Walking Dead

[Ironwood]

Yeah, it's not good.

[Tale]

Then again, Dwight has fought Daryl enough times to maybe learn how to get the drop on him? I dunno.

I'm still enjoying it very much, as a dose of mindless entertainment.

[Selby]

This is the first time Rick's group has faced off against competent enemies that plan and have skill. The Saviors know what they're doing and are winning some battles against Rick's group, especially when Rick's team makes mistakes.

This is what I'm hoping they are going for.  But as stated earlier, I would expect that to work maybe twice, not the 3-4 times we're on it so far.  I'd be thinking long and hard before rushing off to make rash decisions like following some idiot who isn't thinking straight.  I understand that for plot purposes they have to do it, but it strikes me as simple convenience more than fitting the narrative.

[Threash]

Except we've been watching Rick's group mow down this guys like dogs for most of the season, their kill count is in the 50s at least. 

[HaemishM]

Most of those were sleeping and caught by surprise.

[apocrypha]

And yet even after them getting jumped over and over again they still wander around in pairs, clearly paying no attention to anything around them, deep in conversation instead. It's a fucking war zone guys, have your deep, but vague, conversations about whether or not it's right to kill people when you're safely back at base, not out in the field where you should be keeping an eye out for VC, er, zombies etc.

[jgsugden]

I'm pretty sure the theme of the finale will be: "You $#@s pissed on the wrong bear.  Meet claw."

[Threash]

Oh fuck that bullshit.

[EWSpider]

That was by far the worst episode of Walking Dead in all of the seasons.  I was bored for almost the entire episode and listening to that Neegan clown drone on was the worst of it.  I will not be watching this show any longer.

[Evildrider]

I liked Negan, but I agree that they didn't really need to do a 90 minute episode here.

[rattran]

I'm totally done with the show now. Even the wife is unsure if she'll bother next season, and until the second half of season 6 she was a rabid fan.

[HaemishM]

Yep, fuck this shit. I'm out. Negan was clownshoes in the comics and this one is even worse. I like the actor and he was clearly told to chew scenery (just like the idiotic comic version), but fuck this. The Saviors being that coordinated is just "Magical Negro" levels of bullshit.

[Selby]

Yup. 90min for... 15 minutes of monologuing & a cliff hanger, with maybe 5 minutes of introductions for Carol & Morgan's side quest to meet new people. Wife is PISSED. I think it's all pretty much expected that the world knows what the comics did at this point in the story by now but to have the show follow it so closely and end without something of a resolution is quite annoying. They could have done this as a mid-season cliff hanger and it wouldn't be so annoying. They really need to step up their game next season if they expect people to still be into the show...

[EWSpider]

I liked Negan, but I agree that they didn't really need to do a 90 minute episode here.

Was the actual show even any longer?  Seemed like we just got twice as many commercials as normal.

I don't buy that it's even remotely possible for that many people to be living nearby and for our peeps to have no clue.

[jgsugden]

... The Saviors being that coordinated is just "Magical Negro" levels of bullshit.

Massive numbers, knowledge of the terrain and enough surveillance to track a mobile home goes a long way.

Bye to those that will not be watching anymore.

[MediumHigh]

Let the "The walking dead has insulted my intelligence for the last" number in legions.

[Setanta]

I liked the Negan portrayal and I didn't mind the monologue at all - it allowed the audience the chance to see Rick fall to pieces (again). I'm a big fan of Carol but fuck that was pointless other than to introduce The Kindom which was totally unnecessary anyway at this point. Too muchg driving around was tedious. If Aaron was along just to step up to the plate then fuck the show because no-one cares about Aaron.

At least Farmville had the balls to run with the Shane and Sophia arcs and to not hold back but the use of a cliffhanger? That was shitty storytelling at its worst.

[slog]

7 seasons is a long time for a TV show.  Everything needs to end sometime.

[HaemishM]

... The Saviors being that coordinated is just "Magical Negro" levels of bullshit.

Massive numbers, knowledge of the terrain and enough surveillance to track a mobile home goes a long way.

Not that long. Even the goddamn Viet Cong had radios and past the satellite tower episode, we haven't seen one use of radios to justify this shit in the least. Not to mention the whole "We can totally sneak an army up on people who have been surviving in the wild like this for almost 2 years."

[apocrypha]

Meh. There was no reason to make that a 90 minute episode, it was tedious. They did a decent job of creating tension but it simply wasn't sustainable for that long. And cheap cliffhangers don't create tension, just frustration.

Scott M. Gimple cited Lost in attempting to justify it:

“I would say, when they opened up the hatch [on Lost], we had to wait and see who was in the hatch. I liked thinking about that. I liked talking about it. … We have to do an episode that justifies it to you. We have to do something so great and so intense that you’re like ‘Okay, all right, fair play.’ That’s the challenge we have and we’re going to do it. We’re going to deliver you something fantastic.

[Setanta]

TWD is not Lost. TWD is flawed writing (even in comic book form) that occasionally comes good. This episode was flawed writing that had one monment in the sun: Negan's monologue. They then destroyed the impact of it and took away from some of the best acting in the season/series in the form of Rick and Negan and destroyed the impact. The rest was shit - every single bit of it. It weas mediocrity at its best.

[HaemishM]

When I start talking about the Saviors sneaking up on the crew constantly, I really got stuck on the goddamn log fire/bridge hanging scene. I keep looking at that and thinking, "Ok who the fuck set the fire? Who's up there tossing the body off the bridge?" Because surely the people there would fucking SEE OR HEAR those people either before or after the body gets tossed. That scene really stuck in my craw and it was the cherry on the top of the shit sundae that was the whole magical disappearing Saviors thing. The "we know exactly the route they will take on foot" trap at the end just made it worse.

We're talking about heavily forested country with a range of 23 something miles. You would need THOUSANDS to cover that much ground and there's no way you can convince me that the Alexandria folks wouldn't have seen that many people before unless they were hiding in goddamn caves. Seeing as how DC was built on a fucking swamp, I'm not holding a lot of hope that there's enough caves or an underground tunnel system that could hide these people's settlements. There's just too much coordination with too much mystery to make that work.

As for the hatch in Lost, I can't say that the revelation of what was in the hatch necessarily paid off the wait. Considering what was in the hatch was just a goddamn countdown computer that did... something sort of unexplained when left alone, there really wasn't a great payoff there. And I say this as someone who LIKED the series finale of Lost.

[Threash]

We were supposed to think it was an elaborate production meant to herd them in the right direction so they could scare them into behaving.  Which is a pretty fucking ridiculous plan to begin with.  Rick's group has already wiped out about 50 of the saviors, the entirety of Alexandria doesn't even make up for a third of that.  You don't kill one guy to make the others behave in that situation, those people are fucking dangerous and should be utterly wiped out.

[HaemishM]

Exactly. I mean, why bother letting Hilltop survive when you quite obviously can just kill their defenders, take the survivors as slaves and set up an outpost there? It's sort of the same setup as they had, except the Saviors leave no oversight there (a few guys with guns as foremen/overseers) to prove the Hilltop residents are holding up their end of the bargain or not plotting to fight back. It's a completely idiotic set up. Woodbury made more sense.

[MediumHigh]

You guys trying to make sense of escapist fantasy.

[HaemishM]

Just because there are zombies doesn't mean there shouldn't be some internal logic. And things that take me out of the story and make me say "Wait, how did that happen?" kill the internal logic.

[MediumHigh]

That rule only applies to the zombies. When the humans act dumber than the zombies any arguments toward internal logically starts to rapidly fall off a cliff. At this point this show pure escapism since everyone still alive has been shown to be consistently less intelligent than the brain dead zombies they kill. Negan shows up and kills just one member of ricks group. Why? Because rick is the good guy so his people are worth 50 of theirs. Sounds about right to me. 

At this point the only intellectual reason you watch the show is if your imagining yourself in the walking dead universe and enjoying the vacation. No amount of cartoon physics will scare you away.

[Tale]

I was fine with it all. Standard recent TWD season. Some meh bits,  some outstanding bits, cliffhanger ending.

[Segoris]

Kind of 'meh' episodes lead-in episodes capped off with a mediocre finale to finish off the season. Sad that the best part of it was Trevor from GTA V.

On the plus side, fuck yeah! It's Trevor!

[Threash]

On the plus side, fuck yeah! It's Trevor!

No way, he's the creepy locksmith from Broad City.

[Slayerik]

What a pile.

[Evildrider]

Well they must be doing something right.  #1 watched show four years in a row now.

[johnnymoore]

Do there have to be zombies in it?

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/28/walking-dead-producer-zombie-crime-show-nbc

[Threash]

The "zombie crime procedural" is actually a better show than this one to be fair to those producers.

[MahrinSkel]

Do there have to be zombies in it?

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/28/walking-dead-producer-zombie-crime-show-nbc

NBC then submitted a different take on the concept: a procedural drama focusing on the protagonists solving “a zombie crime of the week,”

Pretty sure that show wound up on CW as iZombie.