So, that Walking Dead season finale [spoilers]

Bedrockgames said:

I don't think I've ever had this negative a reaction to a show, ever (in fact this may be my first truly negative reaction to a program).

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Blimey.

It didn't bother me one iota. I'm cool with cliffhangers; in fact, I love a good one that actually has me excited to find out what happens next. I was going to watch next season anyway.

Morrus said:

Blimey.

It didn't bother me one iota. I'm cool with cliffhangers; in fact, I love a good one that actually has me excited to find out what happens next. I was going to watch next season anyway.

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I don't mind cliffhangers. Done well, they can be great. Overdone, placed in the wrong spot, they can undermine the drama of the episode. But to me this wasn't an effective one at all. The problem isn't the waiting to find out. It is that the disconnect between Negan's entrance in this episode and the outcome of his actions spans six months. It just kind of nurfed the whole scene. Again, I don't typically care about fidelity to the source material, but when you have a moment as good as issue 100, you don't take the central thing that worked and change it unless the change improves things. Issue 100 worked because your like "who the hell is this cocky a hole...holy crap he just killed (spoiler)!". Now they had to work around that a bit because obviously people kind of knew who Negan was, but they still could have had a Red Wedding moment where the readers and the show fans had slightly different experiences. But by taking out the actual kill, it just lost everything. It isn't that cliffhangers are a problem, it is that there was no real value here in making it a cliff hanger. If a cliffhanger is well done, it can work. The first terminus cliffhanger, definitely worked. It ended in a spot that felt right and made me eager to see what unfolded next season. "How will they get out of this mess?" is a cliffhanger to me "Who did they just kill?" isn't. I think there is a big difference between a "will they survive?" and "what was the trick camera work trying to conceal from us".

And I will say it again, I'm usually mr. optimism (just look at most of my previous post on Doctor Who, regardless of the episode). But to me, this was bad on a scale I just haven't seen in decades. And I suspect this is going to be the dominant reaction. If they don't correct it, I believe this will be the point in the show where people point and say this is where it really started to unravel. Personally I really won't be able to stick with it, if this is the kind of storytelling they are going to do in the next season.

I just can't justify the ending of the episode. If they had killed Glenn or Daryl (or someone important) and done it in a way that was impactful, I'd be singing the episode's praises, because the lead up was pretty effective I thought. But that ending brought it crashing down for me. My wife was actually surprised because I never get angry after watching a show. I think it was the first time I shouted "BS" when the credits rolled.

Morrus said:

Just saw it. Yikes. Brutal.

And man, that cliffhanger - it's been a long time since a cliffhanger actually hung my cliff, as it were. I actually felt the dread mount throughout the last 10 minutes, which is a rare accomplishment for a TV show.

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Yup. True to the word cliffhanger, indeed. I haven't seen something that well played in a long time. Often that sort of thing is mostly predictable or hamfisttedly handled such that when you discover the truth, you find there was misinformation involved. This one was flat out a scene cut off before all information could be had. Cliffhanger.

Mark CMG said:

Yup. True to the word cliffhanger, indeed. I haven't seen something that well played in a long time. Often that sort of thing is mostly predictable or hamfisttedly handled such that when you discover the truth, you find there was misinformation involved. This one was flat out a scene cut off before all information could be had. Cliffhanger.

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Yup. The only cliffhanger in, what, two decades, that actually was a cliffhanger? And clearly audiences have been trained out of what is a wonderful dramatic technique. But then, I heard people complain about trailers that it didn't tell them the whole plot, so they didn't want to see the film. We're getting old it seems. Actually cinematic techniques are not wanted any more.

Oh, and by the way - who shot JR?

But cliffhangers have to be engaging and grab you in order to work. They need to add to the sense of drama and intensity. No one is saying you can't do cliffhangers or that they are always bad. But they can be botched like anything else. They can be overused or feel like a cheap trick. And I think a lot of people thought this one wasn't well placed. I felt it hurt the episode. I've enjoyed cliffhangers in other seasons and in other shows. This one just didn't work. And I think the reason is two-fold: it completely undermined Negan's entrance and it kind of highlights that the show has become too heavily reliant on 'tune in to find out what happens' at the expense of the individual episodes being enjoyable. Again, I am as optimistic as they come about shows. I rarely complain. But it is okay to be critical if the episode doesn't land. I really wanted to like this episode and I was rooting for it to work out. But my honest reaction was 'huh? that didn't work at all' It just didn't. It felt like a trick, and I think the writers overestimated peoples investment in finding out who died (I was tuning in because I wanted to see Negan's entrance and wanted it to have an impact). Turning that into 'who shot JR" for me, it just lessened the impact. It didn't leave me at the edge of my seat screaming "oh no, who just died?" (which is what I think they were going for). It left me wondering if I should even bother tuning in September. And again, I am as forgiving as they come as a viewer.

And I do have to commend them on a good episode up to that point. I had no issue with the build up. I thought it was masterful. But something about that cliffhanger felt...way the hell off. It didn't add any excitement it just made me feel like I was out for an unnecessarily long jog.

If you guys liked it, that is your honest reaction and I am not saying your wrong...I just couldn't say I liked it and feel like I was giving my honest reaction. It kind of felt like the writers thought I only tune in to find out what happens next. The point of this episode for me wasn't to find out who dies. It was to see Rick stripped down of his ego by Negan and Lucile. I was expecting a powerful moment. Imagine if they'd not done the POV thing (which again, to me felt gimmicky and artificial) and instead forced you to watch the horror that Rick was experiencing. Instead I felt like I got a highly sanitized escape from that horror, and I was never personally connected to the stuff the group was collectively part of. I think for that scene to work, you needed to feel what Rick was feeling and I just didn't. I left like I was popped out of the moment by that darn POV and then I just felt like I didn't care. It wasn't a "damn you I have to wait six months to find out!" reaction (at least that would have been a strong reaction). It was much more muted and just a sense that they'd completely dropped the ball conveying the power of the moment.

Bedrockgames said:

But cliffhangers have to be engaging and grab you in order to work.

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Well, in that case it worked.

(Up until the last half season I had to be dragged to watch the yawn-fest that was TWD; seriously, dullest show on TV where nothing ever happens. The last 6 episodes or so actually had me interested, and the last couple I couldn't fake my eyes from the screen. I don't know if they changed scriptwriters or anything, but watching it turned from a chore to event TV).

Morrus said:

Well, in that case it worked.

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For you, and maybe for others. But for me it was the opposite of engaging. I was not engaged by that ending at all. It didn't grab my attention. It didn't get me on the edge of my seat. It didn't pull me into the story or make me want to know what comes next (which a good cliffhanger will definitely do). If it were engaging I'd be eager to tune into season 7 because of it. But I'm not. Had this been an episode that felt like a satisfying and engaging story, I'd be pumped for season 7 to see what happens next. But it just wasn't it. The lead up didn't connect to the cliffhanger at all for me. And finding out who he bashed isn't what is interesting to me about the scenario. Didn't work at all for me. In a big way.

Now maybe when season 7 rolls around, the opening will be good enough that I don't care about this finale. But it won't be like I will suddenly realize it was all worth it. The finale had a pretty negative impact on my sense of the show because it caused me to re-evaluate the entire season. I just don't see what some might be seeing in it I guess. For me it just brought my attention to the fact that a lot of the season have been about the anticipation of Negan's arrival and getting us to tune in to find out more about the saviors. And it left me with the conclusion that I've been enjoying the anticipation more than the episodes themselves lately.

I hope I don't feel that way in September because I love the comics and I am a fan of the show. But boy did that cliffhanger not engage me.

Morrus said:

(Up until the last half season I had to be dragged to watch the yawn-fest that was TWD; seriously, dullest show on TV where nothing ever happens. The last 6 episodes or so actually had me interested, and the last couple I couldn't fake my eyes from the screen. I don't know if they changed scriptwriters or anything, but watching it turned from a chore to event TV).

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I do think the show suffers from being boring sometimes. But I've always kind of felt that the moments of excitement and character development end up paying off. In this case, I feel like the cliffhanger exposed that there is an emerging issue with the show's writing. Maybe it was a one-time fumble. But it was a seriously bad fumble in my view. I really feel like it was a big misjudgment on their part about why people were tuning into that episode. I think they were tuning in to see if Negan lived up to all the hype they'd been building. By making it a cliffhanger, they basically made it so he couldn't live up to the hype.

Bedrockgames said:

For you, and maybe for others. But for me it was the opposite of engaging. I was not engaged by that ending at all. It didn't grab my attention. It didn't get me on the edge of my seat. It didn't pull me into the story or make me want to know what comes next

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I got that, I promise. You have made your opinion extremely clear.