The Walking Thread

[Spinozasgalt]

Is there much of Carol, Maggie and Tara? That's pretty much all I care about at this point.

[Mike_L]

Yes, Maggie is quite prominent now that she's taken control at Hilltop.
Carol is pretty much in the shadow of King Ezekiel ATM.
I'd like to see more of Tara. Like Daryl, she wants a more ruthless approach toward the Saviors, but is being held in check by the pacifist-leaning Jesus.

This season is okay, but it seems like it will be better binge watched. They feel more like parts of a whole than full episodes.

[Mac_Guffin]

Yes, Maggie is quite prominent now that she's taken control at Hilltop.
Carol is pretty much in the shadow of King Ezekiel ATM.
I'd like to see more of Tara. Like Daryl, she wants a more ruthless approach toward the Saviors, but is being held in check by the pacifist-leaning Jesus.

This season is okay, but it seems like it will be better binge watched. They feel more like parts of a whole than full episodes.

This last episode was great. Probably one of my favorites of the series. Could have been higher up if the CGI was better and the Jeffrey Dahmer Savior's actor was better at acting. I also hate how the show portrays the Savior henchmen except for the higher ups as opposed to how the comic does. They're so one/two-dimensional. Also, the I am Negan thing was in the comic, but the show kind of shoves it in your face. Like, we get it.

Carol seems to be more like the comic version of Michonne. I won't spoil and give details, but I expect her to be out of the shadow sooner or later.

I hope the war ends like it does in the comic. I worry it might be a risk they won't take. The show has avoided some risks, but there have been times when they have taken them, so who knows.

[Mac_Guffin]

Is there much of Carol, Maggie and Tara? That's pretty much all I care about at this point.

They're all in the first.
Same with the next.
Same.
Only Carol was in the last one, but it's one of the better episodes of the series.

[Spinozasgalt]

Carol seems to be more like the comic version of Michonne. I won't spoil and give details, but I expect her to be out of the shadow sooner or later.

Yeah, I noticed this when they swapped Michonne for Andrea and went looking for who's gonna fill in the role of Michonne. Made me think, "Oh, well Carol's gonna be around for a bit. Woo."

[Mac_Guffin]

I defend a lot of unpopular things from this show. I can't defend the death that happened in the midseason finale. I'm not saddened by it. I'm pissed at the writing choice. I can't see what happened in the comic happening on the show now, and the show almost always suffers from diverting, and they have never diverted this extremely.
There are exceptions like Carol living on and becoming strong, but they are rare exceptions, and the good changes are almost always from adding something.
I'm not quitting the show yet, but I am now starting to feel like other fans.

[Mike_L]

I cannot help but think that the decision to kill off Carl is primarily one of convenience.
Chandler Riggs has been in his teenage "growth spurt" phase for a while already. With the long gaps between seasons (sometimes as many as six months), I think it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep continuity. He'd matured quite visibly between end of S7 and beginning of S8, even though the events of the latter season supposedly followed immediately after S7. I suppose they could've written around this somehow, but it would've been tricky.
But my main complaint with S8 (so far) is that it felt very disjointed... as though they were trying to weave too many threads. I'll keep watching, I s'pose... but my enthusiasm has waned quite a bit.

[Spinozasgalt]

On the other foot, I just finished the third season of Fear The Walking Dead the other day and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I dunno, maybe it's that this doesn't have a parent comic and so it lets them move more freely. After the first two seasons, they killed off a couple of people and seemed to realise that they could make the leading characters interesting if they wanted to.

[Mac_Guffin]

I cannot help but think that the decision to kill off Carl is primarily one of convenience.
Chandler Riggs has been in his teenage "growth spurt" phase for a while already. With the long gaps between seasons (sometimes as many as six months), I think it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep continuity. He'd matured quite visibly between end of S7 and beginning of S8, even though the events of the latter season supposedly followed immediately after S7. I suppose they could've written around this somehow, but it would've been tricky.
But my main complaint with S8 (so far) is that it felt very disjointed... as though they were trying to weave too many threads. I'll keep watching, I s'pose... but my enthusiasm has waned quite a bit.

But there is a time skip after the war. The growth of Chandler won't be an issue. That will likely happen after this season.

[Mac_Guffin]

On the other foot, I just finished the third season of Fear The Walking Dead the other day and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I dunno, maybe it's that this doesn't have a parent comic and so it lets them move more freely. After the first two seasons, they killed off a couple of people and seemed to realise that they could make the leading characters interesting if they wanted to.

I hate that show. I couldn't get past season 1. The characters are bland and unrelatable... more so than the main show.
I feel like if you don't read the comic, you really don't know how much the show fucks up with what it changes.
I have loved adaptations that change the source material more than I loved the originals, but TWD isn't one of them.
And you know, maybe fully abandoning the source material would be better. I'd probably like that better than half assing it. But we kind of have that with Fear, and I don't like Fear.

The show is so inconsistent with its quality but the comic has consistently gotten better over time. Early issues feel really amateurish, but Kirkman grows as a writer.

[Spinozasgalt]

I totally get if you were turned off FTWD by the first season. And the second season is a bit of a slog to get through with some odd plot choices. But you know how I'm always going on about the fourth season of TWD being a cleanup season that fixed up a lot of the characters by splitting them up and letting them actually become individual characters, which led into the fifth season being the show's best? Well the third season of FTWD feels a bit like that. There are still some of the usual contrivances that both shows always have, but the central characters have been given space to develop and they've cleaned up the cast, so to speak.

Still probably wouldn't be your type of thing, but I'm slightly impressed that they turned the show around so much in one season.

[Mac_Guffin]

It's funny you say that. Latter half of season 4 and 5 were when the show really started sticking closer to the comic. The changes they did make seemed to add rather than subtract, like making a very minor no name group of thugs into The Claimers. My issues were minor like the cannibal victim being a character I didn't care about (Bob) rather than Dale, but the actor wanted out before then, so I don't blame the show. They actually expanded the cannibals into a more powerful group with a compound, making them trappers rather than out in the woods hunters. This is when the comic-show comparisons started being done on the Skybound website because there was a lot to compare and contrast. I think this is the first one. https://www.skybound.com/the-walking-de ... omparison/ It's almost an exact copy, and I love that. Not only that, but this was well-loved by people who haven't even skimmed the comics.

[Mike_L]

Season 8 resumes on 25 February.
Trailer:



And...

Snippets from the Negan origin story...

[felltoearth]

I dropped it about halfway through season 4. Any use picking it up again?

[Spinozasgalt]

I regard the second half of the fourth season and the whole of the fifth season as the show at its best. I will not be swayed from this.



As for the eighth season, I haven't watched the first half yet. I know it's supposed to be pretty sluggish and uneven. This new trailer does look a lot better than the original season trailer though, so it may pick up again and get me keen. We'll see.

[Mike_L]

I dropped it about halfway through season 4. Any use picking it up again?

I'm inclined to say, "No".
This is right...

I regard the second half of the fourth season and the whole of the fifth season as the show at its best. I will not be swayed from this.



As for the eighth season, I haven't watched the first half yet. I know it's supposed to be pretty sluggish and uneven. This new trailer does look a lot better than the original season trailer though, so it may pick up again and get me keen. We'll see.

Agree.

Ratings for the first half of season 8 have been among the series' lowest. Frankly, it's a mess. The 'Negan charisma' that held season 7 together quite well now seems insufficient to make season 8 work. I'll probably watch the first few episodes of the second half, if only because of the time already invested in the first half... but I'm on the verge of dropping it.

[Spinozasgalt]

I don't know if any of us are still watching this, but there's talk about Andrew Lincoln leaving the show and Norman Reedus becoming the main star. Done right, this could actually be a good thing. I'm suddenly interested in the show again.

[scott1328]

I will not watch the show while Negan is still a character.

I would make an exception to see Rick Grimes eaten by zombies.

[Mike_L]

I will not watch the show while Negan is still a character.

In keeping with the comics storyline, he has been defeated by Rick, but his life spared, and is now a prisoner in Alexandria. The Whisperers (nihilistic people who live among the walkers) will be the next big threat and, if they stick to the framework of the comic, it'll be Negan who eventually kills their leader. So, Negan will likely be around for at least another season, maybe two.
I feel rather meh about the series right now... which is probably the way Andrew Lincoln feels about it.

[Spinozasgalt]

I would make an exception to see Rick Grimes eaten by zombies.

I mean, yeah, they'll most likely fuck this thing up. But Daryl's a more compelling character than Rick is by a mile. The most enduring relationship he has (with Carol) is more interesting than anything Rick has. He doesn't give those appalling speeches and crap like Rick does. And Daryl being the lead calls back to one of my favourite moments in season 4, where Beth tells him he'll lose her someday but that he'll be the last man standing. What'll be interesting to me is how they fuck all this up.

Plus, I just like the notion that Carol and Daryl, rather than Rick and Carl, are the last survivors from the original Atlanta group. Rick and Carl suck.