The Walking Dead (SPOILERS)

[Wolfkiller]

That was bullshit.

I was about to say that was some ol' bullshit.

[DigitalChaos]

The writers are Negan. The show is comic book Glen.

They completely destroyed the value of the buildup. They completely pulled me out of the story being that the audience is the only one who didn't see who got Negan's bat and it's all you could think about. People would have held a huge emotional tie to the character that died if it didn't take 6 months for the reveal to happen.

They could have cut the episode the moment Negan's group found Rick & co for the last time. They could have cut the episode 2sec later after showing a bloody pile of meat where the freshly killed character was sitting. All of that would have been much better. Cutting it where they did adds absolutely no value and only a lot of detractions.

[Fifey]

I still think Henry Rollins would have been a perfect Negan. And they definitely should have shown who Negan killed. Such a disappointment. As long as the war lasted in the comics, I'm not sure what would be worse for the show: shoving the entire lead up to the war AND the whole war itself into one season or dragging it out over two. They'll probably screw it up either way they go.

[Ryan]

That was indeed pretty awful. Didn't somebody in this thread find a spoiler that the horseshit POV cliffhanger was what they were going with? Talk about a self-assassination. This was a dismal season that screwed the pooch so many times I lost count, and continued to do so with reckless abandon in the finale. The plotline with Carol and Morgan is completely pointless and inconsequential to anything else going on. They had 90 minutes and it was plainly obvious they were stalling for time and filling up the entire episode with needless bullshit. This whole season was about lame cliffhangers, bad dialogue, pointless story arcs and laughable pacing. Like SDP said, they essentially picked the episode with the most notorious scene of the entire series so far to completely jump the shark with the show

Anyone want to take a guess as to who got reduced to a gore pile? My money is on either Darryl or Abraham. Reedus is casting a much wider net outside the series with film roles and his new show where he rides a motorcycle all over America. Tons of foreshadowing throughout the episode that it could have been Abraham, too.

But...it will probably be Aaron, whom nobody cares about. We'll know in a few months when they go into production for S07 and the cast members start showing up to the set.

Again though, so many things went wrong with this season. Annoying-as-fuck characters, stupid-as-fuck decisions (Sascha and Abraham? Rick and Micchone? Carl's near-instant bullet to the head recovery? Glenn's fake death? Carol's complete about-face? Etc. etc. etc.) and a complete misunderstanding of what the comics created to make this story so great in that medium.

I'll probably check out the first 10 minutes of the S07 premiere just to see who perished, but then I'm almost certainly done.

Yeah, I posted about that. For such an epic (supposedly) episode, you'd think they'd have so much material to get through that they wouldn't meander. But holy fucking hell, how much meandering there was.

Also, where the fuck was Negan's fucks? He didn't even say one fuck.

[DigitalChaos]

Can't put the fucks on TV or something, but i guess the bluray will be uncensored.

[DigitalChaos]

Some fans have made edits to the ending of the finale to make it not suck. I wish it ended this way instead.

obviously these are spoilers...

edit 1:


alt link if its blocked in your country: https://streamable.com/lk56

[DigitalChaos]

edit 2:


alternate vimeo link if its blocked in your country:

[ghostaustin]

I totally misheard Negan's dialogue initially, thus I was super confused by the fact that no one knew who died. I originally heard "When I'm done, feed the boy's other eye to his father," not "If anybody moves, feed the boy's other eye to his father." Now that I know the difference, I'm pretty disappointed, and I originally wasn't even going to watch the episode because I was so stressed out about it.

So now I understand the anger, and I totally agree. That shouldn't have been a cliffhanger moment, that should have been a "let's finish the season with something that's gonna make you feel real shitty" moment.

[Ryan]

Can't put the fucks on TV or something, but i guess the bluray will be uncensored.

They say prick and shit all the time. Why not fuck?

[Ryan]

"Right now I'm about to fucking bash the holy fuck fuckity-FUCK out of one of you fucking fucks with my fucking bat..."

lol gotta fuckin love Negan...in the graphic novel.

As soon as he showed up in issue 100, I thought to myself "this is gonna suck if they get to him on the show and it's still on AMC"

Sure enough

The new Deftones record has more gore than this finale.

C WAT I DID THAR?

[Bachy]

That was bullshit.

I was about to say that was some ol' bullshit.

[Ryan]

I just read an article where Kirkman says that who Negan killed is "beloved to everyone".

[thelastdisciple]

I just read an article where Kirkman says that who Negan killed is "beloved to everyone".

There's no way Eugene, Sasha or Rosita are beloved to everyone so i guess it must be either Daryl, Glenn, Michonne, Abraham or Maggie.

I'm gonna be some pissed if it's Daryl. Mother fuckin' Norman Reedus, a Boondock Saint? Hell no.

[bobbie solo]

listen to this BULLSHIT from Nicotero in an EW interview:

Nicotero is also unapologetic about the ending:

“I was very passionate about ending this season on a cliffhanger and not knowing, because I feel like it propels us into next season in a great way. So people can be upset. A week from now, they won’t be upset anymore, and it’ll be fun.”

What an arrogant, unaware & completely tone deaf answer. Or even worse, he's just plain lying. I suspect the latter. People are still pissed about all the shit that went on in Lost, in Prometheus, how sloppy Avengers 2 was, etc etc. You really think everyone is gonna stop caring in a few more days? Fuck you.

[jessamineny]

He can fuck right off.

[Your Name Here]

..........................

[Ryan]

Arrogance before the fall, I feel like the writers and producers of The Walking Dead have become arrogant and lazy as far as writing goes, I'm pretty sure AMC will notice a sharp decline in their ratings for season 7, I as well as some others here aren't the only ones that have become tired of the same story line over and over. I would imagine if you are an actor on the show this would be a good time to have your character killed off.
It hasn't hurt Jon Bernthal (Shane) who has had several decent movie roles and is on Daredevil now.

They should've done something completely left field and have Negan bat the whole lot of em to death, then have the Fear The Walking Dead characters meet Negan and go from there.

[bobbie solo]

that would be the greatest thing ever.

[Your Name Here]

...................

[Ryan]

Then eventually Fathet Gabriel is the sole survivor, kills Negan by throwing his priest collar at Negan's neck Oddjob style (with his hat in James Bond), meets Strand and they both make out with each other as the sun sets, and their jizz eliminates all the walkers.

[blackholesun]

I'm a Walking Dead TV show apologist, but that finale was bullshit. There was no reason for it to be 90 minutes and the cliffhanger bullshit took away any impact that scene had in the comics. There's a reason that scene is heralded in the comics. It has emotional weight. A character you spend 100 issues getting to know dies in an instant. It's classic. You feel for that character. There is almost no emotional weight behind the TV version of this scene. There's none. Everything will be revealed in the fall, but it will lack the emotional weight of actually showing who died, in the moment. I'm convinced they did the cliffhanger to fuck with the comic readers, at least the ones who endlessly troll on Twitter.

I do find it funny when people blame AMC for the episode though. As if they are the entity creating the ideas behind the show. Blame the producers and writers. Dumbasses.

[implanted_microchip]

I do find it funny when people blame AMC for the episode though. As if they are the entity creating the ideas behind the show. Blame the producers and writers. Dumbasses.

You see you'd have room to insult anyone who thinks AMC has big influence over it if it wasn't for the fact that The Walking Dead's entire problems from season 2 onward stem thoroughly and completely from AMC's fuckery behind the scenes.

Acclaimed filmmaker Frank Darabont of The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption fame is Executive Producer and showrunner of season 1 of The Walking Dead, and it's a massive fucking smash. It's a surprising success for this relatively low-budget horror series about rednecks from Atlanta trying to not to die and fucking each other's wives, based on a comic book that anyone besides comic fans didn't know existed. It wasn't Spider-Man. It wasn't even Preacher-level well-known.

And so season 2 comes along. And Frank's proven he can make a good product, and Frank's proven that it can be popular.

Unlike Mad Men or Breaking Bad, the two prestige series that have been netting AMC Emmy's consistently and annually season after season after season, AMC owns the rights to TWD completely. They do not have to go between another company. The showrunner cannot threaten to walk and take it to another network, like Matthew Weiner of Mad Men can (and who did, using his ability to walk as regular leverage for budget increases and control over the marketing).

So AMC goes, "Great, this guy made a success out of something that we didn't really know what way it would go, now let's do it for even less."

They cut the budget, and now Frank's struggling to make things work. They take the tax return they were supposed to get for production costs and leave them without it on short notice. You have people filming in deep South heat in the middle of the summer, bug bites and sunstroke all day long, and no executives ever spend time on set. It's utter bullshit, and Frank knows it. And fuckery happens, and things go wrong, and next thing you know Frank Darabont is no longer the visionary behind this show. Any cast members who threaten to speak out about their bullshit are threatened with deaths and Dale actually dies because he refuses to keep working without Frank at the helm.

It was a clusterfuck of a season and Darabont went on to sue AMC and win. He actually won in a lawsuit against the network. And that was season 2.

Since then, they've fired another showrunner and swiftly installed another. There's been constant rumor and issue surrounding actors and pay and unfair treatment. They've consistently lowered budgets despite the highest ratings of any cable TV show and a massive merchandising extravaganza. The show has had constant pacing issues, constant "just wait till next episode!" clickbait-esque cliffhangers and midseason finales and constantly cheap writing for years and years across three showrunners.

You can blame a lot on them, sure, but it's a consistent pattern no matter who is at the helm. At a certain point it stops making sense to blame it only on the lead writer when not a single one can make things work, despite one of them being Frank Darabont of all people (who, by the way, had wanted to do a spin-off centering on the fall of Atlanta and the soldiers from the tank Rick hides in in episode 1, only for it to be deemed "too expensive," yet years later they decide "Time for a spin-off series about the fall of civilization!").

They even had a hashtag ready the moment the finale finished and everyone involved has been giving stocked, rehearsed and canned answers to questions about it, with various actors saying differing things on whether they know about who died or not. Jeffrey Dean Morgan openly said he had zero clue they weren't going to show it until it aired. It's very, very clear that this was almost certainly not the decision that had been originally made and it was a late change to stretch it out for the sake of hype and ratings. This is a show keeping its viewers in a perpetual state of blueballs, always teasing and never delivering, always building and never exploding.

It is a show where the midseason finale's last shots got outright retconned in the midseason premiere and almost everyone just fucking went with it. It's got problems deep at its core and is just not good. It won't ever be good. It has a strong cast, it has a strong well of source material to draw from, it has had talented people involved in the writing and yet it continues to never actually be a consistently good show. At all. Ever. Not one season besides the first has been able to be consistently decent at any point, and even the first had some real bullshit with the whole CDC plotline. It is incapable of being good and it never will be in any lasting sense of the word, and after so many changing of hands, it hits a point where it can't only be the fault of the writers/showrunners.

This is the only major show AMC has had that they have thoroughly outright had complete control over and it is in turn the only one that has been such a fucking bore of a trainwreck. They didn't have complete say over BrBa, and it was a masterpiece. They didn't have it for Mad Men, and it was a masterpiece. AMC was lucky to have two shows early in their foray into original programming that they didn't actually have full ownership over and were led by absolutely visionary and amazing showrunners that remained at the helm and ended it on their own terms all the way through. So people thought, "Oh, AMC is the HBO of cable! AMC is fucking golden! They're the best!"

But they're not. They got lucky by being able to present someone else's work in front of the class and now that those kids have graduated, they're left scrambling for their own posterboard, and it's utter shit. Their only good original show is Better Call Saul, by the same team as BrBa which they also do not have full ownership over. AMC is absolutely a part of the problem and well worth being included in the discussion of why the most watched cable drama is a regular hot mess of shit and I and anybody else who brings it up is not a dumbass for saying it, we're simply looking at it for what it is.

[Ryan]

Hmmm.. this has really convinced me about who Negan killed:

http://www.popsugar.co.uk/celebrity/...photo-40817458

They note that we see from a first person point of view four times in the episode. As we end up finding out, the POV shots were happening from inside the van where Glenn, Daryl, Rosita and Michonne were kept. As the doors open, we see that Michonne was furthest back, and that the motif of seeing from someone's point of view that entire episode may have all been Michonne's.

Further, they said that it is a "much loved character," and that we see it from a first person POV is supposed to connect somehow to the opening of what happens in season 7. Well, that makes sense too, since Rick and Michonne have been getting jiggy wid it. For that to happen, Rick will be all kinds of vengeful. I'm going with it being Michonne.

[blackholesun]

You see you'd have room to insult anyone who thinks AMC has big influence over it if it wasn't for the fact that The Walking Dead's entire problems from season 2 onward stem thoroughly and completely from AMC's fuckery behind the scenes.

Acclaimed filmmaker Frank Darabont of The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption fame is Executive Producer and showrunner of season 1 of The Walking Dead, and it's a massive fucking smash. It's a surprising success for this relatively low-budget horror series about rednecks from Atlanta trying to not to die and fucking each other's wives, based on a comic book that anyone besides comic fans didn't know existed. It wasn't Spider-Man. It wasn't even Preacher-level well-known.

And so season 2 comes along. And Frank's proven he can make a good product, and Frank's proven that it can be popular.

Unlike Mad Men or Breaking Bad, the two prestige series that have been netting AMC Emmy's consistently and annually season after season after season, AMC owns the rights to TWD completely. They do not have to go between another company. The showrunner cannot threaten to walk and take it to another network, like Matthew Weiner of Mad Men can (and who did, using his ability to walk as regular leverage for budget increases and control over the marketing).

So AMC goes, "Great, this guy made a success out of something that we didn't really know what way it would go, now let's do it for even less."

They cut the budget, and now Frank's struggling to make things work. They take the tax return they were supposed to get for production costs and leave them without it on short notice. You have people filming in deep South heat in the middle of the summer, bug bites and sunstroke all day long, and no executives ever spend time on set. It's utter bullshit, and Frank knows it. And fuckery happens, and things go wrong, and next thing you know Frank Darabont is no longer the visionary behind this show. Any cast members who threaten to speak out about their bullshit are threatened with deaths and Dale actually dies because he refuses to keep working without Frank at the helm.

It was a clusterfuck of a season and Darabont went on to sue AMC and win. He actually won in a lawsuit against the network. And that was season 2.

Since then, they've fired another showrunner and swiftly installed another. There's been constant rumor and issue surrounding actors and pay and unfair treatment. They've consistently lowered budgets despite the highest ratings of any cable TV show and a massive merchandising extravaganza. The show has had constant pacing issues, constant "just wait till next episode!" clickbait-esque cliffhangers and midseason finales and constantly cheap writing for years and years across three showrunners.

You can blame a lot on them, sure, but it's a consistent pattern no matter who is at the helm. At a certain point it stops making sense to blame it only on the lead writer when not a single one can make things work, despite one of them being Frank Darabont of all people (who, by the way, had wanted to do a spin-off centering on the fall of Atlanta and the soldiers from the tank Rick hides in in episode 1, only for it to be deemed "too expensive," yet years later they decide "Time for a spin-off series about the fall of civilization!").

They even had a hashtag ready the moment the finale finished and everyone involved has been giving stocked, rehearsed and canned answers to questions about it, with various actors saying differing things on whether they know about who died or not. Jeffrey Dean Morgan openly said he had zero clue they weren't going to show it until it aired. It's very, very clear that this was almost certainly not the decision that had been originally made and it was a late change to stretch it out for the sake of hype and ratings. This is a show keeping its viewers in a perpetual state of blueballs, always teasing and never delivering, always building and never exploding.

It is a show where the midseason finale's last shots got outright retconned in the midseason premiere and almost everyone just fucking went with it. It's got problems deep at its core and is just not good. It won't ever be good. It has a strong cast, it has a strong well of source material to draw from, it has had talented people involved in the writing and yet it continues to never actually be a consistently good show. At all. Ever. Not one season besides the first has been able to be consistently decent at any point, and even the first had some real bullshit with the whole CDC plotline. It is incapable of being good and it never will be in any lasting sense of the word, and after so many changing of hands, it hits a point where it can't only be the fault of the writers/showrunners.

This is the only major show AMC has had that they have thoroughly outright had complete control over and it is in turn the only one that has been such a fucking bore of a trainwreck. They didn't have complete say over BrBa, and it was a masterpiece. They didn't have it for Mad Men, and it was a masterpiece. AMC was lucky to have two shows early in their foray into original programming that they didn't actually have full ownership over and were led by absolutely visionary and amazing showrunners that remained at the helm and ended it on their own terms all the way through. So people thought, "Oh, AMC is the HBO of cable! AMC is fucking golden! They're the best!"

But they're not. They got lucky by being able to present someone else's work in front of the class and now that those kids have graduated, they're left scrambling for their own posterboard, and it's utter shit. Their only good original show is Better Call Saul, by the same team as BrBa which they also do not have full ownership over. AMC is absolutely a part of the problem and well worth being included in the discussion of why the most watched cable drama is a regular hot mess of shit and I and anybody else who brings it up is not a dumbass for saying it, we're simply looking at it for what it is.

Did not know most of that.

Consider me schooled.

[implanted_microchip]

Did not know most of that.

Consider me schooled.

Haha, no problem. I'm sorry if I came off as condescending at all. It's mildly embarrassing that I even know that much about the production of a show I don't even like but it's the kind of thing where there's so much drama around it that it's like its own fascinating show. It's just a very deeply-flawed series in some very hard to repair ways and it's a big let down for me as such a fan of the source material. I have a hard time lately even getting thrilled about that, knowing how much Kirkman is willing to milk it.

[Bachy]

Part of me hopes it was Daryl, so I have an excuse to finally stop watching this joke that the show has become.

[fillow]

Here's Kirkman's recent AMA if anyone is interested
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen...t_starts_next/

[october_midnight]

Season 7 hits on October 23rd, will be 8 episodes in length.

[raptors661]

Did they add a EPK bit with Carol at 2:18? It's kind of jarring.

[bobbie solo]

man they are sticking close to the books overall. They keep fucking up anything that isn't from the books 100% (ie who Negan kills), so I hope they just do a direct translation this season. Loved seeing the Kingdom and it's leader and his pet.