The Walking Thread
May 10, 2017 19:33:58 GMT -8
Post by Jay on May 10, 2017 19:33:58 GMT -8
Why am I continuing on with this? Well, perhaps it's fun to follow along with one of the most popular shows on television and remain unimpressed with it, and I sure as hell ain't hate-watching The Big Bang Theory.
This is likely to continue the existing format that I had of responding, which was to send texts while watching to a friend and then later try to come up with a more holistic glance at the episode for whatever good it does us. Presently, I am catching up with the second half of the most recent season so without further ado...
7x09 "Rock in the Road"
"God help me I'm going to try to watch The Walking Dead"
"What's interesting to me is that the half season finale played itself up as all dramatic and there doesn't seem to be any carry over in the episode description, but hell, it's not as if I watch this show for any defensive reason"
"Gabriel is making poor choices more rapidly than usual"
"Hilltop leader played a douche in 24 and expecting him not to be a douche is like watching The Shining and thinking that Jack Nicholson won't be nuts"
"It would also be a buzzkill to see the forced reassembling of the posse only to have him wet blanket it"
"Here is some cannon fodder. I am excited for them to get just enough development to twang the heartstrings and then bite it in a horrifyingly violent way"
"Darryl doesn't like LARPers"
"'Hi strangers hand over your guns we are not going to frisk you lol'"
"CGIger"
"The telegraphing of punches in this show. You know that the second in command in The Kingdom is a dead duck"
"Here is an anecdote from Rick that is folksy comes out of nowhere"
"Still wish Keith David played Ezekiel"
"'I'm training and will also die shortly!'"
"I wonder if, since Rick and Michonne have hooked up, that means Ezekiel and Carol will try to hook up"
"To which I would say that at least some of the dynamics unique to the show over the comic are being made use of."
"Negan is talking about Fat Joey!"
"All cars left in the highway can be jumped easily!"
"Gift explosives on the highway makes me think of Fallout"
"I also feel like this is padding in episode length"
"One, that wire stunt was gratuitous. Two, why not back up and run em down a second time?"
"The buddy system!"
"Now we shall play intense industrial music while we search for a thing that the viewers know is not there"
"I do like Negan's second in command"
"Gabriel: I'm on a boat, motherfucker"
"Don't know how to interpret the cliffhanger aside from that's an awful lot of human ladies?"
--------------------------
I feel like this episode is more or less a baseline for where the show’s been at lately: Not much emotional continuity, rather episodic in structure, flashes of interpersonal drama and then “oh wait, we forgot most of this show’s viewers are here to watch zombies get killed,” hence a random and somewhat effective killing spree that is gone shortly after it begins. I suppose if I were to hone in on a moment that defined the episode, it would either be that— an instance in which the main characters unnecessarily get themselves into an excess of trouble only to fumble their way out of it by way of plot armor— or the false drama of the Saviors showing up Alexandria and wrecking shit up while intense music plays and they search for something everyone knows will not be there. Both perform the same basic function.
As suggested above, the drama is still mostly predictable, but I do like the sense that something may be developing between Ezekiel and Carol, which distinguishes itself from the comic’s Michonne/Ezekiel ‘ship. Something likely had to happen since Andrea bit it x seasons ago and they’ve kept around Carol, which is defensible (now) and interesting. The trouble is that outside of making some attempts at developing Carol and Darryl, who are the show’s own at this point, it’s clumsy enough most of the time to make me doubt its potential payoff. We can remember that Sasha is basically a loose end at this point as a show-specific character whose drama has never felt authentic, scarcely felt like a character for how little sense we have of her internality outside of Tyreese dying and her being a suicidal sniper for a spell. Even her sleeping with Abraham felt like something the show did for want of something to do, and while Abraham at least had a vocabulary for a bit, not much a character either.
What we’re left with is a show where a lot of plot bears on Rick, who is about as weak a lead as you’ll come across, being an emotional floating point by which we gauge the tenor of the season, without development, without progress towards an endgame since a show of this nature can’t really have a goal. Which raises a further question: Might one of the problems of the show be that it tries to be about human nature, but doesn’t have anything interesting to say, or seems to only say the same thing over and over again? Perhaps the zombie format is better left to the movie format, or comics that can parcel out their story in digestible doses. So much of it as a TV series feels superfluous, and not in a fun and gratuitous way.
Oh and that's the same highway from season two, don't pretend that it's not.
This is likely to continue the existing format that I had of responding, which was to send texts while watching to a friend and then later try to come up with a more holistic glance at the episode for whatever good it does us. Presently, I am catching up with the second half of the most recent season so without further ado...
7x09 "Rock in the Road"
"God help me I'm going to try to watch The Walking Dead"
"What's interesting to me is that the half season finale played itself up as all dramatic and there doesn't seem to be any carry over in the episode description, but hell, it's not as if I watch this show for any defensive reason"
"Gabriel is making poor choices more rapidly than usual"
"Hilltop leader played a douche in 24 and expecting him not to be a douche is like watching The Shining and thinking that Jack Nicholson won't be nuts"
"It would also be a buzzkill to see the forced reassembling of the posse only to have him wet blanket it"
"Here is some cannon fodder. I am excited for them to get just enough development to twang the heartstrings and then bite it in a horrifyingly violent way"
"Darryl doesn't like LARPers"
"'Hi strangers hand over your guns we are not going to frisk you lol'"
"CGIger"
"The telegraphing of punches in this show. You know that the second in command in The Kingdom is a dead duck"
"Here is an anecdote from Rick that is folksy comes out of nowhere"
"Still wish Keith David played Ezekiel"
"'I'm training and will also die shortly!'"
"I wonder if, since Rick and Michonne have hooked up, that means Ezekiel and Carol will try to hook up"
"To which I would say that at least some of the dynamics unique to the show over the comic are being made use of."
"Negan is talking about Fat Joey!"
"All cars left in the highway can be jumped easily!"
"Gift explosives on the highway makes me think of Fallout"
"I also feel like this is padding in episode length"
"One, that wire stunt was gratuitous. Two, why not back up and run em down a second time?"
"The buddy system!"
"Now we shall play intense industrial music while we search for a thing that the viewers know is not there"
"I do like Negan's second in command"
"Gabriel: I'm on a boat, motherfucker"
"Don't know how to interpret the cliffhanger aside from that's an awful lot of human ladies?"
--------------------------
I feel like this episode is more or less a baseline for where the show’s been at lately: Not much emotional continuity, rather episodic in structure, flashes of interpersonal drama and then “oh wait, we forgot most of this show’s viewers are here to watch zombies get killed,” hence a random and somewhat effective killing spree that is gone shortly after it begins. I suppose if I were to hone in on a moment that defined the episode, it would either be that— an instance in which the main characters unnecessarily get themselves into an excess of trouble only to fumble their way out of it by way of plot armor— or the false drama of the Saviors showing up Alexandria and wrecking shit up while intense music plays and they search for something everyone knows will not be there. Both perform the same basic function.
As suggested above, the drama is still mostly predictable, but I do like the sense that something may be developing between Ezekiel and Carol, which distinguishes itself from the comic’s Michonne/Ezekiel ‘ship. Something likely had to happen since Andrea bit it x seasons ago and they’ve kept around Carol, which is defensible (now) and interesting. The trouble is that outside of making some attempts at developing Carol and Darryl, who are the show’s own at this point, it’s clumsy enough most of the time to make me doubt its potential payoff. We can remember that Sasha is basically a loose end at this point as a show-specific character whose drama has never felt authentic, scarcely felt like a character for how little sense we have of her internality outside of Tyreese dying and her being a suicidal sniper for a spell. Even her sleeping with Abraham felt like something the show did for want of something to do, and while Abraham at least had a vocabulary for a bit, not much a character either.
What we’re left with is a show where a lot of plot bears on Rick, who is about as weak a lead as you’ll come across, being an emotional floating point by which we gauge the tenor of the season, without development, without progress towards an endgame since a show of this nature can’t really have a goal. Which raises a further question: Might one of the problems of the show be that it tries to be about human nature, but doesn’t have anything interesting to say, or seems to only say the same thing over and over again? Perhaps the zombie format is better left to the movie format, or comics that can parcel out their story in digestible doses. So much of it as a TV series feels superfluous, and not in a fun and gratuitous way.
Oh and that's the same highway from season two, don't pretend that it's not.