It never fails to fascinate me how differently fans of the show can react to the same thing.

Ha! I'd happily watch 50 minutes of the characters just sitting around talking to each other most weeks! If only! I'm way more interested in how they are affected by what's happening to them, than what is actually happening.

I agree it felt out of place, but that's why I really liked it. The idea of someone falling in love and planning a date, opening a new chapter in their lives, whilst most of them are seeking closure, contemplating the very strong possibility of them dying in this conflict... I thought that worked brilliantly. And still resulted in some of the best moments between Eugene and Rosita as an added bonus.

I can't help wondering what you think the end of the season should focus on if not
what we are getting: the end of the whisperer conflict, the departure of Michonne hopefully connected to Rick, and the introduction of a new community through Stephanie? With an added twist of Maggie's return? Within that the resolution to Negan's redemption-or-not and Carol's thirst-for-avenge arcs? These were the main stories of the season and we are most likely getting them all tied in a bow by the end of this season.

 

I couldn't agree more. One of the best executed cliffhangers ever.

In some ways it made me think of the highly controversial season-end cliffhanger of the line up with Negan bringing down the bat at an unidentified survivor.
I know I'm in a minority but I thought that was a brilliant idea not to show who it was. Because my overwhelming feeling at that point was that it really doesn't matter who it was. Those people all kneeled there together as one big family, with every life as important as the other. The horror of the moment was that a precious life with all their pulsing bonds to the rest of the family can be extinguished, just like that, whilst the rest of them had to watch unable to stop it.
That was the end of the story of S6 for me, and S7 was going to be dealing with who it was and looking at it in a more personal level. That worked for me in a very horrific but hugely effective way.

Right now we have a cliffhanger when we know we are bound to lose people in this battle, and again I'm left feeling that it almost doesn't matter who, because it's going to hurt bad no matter who it is.

 

Aren't they just. They've already killed so many good people, some really really good people, and will kill some more before this conflict is over. This entire TWD world is painting such a horrific picture of the depravity humans are capable of.

The words from Judith in the last episode is really at the heart of this world: how your life can take a completely different turn depending on who you meet, whose influence you fall under, what path you take your first steps on. How sometimes you might take those steps hesitantly or desperately, yet the road will still take you down and suck you into a way of life and thinking that you might have never thought yourself capable of. How you could become someone attacking a group of survivors lead by the Governor, who you have never even met, had no conflict with. Or become a Wolf, a Saviour, a Whisperer. Turning on other people just out of spite, wanting to exploit them, rob them, or simply wipe them out, following some horrific twisted ideology.

I like how we were always shown members of these communities at various levels of commitment to these ideologies. As well as the generally good people whose story we have at the heart of the show can sometimes cross the line and end up doing horrific things as well, yet they are still able to yank themselves back from the brink and reconnect to the better part of their humanity.

 

Yes, it did seem out of place for me, but yet so right. It made me think of the day that I married the love of my life. . and then had to bury my beloved granddad the next day. How one day I celebrated the birth if my first grandson and buried the last member of my dad's immediate family the next.
Even in an apocalypse life ends for one while hope springs forth for another. I always tried to instill in my kids that the world can't beat a persn who refuses to stay down. It's ok to drop your sword and cry for awhile . . Just remember to pick it back up and rejoin the battle. The only looser is a quitter and it always too soon to quit.

 

It's interesting because I don't think TWD is too far off base with how crazed our society would become.. With the coronavirus scare you have people fighting over toilet paper in Walmart. Not sure what that is all about. I can understand disinfectant, but for some reason people are hoarding toilet paper. It's just insane. So you wonder in the face of a real apocalyptic event how far everything would devolve.

 

Lastcat has become a:



Lately. LOL

 

Oh nonononono........that was the ONE episode of this show I was so pissed about. LMAO

 

I know, I know. Most people were. And I get it. But somehow it worked for me. I remember feeling actually shocked to realise how much people hated it and felt cheated by it at the time.

 

I just saw it as a completely cheap trick.

 

I get that. Everyone was anxious to find out who Negan would kill and then we were told nope, you gonna have to wait 5 months to find out, dudes.

But for me it worked because I went into the scene thinking I love every single one of these characters and it’s unbearable to think one of them will die like this. And the first thought I had when it was all over was that this was one of the most brutal things I’ve ever seen and it doesn’t even matter who it is that got killed, all that matters that it was one of them, how this hurt them all. I’ve never seen them more united than in that moment.

 

The breakdown of society is somewhat accurate (though pretty exaggerated at the same time) but the thing that TWD doesn't do very well are all the cliched and over the top characters that arose afterward. A lot of that has to do with the fact that these characters originated from a comic book that was written by a guy who was pretty much just a self taught writer and had a habit of falling into the traps of cliché storytelling and character development.

It is ok to have those types of characters within a comic book (as all characters in comics are over the top in someway or another) but tv viewers generally don't have the same kind of tolerance for that as comic readers do. Honestly what the tv show should have done is scrap everything in the comic after the group got to Alexandria as that is when Kirkman really started going crazy with his storylines and the characters he was developing. THe show started right about the same time the comic was being introduced to Alexandria and I think Kirkman decided to start doing whatever the hell he wanted to do since he was now making all that additional money from the show. It probably isn't any coincidence that the viewership started deteriorating quickly once it started trying to adapt Kirkman's post show starting comic craziness. Sure the ratings would have fallen off anyway due to the show being on for so long but it wouldn't have seen a 70 to 80% decrease in viewership like we have seen in the past three or four seasons if they weren't putting all these crazy characters in the show like they are now.

 

I don't think that's a coincidence either. Zombies aside, as a given for the genre, up to the early days in Alexandria the show was pretty "realistic". With the introduction of communities such as the Kingdom with a character like King Ezekiel straight out from a fantasy world, the show crossed over to a different genre, that was not everyone's cup of tea. Add to that the initially very much cartoon-like Negan, the sketchy depiction of the Wolves... And then it was like Gimple couldn't get enough of the fantasy stuff and added Jadis and her group for good measure, and to the bafflement of most of the fandom.

Only hardcore fans stuck with the show who had enough love to forgive the madness or had a soft spot for fantasy. I'm inflicted with both, so I'm still here.

What Angela has done amazingly well is accomplishing the practically impossible: taking the Whisperers, who are again another group straight out of a fantasy world, and make them somehow inexplicably "real". I like the fantasy genre but it has somewhat bothered me on the show. I prefer the return to more "realism".

I don't actually know if it is legally possible for them to completely break away from the source material. But what I know is that AK is doing a much better job of juggling this than SG did.

 

Last of Us will probably be a zombie show that would be more inclined to maintain its audience than Walking Dead was able to because it is a much more down to earth story and universe than Walking Dead is. NaughtyDog made a far greater effort to tell a realistic version of a post apocalypse world than Robert Kirkman did.

 

My interest is peaked for Last of Us. That won’t stop me though from sticking with TWD to the bitter or hopefully bittersweet end. I love this show and happily forgive its blunders for all the things I’ve loved about it over the years.

 

Ahah, I was wondering when you'd reach out to get Last of Us into this.....

 

Lol, hey Last of Us is the future. Five years from now Last of Us will be the show people think of when a zombie conversation is brought up.

 

15 y/o and younger, for sure. Otherwise, no. Just like the kids don't know about Romero.

I've been watching TWD for 10 years. Talk to me about zombies, I think of Romero.

 

@NakedCity Pretty much all ages play video games these days. There are hundreds and even thousands of youtube videos of people in their 20's, 30's and 40's playing and talking about Last of Us. The show will be a massive hit if done well. There are probably about two to three times as many people who will play the upcoming Last of Us 2 coming out here in a couple months than are watching TWD right now.

 

I didn't mean that only 15 y/o played video games. I play video games. I meant that only people who were too young to have been there for TWD's huge beginning would consider TLoU the reference as zombie TV shows. Just like anybody who was there when the Romero films came out wouldn't consider 28 Days Later the reference in the genre.