^^yup... this, definitely this
Walking Dead Season 7
- Thread starter Bryancd
- Start date
^^yup... this, definitely this
I don't care if the quote was from the comic book or not. Rick lost a hand in the comic and I would still think it would be dumb if they put it in the show. I'm not judging the series on how close it follows the comic. I'm judging the quality of the show.
IIRC correctly it was after he was hit on the head the first time. I remember them flashing to a side view of him and he gave the peace sign to Sasha, ten they flashed to her face
I believe Kirkman has said in previous interviews he felt it was a mistake and regrets doing that in the comic book which is why it never carried over to the show
Fawbish
Sr Member
It was just before he is hit - just after he is chosen.
His hand slowly changes to a peace sign, and then there is a reaction shot from Sasha, she glances down at it and her upset goes up a level of magnitude. Really, really well done, I totally missed it the first time.
And then WHAMMY, "You're takin' it like a champ!"
...:cry
Solo4114
Master Member
There are a few ways that tend to intersect.
First, you've got things like excessive gore. I mean, I get that it's the zombie apocalypse, but at the same time, the show sometimes seems to revel in the gore in ways that just aren't that appropriate. For example, remember when "Everybody ate Chris" last season? Guy who got caught in the revolving door and torn apart by walkers? The show lingered on his death as it happened. It made a point of really showing you the death in all it's awful detail. Like I said, I get that it's the zombie apocalypse, but at the same time, why bother lingering on his death? What purpose did it serve? We're already well aware of the horrors of this world. So it ends up being gore for the sake of gore, and that's just cheap manipulation. A way to generate shock by going to the lowest-hanging fruit. We may not really care about the character, but we'll care about the gore!
That character was another good example of the kind of "cannon fodder" character that the show very often uses, where it introduces a character and lets you BARELY get to know them, and not even really care about them, only to then kill the character off later. We'd spent, what, 5? Maybe 6 episodes with that character in the cast? We knew very little about the guy, but he was just a little more than the usual mooks who get eaten in the show. And that was pretty much the only role he served. He was introduced just so he could be exited later and have it mean more than "Townsperson #5." Except that the show never really did anything to make that actually work. His death was STILL meaningless, because the show hadn't really gotten us to connect to him. So in the end, he's just a redshirt with a name, whose death serves only to shock and nothing else.
The show also has major, major issues with plot speeds. It cannot seem to find a balance. Half the time the show is stringing along nonsense plotlines, in some effort to have us connect with the characters, but it does so in a way that's usually just boring. The trip to Terminus is a good example. Instead of having anything, you know, HAPPEN, the show basically just had everyone walking from Point A to Point B and having little vignettes for a while, grinding the actual story to a complete halt. Instead of revealing the characters through actions that advance the plot, the show did a hard split with "plot episodes" and "character episodes" with the end result feeling like the "plot episodes" try to do too much at once, and the "character episodes" feeling like boring interludes where nothing happens. Into this mix, we throw the introduction of named redshirts to be killed at a later date, and the end result is we just stop caring much about ANYONE.
Finally, there are the incredibly cheap manipulations like Glenn's fake death last season. There was, truly, no point to that EXCEPT to make audiences yell "OH NOES!!!" at their screens. It was a story beat that was shoehorned in purely as a "let's generate watercooler talk" moment. It existed for no other purpose than to f--- with the audience. That's just bad writing. Sure, a lot of shows have moments like this, but those shows often do a lot of other things right in the telling of their tales. The Walking Dead basically just wallows in misery, drags out its storylines, showcases gore, and otherwise f---s with its audience. At one point in time, it was interesting and engaging. Now? It's a shadow of its former self.
yes... agreed with this. i'm ok when a show will f with me but when it get's into the fashion of what the TWD has been doing, it's gotten old. i like the occasional gore out, sure, why not but the constant screwing with the audience is out of control. the majority of the GA will fall for it but the hard core fans are tired of it and thus, voice their opinions on dead ears until we just get tired of the show and stop watching it.
mattycsi
Master Member
His death served to push the Alexandrians with him to the realisation of how brutal the world had become. It was gory for that reason, to show why it would be horrific and traumatic to them. As an audience member would you buy it if he was just left to the walkers and the camera moved on to see this guy getting shellshocked over it for a few episodes.
We live in a brutal world now, in the event of zombie apocalypse it would become that much more horrific. Why should it be shied away from in story that is centred around that apocalypse and horror?
It was used in this episode for the same effect. We needed to see it to understand how much it would break the characters, not just Rick (he just took longer). it's done to give us empathy with the group. Had it been cut aways from the bat swing, it would mean nothing, and people would now be calling them out for not going there and saying Rick was ***** for acquiescing so quickly..
We have to have characters come and go with varying degrees of attachment to them, again, would an audience buy it if was red shirt of the week getting killed? You would have zero investment in it at all.
There has always been excessive gore in this show, I really don't get why it's becoming a problem for people all of a sudden.
For me, this adds a "realism" to the show. Life doesn't always move at a perfect pace, can be feast or famine at times. But I appreciate what you're getting at, It just suits the show and the subject for me.
I can't think of one show that doesn't do this.
Wetwired
Active Member
Taking Daryl hostage was the one thing that made this episode pointless. Neegan wanted people to provide for him, but he still killed two and tried to break the rests will but obviously didn't think he acomplished that. Hence the need for a hostage. Like Rick said, he has an army and Daryl. Right, so the prolonged abuse was not at all neccessary then?
mattycsi
Master Member
What do you think the group would have done had they left Daryl? Likely give it a couple days, pile in the van and get the F out of Dodge. That leaves Negan without them producing for him and a source then of possible weakness and embarrassment to his crew.
Taking the hostage further embeds them to his will.
Wetwired
Active Member
That was my point. The abuse didn't work so why do it. All he had to do was take one hostage.
firesprite
Master Member
Man, the apologists for this show kind of crack me up. If you want to keep watching, that's fine. I refuse to give them the viewership and I refuse to use their hashtags on show-day. What started out as a genuinely well-written show about what surviving a catastrophe does to the human psyche has devolved into a gore-fest of stupidity.
Last season alone, we had the Benny-Hill-Truck-into-the-Pond, Super-*****, and the Glenn-fake-out. It's pretty clear that the writers have lost all regard for their audience's intelligence, and for the integrity of these characters.
Last season alone, we had the Benny-Hill-Truck-into-the-Pond, Super-*****, and the Glenn-fake-out. It's pretty clear that the writers have lost all regard for their audience's intelligence, and for the integrity of these characters.
mattycsi
Master Member
And Rick would just starting planning a war to get him back. Best case scenario for Negan, he kills rick and the others and loses productivity and loses a number of his own men in the process.
Better to brutally psychologically break them down and take out an insurance policy.
nwjedidave
Sr Member
It's not scripture, not what I'm going to base my life off of, its ENTERTAINMENT. Take it as such. If you don't like it move along, if you do great. No need for anyone to start taking jabs at anyone else's views. (point made to EVERYONE not specifically Ms. Sprite)
firesprite
Master Member
No, it's not scripture. It's entertainment. However, that doesn't mean we can't feel passionately about it, and it doesn't mean we can't hold the writers' feet to the fire when it appears they're falling down on the job.
I apologize for snarking at the people who are still willing to stick by the show.
kibosh
Sr Member
The abuse worked very well. It showed what will happen to Daryl if they skip town, or rise up against him.
What cracks me up are all the people that have quit watching, or threaten to quit watching again and again, yet always find their way back to make sure the rest of us know how far beneath you the show has become. Like you're the cool kids for not liking something that's popular. Please, by all means, move on from the show. Just stop telling us every week that you have, or that you're going to. Have some conviction. Actually take a stand and stick with it.
Solo4114
Master Member
Actually, yes. You could easily convey the exact same thing without even showing the gore, which might even have been more powerful through suggestion, if you show only some of the violence, and otherwise have the scene play as the reactions of the Alexandrians watching it. Ask yourself something: is the scene more about showing the audience the horror of the moment, or showing the Alexandrians' reaction to the horror? You suggest that it's to bring home the impact on the Alexandrians, in which case the camera should be pointed at them, showing their reactions, not at the gore. By focusing on the gore, the show is titillating and grossing out the audience, which is why it's manipulation that isn't really tied to the story. You can tell the same exact story beat and probably tell it better by focusing on the people we're supposedly focused on: the Alexandrians and their reaction to not being such badasses after all.
Meanwhile, the audience has seen plenty of gross-outs and gore in previous seasons, so continuing to focus on it seems more about titillation and "shocks" than about conveying part of the narrative.
Well, we don't live in that world. The characters do. But it's also been abundantly clear that the world in which the characters live is horrific, brutal, and unforgiving. That said, there's just no need to show a guy's cheek getting ripped from his face in realtime, except to glorify the moment itself in a kind of "Whoa! Look at how awful that is!" sense. But the audience is already there with you. The audience already knows the world is awful and cruel for these characters. So, are you showing this to remind the audience of that? Or are you showing it to excite the audience? If it's the latter, that's just cheap manipulation.
I haven't watched the episode, but having read the comic, and seen how graphic it was in the comic, I'd say that the purpose of the scene and the graphic nature of the horror of Glenn's death is to really, really, really get you to hate Negan. I also think the comic scene is a bit needlessly graphic in that sense, but the comic has always kinda been that way. The show, on the other hand, has to skirt network decency rules and FCC regulations. So, when it dips its toe into REAL gore, like the kind you'd see in an R-rated film or an NC-17 rated film, I tend to think it's much more about creating a momentary shock, rather than furthering a narrative.
That's about where I am already: zero investment in the characters anymore. The thing is, the show spends a decent amount of time introducing these characters just to kill them off, and I can't help but ask...why? The guy that Nick got killed with his cowardice, the one from the hospital, that whole hospital sequence was made up for the show. And it didn't really accomplish anything except getting Emily Kinney out of her contract and swapping Not-Chris in for her, only to kill him off a few episodes later. The whole detour didn't really accomplish much of anything aside from that. In fact, it simply grew out of the already protracted "Walking to Terminus" story arc. All of this stuff just seemed to pad out the story, without really accomplishing anything and without being particularly interesting.
So, in the process, we introduce Not-Chris because we padded out the season, then we kill him off almost as randomly as we introduced him. The show is full of this stuff, and it strikes me as being far more about the production schedule and needing to fill episode orders rather than telling a tight story. Characters are introduced and killed not because they necessarily further the tale, but because we have time to kill. It's sloppy, and ultimately just kind of manipulative because we're supposed to sort of care, but these folks are really just horror movie victims.
Gore, on a show like this, should be in service to something. It should happen, yes, but it should happen for a real reason beyond just "ewwwwww guts!" Look, this show, at least initially, presented itself as being a more serious, character-oriented take on the zombie movie genre. It was supposed to be better than just Return of the Living Dead. It was supposed to be something beyond an excuse for Tom-Savini-esque mutilation f/x. And at first, it really was. Sure, the gore and the zombies were there, but that was just the hook to get you invested in the characters and their drama. Over time, though, the show has increasingly drifted towards becoming just a typical zombie scenario. The moments where it tries to rise above that are the ones where they do something "big" like kill a main character.
Different strokes, I guess. Personally, I think the show could do a better job of blending the two elements into each episode, instead of behaving as if "Well, this is a character episode, so pretty much nothing's gonna happen" vs. "This is a plot episode, so everything' gonna be crazy, but we won't get any deeper understanding of our characters."
Sure, lots of shows do this. But most of them disguise it better and handle it better.
Mola Rob
Sr Member
Umm can you see into the future? Why don't you give the people who said they're quitting a chance to quit. The second show of the season has yet to air. Six weeks from now if people who said they quit are still bitching about the show then you can give them a hard time. I for one have had enough of the repetitive course the show is on, the lack of consistency in the characters, and the villain of the season story lines are tiring. Who comes after Neegan? An even biggerer, badderer, strongerer bad guy (or gal) who kills not one, not two, but three of the main characters? I don't care to see how Rick and crew get their revenge after this, they've all devolved into idiots.
