*sigh* If you haven’t watched the season 6 finale of The Walking Dead — spoilers.
If my tone sounds resigned, well, it is. Breaking up is usually hard to do…except this time. They made it damned easy for me.
Yes, they’re deviating from the comics. Fine. I stuck with them through that. I stuck through TWD through “the farm” season that others hated. I didn’t mind that. I stuck through it with the bullshit with how they changed the Governor around and killing off Andrea while leaving Carol alive, because they logically worked it around in a good way. Okay.
THIS? This pissed me off. The mid-season cheat with the cliff-hanger with Glenn under the Dumpster? Okay, I wasn’t happy with it, but I gave them a pass.
They’ve yanked my chain one too many times. I suspect Glenn will survive, but honestly? I don’t care now. The Terminus cliff-hanger was a GOOD example of how to do a cliff-hanger. This? This was a mother dick shit sandwich with a side of bitch nuts.
I saw one tweet chiding those of us who are bitching that it’s like who shot JR. Uh, no, it’s not. Not even the same species of storytelling.
Maggie’s baby is in jeopardy. Carol’s life is on the line with her injuries. THERE are your cliff-hangers. The gut-punch SHOULD have been cutting to black seconds after seeing who it was that Negan killed.
This? Building up Negan and bringing him out (massive kudos to Jeffrey Dean Morgan who FUCKING NAILED NEGAN) and then building it up just to…
I envision a guy spending a couple of months at his parents’ house for some reason, away from his wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend, and he’s horny and he FINALLY gets to wank for the FIRST time in literally a couple of months, and RIGHT before he’s about to pop a money shot, his mom knocks on the door and asks if he needs more acne meds because she’s going to the store for hemorrhoid suppositories for his dad.
Aaaaand we’re done.
I mean, they cast a guy for Negan who was PERFECT as Negan. They gave him a set-up that, okay, a little long-winded to get there, fine. He NAILED THE FUCKING ROLE. I was SO fucking HAPPY to see Negan, brutal as I was already prepared for it to be. He was AWESOME. And then…
*knock knock knock* “Hey, your dad’s got some rectal itching and puffiness. Can I get you more blackhead cream?”
Ppphhhtttpppp. He might as well have Googled “blue waffle” in his porn stash, because it would have killed a chubby as fast as it killed off some of the TWD viewership.
*sigh*
Shitty, weak writing. I feel like my chain is getting yanked as a viewer. Like they didn’t trust me enough to come back next season. Like they’re AFRAID to kill ANYONE off now for fear of starting a fan riot and losing viewers. (They pissed off a LOT of viewers last week by killing off Denise instead of Abraham.) Like they were trying to find the least objectionable option to them and do THAT.
Terminus? That was a GREAT fucking cliff-hanger. That was how you do a cliff-hanger.
This?
This was bullshit. This was Fonzie waterskiing.
I watched The Talking Dead and they were trying to justify it on there as an episode to show a transformation from confident to beaten down. Then they went on to promise a bigger, better delivery at the start of next season.
Cocky much? That did nothing but piss me off even more, guys.
Uh, okay, they did that, and it STILL would have been a great show if they’d even done something as simple as showing the character from the back in an identifiable way.
They did change some of Negan’s lines. In his lines he uses the F-bomb a lot more, and he also made comments about Glenn and other characters (as stereotypes) that he didn’t in the episode.
I honestly wonder if the writers were trying to stall to figure out which character to kill off. As most of us know, in the books, it’s Glenn. But Abraham should also be dead. And Eugene did the thing with giving Rick the plans for making bullets (Eugene is still alive in the books as of last issue). Michonne is still alive in the books, as are Rick, Carl, Maggie & her child, and I think Aaron is still alive. Darryl isn’t in the books, and I saw a hypothesis that it was Darryl who died because of the blood on the camera like the end of the previous episode.
My money’s on Abraham, or Eugene, or Darryl. Which might be why, if it’s Darryl, they’re waiting so that they lose viewers after the premier.
But I’m done. I’m still going to watch Fear the Walking Dead. (Unless they piss me off.) I’ll also keep reading the books. But no more first-runs of TWD for me, though. I’ll catch it (maybe) once the season’s all on On Demand or Netflix or something. I do not like being deliberately manipulated with a cheat tactic.
And that’s a shame, because other than too much time in the RV, this was actually a really great episode, one that made up for weaknesses in previous episodes this season. Then…they blew it. Last fucking second, literally, they blew it.
AND, if they do a time jump and reveal who it was that died like that, without actually covering the grim, gory, hard aftermath of Negan and Lucille, that’s ANOTHER cheat. I mean, blacking out to the sound of Negan killing his victim? Genius. Perfect. Excellent. ALL they needed literally was a slow-mo fade out of an identifiable victim going down, maybe with a quick switch to the faces of all the characters on their knees, one at a time, to show their horror, and then cut to black to a final statement by Negan as a voice over.
This?
This was shitty, crappy screenwriting 101, what NOT to do as a writer.
THIS is why readers HATE serials (something I’ve covered in the past). This feels not like good, intense storytelling, but a cheat to suck more money (or in this case viewers) into their mitts.
Keep your readers/viewers by good, strong storytelling. Not by cheats like this. This wasn’t a cliff-hanger. Sometimes that means taking hard risks and doing something you know is going to piss off viewers short-term, like killing off a beloved character.
This was a shark-jumping. And it makes me really sad, because you all know I LOVED this show with the heat of a thousand suns. And they just ruined it for me in one episode.
I’ll go back and rewatch up to this point. But like I said, I’m done with first-runs of this show. I’ll wait and read the spoilers after it comes out in October before I decide if I’ll watch any more of it in the future. I’m certainly done with making sure my ass is in front of the TV to see first-airings. Life is too short for bad writing, in books or TV shows.
Mostly, my condolences to Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who kicked fucking ass, and then got hosed by the writers pissing off a goodly chunk of their viewing audience with this blunder.
Also, feel free to suggest shows to me I should try. Preferably ones I can binge-watch to catch up on. I want to try iZombie and Orphan Black. I need to give Supernatural another chance. I already watch Z-Nation.
Thoughts? Sound off.
EDIT: Someone posted this https://soundcloud.com/user-364948986/etc from the episode and said that if you listen close, you can hear characters yelling, “Glenn!” in it. Maybe. Not sure. What do you think?
I released books 1-3 in my Bleacke Shifters series (as Lesli Richardson) in a box set. No new content, but if you don’t have the books, it’s a bargain. Look for book 4 around June.
Liability (Suncoast Society 33, MMF, BDSM) is available from Siren-BookStrand and should be coming to third-party sites soon. I’ll be submitting Switchy (Suncoast Society 34, MMF, BDSM) this month. So look for that around May/June.
ICYMI, there’s a boxed set out for my Suncoast Society books, Tony’s Collection, which contains The Reluctant Dom, Domme by Default, and The Denim Dom. If you don’t have one or more of those books, it’s a great deal to add them to your collection.