Walking Dead S07

[Driver]

Fair criticism, no doubt. But like I said-- that isn't new. That has always been their game. I'd agree some of the character development has stalled with Rick-- but Carol last season was amazing in my opinion.

 

I'm not trying to tell people they are wrong for being over the show-- just pointing out that crying foul NOW is silly.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

Fair criticism, no doubt. But like I said-- that isn't new. That has always been their game. I'd agree some of the character development has stalled with Rick-- but Carol last season was amazing in my opinion.

 

I'm not trying to tell people they are wrong for being over the show-- just pointing out that crying foul NOW is silly.

Carol was the only reason I watched last season, actually.

 

It is one thing to kill off a character. That has always been part of the deal. But that episode brought the death of a main character(s) to a different, and unnecessary level. Did we need to see a head turned into red goo? How does that advance the overall arc of the show? Like I said, the whole point of the show just seems to have stalled. It's clear there is no cure. They don't even know how the zombies came to be in the first place. It's also clear any attempt at civilization fails. The only constant is we get to see main characters die, one by one.

 

Sorry, but I need more plot than watching people die.

[monkeygirl]

I'm out too. I mean. why did this how get scary and kill somebody? I thought Negan's bat was going to shoot flowers and stuff. I didn't see him killing somebody at all, that was just weird.

 

It's not THAT, christ. It was the psychological aspect for me. I simply can't take it. I don't BLAME the writers or anything, but keep in mind,

I don't follow the other media that TV and movies come from normally. I did in the case of Harry Potter but I've never read one of these comics

so I didn't know what was coming. This was beyond gore for my brain.

 

I agree, the formula had gotten stale and they needed a re-set-I get that. And if it makes any difference, I thought Carl was excellent in this one.

I just don't have the inner peace to deal with prolonged psychological torture as part of my entertainment diet. Maybe I could have worded it

differently because I'm not pissed and I'm not shocked. I'm just not a regular WD viewer any longer. My delicate sensibilities were

damaged. I DO give them props for going where no series has gone before. That **** was ****ed. UP.

 

 

I'm responding to the argument that the Walking Dead suddenly went "too far."

See? Yeah, this is not MY point. I guess I did word it wrong. I don't think the show or writers went 'too far'...where DO you go

after you've brutally opened dozens of zombies' heads every week? Right ****ing where we are. It just affected me too much to

continue to watch regularly. I can only imagine Negan's pay-back will be that much worse and as somewhat satisfying as it it'll be,

I'd rather read about it after the fact.

 

 

Just know that you are leaving because it's on you, not because the show was a big meanie to you.

I know this wasn't directed at me, but ABSOLUTELY on me. The show delivered.

[monkeygirl]

But that episode brought the death of a main character(s) to a different, and unnecessary level. Did we need to see a head turned into red goo? How does that advance the overall arc of the show? Like I said, the whole point of the show just seems to have stalled. It's clear there is no cure. They don't even know how the zombies came to be in the first place. It's also clear any attempt at civilization fails. The only constant is we get to see main characters die, one by one.

 

Sorry, but I need more plot than watching people die.

You didn't think it was necessary? Do you think he could have broken Rick without it? That was the point of it all, I think-that Negan DID go THAT.

FAR. SOOOOoooooo much farther than we've seen, yet not to the point of pushing Rick to pure rage. I can think of a few things they could have done-involving other

characters that would have been more personally hurtful to Rick but then we'd all be wondering why Rick didn't just go apeshit. I think this was

the PERFECT solution to subjugate him 100% and I don't see much else that would have-so in that, I think they did a stellar job.

[Odine]

It might've been necessary for Neegan to go that far.. But it wasn't necessary to show every last bit of it, every last nuance of skull fragmentation, brain gibs gurgle and pop.

 

Slaughtering zombies in every mode of eviceration you can think of is so far removed from what we saw last episode. Zombies are already dead, they're not real, and the violence is comedicly over the top. Like a comic. Watching a human smash in the skull of another human with a bat, in the detail that we did, (even though we know it's fake) is some NEXT level shit. And I don't blame anyone who found it too much. YES it's what the show does, and yes gratuitous gore and violence should be expected, but they have never pushed us this hard before. The level of sadism and brutality last episode is unmatched by anything else on this show. Walking away from the WD because the last episode was that one bite of cake too many, is totally justifiable.

 

That said I might keep watching in my own time. But my girlfriend is out.

[Driver]

I get it-- I stopped reading the comic for similar reasons. Not the violence per say, but the lack of anything positive. The bleakness wore me down. The show might get their too.

 

I just disagree that they somehow changed the rules and to be surprised at what happen is short-sighted. People are wigging out because it is Glenn, plain and simple. His death was no more violent or visually disturbing than Noah's, for example.

 

We just love Glenn.

 

So I think people are crying foul because Glenn was a nice guy.

 

So they got you-- they wanted to create an emotional reaction, and they succeeded.

[Jacen123]

I am going to keep watching if for no other reason than that Jeffrey Dean Morgan is just fun to watch playing such a nutjob. I'm not saying it is fun seeing Negan brutalize people because that is not the case at all. That is super uncomfortable to say the very least. He just has a great energy and really seems to be nailing the character.

 

On another note: What's Glenn's favorite restaurant?

 

 

Popeye's

 

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

 

But that episode brought the death of a main character(s) to a different, and unnecessary level. Did we need to see a head turned into red goo? How does that advance the overall arc of the show? Like I said, the whole point of the show just seems to have stalled. It's clear there is no cure. They don't even know how the zombies came to be in the first place. It's also clear any attempt at civilization fails. The only constant is we get to see main characters die, one by one.

 

Sorry, but I need more plot than watching people die.

You didn't think it was necessary? Do you think he could have broken Rick without it? That was the point of it all, I think-that Negan DID go THAT.

FAR. SOOOOoooooo much farther than we've seen, yet not to the point of pushing Rick to pure rage. I can think of a few things they could have done-involving other

characters that would have been more personally hurtful to Rick but then we'd all be wondering why Rick didn't just go ape****. I think this was

the PERFECT solution to subjugate him 100% and I don't see much else that would have-so in that, I think they did a stellar job.

 

You are missing my point completely. They could have done the exact same thing without being so graphic.

 

My other complaint is there seems to be no point to the show. There is no drive to find out why this all happened, or find a cure. Every time there is an attempt to create a society, it fails. All we get are breaks in between Rick going from full on murderer, to leader, and back again.

 

It's been done too many times in the show, and I am bored with it at this point.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

 

So they got you-- they wanted to create an emotional reaction, and they succeeded.

And if their intent was for me to stop watching, they also succeeded.

[Driver]

The point is survival. Kirkman always said the thesis was a zombie movie without end.

 

And with a record breaking 17million viewers I'd say their doing something right. Like I said, real curious what the drop off will be.

[NumberSix]

I'm responding to the argument that the Walking Dead suddenly went "too far." They've been this way since day one. This is their playbook-- they tease things out as long as possible, they kill off beloved regulars, they are graphic as hell. If this is suddenly news to somebody, they haven't been paying attention.

I wouldn't disagree with much of that. The show's been plenty violent over the years to Our Heroes as well as to nobodies and random zombies. Previously in most cases whenever we had wackos killing people off, it was generally a means to an end, or a consequence of either evil or stupidity. After a few seconds of bleeding and several hours of grieving, we all moved on. The most far-out we got was the Governor, and even he was just a guy who thought he was the hero of his own story. Butchering Herschel was super disturbing, but to him it was more business than pleasure. Casualties of his war campaign. He didn't stop to poke his finger into the stump and swirl it around a few times.

 

Negan is arguably the first powerful character-in-chief that we've seen who doesn't just commit violent acts -- he relishes violence. He loves what he does and practically gets off on it. He's the kind of monster who would Instagram piles of pulverized brains if he could, who leers at his captive audience and exclaims like a gleeful carnival barker, "YOU GUYS THIS IS SOOOO AWESOME." He's an overindulgent, empowered Eli Roth superfan writ large.

 

I gave up the comics after the fifth trade sunk beneath and beyond my acceptable personal parameters. The show wisely sidestepped Kirkman's terribleness from that arc, but I've known in the back of my mind for years that sooner or later I'd have to drop the show whenever it inevitably decided to see how far it could push its boundaries and our buttons. With all those interviews and articles we got over the summer proclaiming, "It's Negan's world now!" the showrunners are clearly putting him and his sanguinary shenanigans front and center, adoring him with every lingering camera shot, and announcing to any and all comers that, in their minds, Negan is gonna take the show next-level and they're gonna lovingly worship every imaginatively second of creatively extended tortures for as long as they're rewarded for keepin' 'em comin'.

 

I'll pass. Already did, really. Once we got into Negan making Abraham head-custard, I downshifted from watching to just half-watching while multitasking. Around the 46-minute mark, when Negan started setting up his little Abraham/Isaac exercise with Rick and Carl, I decided I was done and turned off the TV.

 

This sort of cheerless sadism that occurs whenever writers without limits love their villains way more than their heroes is more or less why I also dropped Gotham early into season 2, and that was only TV-14. It's not about measuring the buckets of blood by volume. For me it's about measuring the morality behind the storytelling.

 

YMMV.

[Driver]

Very well said.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

Six, I agree. Very well said. You captured almost everything I felt about the episode, and the show in general, in an exceedingly concise manner.

The point is survival. Kirkman always said the thesis was a zombie movie without end.

And with a record breaking 17million viewers I'd say their doing something right. Like I said, real curious what the drop off will be.

Well, that only confirms what I said. Really is no point to the show, other than to torture the heroes. Maybe it's shame on me for not figuring that out until last season, and then getting sucked back in only to have the football yanked away once again, like Charlie Brown, but I'm out for good, nonetheless. This episode really pissed me off, and the more I dwell, the more pissed I get.

 

Life is sh*tty enough. I don't know about you, but TV, movies, and books are about escapism for me. There are certain things I require in those. A journey with a beginning, middle, and a conclusion. There has to be an end goal (whether or not it actually is met is secondary, but there has to be a goal or destination) at that conclusion. I am okay with protagonists dying. I am OK with the good guys not always winning. I am ok with heroes not always being clear cut good. But a perpetual zombie movie where there really is no resolution, and the writer just seems to delight in killing off protagonists, and causing the surviving ones to suffer in perpetuity without any hope of any positive outcome whatsoever, just does not seem to be something I want to escape to.

[Stevil]

It was a disturbing episode. I said to the wife afterwards that watching a show shouldn't be an ordeal.

 

My favourite chraacter died. Glenn was always my WD hero. It broke my heart to be honest.

 

The violence was next-level if I'm honest as well, but I think it was clever. As much as it wasn't a pleasant experience I think the show tried to put me in the position of one of the survivors on their knees watching events unfold. It made me feel what they felt. As much as this episode was about breaking Rick's spirit and resolve, it was also equally about feeling what Maggie or Daryl or Sasha or Michonne were feeling. The camera-work was great because each time it gave you the survivors' point of view. As much as it wasn't to my taste I think they did a good job of making me share some of the pain that they felt.

 

Yes there was gratuitous violence but they didn't show it all. They showed a few hits and the effects. Most of it was off camera. What they did show was bad enough. Sometimes though the off-camera stuff is worse, but maybe not in this instance. But I felt it was necessary for me to feel what they felt.

 

It was actually similar to when they went to Terminus and they lined everyone up at the trough. You were at the back of the line watching people getting murdered by other people and bled like an animal. It was that sense of perspective and that feeeling that makes the show a cut above just mindless violence. It's more down to you sharing their suffering to understand what they're going through.

 

Still a very tough watch though.

[Driver]

Six, I agree. Very well said. You captured almost everything I felt about the episode, and the show in general, in an exceedingly concise manner.

 

The point is survival. Kirkman always said the thesis was a zombie movie without end.

 

And with a record breaking 17million viewers I'd say their doing something right. Like I said, real curious what the drop off will be.

Well, that only confirms what I said. Really is no point to the show, other than to torture the heroes. Maybe it's shame on me for not figuring that out until last season, and then getting sucked back in only to have the football yanked away once again, like Charlie Brown, but I'm out for good, nonetheless. This episode really pissed me off, and the more I dwell, the more pissed I get.

 

Life is sh*tty enough. I don't know about you, but TV, movies, and books are about escapism for me. There are certain things I require in those. A journey with a beginning, middle, and a conclusion. There has to be an end goal (whether or not it actually is met is secondary, but there has to be a goal or destination) at that conclusion. I am okay with protagonists dying. I am OK with the good guys not always winning. I am ok with heroes not always being clear cut good. But a perpetual zombie movie where there really is no resolution, and the writer just seems to delight in killing off protagonists, and causing the surviving ones to suffer in perpetuity without any hope of any positive outcome whatsoever, just does not seem to be something I want to escape to.

I'm not a guy who always needs a happy ending for TV or movies, and obviously I'm a huge horror fan. I think everyone has a time limit to bleakness. Lots of horror movies avoid happy safe endings-- and for two hours, I am fine with that.

 

But 7+ years? I totally get it. Even I think the WD crew needs a little reward here and there. Or even a little levity time to time, which Denise provided last year.

 

Jacen nailed it for me-- Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Neegan was such a great performance that has me hooked. As a horror fan my tolerance is pretty high, but I could run out of steam too at this rate.

[Jacen123]

This is definitely one of the rare occasions where I completely understand people who are done and those who want to keep going with it. Even for such a bleak show as TWD is, this was a horribly brutal, depressing episode that went way over the top. It is absolutely disgusting and, as many of you noted, is bordering on the torture porn side of things. That same thought crept through my head as I watched it, too. I don't blame anyone for wanting to be done with the series after it. I almost gave up reading the book after reading the corresponding issue. (I stuck with it, but back in trades. I'm about four trades behind at the moment).

 

I also think it was an incredibly effective episode, though, for pretty much the exact same reasons that Stevil pointed out. The episode, much more so than the book, really used some nice tricks to make us see it from the perspective of Rick and company. As I said before, Morgan as Negan is utterly fantastic and I really want to keep seeing more of him in this role. I just hope that they mainly just continue to play the psychological games with everyone while being a total dick about it without any more displays like this one. If they keep going to that well, I would be more likely to be out, too.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

I'm not a guy who always needs a happy ending for TV or movies, and obviously I'm a huge horror fan. I think everyone has a time limit to bleakness. Lots of horror movies avoid happy safe endings-- and for two hours, I am fine with that.

 

But 7+ years? I totally get it. Even I think the WD crew needs a little reward here and there. Or even a little levity time to time, which Denise provided last year.

 

Jacen nailed it for me-- Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Neegan was such a great performance that has me hooked. As a horror fan my tolerance is pretty high, but I could run out of steam too at this rate.

 

Agreed. The other thing I would add is that the beatings in the episode also came off as unnecessary schlock. It didn't gross me out in the sense I couldn't handle it because I have seen far worse in movies, but I am not quite how to phase how I felt about the scenes other than to say I felt dumber for having watched it.

 

As for Neegan, I get that he does come off as a smart ass sadistic villain, maybe like a cross between Deadwood's Swearengen and Robocop's Clarence Boddicker, but to be honest, I felt he was gimmicky, too. I liked the Governor a lot better as a villain, than Neegan.

[Stevil]

The Governor was more human than Neegan. Neegan is just a monster with no redeeemable qualities. I hope they don't try and soften him up.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

The Governor was more human than Neegan. Neegan is just a monster with no redeeemable qualities. I hope they don't try and soften him up.

It would be worse if they did.

[DANA-kin Skywalker]

Governor was just trying to be a good father, and a good leader but the stress and PTSD turned pragmatism into brutality.

 

Negan seems to be just a fricking bully (with a sick sense of humor) where the current environment really lets his sadism thrive.

 

Two completely different types of villains.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

I get that they are two different villain. Different motivations, etc.

 

I'm just saying I like the governor better, because he didn't realize he was a villain. He really was trying to be a good father\leader, but circumstance and fatal flaw made him a villain instead. It gave him far more dimension. Even when you don't necessarily agree with the methods, he is sympathetic on some level. Not to mention, he was basically a mirror image of Rick, and Rick has become the Governor to a degree.

 

Neegan OTOH, is a 2 dimensional bully, evil because he can be. I personally can't empathize or sympathize with him. He is just an ass. It seems there is all kinds of fanboyishness over Neegan, which makes me automatically not want to like him, either. Which makes me wonder about some of the fanboys being so quick to root for Neegan.

[DANA-kin Skywalker]

I thought the governor was a good villain as well. I was merely offering a comparison of the two villains because I can't decide which I like better. In the case of the governor, I wanted him to see the error of his ways and turn it all around. In a way, I was rooting for him.

 

Negan on the other hand...I just want someone to smash his face. He's not a complicated villain, he's just good at making me want to piss on his corpse. It's only been one episode, but it seems that he will be an effective villain that way.

 

Unlike many people on the Internet, I'm not completely turned off by the brutal first episode because... what do you expect from this show? That's what the show does. The group has one character who acts as the moral thread tying the group together in a world full of violence...then gets killed in a gruesome way to remind everyone that the world is screwed. Hershel before Glenn, and Dale before Hershel. Perhaps it's because I had already written Glenn off last season when he fell from the dumpster. I felt that he should have never made it out of that situation. I hated that. We now know that his survival was just a tease. I will miss Abraham's comedy more, actually. He had all the best lines.

 

I am however losing interest in the show simply because I'm starting to feel it's run it's course. I feel like there not a whole lot more the show can offer that I haven't seen before. The show Westworld seems to have a lot more to offer, and that's this shows biggest competition in that Sunday night time slot.

 

So, I'm not dropping the mic proclaiming "this time they've gone too far! Too disgusting and depressing! I'm out!" I think that's unfair to the show. The show needs to try and up the ante and keep things fresh and interesting, but at the same time stay true to the formula. It's a fine line for the show to walk, and the longer the show runs, the thinner that margin of error becomes. It's not the shows fault. It's just...in a natural state of decline. I think people want the show to be like it was iin seasons 1-3, but that's not possible anymore.

[Tex]

This show is a barbed wire bat to the head of quality entertainment yet people still watch. Some even comment on message boards after they've quit watching (me).

 

I guess life is that boring. Then again, that's why shows like this are so popular. People will watch anything.

 

As for this show, I've often wondered about people who stick with it. I can only assume nihilistic angry folks who would kill somebody if they knew they could get away with it. Much like the argument about porn keeping perverts at bay, perhaps this show does the same with wannabe violent types.

 

So I guess it does have its place.

[Driver]

That MUST be the only option!

[Tex]

We all know you want to kill somebody