Walking Dead

[nacho]

This show has gone from goofy comedy to totally off the rails. We're now catching up with two characters we haven't seen since March. The cold open was like it came from an episode of Lost. The motivations of the characters is...alien, at best. I spent half the episode laughing out loud and the other half wondering if I had somehow missed an entire season of bridging episodes...

[nacho]

I was going to comment on the mid-season finale...but I don't actually remember any of it. This season of 90 minute episodes has achieved absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, the ratings are tanking. They're still high, because the whole world was watching this show... But they've taken a brutal hit and I don't think they'll dig out. They've shifted from "anyone can die" to "no one can die unless we're just aping the comics or trying to be needlessly showy in a way that doesn't involve narrative storytelling at all."

[nacho]

Walking Dead has been doing better here on the back half of season 7. Mainly because they've given up and embraced the whole Beyond Thunderdome theme...complete with PA spike-wearing warriors and Captain Walker-type child communities that speak in a post-apocalypse dialect that would have taken generations to develop properly.

[nacho]

Well, we're officially into the original extended-cut-of-Dawn of the Dead comedic walkers on this show. All we need is the replacement music in the American version of the movie where walkers are bumping around and falling down and generally being "they are us."

Which is fine. The dead have actually been slowly phased out of this show in favor of the conflict between surviving groups. In the comics, the occasional "herd" is a problem but, generally, they're now about the growing pains of Rick's little federation of communities.

A logical (and, at this point, welcome) way to end this series is to eliminate this last Big Bad, form the federation of communities, fast forward to one year later for an epilogue and a vague cliffhanger to leave things open for a movie down the line and then bid us all farewell.

[nacho]

The finale was pretty good. The fight at the end was downright awesome (even though it made no sense -- like how did the Hilltop and Kingdom armies get inside Alexandria?).

Two problems -- the emotional soul/shocking twist in this episode was completely ruined. The character at the center of it is the new lead in Star Trek Discovery, so we've long known her days were numbered. It's also troubling because she's yet another black character who dies horridly, which is something TWD is very guilty of exploiting.

It also resolved nothing! This has been a very touchy season for the show and we end it with the knowledge that the entire season was just one, long, bizarre prologue for the real conflict to come. It's basically like if Army of Darkness had ended when Ash stood on the ramparts and said he would fight the Deadites. Except it took us 10 hours to get there.

Anyway. This fucking show.

[RottingCorpse]

I've decided that not committing to TWD is one of the better life choices I've made.

[nacho]

You're probably right.

I always find myself thinking back to that, frankly, glorious and perfect pilot episode. What happened? Where did it all go wrong? (Episode two.)

[RottingCorpse]

The pilot was great. I'm very glad I watched it. The next two episodes didn't pull me in. And now I read friends comments about it and the show just seems like this crappy job that everybody wants to quit, but the money and benefits are too good, and really there are way harder jobs than this.

[nacho]

The only reason we're watching is because we want to see Andrew Lincoln die horribly. Preferably in really slow motion.

[nacho]

Fear the Walking dead is back. The two hour premiere was a silly mess, as usual, where nobody behaves with any sense of logic. Like, the bad guys who have murdered hundreds of people in cold blood become good guys instantly because the dead overrun the base. So now everyone bands together and sucks each other's dicks when, literally, 30 seconds before one person had removed another person's eyeball with a spoon and a main character got fed to zombies while everyone laughed.

So...yeah. But that's TWD. I don't know what I expected. I'm just glad people are dying. Our main cast is down to three people. Hopefully ALL THREE OF THEM WILL DIE SOON! Then the show can reboot with interesting characters and go on the road instead of endlessly moving around the same 200 yards of the Mexico/CA border despite days and days and days and days of walking/boating/flying/driving.

[nacho]

Well! This is interesting:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/walking-dead-creator-robert-kirkman-leaving-amc-signs-1797747694

So TWD will be moving to Amazon eventually? That'll be a blow to AMC.

[nacho]

So Fear the Walking Dead gets a soft reboot -- we move forward about 2 years to catch up with the parent series, Garret Dillahunt is introduced as a Texas gunslinger, Jenna Elfman as a plucky journalist in a Dead Reckoning sort of vehicle, and Morgan crosses over from the parent series. We don't see the main cast till the very end, and it looks like things have gone crazy.

This season will be split into multiple timelines:

Those timelines are:

• Morgan's story, which is happening a few months after the events of The Walking Dead's Season 8 finale and includes present-day Madison (Kim Dickens).

• Madison's story of how her family became the roadside bandits who met Morgan, which will start about a year after the events of Fear's Season 3 finale.

• And presumably (this one has not been seen in the first two episodes sent to critics) the year between the Season 3 finale and where Madison's story picks up, which will fill in the rest of the time jump that kicks off Season 4.

[nacho]

Man, Fear the Walking Dead is a shitfest. They've spent the first half of thise season slowly killing off the stars and moving in new ones... And there are rumors that Rick (who leaves TWD next year) will be coming over to Fear! Why are we still watching this show...?

[nacho]

The Rick Dies Season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBaKVC1wIW4

[nacho]

Why am I still watching these shows?

Have I posted that question on every page of this thread?

The weird thing now in Fear the Walking Dead is that, after two soft reboots (one that replaced two thirds of the cast and saw a one year time jump), the goal of the new group of survivors is to make their way to Virginia to join up with the cast of the main show.

So what will Fear become when they get to Virginia? Which, with these writers, will happen without explanation in just a few episodes? Will we get two shows set in the same area with the same cast? Like multiple-perspective shows about the exact same events?

And they want to make more shows! Yet their one spinoff has been a disaster and is obsessed with getting back to the parent show's sphere as quickly as possible.

Blah... But, I'm still watching. I guess that (times a few million) is all that matters, right? No need to tell a story -- or even make sense within their own universe (e.g., two people spent three episodes trapped on an island after a damn burst, hunted by crocodiles and swimming frantically away from them in deep water. Then, when rescue arrives, the rescuers simply drive a car across the flood -- with the water never going above the tire wells -- and save them. So...they could have walked out at any time.)