Walking Dead

[nacho]

A buddy posted this on FB:

Well... they hit a new level tonight... not one zombie during the entire show tonight. Not one! The military put up a fence... don't know why... and everybody is scared, though you wouldn't know it because they were pretty busy hanging out in the pool and painting their house and... well... y'know... carrying on like a typical zombie apocalypse would make one carry on... NOT!

Your buddy must not be watching the parent show. The LA Safe Zone is part of the Safe Zone program that was set up everywhere in the US. The parent show is currently holed up at the Alexandria Safe Zone outside DC, and they've spent the last 25 issues of the comic there.

So what Fear is doing is actually explaining how the Safe Zone program was set up (and, ultimately, failed). All a subplot, by the way, that's directly ripped off from World War Z.

The problem is...we don't care!

[nacho]

Plenty of zombies last night, but still so Danny haphazard in the storytelling. We've spent lots of time establishing that the obviously up to no good military is up to no good.

So season one is all about gathering the Scooby Gang together...very slowly. Next week is the finale. Sigh.

[nacho]

Wow...this show doesn't care anymore...

So the two hour season six premiere is set a few months after season 5's finale, and is mainly just Rick pushing all the soft Alexandrians to pull together and work to build a baffle for a massive herd of zombies that they're trying to drive away from the Safe Zone.

We get plenty of great zombie effects...and their budget for season six is clearly 1.7 billion dollars an episode.

But all that only gets about 30 minutes screen time. The premiere is largly composed of black and white flashbacks to the events immediately following season 5's finale. These flashbacks are told vaguely out of sequence, or perhaps as little "day in the life" snippets with the through-line being Rick's slow takeover and how everyone is making peace with that. So the foundation of Rick's Safe Zone comes in these disjointed flashbacks.

And, thoughout it all, it's arty, narrative-driven, and captivating. Really some of the best stuff this show has offered us...

[nacho]

So the great thing about having a series that makes more money than God...you can have the first three episodes take place in the same five minutes.

So episode one is mainly flashbacks during an operation to lead a herd of zombies away.

Episode two is what happened at the Safe Zone during that operation.

Episode three is what happened at the operation while what was happening at the Safe Zone was happening.

[nacho]

So, at this rate, episode four will be about the dog that saw the zombie that joined the herd that showed up on episode one

[nacho]

So, at this rate, episode four will be about the dog that saw the zombie that joined the herd that showed up on episode one

Almost! Actually, the latest episode was a two hour origin story filling in the details about Morgan's character from when we last saw him in season two and explaining why he's now a Magical Black man.

Because we're talking about Lennie James here, I loved it. He always shines in these sort of shows -- he was the only good thing in Jericho.

Doing this has enraged fans because, of course, everyone wants to know if the beloved Glenn is dead or not. But we won't know anytime soon because this show can do whatever it wants and, hey, that's kind of awesome. Even with the teaser for the next episode, you can't be sure if it's going to be a black and white side-story set three years in the past or if it'll just be a straight-up storyline episode.

[nacho]

There's two episodes left this season and, in show time, only a day has passed. We're following four separate yet simultaneous storylines, all of which are slowly re-converging.

Very interesting. I like that the show just doesn't care anymore.

[nacho]

Man, this show...

I've actually lost track of where everyone is in space and time. I think we're all back together and it's just Glenn still trapped outside Alexandria.

But that doesn't matter because the wall's about to come down!

Then we have our "mid-season finale" and then we finish off the back half of this season with negan -- who, in the comics, was basically The Governor Mark 2.

If they stay this close to the comic, season 7 will be a one year later season and focused mainly on trade agreements.

[nacho]

Yay.

[nacho]

This comes on the announcement that Fear the Walking Dead will pick up a week after TWD proper ends and, with a mid-season hiatus, end about a month before TWD comes back. So... Year round Walking Dead! (Plus, I've heard rumors about a third spin-off if Fear continues to hold water... Lots of talk about the "last lab" in Europe that was working on the plague has been floating around the net.)

Currently in its sixth season, The Walking Dead is reaching the point where most shows start to think about wrapping up the narrative. But The Walking Dead isn’t most shows.

In an interview with Vulture, AMC network chief Charlie Collier and programming boss Joel Stillerman chatted about the unique formula of The Walking Dead, and how they believe the biggest show on television could potentially run for, well, ever. Stillerman said the formula is a simple one, and basically goes back to what creator Robert Kirkman was trying to do when he conceived the comic book that started it all — show what comes after the typical ending of a zombie movie.

The comic has been telling that story for more than a decade, and judging by where the narrative is at the moment, still has quite a ways to go in the years to come. With the television adaptation, Stillerman said they wanted to replicate that sense of a never-ending world.

Here’s an excerpt from his comments:

“What’s so fascinating about The Walking Dead is that Robert Kirkman set out to do something that proved to be remarkably brilliant in a couple of very fundamental ways. One is he wanted to use the world of the zombie apocalypse as a way to get at social commentary. That was always the killer app for the show. But if you ask Robert what his motivations were for writing The Walking Dead, he would say, “I loved zombie movies, but I just felt like the worst part of them was always the ending. You always had to manufacture some ending.” So he set out to write this totally open-ended story, and the proof of that is in how vibrant the comics are.

The answer to how long the show will go on in some way is directly correlated with the health of the storytelling in the comics. Those comics are firing on all cylinders. He still writes every line of dialogue in those books, and is as engaged as he was when I think he was sitting around in Kentucky writing the first issue. That is very much part of the DNA of the show. He sort of felt like, in real life, this goes on for a very long time. We’re along for that ride.”

So, it begs the question — is AMC even having conversations about when the show might end? No, at least according to Collier. Instead of trying to lead the narrative toward an inevitable conclusion, Collier said they’re trying to keep the series as inventive and interesting as possible so it can keep on trucking. Hey, it’s worked for The CW’s Supernatural (currently in its 11th season), so why not Walking Dead?

Here’s an excerpt from his Collier:

“I will tell you we are not actively talking about the end of The Walking Dead. We’re talking about how to keep this No. 1 show on television feeling as fresh as it does in season six. As a brand, we’re very sensitive to making sure that every aspect of it feels fresh and original, and that it’s not treated in any way that’s derivative or taken for granted. Our planning is current and future-focused, and it is not focused on the end at this time.”

It’s amazing to think that six seasons in, and it still feels like we’ve only scratched the surface of how big this story could become. Just looking to the comic for inspiration, there are so many gigantic (and interesting!) stories left to tell.

Which, if the ratings hold up to the mind-boggling average, who knows how long this show could go on?

[nacho]

The season 6.5 premiere was a fucking extraordinary hour of television. Wow.

[nacho]

I'm very curious about next Sunday's episode. We're going to meet Negan, it looks like. With three episodes to go, they might stretch it out a bit... But, certainly, the penultimate episode and the finale are going to be all about Negan.

Negan, essentially. soft-rebooted the comics. He killed a major character, changed the lives of all the other characters, and was the final sort of baptism by fire for the Alexandria Safe Zone. The comics even did a "one year later" break not too long after the Negan arc.

In TV show terms, we're back to being very close to the comics... And you know this cast has to be getting tired of these roles. So they're either going to take the safe approach, or they're going to do something wildly insane.

One of the newcomers, and Daryl, have hinted that it'll be something insane. Rick and Michonne just got a love story subplot at the end of the last episode, so my gut tells me it'll be one of them who doesn't survive this season.

[nacho]

Man, TWD has taken a weird turn. So I think next week is the finale... And they've filmed two endings, so nobody knows what's going to happen. Someone's going to die... And we have pregnant Maggie and Carol in the hands of Negan's people right now.

So much of the latest episode was spent trying to confuse us. All of the "this character is going to die" cues were played out across multiple characters. There are six of them who each had a stereotypical "going to die" trope play out.

Though now we know it isn't Glenn (who buys it in the comics).

Meanwhile, the show sort of reinvented itself last night and took that final step towards answering the "are our heroes actually the villains?" question.

Meanwhile, Fear the Walking Dead returns in a month and is getting major hype. It actually looks good now.

[nacho]

So we're there. Rick and Company are the bad guys in this show.

That's complicated for the viewer, because now the whole thing shifts from a group of heroes surviving to a group of complicated characters who have now been dragged, by Rick, into something of a moral quandary. They're all being forced by Rick to be cold-blooded killers, and that's being used to play with them as, one by one, they realize that what they're doing is wrong. But from a stroytelling perspective, the only redemption is for Rick to die. Either Negan -- who remains elusive -- has to kill him, or someone from our cast has to revolt.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is the direction we're going in. Rick's certainly been on a self-destructive trajectory for the last three seasons now.

But if their plan is to keep our cast evil, and try to convince us that they've been forced to make these choices in light of Negan, a greater evil, then that's going to be a hard story to tell. Because I no longer like the cast, and it'll be hard to win that trust back.

Another possibility -- they're planning a Blake's 7 style mass-kill. I'm thinking Fear the Walking Dead is going to test that approach next season, and TWD will do it when they return next year.

[nacho]

So the penultimate episode featured both the best and the worst of this show, an was still shocking.

Next week is the 90 minute finale. Right now, it looks like it's being set up for a mass title character kill. In fact, that may have started at the end of this episode.

Internet meltdown in t-minus six days...