AMC zombie series from Frank 'Majestic' Darabont - The Walking Dead

Well, we're losing black cast members at a fast rate, that's for sure.

Maybe the spinoff will be set in, like, Maine and they won't even have to worry about appearances.

yeah, that's still annoying, but by the end of the season I have this feeling a lot more white people are gonna die, so it may slightly balance out. but still, poor Noah

xp the spinoff is in LA

i still think this is the show's best season thus far (which isn't necessarily saying much, given how bad 2 and most of 3 and even chunks of 4 have been). but most of its longstanding problems are at a minimum or not present imo.

looking for complete and flawless plausibility and character decision-making in what is clearly a mainstream work of genre fiction seems like a fool's errand. i m/l buy why everyone is behaving as they are in this season, it just happens to make some of the characters, major and minor alike, unpleasant or grating company - but then again, that's kinda what the show is

i guess we can be encouraged by how they've gone from complete tokenism (t-dog) to characters like tyreese, michonne, sasha & bob having significantly developed personas and either sticking around for longish arcs or still remaining, but then again you have two eps this season where an ep focused largely on a black character ended in his horrific death, which comes off as potentially racially sus & tone-deaf regardless of w/e the showrunners' intentions are

this season and last season have been pretty solid overall imo

yeah - compared to t-dog, suicidal CDC lady and prisoner #2 the show has gotten a lot better since then with the minority characters. the deaths are suspect - Noah's seems gratuitous given Beth AND Tyreese basically died for him this season! - but at least they got some actual development before biting it, which is about as much as you can ask for on this show where main cast members seemingly have to die at least by every half-season break

(by the time they hit the church it was obvious there were WAY too many people left in the show, and i expect we're gonna clear out a ton of named Alexandrians by the finale. sorry Tara, no romance for YOU)

I've been playing catch-up with this show for the last couple of months and I'm up to the point where Beth dies and I'm just not sure I can be arsed to go any further. I know everyone hates on S2 but really S4 and 5 have been so ponderous and boring for a show with zombies where a major character dies every other episode.

I was on board roughly up until the Governor died and it really seemed to shit the bed after that, just lose all impetus and direction and for that matter tension. I know the point is that there's no end in sight but it just goes round in circles, none of which would matter if the characters weren't so one-dimensional, you're just marking time until the next action scene.

It should be just 45mins of zombie attacks and them going to war with other arbitrary groups of people and literally nothing else.

Here's the thing. I like the genre. I like the scenario. That's why I've stuck around. But too much of this show is still driven by people behaving stupidly rather than making mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. But the stupidity has been such that it's totally ridiculous that the dumbass-prone would have made it this far. Pretty much everyone left should be comfortable with guns, good with aim, and not likely to do blatantly stupid shit, like trying to kneecap a zombie, or run off into a suspiciously quiet housing development in search of family, or wander into the bushes to take a dump. Which is especially aggravating, because the last couple of eps have knocked off the silent but deadly ninja zombie nonsense and had characters actually hear them moaning from a mile away, but not, I guess the zombies are just selectively quiet, per the dictate of each ad hoc plot turn.

There is so much potential that the show has not embraced, no doubt due to budgets, though I suppose lack of imagination. Like traveling to other places/regions. Like going on quests. Like more than stumbling peripatetically. It's not even clear what the characters want at this point, what they are looking for. Safety? Stability? Salvation? Who knows. Mostly they seem to be on the hunt for people stupider than they are.

AMC's notorious cheapness (which literally stem in huge part from matthew weiner's flagrant/well-documented monetary demands for himself & his show's budget) is def a factor, despite WD's insane ratings.

aside from scott m. gimple (the current showrunner) the show has never had a particularly adept creative mind in charge. darabont was fine but by all accounts had no clue how to portray this world/story within the constraints of well-constructed series TV. mazzara & kirkman (and by extension AMC) supposedly hated each others' guts and mazzara only seemed to know how to make the pure action scenes remotely interesting. the drama was terrible.

the fact that they moved around as much as they did in this season is mind-boggling by comparison to previous ones. the show's primary nihilistic message is a beaten dead horse at this point, but said deceased horse is being beaten in relatively entertaining fashion & is also genuinely affecting in certain moments, at long last. i'm hoping that the final two eps will be more interesting than a rote clash between the two sides, but i also won't be crushed if it is, long as it doesn't totally suck. this show isn't the americans, or even thrones - like my expectations are fairly low.

I didn't catch any "scenes from next week's episode," but my guess is that Deanna hearing that her son was killed (and her son's idiot cohort beaten up), right after Gabriel's message right after coming to her own conclusion that Rick's crew is taking over, right after (no doubt) discovering what Carol has been up to/beating up or killing the doctor, will lead to a brief yelly clash between the sides. But then both sides will have to unify in the face of a new front, either the source of those "W"s carved into the zombie heads, or perhaps something to do with Rick's old friend, who we saw make an appearance wandering around in the woods several eps back. Or maybe I am making that part up.

Or maybe they will build a radio and a raft out of coconuts and finally get off the island.

starting off this week's episode w/ nine inch nails was an amazing choice imo

would've been character-accurate to go to more generic dubstep
crazy rick is sooo entertaining. "KEEP WALKIN'"
did not expect Michonne to step in and deliver the final blow on behalf of the group though, good twist

yea sad crazy rick from the prison in season 3 was NAGL but this "demonic-version-of-walking-tall" rick was genuinely kinda frightening

Love me some NIN, but that intro was unintentionally hilarious. Though to be honest I expected the run mix to be, like, LMFAO or something, especially since his van mix was total boots-n-cats.

Great ending, though. While I find it absolutely implausible that it's only our people who have debilitating streaks of paranoid PTSD and not these gated community yuppies, or that the bad guys are also bad acting weasel types, or that ... well, a whole bunch of stuff, this inevitable conflict is playing out with a pretty compelling sense of drama. The downside, of course, is that, what, there is one episode left? With all sorts of big things set up or waiting to happen? That's one of this show's worst habits, building to a sensible season finale that spills into the next season. That's one reason the show can never find sure footing.

i'm guessing the finale's extended length (90 minutes) is an attempt to avoid that cliffhanger/transition finale potential pitfall, but who knows

i'm just hoping they don't slide the 'W' explanation into next season and we at least start on that already
also wtf happened to Lennie?

err, Morgan

hopefully he'll be back for the finale. his appearances have always been at logical beginning/ending points (premiere, midseason finale) so that would make sense. he's def one of the most intriguing characters they've developed even in his brief appearances - "clear" is my favorite episode of this series for a reason

I keep thinking the W is an upside down M and it's Morgan who's doing that.

that's what Yvette Nicole Brown said on Talking Dead, but it wouldn't make sense to me - they ran into the W zombies back when they hit Noah's hometown, and it's pretty unlikely that Morgan got there ahead of them (nevermind doing all this alone...)

it's tony wonder

Because we just saw Michonne kinda going mental, too, my guess is she knocked him out strategically. Because don't forget, there is also a mess of guns Carol hid somewhere. Methinks it will be a don't throw me in the briar patch situation, where Rick is kicked out and reconvenes with a few others, then doofus coward dude with his own buried gun (guess this is a thing?) does something stupid to spark it all off. The question is whether they stay put in this place, or the walls come down and the zombie swarm advances

Though my guess is still there's a fight of some sort, then some bigger, badder dude or group shows up, our heroes and the yuppies look at each other, then it goes black and we have to wait several months for another rocky start to a new season.

Kinda ridic that this show has once again totally failed to illustrate how many people life in this town. In only takes a couple of establishing shots. By the end of the hospital arc the shitty setup made it seem like there were like 10 people there, most of them cops. They're not doing much better with this town. At least the Governor's town seemed obviously populated, and sure, maybe there are only a handful of people in Alexandria (the better to conserve chocolate chips/alcohol, not to mention LOL power to operate the garage door - the notion that people would use electric garage doors in the zombie apocalypse is just ... ), but if they established that there are only a couple of dozen people there then it makes the appearance of civilization that much more delusional. But this show has even been bad showing us what most of our heroes are up to. Maggie, Abraham, Eugene, et al. Where's Gabriel after going full end of days with Deanna?

thought this week's was one of those rare walking dead episodes which i thoroughly enjoyed with almost no qualms and no annoyance. often i like the "moving the chess pieces into place for the finale" episodes better because they throw up so many questions and possibilities, while the actual grand finale is as likely to just be the writers clumsily knocking the chess pieces over.

i'd agree that there are plenty of conversations we haven't been thrown that you'd think might have been crucial but i don't think we need to be shown every character's waking move - that episode was pretty packed, happy to assume maggie, abraham et al are just getting on with quotidian stuff.

sasha's continued meltdown is really emotionally compelling imo - one of the few times in this series where it hasn't seemed jarring or OTT. maybe because she's only being reckless w/r/t herself, not putting others at risk. kudos to the actress too. very much enjoyed the ~sisterhood of michonne and rosita going after her. those three are good together! as are aaron and daryl! would watch spin-offs involving those groups.

less into the crazy rick soap opera at home - jessie is an extremely boring blonde white cipher atm, pete threatening her in front of rick is so not how abusers behave.

i assume whatever this creepy outside threat is will interrupt whatever the fallout is of crazy rick vs alexandria and they will ~unite

i think my biggest issue w/alexandria is that it is completely implausible for any community - especially one which has obviously been actively running reconnaissance missions and supply runs - to be as comedically incompetent and complacent as they're being depicted, no matter how lucky they are. and can they make their mind up as to whether deanna is the super-smart leader she was introduced as or a deluded naïf? i feel like the contrast between their relative softness and rick's group could have been more subtly drawn

I don't think Deanna is a naif at all. we've only got one moment where we get to see her not explicitly reacting/playing to another person, after Sasha expresses her anger at the naivete of the town, where Deanna actually seems to be truly angered. Everything she does, down to ignoring the "sorry" casserole, is politically calculated. She's been very deliberately managing the town's outlook to maintain this optimistic society. (Why the recruiters and that one girl are "outsiders" is that they really understand what the world is like outside the walls.) I get the impression that she's incredibly shrewd, far more so than her comic book counterpart.

I dunno. Burning the sympathy note was a pretty dramatic statement. But also failure to recognize that her son and his goon were ridiculously inept, even dangerous, demonstrates some pretty poor judgement for a supposed smooth operator. Basically, we've had a lot of her speechifying about how well she reads people, but each of the few episodes she's been in have pointed the opposite direction. And given the erratic nature of the show, there's really no way they're going to explore that irony in any depth, if at all. Even her husband seems like a clueless short-sighted idiot. Just another example of the show occasionally stumbling on a good idea than squandering it due to lack of interest and/or ability. Like, I assume the rest of the team has been up to its own stuff, sure. But the lack of scale and detail about the operation of Alexandria - again, much less info given us than the Governor's town several seasons ago, or even the cannibal community - is just as bad as this show's total inability to establish its characters as much more than cogs or ciphers. Because yeah, I sort of like the Sasha (or even Rick) snaps arc, but the bigger question is how all these other people have kept from going equally batshit, what with the zombie apocalypse and people being torn apart on a regular basis and rape and murder and so on. If the show were more patient, or better paced, maybe it would have had a chance to explore these things before rushing forward at top speed into another dead end.

this was a good finale, maybe the best finale (finales and premieres are often a strength of this show even in weak seasons, e.g. season 2, exception to rule season 3 finale), and one of the best episodes thus far. all around i'd have to say this was the best season by a pretty significant margin.

i have no doubt that plausibility police will or at least could go buckwild about certain things that happened (no one noticing the gate being left open, glenn's lil dance in the woods with that cowardly alexandria dude & how it does not meet what would be its logical conclusion, how do the wolves maintain power for their walker trap, et. al. ad infinitum) but the final product worked for me, and has worked this whole season so w/e. it's not like how season 3 was such a narrative/thematic/character-arc mess that i couldn't help focusing on details that would otherwise be covered by my ability to suspend disbelief in a genre show about zombies

i have to admit that dumbass not even bothering to look back to see if the gate was closed was incredibly stupid
happy to see Morgan finally make it to the main cast (not officially, but c'mon) and bringing mysterious kung-fu skills

dumbass guard or father gabriel? bc gabriel was clearly having a mental breakdown, him not paying attention to that didn't surprise me & i wondered if it was intentional. if you mean the guard though, yea, totally fair crit.

yeah, the guard

Haven't seen the finale yet, but just wanted to come here to make fun of the title "Fear the Walking Dead." First of all, it sounds like the 5th sequel in a lame series, like "Beneath the Fall of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes" or "Return of the Blind Dead" or something. Also, what the hell else would you do but fear the Walking Dead? Hug? Tickle? Taunt? It's the Walking Dead, you fear them! They'll eat you!

Anyway, will watch them fuck up this finale some time this week, hopefully.

Also, what the hell else would you do but fear the Walking Dead? Hug? Tickle? Taunt?

ummm clearly you did not see the last 5 minutes of shaun of the dead bc you can definitely lol at them when chained and on MXC-esque challenge platforms

Fair enough. You can also apparently date them, train them, etc. But in the context of classic shambling man-eating corpse zombie horror, you pretty much fear them. Maybe the spin-off will be a comedy?

Re the guard: an awful lot of ppl're that sloppy/useless tbh

That was really really tense. I stopped watching this for a while but caught the Last few episodes. I'm intrigued enough that I'll probably watch start of next season.

But are they really going to split every season now?

it's more profitable for the network in terms of ad revenue to split them in half, yeah

How do they get more ad revenue that way?

Is this something AMC does with every successful drama?

shit. my bad - i'm thinking of why AMC chose to split the final mad men/breaking bad seasons over multiple years, because in those cases the advertiser pays the same rate they'd pay for a full season's worth of advertising (not to mention all the contractual nonsense).

basically for any show longer than 12 or 13 episodes per season, a lot of networks have been splitting seasons in half for a while now - I think lost might've been the biggest example.

*biggest/earliest.

the ratings are so massive for WD that they are trying to stretch them out over as much time as possible, I guess. it kinda baffles me tbh

dropping the episodes into the higher rated months is m/l the strategy as far as i understand it. more people watching tv in october/november/february/march than during the holidays

do they still use "sweeps" months to determine ad buy rates? i think so, which is why new episodes always arrive in Nov/Feb/May. cable shows are usually 13 eps per season anyway, so them getting a "back nine" seems to only happen for hit shows

i'm glad they'll have a spinoff show to make the summer breaks seem less long

Opening scenes of Fear the Walking Dead feature possibly the most annoying shirt ever to be won by a man

Fear the Walking Dead is terrible, if the first episode is anything to go by. Kim Dickens is great but wasted here; hoping they let this run as a short season and she shows up on the regular series.

thought it was OK. the druggie kind of annoying (that shirt was some weak, weak.. fan service?) but i like the others

Fear the Walking Dead is terrible, if the first episode The Walking Dead is anything to go by.

Haven't seen this yet, but is this supposed to be a sustainable series or just a stand-alone stopgap? Based on what I've read, if The Walking Dead was dude's "what happens next?" idea, then this seems like a series based on the first 20 minutes or so of "Dawn of the Dead," with a city setting, on the verge of collapse.

Haven't seen this yet, but is this supposed to be a sustainable series or just a stand-alone stopgap?

I think a zombie anthology series could be great - one episode or a few with a group of characters in a different part of the country/world, which would let them have real stakes (anyone or everyone could die at any minute, where we know that certain characters on The Walking Dead can't die) but I doubt it will happen.