“You are where you do not belong.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
After last week’s rather dreary talkathon, this week The Walking Dead limped to its mid-season finale with at least a little more pace. Though, it has to be said, this was still a pretty slow and uninteresting affair, only enlivened by some last minute Walker/Whisperer shenanigans that slightly advanced the plot.
Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 9, Episode 8 – Evolution”“Weeks, months, even years go by while you try to make sense of it all.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
Last time, I wondered if the loss of the character who’s been the lead since the beginning (and still is in the comics) would make a whole new show of The Walking Dead. It certainly had that potential, for the show to diverge more thoroughly from its source material than before, and become its own, more unpredictable story.
Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 9, episode 6 – Who are You Now?”“We’re the same. All or nothing. You’re trapped, same as me, you’re connected to the dead, same as me. We are the same, and you can’t stand that we’re the same.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
This felt very much like a continuation of the previous episode – it probably didn’t help that I watched them back to back, but the tone and the content was so nearly identical I had to check to see if it was the same writer – no, this ep was down to Rosemary Rodriguez after Corey Reed’s stint last week. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 9, Episode 4 – The Obliged”
“All this is just what was. There’s gotta be something after.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
So finally, FINALLY, that’s a wrap on the All Out War, in a mostly satisfying and thoughtful season finale for The Walking Dead. It’s been two and a half seasons since we first encountered antagonists the Saviors; that’s over two years ago now. Their presence has been, since then, almost a default format for the show, and it’s a format that’s got real tired. Thank heavens the series can finally do something else. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 16 – Wrath”
“If they won’t end it, you have to. You have to give them a way out.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
It’s the penultimate ep of this season of The Walking Dead, and for the first time in about two years there’s the beginning of some resolution to the plot. That’s not to say this ep has redeemed what went before, or even has the sense of building momentum you’d expect the week before the season finale. But at least there’s some movement. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 15 – Worth”
“I found myself. Some version of myself, a better self. Still, it always feels like it could just be swept away again. But that doesn’t mean it will, and it doesn’t mean I couldn’t find myself again if it does.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
It suddenly occurred to me, watching this episode, that this season of The Walking Dead is nearly at an end – only two more eps to go after this one. I really hadn’t noticed, as the increasingly draggy All Out War plot has shown very little sign of building momentum, just ambling along, mostly uninterestingly, with no apparent end in sight. If it was World War 2, it would be early 1943 – each side has had some significant gains and losses, but palpable victory for either doesn’t seem in sight yet. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 14 – Still Gotta Mean Something”
“The dead have brought out our best and worst, and the worst has been outpacing the best lately, but that won’t last forever.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
Last week’s The Walking Dead was fairly average filler, while the week before was actually rather good. This week? Well, somewhere in between, really. There was far too much going on for it to be filler, and some of it was genuinely exciting. But I’m not sure I buy some of the more… unexpected plot developments, and overall it still felt overfamiliar. Nothing new to see here. Well… maybe one thing… Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 12 – The Key”
“… some kinda shit in between!”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
After last week’s unexpected blip of a genuinely good episode, this week The Walking Dead was back to “well, that was… ok I guess”. This was courtesy of a script by newcomer Eddie Guzelian that went back to the show’s well-tapped vein of war movies and Westerns, but I have to say the one genre I wasn’t really expecting to see was… comedy road movie? Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 11 – Dead or Alive or…”
“You set this course, Rick. Who’s next?”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
Well, at the risk of contradicting my recent posts on The Walking Dead’s steady decline, this week’s ep surprised me by being a marked improvement on the deliberately heavy (even excessive) drama of the last. Sure, it was a bit all over the place – an inevitable consequence of the show’s rather overused device of multi-stranded, non-linear narratives. But I was surprised to find that there was some stuff in here that I found (whisper it) good… Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 10 – The Lost and the Plunderers”
“What you did then, how you stopped fighting… it was right. It still is.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
Despite my dolorous post of my woes recently, life goes on. Well, in the sense that The Walking Dead has returned to little fanfare and probably less interest. Still, it helps me, in the sense that, in all the current chaos of my life, I want to get back to normal… whatever that is. And writing about the steady decline of this once-great show certainly feels like normal these days. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 9 – Honor”
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