nursev said:

XxAxX said:

i agree. daryl or glenn. that was effective, that last scene. first person viewpoint. but yet, once again the writers are rolling on the floor laughing at us and we gnash our teeth through another summer....

Yes they are...all this buidling up Negan and they give us this...some B.S. and the posters on Twitter are killing me with their disappointment about the ending.

it's a great ending. but, once again we are consciously made aware the writers enjoy toying with us. sometimes i wonder, if the writers are choosing such devices for art's sake, or are they simply having fun poking their audience with a stick?

[Edited 4/3/16 19:51pm]

XxAxX said:

nursev said:

Yes they are...all this buidling up Negan and they give us this...some B.S. and the posters on Twitter are killing me with their disappointment about the ending.

it's a great ending. but, once again we are consciously made aware the writers enjoy toying with us. sometimes i wonder, if the writers are choosing such devices for art's sake, or are they simply having fun poking their audience with a stick?

[Edited 4/3/16 19:51pm]

Poke, Poke those bastards. Well Winter is coming soon...moves on to GoT

the sound of the bat :vomit: :heave:

missfee said:

No one thinks that it could had been Rick???

i imagined him at the other end of the line, but maybe so...

nursev said:

XxAxX said:

missfee said:

No one thinks that it could had been Rick???

i imagined him at the other end of the line, but maybe so...

well Negan did say if Carl flinched to take his other eye out....Could be Rick I asked earlier if he was gonna be the one to die. Rick has done some bad shit...killing folks in their sleep

missfee said:

nursev said:

Yes they are...all this buidling up Negan and they give us this...some B.S. and the posters on Twitter are killing me with their disappointment about the ending.

It wasn't a bad episode but do feel a bit cheated though. At least if you gonna fuck me, let me finish...don't give me the cold shower routine. Now I have to wait until October with sweaty palms all over again to see who is dead.

episode was cool...but to not let us see who gets killed is messed up I mean folks are still gonna watch in the fall.

Andrew Lincoln has been killing since he woke up six years ago...the guy needs a rest

missfee said:

nursev said:

Yes they are...all this buidling up Negan and they give us this...some B.S. and the posters on Twitter are killing me with their disappointment about the ending.

It wasn't a bad episode but do feel a bit cheated though. At least if you gonna fuck me, let me finish...don't give me the cold shower routine. Now I have to wait until October with sweaty palms all over again to see who is dead.

Well it isn't Daryl....I heard his voice on the game commercial. So....Glenn Rick or Aaron maybe?

nursev said:

nursev said:

hmmm. carl. that makes sense. negan wants rick to be really sorry. also, negan said 'he's taking it like a man' which is something you might say to/about a boy

nursev said:

Negan fine as hell though

[img:$uid]http://i497.pho.../img:$uid]

missfee said:

nursev said:

well Negan did say if Carl flinched to take his other eye out....Could be Rick I asked earlier if he was gonna be the one to die. Rick has done some bad shit...killing folks in their sleep

My cousin said she thinks it's Carl but how could it be Carl if he made the flinching comment? His only good eye would be crushed anyway from the bat. That's why I don't think it would be Carl.

The more you say this Im starting to believe its Rick...thats why they didnt let us know the ending show will be different in the fall and folks will riot

missfee said:

nursev said:

Well it isn't Daryl....I heard his voice on the game commercial. So....Glenn Rick or Aaron maybe?

I put my money on Glenn or Rick. And if it's Rick....I riot gotdammit!!!

I dont think its Glenn...the writers learned their lesson bout trynna kill him last time

XxAxX said:

hmmm. carl. that makes sense. negan wants rick to be really sorry. also, negan said 'he's taking it like a man' which is something you might say to/about a boy

Nah...In the comics doesnt Negan take an interest in Carl? I think he does cause he kills his daddy

nursev said:

missfee said:

The guy who plays Aaron is good looking too.

he aight

missfee said:

Also, how come we still haven't seen Abraham & Sasha show some kind of romantic affection yet when it seems like they are together?

Cuz Rosita is mad and Sasha is gonna have to beat her ass to make bisquick with Red

morningsong said:

oooo. critics pissed. critics real pissed.

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'The Walking Dead' finale recap: 'Last Day on Earth' is torture

from: http://www.chicagotribune...story.html

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Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan was also worth the wait -- the actor has made a career out of dropping into dramas and stealing the show with memorable, charisma-laden guest arcs (see: "Grey's Anatomy," "Supernatural" and "The Good Wife"), and "The Walking Dead" is no exception. The show has tested our patience in its slow build-up to Negan's introduction, prolonging the agony so much that I started to lose interest in the character purely because we'd heard so much about him without seeing him in action (show, don't tell, writers!), but Morgan's charm made his entrance suitably compelling and tortuously tense in equal measure.

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When a storyline has a clear purpose, "The Walking Dead" can be a thrill ride, and the episode shone in those cat and mouse moments when Rick and his group went head to head with the Saviors, trying to outsmart them only to find that Negan was one step ahead of them. That bodes well for next season, when our fearless leader will have to face his most formidable foe to date, one who has him outgunned at every turn and clearly doesn't shy away from spilling blood when needed. But for now, faced with a summer of further speculation, the finale can't help but leave a sour taste (of grey matter?) in the mouth.

[Edited 4/4/16 5:55am]

'The Walking Dead' goes full-on whack-a-mole

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Mary McNamara Contact Reporter

from: http://www.latimes.com/en...story.html

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The show that kick-started television’s age of Major Character Paranoia ended its sixth season with an almost laughable distillation of its now signature whack-a-mole ethos.

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For weeks now, “The Walking Dead” has been foreshadowing, stage-setting, and otherwise heralding for the the Super Important, No, We Mean It arrival of Negan, creator/graphic novelist Robert Kirkman’s uber bad guy.

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Here played by king of the black leather jacket and dangerous yet still adorable grin, Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

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Negan rules the Saviors, a group of thugs that Daryl (Norman Reedus) and other members of the show’s core constabulary have been running into for much of the season with varied results.

Well not so varied; it was pretty much all about killing, and the necessity of it. Occasionally mercy works in "The Walking Dead," but more often it does not. In the first half of the season, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his crew arrived in Alexandria like battle-scarred Amazons crashing a Tupperware party — behind strangely effective walls, the good folks of Alexandria wore clothing that was ironed and had no idea how to kill a Walker.

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But ignorance can be more dangerous than brutality. Attempting to teach the Alexandrians, some of Rick’s team died (along with a lot of Alexandrians), but, as the second half of the season began, those who did not began to remember what it means to be civilized, to eat food off plates and make plans beyond “Kill that one behind you.”

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Even Michonne (Danai Gurira) began to smile and relax and say things like “we could make this work.” At which point, it was difficult not to think of the hilarious scene in “Galaxy Quest” when the guy who played the nameless extra looks at the lead actors who now find themselves drawn to seemingly adorable aliens on an actual other planet and screams: “Didn’t you ever watch the show?”

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Because this is how “The Walking Dead” works: Things get a little better and then they get a whole lot worse. Oh, and one or two key characters are inevitably sacrificed to remind viewers that life is uncertain and fictional drama is not about making people comfortable.

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Unfortunately, if you kill, or threaten to kill, key characters regularly enough, big deaths become not so much a dramatic disruption as a predictable pattern, and cliffhanging just turns into just another hobby.

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The trouble with 'Walking Dead's' Season 6 and its OMG moments: Has the show broken its own zombie code?

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Indeed, when, in the penultimate episode Daryl was shot, his blood literally splattering the camera lens, it almost seemed like a joke. Yeah, yeah, after all this Negan build-up, they’re going to kill Daryl, whatever. He's fine. The writers are just buying time.

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So. Much. Time. Just before Daryl got shot, Maggie had clutched her abdomen. And though her symptoms seemed more in-line with the flu than miscarriage, for the majority of the 90-minute finale Rick and a few others raced around Winnebago trying to take her to that obstetrician they’d recently met in the Hilltop community. (Because if you introduce an obstetrician in the first act …).

But like Angelenos trying to get across town on Marathon day, they were stopped at every turn, only these roadblocks were created by Saviors. Who monologued like super villains and whistled signals to each other in such a key of mockingjay that when the Big Scene finally occurred and Negan was about to be revealed, it wouldn’t have been terribly surprising if Jennifer Lawrence had stepped into the circle to hand Rick a white rose.

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But no, it was Morgan.

Who, having assembled most of the show’s main characters, and his own very large following, proceeded to put on a show. The world was about to change; the Alexandrians would now be working for Negan in a quasi serf situation because they had killed more Saviors than he felt comfortable with, and once again someone would have to die.

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“Eenie, meenie, miney, moe,” Negan said, channeling, no doubt, showrunner Scott Gimple in what one can only assume is the near-weekly ritual in the “Walking Dead” writers’ room, before bringing his barb-wire-wrapped bat onto the head of … the camera. Which fell to the ground and went black as voices murmured and Kirkman cackled about what a terrible summer it was going to be for “Walking Dead” fans as they try to figure out who got killed.

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4 burning questions from 'The Walking Dead' Season 6 finale

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Maybe. Maybe not. The scene we'd all been waiting for was strangely flat, anti-climactic, and, because the action had been so obviously jerry-rigged to make this scene possible, a bit infuriating.

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Many interesting things happened around the edges of the last few episodes as we all counted down to Negan — the Alexandrians are now smaller but tougher, the Hilltop community offered the hope of sustainability and yet another group emerged in the final moments to help out Carol (Melissa McBride) and Morgan (Lennie James) off on their own absurdly contrived journey.

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As for Negan, well, he is the first character in the show thus far to follow a socio-economic model that is based on expansion. Never mind the bat, he's the show's first real politician, which may be the most frightening about him.

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It also allows, one can only hope, for the show to start experimenting with a different, and more socially advanced plot line in season seven because otherwise, "The Walking Dead," like its titular characters, will just keep endlessly lurching around in circles.

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It almost doesn’t matter who got killed (as long as it isn’t Daryl), as long as Gimple and his writers stop with all the crazy narrative roadblocks and get on with the story.

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

Follow me @MaryMacTV

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[Edited 4/4/16 5:48am]

from: https://www.yahoo.com/new...28349.html

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The Walking Dead runs on overkill these days and perpetually writing about its fall from higher creative heights, its remorseless lack of creativity after six seasons, its transparent manipulation of its devoted audience - that, too, is overkill. So hopefully this will be my last critical take on the series until it decides to become something other than a cartoon.

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And that's really where we are - and have been - with AMC's The Walking Dead. For many seasons it was achieving something it wasn't getting enough credit for, a greatness that went along with its eye-popping popularity. The series, even in patches where it seemed temporarily lost or in need of a creative turn, was still more often than not reaching heights that were easy to dismiss under the "genre" label.

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The Walking Dead had managed, for an impressive length, to transcend the horror genre, to be more that "a zombie show." It remained in play when critics compiled their best-of year-end lists because it had managed to make a show about zombies more about the living than the dead. It had an understanding that to take a concept better suited to a two-hour movie (or a graphic novel) and make 16 hours a season out of it, something had to give in the construction of old tropes. People had to matter more than zombies.

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Read More: 'Walking Dead' Finale: Wh...egan Kill?

By inverting that older working notion and doing, for the most part, an admirable job of fleshing out a number of characters in a high-volume cast (with many supporting players), the producers were able to make it matter. But eventually, when The Walking Dead became an unstoppable force, a ratings hit, a show that would succeed no matter what you gave the viewers, decisions apparently became a little bit easier in regard to cutting corners. In the last two seasons, looking the other way on plausibility and repeating a series of mistakes that an ongoing story with characters who learn should never make - that became the norm.

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The Walking Dead tripped over itself and realized it could stomach the embarrassment.

Which is essentially why season six was the final straw in trying to judge it critically. Make no mistake:The Walking Dead can be very entertaining week to week. And despite the bloated, misguided 90-minute finale on Sunday, still managed to turn the overly long introduction of the Negan character (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) into a few better-late-than-never minutes of intrigue. Anyone who watched Morgan as Negan and thought, "Hmmm, I like that dude - I'll watch more next season" can't really be faulted.

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Hell, even I'll watch more next season. Maybe.

See More: 'The Walking Dead's' Most...s (Photos)

Yet the finale left a sour taste not only because it was so incredibly lifeless and so transparently manipulative, but because it found the show getting away with murder, killing its better self. To see the writers and producers milking the audience for all it's worth is less disheartening than predictable. That's what The Walking Dead is now - a series that can fritter away 78 of its 90 minutes with dumbass storytelling and realize, with a smile on its face, that most of the viewers will come back next season regardless.

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It's that kind of creative failure with a smirk that is so audacious and galling about The Walking Dead. You can't kill The Walking Dead. It's a machine. A money-making machine. Even shaming it will have no impact.

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And at this point, as a critic, so long as The Walking Dead fuels AMC to keep trying to make other, more creative non-zombie shows (Better Call Saul, Halt and Catch Fire, Humans, etc.), I don't have any real issue with it. Financial trade-offs for creativity work for me. It's hell in this business.

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But that doesn't make the implosion of a once excellent series enjoyable. When The Walking Dead understood the existential breadth it could embrace and nurtured various storylines and themes - hope, desperation, struggling on vs. giving up, what misery does to the soul, how the tearing of the moral fabric changes people in different ways, and so many other dramatic detours - it was at its zenith.

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Then it stopped developing characters. It rushed changes. It made characters act in ways they never would. It brought characters together romantically who seemed, just a few episodes prior, to loathe each other. In this season of The Walking Dead, it often felt like you'd missed three or four episodes that explained these sudden and shocking changes - except you hadn't. Carol changed for no believable reason. Abraham dumped Rosita for Sasha when neither action made any sense or had any pre-history. Characters did dumb things - running off alone - like it was the first season (of course, that has been a damning trend on the show - same as the group meeting up with other groups, trusting them and getting killed for it). It was a season of clearing a low bar with no side effect to the ratings.

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Read More: 'Walking Dead' Producers ...liffhanger

When you can't trust the storytelling, a show is over. At least from a critical perspective. Not killing Glenn was the last straw for me. I stopped caring at that point (and, arguably, I had cut the show too much slack even before that point).

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But I watched along every week for entertainment value; the show can still deliver that, even though, for me, it's just harder to watch through the wincing of what happened to a series I once advocated for strongly.

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And then to witness this boring finale, where the road blocks Rick's group encountered seemed metaphorical rather than real, all leading up to the introduction of Negan (a character comic book fans know but regular viewers do not, so catering an entire season to his arrival was the ultimate in anticlimactic storytelling). And, sure, thanks to Morgan, a likeable, fine actor who has done lots of great work, Negan's arrival added some much needed pop to the final 10 minutes or so.

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Only to have the season - who will Negan kill as revenge against Rick and the gang? - end in a cliffhanger.

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Of course. More manipulation. Fans of The Walking Dead are just cows to be milked. To assume this crass puppeteering will stop in favor of better storytelling is, at this point, just sad, wishful thinking.

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The Walking Dead might be the most popular show on television. But at one point, it was something better than that.

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nursev said:

XxAxX said:

cool. honorable knights abroad. templars wearing hockey pads armor

I haven't read the comics...who are the hockey pad guys?

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from: http://www.hollywoodrepor...iva-878677

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March 28, 2016 12:23pm PT by Lesley Goldberg

The 'Walking Dead' Scene That May Hold the Key to Season 7

The mystery man clad in protective armor could tip off that the series is introducing The Kingdom.

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[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Sunday's "East" episode of AMC's The Walking Dead and the comic book series it is based on.]

As AMC's The Walking Dead prepares to introduce dreaded villain Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) in next week's season-six finale, what seemed like a throwaway scene in Sunday's penultimate episode may hold the key to season seven.

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As Morgan (Lennie James) and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) searched for Carol (Melissa McBride), the duo crossed paths with a briefly seen man searching for his horse at a farm.

While Rick attempts to take a shot at the guy — he no longer takes any chances — Morgan pushes his arm and the mystery man clad in protective armor runs away (seen above and below).

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Rick takes note that the guy was using a spear clearly manufactured by the Hilltop community and believes him to be a member of Negan's savage Saviors, but Morgan isn't so quick to write the guy off as the enemy.

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"Maybe he's from the Hilltop, maybe he's from somewhere else," Morgan says. And Morgan may have it right.

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For eagle-eyed fans of Robert Kirkman's comic series, the mystery man may belong to a community known as the Kingdom. The Kingdom, like the Hilltop and Alexandria, is another community of survivors — and they detest Negan and the Saviors.

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Read more Norman Reedus on That Walking Dead Cliffhanger

The Kingdom is overseen by a George Clinton-like leader named Ezekiel, a former zookeeper who oversees the community with Shiva, his pet tiger. (Yes, a tiger.) The residents of the Kingdom dress in protective armor — and serve as knights to the so-called "King Ezekiel" at a transformed high school.

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Members of the Kingdom, like those of the Hilltop and Alexandria, do not wish to be a part of Negan's reign of terror as the f-bomb-dropping baddie uses fear, intimidation and violence to take half of the neighboring communities' food, supplies and weapons in exchange for safety (from the Saviors).

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The man in protective armor in Sunday's episode may be the biggest hint to date that The Walking Dead's world expansion will include the Kingdom — and likely Ezekiel and (hopefully) Shiva (both below).

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"There's not a great chance but if it were happening, I wouldn't tell you either," showrunner Scott M. Gimple told THR ahead of the midseason premiere regarding whether Ezekiel and Shiva might be introduced this season. "The world is going to be expanding in a lot of different directions."

Introducing The Kingdom serves as a next logical step given where the AMC series is in the comics' run. Negan makes his debut in the landmark 100th issue, coming face-to-face with Rick, Michonne, Carl, Glenn, Maggie, Sophia and Heath as they are on their way to the Hilltop while the Saviors plan their attack on Alexandria. That would match up with where the series is — with Rick and company likely taking Maggie, who is on the verge of losing her baby, to the Hilltop to see the ob-gyn there as Daryl, Michonne, Glenn and Rosita are held by Dwight and the Saviors.

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The Kingdom also will help fortify what could be a massive army between the residents of Alexandria, the Hilltop and the Kingdom, who could unite to bring down Negan and the Saviors in a take on the comics' "All Out War" arc.

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What are your theories? Sound off in the comments section below. For more Walking Dead coverage, go to THR.com/WalkingDead. The 90-minute season-six finale of The Walking Dead airs on Sunday at 9 p.m. on AMC. Stay tuned to THR for more coverage.

missfee said: