Let's start towards the end:

Negan did not 'surprise' Rick by just walking out. He had been called out, by the signal, the clear message in the co-ordinated shooting. That said 'You are not under attack, but we are here, armed and ready, so let's talk'.

Is he scared to go out? No, he rules by having, as he says, the biggest ****. What message does it send to his crew if his response is to cower and hide? He has to rule, not lead - there are slightly different...rules. And in no small measure Negan will earnestly believe that he must be safe out there - if someone takes a pop at him, his people will punish the communities like they punished Ocean View. We know (if we've been paying attention) that is not a good idea. The allies need to win, decisively and swiftly - and that does not come about by just shooting Negan.

The victory needs to be enduring, too. If you just shoot Negan, you have an ongoing war and any number of wannabe-Negans applying for that vacancy, or just randomly being thick thugs enjoying the anarchy of an apocalypse. They all need to know that there is nothing to fight for and a lot to be gained by becoming responsible citizens again.

Negan, having walked out, then tells us why this is happening. Nobody wants a war (well, maybe some viewers do, but let's suppose the characters don't know they're on television for the moment). Neither side wants to put their people in the way of a hail of lead - Negan says so, and cheekily uses it as a bit of one-upmanship, trying to put Negan down in the eyes of the allies: 'See? Rick is such a poor leader he'll take you all to a war he can't win, because he'd rather you died than he served me'.

Also, Eugene may be redeemable and Dwight is on their side, so let's not wildly fire around them, eh?

So that's why Rick doesn't shoot Negan right off the...er...bat. Nobody else shoots Negan because there's a plan and it's a good one. None of the Saviors shoot because they haven't been told to (or have been told not to). Negan rules. You don't use your initiative around a ruler.

Of course, ultimately Rick loses his patience, and moves to the back-up plan: shooting. At this point, they know guns are trained on them from above (not from all those windows, but who knows from which of them?). He could have stepped out from between the 'shields' (mock them all you like, I'd rather have one than not if someone was shooting at me), taken aim and hoped it was a kill shot - but a) he's not stupid and b) he still doesn't want to kill Negan.

I know, he said he did. And would. Twice. And then reminded Negan he'd said it twice. But again, he doesn't want to do it here and now. I'd imagine, as a lawman and a leader, he'd want a showtrial and a public execution - well maybe not, but nor does he mean he seeks his death as an immediate and sufficient end in itself.

Luckily everyone else was drilled for Plan B: 'If shooting starts, everyone fire on the windows.' It's suppressing fire, for whichever windows have armed saviors with good sightlines. The allies have the initiative - one moment any snipers in windows are merely on alert, the next the air is filled with leaden rain. Every one of them ducks and stays down. There are no heroes in there. The allies aren't expecting to hit anyone - they're expecting to get the hell out of the way, because all though Rick offers an opportunity to surrender, he knows it won't be taken up. That's why there's a herd on the way.

Good to see the RV getting blown up. It says they're not travelling anymore. They've settled down and now they're clearing their backyard of vermin.

 

"Now somebody please figure out what the hell was the whole shoot out the windows thing????"

Apparently Negan's men were shooting back. I understood the shooting of the windows as shooting at Negan's men. I think the scene just was not shot well to show Negan's men in the windows.

 

The series jumped the shark in Season 7 with the introduction of Neagan. There is always a danger of repetition in post-apocalyptic series but Neagan is just a second-rate 'Guvner' played by a third-rate actor, whose performance appears to be a bad impersonation of Jack Nicholson at his most over-the-top.

The flaws in the story-lines have already been pointed out, although I would argue that Neagan could have simply been shot on several occasions in Season 7 and the 'balcony scene' was a complete nonsense - the new ruthless Rick would simply have had snipers poised to take out Neagan, his Lurch-like deputy and the irritating fat-boy who pretended to know about the plague.

These plot problems are compounded by Rick walking straight into the arms of the inarticulate woman in the scrap-yard. Out of curiousity I will probably watch the rest of Season 8 but after that I will regretfully mourn the passing of an excellent series gone bad. Perhaps 'Fear the Walking Dead' will provide some sort of substitute.

 

Spirited writing - if the Forbes guy ever gives up, and you improve, you might be in with a shot. The only thing the Guv and Negan have in common is that they are antagonists - like so many other characters over the course of seven and a half seasons. Of course, there's always the probability, post-apocalypse, of being attacked and then, in a bad impersonation of Groundhog Day, getting attacked again. I wonder if Jack Nicholson would survive the ZA? Someone has to rebuild the movie industry.

Check elsewhere for my thorough refutation of your criticism - did you come up with it yourself or borrow it from one of the other people who've made the same mistakes? It can be fun to construct amusing denigrations of popular culture, but they have to hold water. Rick, ruthless or otherwise, wants order (and law). He doesn't want leaderless mini-Negans running around - nobody wants that. Shooting Negan might satisfy some shallow bloodlust, but it doesn't end the war and it wouldn't set a good example to his own people or the potentially rehabilitated Saviors.

The Alliance had lost a lot of soldiers. The Kingdom is more or less out of the fight, and Rick needs more recruits. It's certainly dangerous to go to the junkyard - but it's actually less dangerous to go alone. No, really - that's danger to one person, rather than all of a small group. Less danger. He can't send a large group, they can't be spared. He can't send anyone else - no leader who wants respect would do that. He has good reason to suppose that the highly articulate (but commendably concise) Junk Queen will think it worth their while to join him. But it's TV, so he has to fight in his underpants.

How will your curiosity respond when season 9 lands, with trailers and discussion and whatnot? I'm curious.

 

An interesting analysis of my critique. As a Brit, I am not familiar with Forbes, but I will take the comment as a double-edged compliment. Of course, there will be some repetition, the tropes of post-apocalyptic dramas require it, but Neagan and the Guvner are too similar, both dictatorial strong men whose psychology is driven by their respective losses, in The Guvner's case his zombie daughter and in Neagen's his late wife. To any Brit, the fact that he was in the past a PE (gym) teacher explains a lot about his behaviour

My critique is not centred on the 'realism' of the series. It is a cultural construct whose mode of address is naturalism, but no one actually believes that zombies could exist or that Rick or any of the characters are real. They are simply functions of the narrative. Their behaviour is also simply a production of the writers' imagination.

My criticism is that the writers have lost their way and the repetition is a result of their (now) limited imagination. Perhaps the answer is to sack them and bring in a new writing team. I'm not familiar with the comic books so I don't know how closely the TV series follows the comic books' narrative.

In the early 1970s the BBC produced a series called 'Survivors' posited on the idea that a man-made virus had escaped its lab and that 90% of the world's population had died as a result. The same basis as the contemporary series 'The Last Ship'. A similar group of survivors led a nomadic existence searching for a safe haven but in this case, despite the small size of Britain, it was possible to find sufficiently isolated areas to build new communities. Given the size of the United States, this should be even more possible in 'The Walking Dead' and would provide more interesting viewing than these constant battles between war-lords.

So I am asking for a radical rethink by the producers, the opportunity for which may come when and if 'Rick' leaves the series. I understand that Andrew Lincoln initially signed for six series which was then extended for a further two. I assume his future is now in the hands of him and his agent!

 

Incidentally, is it mere coincidence that the two worst actors in the series,Jeffrey Dean Stanton and Josh McDermitt also play the most annoying characters or is it a function of their lack of acting ability?

 

'The Forbes guy' is a critic whose reviews appear on Forbes webpages. Somewhat famous, at least round here, for relentless negativity - much of it inspired by the same mistakes you made, some of it apparantly just because it's cooler to hate a show a lot of people love.

As a Brit, and as a fan of post-apocalyptic drama, I'm initimately familiar with 'Survivors'. What a dreary, mundane, fundamentally British series it was - grey, insipid and lacking in scale and scope.

You are, of course, correct to say that the behaviour of Rick and co is "a product of the writers' imagination". But by the same token, your criticism is a product of your own imagination. The writers are routinely paid well for their imagination (so am I, as it happens). Are you? Can you imagine a comprehensive rebuttal to the points I made (not shooting Negan on the balcony, going alone to the junkyard)?

Guvner was a politician. Negan is a king, a tyrant. That's sufficient difference (as you can tell by the different ways their stories play out). The commonalities you point to are also common to other characters. They are both men (approx. half the population) - perhaps we need a female then. They are both leaders (as are all the other leaders in the series) - perhaps we need a female follower then. They are both strong (like so many other characters) - perhaps we need a weak female follower then. Their psychology is driven by their respective losses (oh come on, that applies to every single survivor) - perhaps we need a weak female follower who lost nobody and nothing and whose psychological drives are unique. The show can only be saved by the introducton of a mad bag lady who hasn't even noticed the zombies!

The writers, I'll remind you, earn their money...

You posted again while I was drafting this. I'll point out that the actors earn their money too. Not liking the characters is not a criticism of their skill in portraying them. Given that you've demonstrated no understanding of the job of writing, why compound the matter by demonstrating no understanding of the job of acting?

 

I don't know if you have seen how Josh McDermitt is in real life, but judging by that I say he does a phenomenal job. Especially with all the tongue twisters he is given.

 

OK, at the risk of engaging in a Neaganesque 'dick-swinging' contest with jiggeryqua. I am not as ignorant as you might think. I am a professional theatre director, sometime actor and write adaptations of non-theatrical material for performance (I wrote a stage adaptation of 'The Handmaid's Tale' over ten years ago, long before the excellent recent television version), as well as having taught film and television in a number of British universities and acting for stage and screen in conservatoires in Britain and abroad. My first degree was in drama and cultural studies; my MA dissertation was on the ideology of British and Australian television soaps and my PhD from Cambridge was on the adaptation of novels for performance.

None of these qualifications mean that my opinions are any more valid than others posted on this site, but I think they go some way to refuting the accusations of ignorance. I would for example bow to PepperAnn's greater knowledge of McDermitt, although I suspect that his problems come from the material he has been given. I will attempt to find examples of his other performances to watch. Incidentally I was at school with Andrew Lincoln (or Clutterbuck as he was then), although he was several years below me, and I know how good an actor he is, a Georgian friend of mine genuinely believed he was from his home state until I showed him some episodes of 'Teachers'

Now to turn to the real substance. Firstly I think until Season7 TWD was an excellent series, I am not attacking it due to its popularity rather that it has been let down by the writing team. Repetition is inevitable in long-running series of this nature but despite the differences between The Gov and Neagan they remain a character type - homicidal warlords.

TWD is not a study in psychological realism a la Chekhov or Ibsen, it is essentially a reworking of traditional journey based tales that stretch back as far as Homer, although the latter did at least present his protagonists with a wider range of challenges. In the 1930s the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp wrote a seminal study of Russian folk-tales in which he identified, if my memory serves me correctly, 32 tropes that can be found in all stories of that nature and in the 70s the Italian structuralist Umberto Eco published a study of the James Bond stories using Propp's ideas as a starting point. TWD utilises a number of these tropes.

What the result of Rick killing Neagan would be is not strictly relevant. This is not reality, Neagan's constant miraculous escapes are evidence of this, however dealing with a plague of 'mini-Neagans' would be more interesting than yet another 'dick-swinging' contest between him and Rick. It would also be interesting to see a development of the early story-line regarding the search for a cure for the Zombie virus.

To return to the acting, I think it is significant that many of the leading roles in American TV series are played by British actors, 'House', 'Chance', 'The Wire'', 'The Affair' and 'Homeland' to name but a few, not to mention David Morrissey and Andrew Lincoln himself. American ctor training is dominated by Stasberg's corruption of Stanislavski's 'System' into 'The Method'. The result is that despite its pretensions and with the exceptions of the truly great film actors like De Niro, Pacino, Brando and Hoffman, lesser American actors deliver their usual schtick, like our Nicholson impersonators Neagen and his deputy 'Lurch', who ot only deliver their lines like the great jack but also have adopted his physical resemblance, receding hair-line and all. There is little or no subtlety in their performances. I must say, however, that some of the supporting actors in TWD are superb Norman Reedus, Lauren Cohen, Melissa McBride, Chandler Riggs and Lennie James in particular. Although of course Lennie James is also British. I suspect that American Equity must be increasingly pissed off that its members are being denied work by these British interlopers!

Finally I must defend 'Survivors'. The criticism 'grey, insipid and lacking in scale and scope' may be accurate to some extent but having seen the series as a child it seems now to reflect the grey, insipidness of Britain at the time. But I think the lack of scale was a function of the limited funding of what was then an in-house BBc production made long before the era of independent production companies. One only has to look at 'Dr Who' from that time to wonder how that maintained such a fanatical fan-base.

I have just seen the last broadcast episode S08E08. More over-the-top performances from Stephen Ogg and Morgan, although the presumed death of Carl does make me want to watch the rest of the season. I wonder what Andrew Lincoln's contractual position might be since the death fo carl might be an appropriate point at which to leave the series himself. He must have made enough money to take on different acting challenges or to develop his directing career.

Sorry for the lengthy post but I wanted to make a number of key points. One thing I would be interested in is views on the ideology of the series

 

Say what you want about the show but Jeffrey Dean Morgan is not a 'third-rate actor'. He's an excellent actor. That the show does not use him to his full potential is another matter, but it has nothing to do with his talent.

And lol at your "I'm a professional theater director". 'm queen of the universe, nice to meet you.

 

The part in bold is correct.

No matter the profession or qualifications, opinions are just that. One writer may not like the direction another writer is taking something but that doesn't make one correct over the other.

Your paragraph that says the following...

"What the result of Rick killing Neagan would be is not strictly relevant. This is not reality, Neagan's constant miraculous escapes are evidence of this, however dealing with a plague of 'mini-Neagans' would be more interesting than yet another 'dick-swinging' contest between him and Rick. It would also be interesting to see a development of the early story-line regarding the search for a cure for the Zombie virus."

...especially the parts in bold shows me that you want the show to take a different direction than was ever intended, and for that reason you may never be happy with it from here on out. Negan's purpose goes beyond All Out War, and finding a cure for the virus is still far down on the list of priorities in this time when civilization is still struggling to survive.