The Walking Dead.

[zev]

Two episodes worth of material stretched out into 3 1/2. Not good. But maybe I'm just still bitter they killed off Beth.

 

But hey, at least they established for us that yes, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is playing Negan.

 

As for that cliffhanger...

Spoiler

if the best thing you can give for the S6 is end is that Carl probably didn't get beaten to death, good luck going beyond an S7.

 

 

[Casey]

Reddit's Walking Dead section has slowed down the end sequence audio, and it's most likely...

 

Spoiler

Glenn

 

[TheVileOne]

Last couple of episodes were a total shitshow.  WrestleMania was better than the writing here.

Sorry, but this is not good writing.  These episodes dragged with a lot of nonsense in-between.  

 

 

So you have been building up to this moment all season and you end on a cliffhanger of where "haha!  You don't actually get to see Negan kill anyone, it's all from his POV!"  Sorry but that's bullshit.  If you want to end on a cliffhanger fine, but now you are going to make people think for the whole summer, "Hey, maybe it wasn't Glenn!"  

Not to mention all the survivors acting dumber than posts, which they've been doing most of this season anyway.  

 

Anyway, I'm done with this show.  Fuck this shit.  My hate viewing of Walking Dead is officially over.

[ChesterCopperpot]

and I thought Wrestlemania was the worst thing I watched last night

[Jrag]

As someone who doesn't read the comics, this show is infinitely more interesting than it was a few years ago.  I liked the finale.  The slow reveal of the scope of things/man power of Neegan's group was really cool.

[MonteCarl]

Other than ending on a cliffhanger, I had no problem with the episode last night. Rick has gotten complacent and cocky thinking he has the baddest group around and can take anybody based off of the things they've already survived. This was evident in the ep when they make the deal with The Hilltop and causally just say "Yeah, we'll go kill 'em. No problem". He had no idea what he was in for. Then they kept getting stopped by The Saviors at every turn and his confidence slowly was sapped away. After the first top and confrontation with The Saviors, he was all "Keep getting in my way and it will be your last day on Earth, bitch". Then they were stopped again. And Again. And Again. Each time by bigger groups of people showing more power and each stop he was closer to realizing that they were fucked. Then, when they thought they had a work around by sneaking Maggie through the woods with Eugene taking the RV, and they walk directly in to a trap with what looked like at least a hundred Saviors, he was terrified and knew it was over. Rick was defeated and he knew it. Negan played him like a fiddle and showed his power. Now somebody (probably Glenn) is dead and next season they will have to deal with it while they plot to try to overtake Negan and The Saviors.

[Technico Support]

Exactly.  Rick's slow realization of just how NOT in charge he is was wonderful, especially with regard to how cocky he had been getting this season.

I didn't mind the cliffhanger.  I feel like they knew killing off a main character brutally would have caused a lot of people to stop watching, especially if you combine that with a  natural stopping point like the end of a season.  Avoiding that part at least means you can keep people watching.  A cynical creative decision, to be sure, but here we are.

[Jrag]

Yeah, this episode might be Andrew Lincoln's best performance.  Really loved the change from his first conversation with Maggie to his 2nd one.  He is repeating the same "we will get through this" shit, but it's just so much less convincing. 

[TheVileOne]

2 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Exactly.  Rick's slow realization of just how NOT in charge he is was wonderful, especially with regard to how cocky he had been getting this season.

I didn't mind the cliffhanger.  I feel like they knew killing off a main character brutally would have caused a lot of people to stop watching, especially if you combine that with a  natural stopping point like the end of a season.  Avoiding that part at least means you can keep people watching.  A cynical creative decision, to be sure, but here we are.

There was nothing natural about it.  Also they've been killing off main characters since the show started.  Why would this be any different.

[Technico Support]

I'm thinking about the way it happened in the comics, where it was so over the top brutal and graphic, and the character so loved, that it apparently turned off a lot of people from reading it further than that.  If you haven't read it, a main character got his head literally caved in and sat there stuttering the name of another character over and over through the brain damage, eye hanging out of his head, and then died in a disgusting pile of gore.

I was wondering how they'd avoid the same senseless brutality and fan backlash on the TV show and this was a good enough way to handle it.  To me, ending the season that way would have turned a lot of people off, so they did a cheat ending that, in their minds, I guess, did less damage.

[evilwaldo]

This season had the worst writing I have seen in years.  The producers should be lucky that they are still on the show after this train wreck.  The first half felt like the Star Wars 1-3.  Nice story but this was material that could have fit inside of one movie, not three.

The whole ending was a complete garbage dump.  The walkers get killed walking into a pond on fire.  Did they not pay attention to the spinoff show where walkers are floating and coming out of the sea alive?

I almost forgot about how they left the house during the first half cliffhanger during the afternoon and one block later it was pitch black.  Mom.  Then you have the mess with killing all of the zombies in a rage while nobody gets touched.  How cheap of an ending is that?  Mom.  Not to mention the stopping in the middle of the block to have a conversation surrounded by walkers.  Mom.  You know what action would have been scarier?  Rick changing the plan without saying a word leaving everyone to wonder why. 

Rick's bad decisions which led to half the town getting killed he is rewarded with more power and responsibility over the community.  Nobody questions Rick.  Alexandria has become a cult.

Don't get me started on the dumpster and Glenn.  He should have died in the first half of the season.

This whole season has been about falling into the trap of typical Hollywood tropes.  Everything was by the books network television and it sucked.  They threw out the fun Hitchcockian values where you did not know the real danger and had to keep your head on a swivel since danger was around every turn.  Yes they had the comics as a spine but they have diverted so much from the comics that you cannot consider them of much value anymore.  Remember Andrea?  How is she doing in the comics?

 

I almost forgot, next season can we have more commercials?

[TheVileOne]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

I'm thinking about the way it happened in the comics, where it was so over the top brutal and graphic, and the character so loved, that it apparently turned off a lot of people from reading it further than that.  If you haven't read it, a main character got his head literally caved in and sat there stuttering the name of another character over and over through the brain damage, eye hanging out of his head, and then died in a disgusting pile of gore.

I was wondering how they'd avoid the same senseless brutality and fan backlash on the TV show and this was a good enough way to handle it.  To me, ending the season that way would have turned a lot of people off, so they did a cheat ending that, in their minds, I guess, did less damage.

I know exactly what happened.  If they wanted to change it to make it less brutal fine.  But that was beyond a copout.  And it wasn't just that ending.  All the other writing was shit.  

If that's the moment that gets people to stop, I mean then they should've really stopped after what happened to Lori and Judith in the comics, which was changed for the show.  

[PuroresuFan]

So I waited all season just to see Neegan kill the cameraman? 

[Jrag]

Those characters sucked though.  You keep looking at it through the lens of the comics, but Glen dying (if it actually is Glen) will be a much bigger kick in the gut for the TV show audience.  It works as a cliff hanger because they put all the interesting characters in danger.

This show has been playing around with their TV formula for a few seasons now.  While GoT and others have been using the penultimate episode as the climactic moment, TWD has developed the season premiere/mid-season premieres as the climax. They have been using this formula for a while now.  I'm thinking the season where the Governor died was the last time they blew something off to end a year.  If you were expecting something else I don't know what to tell you.

Out of the shows I watch, they are the only ones doing this.  It's sort of refreshing.  The premieres seem like events and it gives the seasons a weird pace. Other shows start slow and use that time to world build, but TWD does the world building at the end of the year.  Odd, but it works for them.  If you were unaware of the man power of Neegan's people (like I was), that was an interesting episode with a building sense of dread.

[Technico Support]

35 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:

I know exactly what happened.  If they wanted to change it to make it less brutal fine.  But that was beyond a copout.  And it wasn't just that ending.  All the other writing was shit.  

If that's the moment that gets people to stop, I mean then they should've really stopped after what happened to Lori and Judith in the comics, which was changed for the show.  

I'm not saying I liked the ending, I'm just saying it was the best they could have gone with, given what they had.  Shit, I personally think that there was so much backlash to how Negan was debuted in the comic that they should have done it differently in the show.  But since they committed to matching the scene from the comics, the decision was between:

End the season with something that's going to really piss off fans of the show who may decide this is a good point to nope on out of here

or

Do a cop-out cliffhanger where at least people will come back for a resolution

I think the second solution was better but definitely not great or anything. 

Writing-wise, this second half has been hit or miss for me.  I enjoyed the "chasing Jesus" episode, the one where they killed all the saviors and the one where Maggie and Carol are kidnapped, but the last two before this one were just treading water until the finale, and that sucked.  I'm curious as to where they're going to go with Rick.  He showed traits of being a straight up bad person by preemptively killing the Saviors and also became an arrogant shit who got his comeuppance, but I don't think we were ever supposed to root against him -- this isn't Breaking Bad where the aim of the show was to turn the protagonist into someone you actively rooted against (which didn't really succeed because we're not wired to watch TV that way).  So what now?  Does Rick "regain his humanity" as Morgan was alluding to or do we just accept that Rick is always i the right?  Subpar, aimless writing, to be sure.

[Technico Support]

Oh and I really enjoyed Steven Ogg's (Trevor from GTA 5) character and hope he stays around a bit.

[Jrag]

Yeah, I want to make it clear that the show is still absolute shit at times.  Like Carol getting all wishy washy out of nowhere or that awful episode where the doctor gets the arrow in the eye.

Rick is a hell of a character, though.  He isn't a great leader. He isn't particularly smart or dumb.  Morally, he does the wrong thing as often as the right thing. What sets him apart is, at his core, he is simply more animalistic and violent than everyone else. That he never really comes to terms with that truth makes the character all the more interesting.

[zev]

They literally beat the audience over the head with the idea that it is a dark show.
We know it's dark already, for the group isn't exactly a bunch of bright bulbs, what with none of them saying, "What's that Glenn, walkers in the barn? You dont think Sophia could be in there, do you?"

[Casey]

Literally my only problem with last night's episode was the cliffhanger. At least show Negan beating someone's skull in, close the finale out on that note and leave people in shock for months until the season premiere. MonteCarl hit all of the notes already, and I'm in agreement with him. Everything was perfectly fine, except for the cliffhanger. I mean, it kind of felt like they stretched out some scenes just so they could hit that hour and a half mark, but I'm not complaining.

Steven Ogg needs to be a recurring character next season, he was fantastic - even if I can't get it out of my head that Trevor survived the events of GTA V and is now in a zombie apocalypse. Seems appropriate, though.

[zev]

I must confess I caught the show's replay after Mania, so maybe I missed something watching it at 2:30 in the morning.

 

The only named character that was murdered by anyone on screen last night was Bray Wyatt, right?

[evilwaldo]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

Literally my only problem with last night's episode was the cliffhanger. At least show Negan beating someone's skull in, close the finale out on that note and leave people in shock for months until the season premiere. MonteCarl hit all of the notes already, and I'm in agreement with him. Everything was perfectly fine, except for the cliffhanger. I mean, it kind of felt like they stretched out some scenes just so they could hit that hour and a half mark, but I'm not complaining.

Steven Ogg needs to be a recurring character next season, he was fantastic - even if I can't get it out of my head that Trevor survived the events of GTA V and is now in a zombie apocalypse. Seems appropriate, though.

[evilwaldo]

Yeah the cliffhanger was pretty dumb given the fact everyone who touched the comic knows who is dying.  The whole bit with Negan being one step ahead was great.  Rick got his comeuppance and it set the stage for Season 7.

It is a shame the first six or seven episodes happened.  They could have told a decent story with The Wolves since that thread is still wide open.

[TheVileOne]

5 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I'm not saying I liked the ending, I'm just saying it was the best they could have gone with, given what they had.  Shit, I personally think that there was so much backlash to how Negan was debuted in the comic that they should have done it differently in the show.  But since they committed to matching the scene from the comics, the decision was between:

End the season with something that's going to really piss off fans of the show who may decide this is a good point to nope on out of here

or

Do a cop-out cliffhanger where at least people will come back for a resolution

I think the second solution was better but definitely not great or anything. 

Writing-wise, this second half has been hit or miss for me.  I enjoyed the "chasing Jesus" episode, the one where they killed all the saviors and the one where Maggie and Carol are kidnapped, but the last two before this one were just treading water until the finale, and that sucked.  I'm curious as to where they're going to go with Rick.  He showed traits of being a straight up bad person by preemptively killing the Saviors and also became an arrogant shit who got his comeuppance, but I don't think we were ever supposed to root against him -- this isn't Breaking Bad where the aim of the show was to turn the protagonist into someone you actively rooted against (which didn't really succeed because we're not wired to watch TV that way).  So what now?  Does Rick "regain his humanity" as Morgan was alluding to or do we just accept that Rick is always i the right?  Subpar, aimless writing, to be sure.

What you are ignoring is that a great deal of fans are ticked off now and rejecting this ending.

Couldn't Negan beating up whoever and us seeing who it is and leaving the audience on that note, couldn't that have been an equally big cliffhanger?

 

[Casey]

It's probably a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. The fans' response would likely still be the same, if not worse.

[TheVileOne]

I just can't believe that.  And if it was that bad, they could've killed off a different character.  The show has already broken from the comics storytelling a number of times.  So this wouldn't be all that different.