Walking Dead II

[Pasta Chick]

We have the Spectrum app through Charter which includes either HBO or Showtime. Because I'm way too cheap for a full cable package.

Seriously though, I was trying to subscribe to AMC on Roku last night and it wouldn't let me... but after this morning I don't even care. I'm so pissed off by fan-pandering and plays for social media attention. It's like the click-bait of television series.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Yes, I thought about the Genesis story.  Negan didn't stop Rick, however.  Rick gave in (which he had to do) and that ended the crisis.

I'm hoping another biblical principle will eventually apply - he who lives by Lucille shall die by Lucille.   

[Davin]

That axe also wouldn't be a bad thing for Negan to die by.

[Dragonia]

^^^ I concur, but only after someone mentally plays with him and degrades him and rips his spirit and pride and dignity to shreds.
Good Lord, what is this show doing to me?!?!? 

[Sandra Craft]

I'm so happy that you guys have a WD thread! I came first thing this morning to check, and voilá! 
So Books, I am opposite of you in that Glenn was one of my least favorite and Abe was one of my most favorite characters.

I've always felt Glen would have made a much better leader than Rick.  Not that Andrew Lincoln doesn't have a great profile and is one of the very few men who looks good with a full beard, but Rick has an emotional breakdown nearly every season -- he's just not that stable.  Whereas Glen was solid as a rock no matter how awful things got.  The only points against Glen as leader were his youth and lack of experience, and he was catching up there fast.

And then there's this, my absolute favorite WD scene: 

But as terrible as I found his death, it did suit him -- to the last he was thinking of Maggie.  I'm not a particularly sentimental person (well, not about other people anyway) but that "I will find you" had me on the verge of tears.

And Abraham's death suited him as well, died telling his killer to suck his balls.  But it wasn't that that got to me about Abraham, it was something I didn't even notice until someone far more observant pointed it out -- just before he first got hit by Negan, he flashed the peace sign to Sasha, because that was their "thing".  That was what finally made me warm up a little to Abraham, right when he was getting killed off.

It's was fun watching the interactions until Jeffery Dean Morgan (Negan) came out. Even though I know he is a great actor, I still can't like the real life man at all. Ech....

I don't know anything about Morgan in real life, but I have to admit my opinion of Negan has changed since season 6.  Then I thought, "oh great, another one-note cartoon bad guy", but Negan's really gotten fleshed out as far more complex than that so I'm actually enjoying his awful self.  Looking forward to learning more about him before he gets done in.

That axe also wouldn't be a bad thing for Negan to die by.

This.  I just haven't decided yet who I want to see do it.  Maggie and Sasha are big favorites, of course, but Daryl and Rick are heavy contenders as well.  And what about Carl?  I think he could also be a poetic possibility.

[Sandra Craft]

Altho I will admit, Rick's instability does have its uses at times:

[Sandra Craft]

Ahem.  The Walking Dead Quitters Club

[Dragonia]

From the Walking Dead Quitters Club, this sums it up nicely:

That's TWD's biggest problem going forward. We're supposed to hate Negan now, and the reason people should want to keep watching is to see what type of revenge Rick strikes back with, no matter how many seasons it takes. But no amount of payoff is worth being jerked around like this.

I will still keep watching, because I want to know what happens, but that article had some good points.
Besides, this is the only tv I watch. 

[Sandra Craft]

From the Walking Dead Quitters Club, this sums it up nicely:

That's TWD's biggest problem going forward. We're supposed to hate Negan now, and the reason people should want to keep watching is to see what type of revenge Rick strikes back with, no matter how many seasons it takes. But no amount of payoff is worth being jerked around like this.

I will still keep watching, because I want to know what happens, but that article had some good points.
Besides, this is the only tv I watch. 

Me too, and I'm particularly curious about what's going on with Morgan and Carol.

[Pasta Chick]

Ahem.  The Walking Dead Quitters Club

I was just coming to post this!

And reading the comments, a lot of people are missing the point. It's not that it's gory and cruel - I expect a zombie show to be gory and cruel - it's that that's ALL it is. Dragged out over multiple seasons.

I miss character development. I don't even care that Glen and Abraham are dead because they're just pawns the show uses to toy with us.

People keep talking about "but that's how the novels are!" But there are several problems with this:
- Novels translated to the screen cut out a lot of detail FOR A REASON. Some cut too much which is just as bad, but for real, can you imagine GoT or Harry Potter with literally every detail kept in place?
- Even if that particular scene was panel by panel from the novel, the obnoxious pacing, the placement of commercial breaks, and splitting it between not just episodes but an entire damn season is ridiculous. While very obviously playing off social media.
- Being in graphic novel form doesn't make something good. Sorry nerds. Truth sucks. If this IS word-for-word, setting and drama copied from the novels, then the novels suck balls. /sorrynotsorry

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Rick and Carol and Maggie are all being developed, in my opinion.  The women are turning into bad asses and Rick is a question mark, vacillating between courageous leader and sniveling wimp.  Daryl is constant.  Michone is fairly constant, but shows a little more humanity and rationality now.  Morgan finally killed someone.  It is just escalating violence, and after Negan is horribly killed I'm not sure where they will go with this, although they promise more years.

[Sandra Craft]

So, for those of us still watching, what are we thinking so far?

I like the Kingdom, it's my kind of place, but I find King Ezekiel's affected speaking style baffling and more than a little annoying.  I suppose that's how he talks in the comic but I think it's a mistake for the show.  His natural style, which he uses with Carol, would be perfectly fine for his role as king, and not make him sound like a loon.

The Kingdom itself may be working like a fairy tale (esp. with most of the people apparently in the dark about Negan) but I think that would be OK with me if I had lost consciousness in a George Romero film and woken up in Camelot.  I'd enjoy the luxury of just relaxing into it for a few weeks before asking "OK, what's really going on?"

Negan's group just gets worse and worse.  The actress playing Dwight's now ex-wife said she thought Negan a charismatic leader but I have to disagree.  Ezekiel is charismatic -- he enchants everyone into cooperating with him.  Negan rules purely by fear -- people only obey him out of terror of becoming his next victim, or of getting hurt even worse than usual the next time it is their turn for the pain.

Fear is the answer to poor Gordon's question about why, with only one of Negan and so many of them, they can't get rid of him.  They're all too afraid of dying to take the chance, and it's a reasonable fear.  Even if one of them managed to kill Negan by surprise, it's just about a given the other minions would kill that guy and then one of them them would surely seize the opportunity to become the new Negan -- making the hero's death not only a sacrifice but a wasted one.

[Davin]

So, for those of us still watching, what are we thinking so far?

I like the Kingdom, it's my kind of place, but I find King Ezekiel's affected speaking style baffling and more than a little annoying.  I suppose that's how he talks in the comic but I think it's a mistake for the show.  His natural style, which he uses with Carol, would be perfectly fine for his role as king, and not make him sound like a loon.

The Kingdom itself may be working like a fairy tale (esp. with most of the people apparently in the dark about Negan) but I think that would be OK with me if I had lost consciousness in a George Romero film and woken up in Camelot.  I'd enjoy the luxury of just relaxing into it for a few weeks before asking "OK, what's really going on?"

I like the kingdom, I think it would be just fine if he dropped the act and kept everything else.

Negan's group just gets worse and worse.  The actress playing Dwight's now ex-wife said she thought Negan a charismatic leader but I have to disagree.  Ezekiel is charismatic -- he enchants everyone into cooperating with him.  Negan rules purely by fear -- people only obey him out of terror of becoming his next victim, or of getting hurt even worse than usual the next time it is their turn for the pain.

Fear is the answer to poor Gordon's question about why, with only one of Negan and so many of them, they can't get rid of him.  They're all too afraid of dying to take the chance, and it's a reasonable fear.  Even if one of them managed to kill Negan by surprise, it's just about a given the other minions would kill that guy and then one of them them would surely seize the opportunity to become the new Negan -- making the hero's death not only a sacrifice but a wasted one.

I don't find Negan's group to be very realistic, it looks like it was written by someone who is going off of bro pseudo science and folk wisdom, and surprisingly, against everything we've learned about human behavior in the last 100 years, it produces a large and stable population of loyal people who amazingly seem well behaved and not insanely unpredictable, and another population that are almost completely subservient.

If we look at another "experiment" that was fairly similar, there is one very popular example. But even in the Stanford Prison Experiment, there were a lot more "prisoners" fighting back from the start and until the end. There are lot of things that are different of course, but I think the differences lean away from instead of towards what is being presented. People don't respond to punishment like that at all, it would make more sense if they took out the punishments and left in the deprivation, starvation, and "rewards."

So I find Negan and that whole thing a lot more cheesy than anything else, and the Kingdom seems a lot more realistic. Although, I thought Carol was so good at acting back before she left the group, and then she went way overboard in the Kingdom. Even if Ezekiel was as cray as he acted, he could have seen through the act. So far it's still tolerable, but the misrepresentations that Negan's group presents is grating on my nerves.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

You have to suspend belief for the entire series - we are talking zombies here - so quirky things like the Kingdom and Negan don't bother me that much.  Everything is a caricature.  However, I think that some cults and even big corporations have the sort of "bow to the leader" culture that we see this season.  I just look at those as sort of background noise to how Rick & Co. are going to develop  - what they are going to become. I think of this series as a dream in which the brain is trying to reveal something to us about our/its essential nature. 

[Davin]

You have to suspend belief for the entire series - we are talking zombies here - so quirky things like the Kingdom and Negan don't bother me that much.  Everything is a caricature.  However, I think that some cults and even big corporations have the sort of "bow to the leader" culture that we see this season.  I just look at those as sort of background noise to how Rick & Co. are going to develop  - what they are going to become. I think of this series as a dream in which the brain is trying to reveal something to us about our/its essential nature.

I'm fine with suspending belief, that's like a, "no shit" kind of thing. If a story is not going to be realistic, then at least it should expose something about humanity... otherwise it seems pointless... and that's even fine in its own. But in this case, the misrepresentations of how humans behave work against revealing anything about our essential nature instead of for it. It's not revealing something about humanity, and it's moved too far down the "what if" path that they're no longer concerned about plausibility. Which of course is fine too. I just don't enjoy it as much.