I’m glad others point it out. They’ve done stupid stuff before but for the 100th episode and a season premiere to be half talking about only needing to kill Negan, it’s too stupid to have him come out with no cover. Nothing else mattered at that moment, Rick and Maggie had a lot of people backing them, all they had to do was load him up and deal with the rest accordingly. WAY too stupid of the writing to have him come out like that.

 

Like many others, what bothered me the most was the stand off scene between Rick & Negan... As previously mentioned by others I can understand what the intended goals of the writers were (I assume Rick is giving Negan a chance to surrender), BUT the tension and conflict felt contrived rather than emerging in a realistic and plausible way. Like, sure, Negan is going to survive the confrontation, but at least create some kind of real tension.

Honestly, this issue could have been better resolved by actually highlighting the distance between Rick and Negan or at least make it visually apparent that he couldn't be shot at so easily even when he walks out with no cover. Basic framing shots, really. Otherwise, the scene just doesn't work.

Also, the juxtaposition between Rick's "one man" speech and then the montage of various saviors being killed is just silly. I think the speech should have been re-worked drastically.

 

Impatient with the oral duels between Rick and Negan. Enough already.

 

This episode was PAINFUL to watch as it was one of the worst episodes in the history of the show.
ATROCIOUS editing in pace, framing, coherence, and context.
1) The most obvious that everyone has pointed out.. Negan is exposed with NO cover with Rick and 30 others just 20 feet away. It's an absurd plot device that Negan WAS NOT just sniped and killed right on the spot.
2) Ammo is so precious it has to be made by hand but hey, lets shoot thousands of rounds breaking windows..
3) Where is Negan's army??? you see Rick taking fire but you never seen Negan's army.
4) The time jumping speech and future "old man Rick" was very poorly edited and looked like some 1rst year film student's lame attempt at ripping off overused weak lame time jumps.
5) The action was weak, poorly shot, boring and got no where.
6) The "Feel" of the walking dead feels more and more like self aggrandizement.
7) Plot devices... EVERYTHING about the walking dead now just SCREAMS plot device. The writers want Y to follow X and don't care how absurd, irrational, improbable, or illogical the path to get from X to Y takes.. Everything feels contrived and thus has no tension or real value.

 

Hi - first post here, so apologies if rebuttals of complaints should go somewhere else...and if rebuttals of complaints are poor etiquette, but not particularly sorry for the second one.

As Negan's speech made clear, Rick's gang don't want to get people killed unnecessarily. Negan knows that. The signal (Rick's single shot followed the three massed shots) is clearly not an attack - to those inside it's a signal that they can come out without expecting to be shot immediately. Again, this is because Rick does not want to put his people in harm's way if it can be avoided. Nor does Negan - he thinks he can quell the uprising anyway (actually, Negan thinking Gregory might be able to dissuade anyone is probably the least believable element of the episode).

Remember, too, that there is a herd on the way. The Allies plan requires them to leave pretty quickly, not get stuck in a firefight with a herd approaching. They want the Saviors to hand Negan over - if they start shooting randomly, then there will be a firefight (indeed, there was, once it became clear the surrender plan wasn't going to work).

It did perhaps strain credulity that our heroes can hit anything they want when it's needed for the plot, but Rick aims like a stormtrooper when that suits the plot (Maybe they should have used Daryl to pick off Negan with the crossbow - you have to know he was aiming for Dwight's motorbike tyre when he sent the message at the beginning). But shooting at someone is not the same as hitting them - and getting a good bead on Negan would have exposed whoever was taking the shot. Now, suppose they'd rolled up and removed Negan with one shot straight away. Do you imagine the rest of them would simply surrender? No, there'd be a massive firefight and an ongoing war - though the Saviors might not be as well organised, depending on which lieutenant rose to the top as the new Negan. Because they are all Negan, they're all ready to step up (one or two of them might even have been planning their own coup), they won't want to lose all that privilege and they'd have missed their chance at "couldn't we just take a time out here?".

All that spare ammo presumably came from the same place Richonne picked up all those MRE's and the guns, along with the resources all the Allies already had. The fairly ineffectual shooting, and the breaking of windows, was to make an unmissable attraction for the herd - who are the real weapon.

If I have a complaint (apart from 'oh lay off with all the confusing flash-forwards/dream-sequences'), it's that the priest was just beginning to turn into someone I could like and now he's almost certainly going to get sacrificed to help Negan escape.

 

I'm really upset by the apparent SJW Diversity push of Islam. To be clear, I don't mind at all if there are characters that happen to be Muslim and work really well in the story line, but it seems like they're cramming in a bunch of Islam stuff just for the sake of having more Islam stuff. I was really turned off by the apparent turning away from artistic creation in exchange for Leftist "diversity" quotas, and I don't feel good about the rest of the season for this reason.

This is for TWD writers:
If you're going to try and push political agendas, at least do it with more subtlety, or more preferably not at all. Do you know the very next verse after the verse from the Quran that the Muslim traveler speaks: "whatever you have of good spend on the traveler" - Surah 2:215?
Here it is: "Holy fighting (Jihad) is ordained for you (Muslims) though you dislike it, and it may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not know." - Surah 2:216
Basically Mohammad is trying convince his followers that fighting for Allah's causes is a good thing even though they may not think that it is. Even since the beginning Islam has been about lies and deceit, with their prophet trying to convince them that murder is good and holy.

 

Yep, agree with all the complaints above. It was just lazy writing to setup what they want to come next. I appreciate that the fan disappointment would be huge if they just rolled up in their crappy caravan, Negan walked out, and is immediately filled with lead. But NOT killing him here was idiotic. Why on earth would Rick want to give him a chance to give up or get away? And what kind of stupid plan is it to challenge your enemy, break all his windows and then leave it to a herd to annoy the hell out of them? This isn’t Game of Thrones where you meet on the field with your Bannermen to discuss tomorrow’s battle. Yeah Rick...we get it’s not about you. But letting Negan live when you have a clear shot isn’t a personal thing.
And really, how is it that Negan knows he’s at war with the alliance, yet he has ZERO defense at the Sanctuary?! How could they be allowed to drive up to his front door like that? Stupid. And the way they parked those cars and left their backsides unprotected...a couple of Negan’s guards in the rear could have wiped them out. I really think the writers need to hire someone who can do a better job with man vs man combat. They suck at writing battle scenes.
Argh and don’t get me started on how ridiculous the attacks are when people come running in with guns blazing on full auto, shooting from behind their own people.

 

I just don't get why Negan even came out? They could have had his hench men come out and have Negan talking over some speaker system. Aaron turn to Rick asking should they take out the henchmen Rick reply no as burnt face guy (name escapes me) is helping and it would look odd to just not kill him. Then have the plan to get the horde to take over the grounds happen. Negan could still have made some hammy speech over the sprakers.

 

This is a complaints thread so ...

To be honest it all started with the introduction of Negan; many times the story felt like it was trying to be fit to a comic book story where it just didn't fit or they didn't sketch out the plot to match. I personally could care less about the tv series matching the comic books at least make the story make sense (believable).

And that takes me to this episode. What everyone has been talking about Negan and his main guys standing in front talking and then the group shooting out the windows with about 1000+ rounds of ammo).
I assume this has to do with the comic - but the implementation is Very poor. Noone believes this to be a real event just a 'film' event. It takes one out of the story.

I really wish the people in charge would stop trying so hard to fit the tv show to the comics. Just use common sense when it comes to the show.

The rest of the plot was pretty good; I didn't mind the flash backs (that seems to be the thing or Gimple or Nicotero). That didn't bother me so much - the lack of realism when it comes to certain scenes does. And again this mainly started with the introduction of Negan for some reason.

 

Yeah okay, can we get back to Fear The Walking Dead again without the cheese? Negan is super silly, the dude clearly forgot last time his guards was shit and died in dozens to some "weed seperating" idiots.

 

Thank you for this perspective and welcome to the forums!!

 

Remember when everything was not a plot device but made the show feel living? Like when Shane found the radio channel sending out an message, or the crazy lunatic in the cabin or the gang in Season 2 that never got concluded who they where but they just was another group of probably bad people and things existed outside of the Rick gang and their current villian/foe/mobster biker gangsters. It felt like there was an world built for them to be part of, now it feels like the world is built around them or for them alone.

 

I think part of the shows problem now is the utter lack of dialogue. Unless they are giving some over the top speech they just don't talk at all. No one said to Rick **** the plan let's shoot Negan now he has come out with no cover. Or no one talked about what the plan was and why it was in contridiction with the just kill Negan speech.

The show is down to the point where no one speaks unless it furthers the plot which follows the comic no matter how dumb it comes across.

 

That is true, it seems the show really only want people to talk when they need to move plot on or have some speech to hold. Nothing inbetween anymore.

 

Yeah this is actually so annoying. Nobody talks in massive, long, cryptic monologues in real life. It's uncomfortable and weird to watch 95% of interactions on the show play out like that.

It's like, where's the editor going through the script and making notes like "that's dumb" "nobody would ever ever say that" "wtf does this mean?"

 

I think the reason why he looks sad, with the red eyeliner, is because of who died and is in those graves - it must be someone very important to Rick.
I think the flash forward where it shows Judith a few years older is maybe a hopeful dream, but the way they broke it into pieces made it confusing along with the other flash forward of the graves. What a mess the whole episode was.

 

Just watching last week's episode (Mercy, 801) and, in hindsight, it really is as stupid as it was last week. This is worse than the episode where they decide to lead a billion walkers out of the quarry and past the Alexandria gates.

Basically, in Mercy, they carefully recon the entire area, ambush and kill all of Negan's lookouts, armor-up the cars, round up hundreds of walkers and lead them to the Saviors' compound, snipe all the guards, sneak into the compound and destroy all defensive fences, just to ... TALK with Negan.

WTH?

Kind of a bad time to let your mercy prevail over your wrath. Maybe if a few more survivors got their heads bashed in by Lucille it might be time to let your wrath prevail over your mercy?

 

I’m happy you rewatched it so you could come tell us how stupid it was.

 

No problem. I'll be here next week to re-review this week's episode.

 

So it obviously wasn’t THAT stupid