The Walking Dead season 7 – some thoughts

Spoilers (obviously).

Also for Dexter season 4

Well well well, Negan is here boys and he's a doozy. It took an awfully long time and a cliffhanger to boot but now he has finally arrived. His constant smirk and delicious addiction to swearing brilliantly  brought to screen by the (always reliable) Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Did my ears deceive me or is the Walking Dead finally allowed to drop some G-damnit bombs here and there.

However, apart from the inclusion of Negan into the mix this season of the Walking Dead has been continuing the trend of Rick making inadvisable decisions and less and less walkers overall.

I think the whole ‘zombieland’ episode was mainly there to up the overall walker presence on the show. And, as such, it became one of the best episodes of the season for me. Getting creative with zombies is the only reason I watch it.

Bad leadership Rick!

Rick isn't the best leader of the survivors (there I said it!). He's a tacticus. Like a colonel on a battlefield in the First World War. He can bark orders that enables his platoon's survival. But Rick's not fit to play the political game of generals and kings (I think Maggie will grow in that place -if the show goes on long enough). I mean, look at the evidence:

Overtaking the prison: easy. Defending it and keeping it safe: Not so much. By the time the governor attacked they still had walkers within the walls.

The walker exodus last season: one of the dumbest decisions ever in a 'what could possibly go wrong'-worldview. I wrote before (link) that this ‘natural wasp trap’ would have been a great way to keep Alexandria safe (and some target practice as well).

Then there was the outpost attack. Any (any!) general will do his homework on this one and try to find out everything there is to know about an enemy before attacking. Tactically a very smart attack - but in the larger scheme of things the worst move Rick could make - rattle the rattlesnake as it were.

Knowing this, it wasn’t much of a surprise to me that the weird hairdo girl with the funny way of talking couldn’t be trusted. I can't wait for the next season to kill that not very nice person. 

By the way, in the fiction of the show the world ended about three years ago (based on the age of baby Judith). So, really? In three years you manage to forget any form of basic grammar?

Now I shouldn’t be too hard on the character Rick. Without mistakes and problems that need a dangerous solution we’d be watching a rather boring show. And I do like this fault in the character: Rick’s great at fighting, bad at politics.

Besides: I loved, how Rick grew from wreck to suicidal martyr this season. In the last episode Rick on his knees is a far stronger man than Negan ever was.

Which begs the question: why Negan didn't kill Rick in the first place? I think Negan got bored and needed a challenge (with some handy weapons to boot). And I think Negan realizes in the finale that this little mouse he toyed with has grown claws. 

The first episode

Apparently the first episode was a little bit too much for a lot of the viewers. Complaining about the gruesomeness of the deaths of Abraham and Glenn.

Apart from the fact that these deaths were in the comic I also thought they were pretty mild. I watched a walker-head being crushed by car-door a few seasons back. I saw Noah being eaten alive only one season past. And somehow getting smashed by a baseball bat named Lucille is a step too far? I mean, this is a zombie show that relishes in blood and gore. If Michonne doesn't decapitate a zombie it's a ‘meh’ episode. I'm not watching it because I like the dialogue that much. And like Game of Thrones I'm more than prepared not to get too attached to characters.

But what I did like about the online backlash on the first episode was the short period in which rumors spread that the show would tone down on the blood and gore because of this. Later, thankfully, they took it back. (Wasn't that from the Nanny?).

I mean, if you can't take it why watch this show? True, I wrote before that a zombie show is about a heck of a lot more than mere blood and gore - but, by now, the walking dead has proven itself that blood and gore is in fact a very important element to the show.

Character problems.

Then, of course, there are the other problems with the show. For instance (like I did) you can easily save up the two penultimate episodes because they are usually nothing more than build-up.

Overall, as always, there are, per series, three or four episodes too many to begin with. And, as a consequence of that, the Walking Dead doesn’t have the budget to be the all out zombie extravaganza it wants to be.

Moreover, since these ‘filler’ episodes need to be filled with something. The show opts for character development. Which would be great if the Walking Dead had any great character writers. But they don’t.

The Walking Dead's strong suit isn't symbolism or dialogue.

I mean, I saw the Sasha ending coming for six episodes - and the actual way it was going to go down in two. Sometimes it feels like the Walking Dead wants to over explain itself -which it shouldn't, people are (usually) pretty clever

.

Any dialogue this season between Rosita and Sasha can be skipped quite effectively because it basically comes down to repeating their motives over and over (and over) again.

And we all knew Sasha was on a suicide mission the minute she lay herself down in a pit of walkers last season. 

…or even character coherence.

Then there’s Enid who has a lovely scene with Carl –declaring love (or teenage lust – he is the only boy her age left) as it were. But for the rest of the season she’s nothing more than a glorified babysitter. One minute she's droopy then she's all baby girl power caring happy. Her character is currently all over the place. So I would love, for next season, for her to have some other kind of ‘tortoise-eating’-scene just to pigeonhole her character once more.

The same goes for Negan himself. Last season we got proof that this is a very smart man. Yet, this season, to be honest, the only time I caught him using his deductive skills he got played by Dwight. And when he finally bamboozled Rick he got bitten (in the behind by a tiger).

Negan is a smart man, yet the show doesn’t show it. Though I must admit I did like the powerplay Negan possessed (and Rick tried to possess).

The best example I can give for a well executed fictional power-play is in season four of the show Dexter.
In this show the Trinity Killer kidnaps a child with every intention of killing the boy.

But before he does that the setting has to be right.
The boy, for instance, has to be in a pajama.
The boy, however, is fighting back.

So, when the killer shows up with hamburgers and a pajama the boy rebels and refuses to change his clothes.

The killer, in turn, breaks down.
The boy, believing he has the upper hand, decides to give in a little to smooth his own release over.
Offering to wear the outfit and eat a hamburger.
Not knowing, however, that the hamburgers are drugged.

I loved this scene because the weakest person in the room is actually the strongest.
The audience knows this! Yet, what’s displayed on the screen is giving every bit of ‘power’ to the boy.

Some character grow though.

That doesn’t mean that none of the characters developed. After the priest ‘grew a pair’ last season he’s been on a roll. His character is turned around as the baddest-religion-preaching-zombie-slaying-character around. And in this season his words meant something.

This is one of the things the creators of the Walking Dead do/pay close attention to. A few seasons back Carl was hated with a vengeance. Which was, obviously, a problem because the kid was bound to stick around. So they made him more 'bad-ass' in the next season. The crew pulled the same trick with the priest I think.

The same goes for Morgan who finally sharpened his stick (again: terrible symbolism). The motivations behind it are a bit uneven (I hardly knew the kid). But it was about time.

My favorite, though, has to be the new form of Eugene. Yes his primary objective is (as always) looking out for himself, but he is in fact smart enough to incorporate some long-term plans. I feel that the Walking Dead-crew wants to create some sort of (Harry Potter) Snape storyline with Eugene. In laments terms: is he good or bad? But I think the answer is pretty obvious: Eugene first, then Rick and last (after the walkers) Negan and his crew.

What (else) did I like?

The usual suspects here: Carol, Tara (who I happen to like very much. I have a soft spot for her) and Ezekiel and his Shiva. Fun, insane and some wonky CGI. But most of all the actor Khary Payton managed to take the dialogue from the comic –that was a bit uneven, to be fair- and channel it beautifully. He actually managed to make the show better than the comic in his performance –which is something I surely respect. 

What do I want for the future.

Well, I’ve finally run out of comics. I haven’t read them after, pretty much, the war between Negan and Rick started. So now everything is going to be new for me. That’s something to look forward to. Though I think it's about time to get back to a city for a change, the countryside is kind of boring me now. Moreover I think, next season, they'd better start fishing. 

But most of all I want a real walker danger again. The last comic I read had Rick leading a bunch of walkers to Negan’s sanctuary and it was brilliant. I doubt it will be as brilliant in the show, but I can’t wait.

Conclusion

The Walking Dead is still going strong. But the faults it suffers from since the second season (too many episodes, bad writers) are still there and are (probably) never going to go away. Nonetheless, it is still great entertainment if you love your post-apocalyptic fiction raw and bloody.