saviors (MAYBE in an attempt to help lead them off?) suddenly she becomes the best proponent of the guy that murdered her girlfriend, while suddenly Daryl now wants to kill him with his bare hands. This continues through the next 2 or more episodes, where the writers bizarrely have Tara defending him and Daryl wanting to hunt him down and kill him like a dog. Whatever, this is too much sound and fury for SOMETHING THAT SHOULD JUST BE COMMON SENSE to reasonable people. Jeeez. Also that shithead Eugene gives Negan an idea of infecting all their weapons with walker blood, which despite the fact that people commonly coat themselves in walker blood to escape walkers, now apparently it's so virulent that if you get any in your bloodstream you'll die. I don't really know what the science of this is anymore. But fuck you too, Eugene, you coward.

Episode 12: Some interesting stuff, like with newcomer Georgie. Also, Rick goes solo and separates Negan from the saviors, in an attempt to murder him. Their cat and mouse game (where Rick momentarily wields a flaming Louise) is interesting, and here's where Negan first learns that Simon wiped out the junkyarders against his express orders, but it also ends very predictably and of course Negan escapes somehow... except for the very end when we realize that Negan did not actually escape but was captured by... wait for it... Jadis. Okay, maybe this will be interesting? Okay episode, unbelievably. How did they manage this?

Episode 13: The episode opens with ten minutes of Simon's Saviors storming Hilltop, with Maggie's group fending them off. This is actually decent enough. Maybe this will be a good episode? Nope. Now Carol has a talk with Tobin, who was wounded in the battle -- a heartfelt conversation where he has high hopes for the future and she is dour about everything, and then... yes, you guessed it.... he has been infected from his knife wound so he succumbs and then rises and starts a chain of zombies chowing down on half of the hilltop defenders who are sleeping in the mansion. It's all so dumb... and predictable. Tara who was wounded claims she isn't turning because Dwight shot her with a CLEAN bolt on purpose (to keep her from getting hit by a dirty weapon), Daryl won't hear it, again lots of stupid arguing from people who held each other's position just 2 episodes back. Meanwhile Ben steals an AK-15 despite being underage and not passing a licensing check, goes to the Savior prisoner pen to murder whoever killed his brother, and instead of just spraying them down from outside the cage of course unlocks the cage so he can go in, get knocked down, and the baddies steal the gun and flee... well, half of them. The other half stay, to join hilltop conveniently to replace all the folks the writers just killed in their sleep back in the mansion. It's just one of those episodes where you're groaning half the time because people are saying things that mark them for death in the next five minutes OR do really stupid things that you know will get a bunch of people killed OR you can see how clumsy the writing is in manipulating the plot to get to a certain position.

Episode 14: Rick is still too pissed and wimpy to read Carl's letter to him, so he goes after the fled Saviors to kill them all despite Michonne telling him not to., Ben has run off to kill them...and Elijah calls Carol a coward for not wanting to chase after him. So Carol goes after Ben (with half-crazy Morgan in tow -- yes, he's gone nutty again), but they split up and then Morgan almost kills Rick because hes CRAZY again but doesn't, so they can both be captured by the rogue Saviors and tied up. Rick promises the saviors they can join hilltop if they bring him and Morgan back. Morgan isn't having none of it and goes on a crazy rant that almost gets him shot... except about then the walker horder shows up and invades the bar. Nasty Long-Haired Savior dude who instigates all the trouble for the last 6 episodes runs off, Rick and Morgan break their bonds, Rick tells the other Saviors to go ahead and get out (pretending to be their friends), and THEN STARTS KILLING THEM ALL -- DESPITE WHAT MICHONNE TOLD HIM, and ANOTHER PRISONER SAVIOR ASKED HIM, and WHAT CARL PROBALBY WOULD HAVE WANTED -- I mean, he actually murders them all and/or gets them eaten by walkers. Meanwhile, morgan chases Long Hair and tosses him out into a walker herd and then pulls a metal gate shut -- AND THEN, he holds the guy from HIS side against the gate so that all the walkers can run up and start gobbling him up. It's sick shitty stuff, it's basically what happened with Noah, except Glenn (the watcher) had a heart and Morgan is just crazy psycho morgan forcefeeding Long Hair to the zombies. Rick, also, is a shithead, with no remorse. He finds one savior who is still alive (though dying), and as the guy says " Why did you do this? We could have all gone back..." Because any reasonable person saw that SOME OF THESE SAVIORS actually did want to join hilltop and just ran off because they were scared.... but Rick caps him in mid-sentence. The tone of this whole segment is supposed to be some kind of character development, I guess, but it doesn't come off this way -- it just comes off as Rick being a dickhead and with no humanity left in his soul, inspiring loathing rather than pity or concern. It's a real low moment for the show, close to the needless double-bashing of Glenn and Abraham a season and a half ago, and pretty much should spell the deathknell of Rick as a hero. Anyway, Rick and Morgan get back to hilltop all covered in blood, then Rick finally reads Carl's note and cries, while Michonne is far too forgiving. Meanwhile, there's some bullshit with Jadis, where she somehow ends up letting NEGAN GO with his bat, and cries to herself in her little room under the junkpile; yes, they waste about 20 minutes on that subplot as if it were supposed to be meaningful, but all it does is reset the plot again because Negan is back at the Saviors by episode's end.

and saves him from a crowd of walkers and brings him home, and everyone cries, blah blah blah. Meanwhile, Rick and Morgan are captured

Two more episodes to go. Basically anything MEANINGFUL that has happened in the last six episodes could have been condensed to probably 2-3 episodes. The writers have no clue what the hell they are doing, and they can't set up a moving plot to save their lives. This Negan crap should have been done by the middle of Season 8, if not the beginning.

I've mostly lost interest in the show, yet only watch out of a sense of feeling like I've traveled too far down the path to turn back around and go home. It really just feels like after this long, it just seems to recycle its own set of self-defined tropes, only attempting to do so in a much more overt and gory fashion -- It's surviving more off shock value than actual substance.

You can rest assured that each season or mid-season finale, a long-standing character is going to die, and at this point knowing that ruins any sense of immersion or character connection because you KNOW it's coming. Plus, we've hit a wall in terms of character development about 4 seasons ago, so everyone still left standing from the beginning just seems very flat and stale -- You know what their basic motivations are and what drives them to make the decisions that they make.

That said, Negan is one of my favorite villains ever, simply because he has very clear motivations behind his madness and lives by and enforces his very strict moral code, yet even he is kinda losing his edge simply because of how long and drawn out the Saviors saga has been. That's one of my biggest gripes -- So much filler and not enough substance.

Why do I need a 45 minute episode explain why Tera, who at BEST you could call a supporting character, feels about what's going on Negan and the Saviors? Streamline some of this shit. Devoting an entire episode to the POV of one individual character makes it feel too much like a crappy daytime soap opera. Seriously, pick up the pace, AMC. You're losing viewership simply because of how slow and meandering the plots have felt the past couple of seasons.

 

[Totenkindly]

I agree with everything you've said, INCLUDING the stuff about Negan. I love him as a character; even his motivations seem to be more unique than what they first appeared.

But he's being ruined by the same slow erosion of the glacial plot progression and how the characters become static at some point... dragging on for pointless seasons until they are simply killed as sacrificial lambs for ratings.

 

[Stigmata]

I agree with everything you've said, INCLUDING the stuff about Negan. I love him as a character; even his motivations seem to be more unique than what they first appeared.

But he's being ruined by the same slow erosion of the glacial plot progression and how the characters become static at some point... dragging on for pointless seasons until they are simply killed as sacrificial lambs for ratings.

If you somehow managed to condense the entire series up-to this point in 5 seasons, it would be Breaking Bad levels of greatness. Seriously, if you could cut all the fatty tissue off that serious, Oh Man. I read somewhere that AMC has plans to continue on for at least another 4 seasons, and I just think ".....Why?"; haven't we really said everything we've needed to say thus far?

We get it -- there's a shit ton of mindless zombies and humanity has descended into madness and devolved into secular tribes of hunters and gatherer, and eventually they'll encounter another group of these survivors who have a sociopathic leader.

This series kinda reinforces my thought on how Americanized adaptations of popular mediums tend to get drug through the mud, simply because they refuse to let it go out on a high and would rather ring every droplet of monetary moisture out of the face towel, even though it stinks and reeks of years of condensed genital sweat and grime, before they reach in the cabinet and grab a new one.

 

[Totenkindly]

If you somehow managed to condense the entire series up-to this point in 5 seasons, it would be Breaking Bad levels of greatness. Seriously, if you could cut all the fatty tissue off that serious, Oh Man. I read somewhere that AMC has plans to continue on for at least another 4 seasons, and I just think ".....Why?"; haven't we really said everything we've needed to say thus far?

We get it -- there's a shit ton of mindless zombies and humanity has descended into madness and devolved into secular tribes of hunters and gatherer, and eventually they'll encounter another group of these survivors who have a sociopathic leader.

This series kinda reinforces my thought on how Americanized adaptations of popular mediums tend to get drug through the mud, simply because they refuse to let it go out on a high and would rather ring every droplet of monetary moisture out of the face towel, even though it stinks and reeks of years of condensed genital sweat and grime, before they reach in the cabinet and grab a new one.

Yeah, I think the fact it is based off book source gives it the illusion that it's actually got the material to continue, but even then it's been highly uneven in terms of content. The governor got 1.5 seasons and that seemed too much (based on their inability to produce decent writing -- including the ruination of Andrea as a character); then they barely spend any time on Terminus or the Whisperers, they barely got 2-3 episodes; and now two seasons on the Saviors. Meanwhile they can't manage and repackage the material in a way that works -- that isn't derivative, repetitive, or just boring.

They really need to step back and think how something is playing big-picture and treat it appropriately, rather than just trying to cram whatever details they want from the source (or made up wholesale) into the show. And how characters are utilized. And the role of cliffhangers and how they are worse for a show if managed poorly. It's all big-picture stuff the showrunner should be managing better.

I had really been excited about Fear the Walking Dead mainly because of the chance to start fresh + the cast they had assembled. First season was six episodes, and I quit halfway through the second. It felt more aimless and stupid and wasteful of characters than its parent series. Having recently read the synopsis for what's happened since in the series, I don't regret quitting.

---

for some reason Marvel's "Strikeforce Moratori" comic comes to mind. Basically aliens were attacking earth, but our scientists had discovered a way to "superize" human beings in order to be able to fight them off, although most people didn't take and died horribly when bombarded by the process. And it was also a suicide mission, because the power invested in the cells would eventually destroy the host, faster or slower. Anyway, the first issue starts with a main character who is a writer, and a few other people who survived the process, and they each had superpowers of their own, and were kicking butt and promoted as Earth's heroes... and then they all started to die horribly when their cells could no longer contain the energy. It was a big deal when in issue 7-8 (?) the main character actually dies -- you know it's coming because it's the premise of the story, but it's still shocking.

But then it kind of became old hat, it's kind of hard to connect with a regularly changing cast base (since the dying heroes are replaced by new ones willing to sell their lives for a few months of helping humanity). So they did the smart thing and eventually ran the series down after 3 years or so, providing closure to the storyline. I can't say it was a superb comic, the art and storylines were pretty middle-of-the-road Marvel for the early 90's (? can't remember when it came out), but they had an idea, they ran it out, and when it was done, they wrapped it up.

TWD is similar in concept (and specifically literally comments on it -- how they're all the "walking dead"!), but just slower paced... and they cheat. Certain characters become invulnerable because they're scared to kill them, but then they just don't know how to make them live either. So they end up in some bizarre narrative twilight until finally murdered by the writers as if it's some glorious thing, and usually it's overblown or silly and contrived for convenience of plot. The best deaths actually have felt like a natural unfolding of the plot... I guess Merle is a decent example of a cool character they did not overextend. And Noah, well, that was horrific especially because it just happened yet made sense in how the plot was spinning out. But mostly it's stupid. I'm kind of surprised they didn't just kill Jadis off, because they obviously don't know what to do with her either.

I appreciate that shows like Breaking Bad don't try to overextend their life span. The problem with TV as a medium in particular is that it is automatically a "series," where profits typically come from advertising (aside from Netflix and pay channels), so that there's always a temptation to run something in the ground -- you have to keep producing quality even when you have no more ideas, and you have to produce episodes to keep the cash flow coming. It's the same issue with comic books (but worse, there), where properties are not allowed to end and either becoming repeatedly recycled OR the characters change so much in personality and concept over time that you can't identify them with who they were in the past.

 

[Stigmata]

I watched Sunday's episode last night, and it just kind of dawned on me that I think the greatest source of my disinterest in the show is that over the last couple of seasons the show has kept the audience in a sustained state of melancholy, offering nothing outside of that, so much so that the show has just become monotonous and stale. Nothing particularly interesting is happening with any character in particular, nor are any of their respective stories really moving forward. It's just nothing but driving of sadness with no pit stops being made to explore any other forms of emotion.

Due to how prolonged this season has been, even Negan is starting to lose his thunder, and is actually starting to become more of sympathetic character than Rick (who's supposed to be the protagonist, yet as the series progresses I'm finding it harder to distinguish the lines between good and evil, as now it's mostly shades of gray and differing perspectives)