directed by Greg Nicotero
written by Scott Gimple and Matthew Negrete
When "The Walking Dead" comic book reached its 100th issue, writer Robert Kirkman and artist Charlie Aldard marked the occasion by killing off a major character in one of the most brutal ways imaginable; having that character beaten to death with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. That was a momentous occasion given that the character killed had been with the book almost from the very beginning and was a main fixture in the television series as well.
As a result, this particular event got fans of the television series talking about when and how this particular story would unfold in the show.
And unfold it did last Monday (with several replays throughout the week) in the Season 6 finale. I have to say...I'm a tad disappointed.
I have noted, as of my last post, how I find the quality of this show to be declining and how I am taking issue with how the only challenge that seems to be facing the writers is how else to strip away all moral compunctions of the main characters as they make increasingly extreme decisions to ensure their own survival. I suppose Negan, played in the series by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and his Saviors are being set up as a way to show Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) how far they've fallen and how to rediscover their humanity.
Indeed, in this episode, the Saviors basically trap Rick's group, blocking their every attempt to escape the wide cordon they have established, and at the end, when Rick's group abandon their vehicle and attempt to escape the Saviors on foot, they are captured and the dreaded confrontation takes place, only not quite as we expect it to happen.
Elsewhere, Carol (Melissa McBride), who has left the group following her and Maggie's (Lauren Cohan) harrowing capture by and escape from several Saviors, which resulted in brutally killing their captors, is on her own, but is being pursued by avowed pacifist Morgan (Lennie James) who wants to convince her to return to the group. She is assaulted and overpowered by a wayward Savior, and Morgan must now decide just how important it is to him not to kill anyone, with Carol's life in the balance.
But to get back to the moment this entire season 6 has been building up to: Negan shows up, gives a chilling monologue, parts of which are lifted right out of the comic book, and beats one of the characters to death, but no one, knows who it is, and by no one I mean the camera switches to the point of view of the victim at the moment the beating occurs, so no one knows who got it, and the choices range from leader characters like Rick, Glenn (Steven Yeun), Michonne (Danai Gurira), Carl (Chandler Rigg) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) to perpetual wallflowers like Rosita (Christian Serratos) and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) to relative newbies like Aaron (Ross Marquand), so it's pretty tough to narrow down. Not only that, but apparently when that scene was being filmed, none of the lead actors was present (with Dean Morgan basically just hitting in the direction of the camera) and none of the actors had been told who would die. I suppose that has since been remedied, but it doesn't change the fact that as cliff hangers go, this one felt somewhat mean-spirited.
This wasn't just another season-ender; this was meant to mark a huge milestone for the show. The entire season 6 has come and gone without a major character death, (though they had Glenn's "fake out" death during the first half of the season) and I figured they were "saving up" for this. What viewers got instead was a major cop-out, preceded by one of the most monotonous episodes I have ever seen in six years of viewing this series (with the Grimes' groups foiled attempts to escape getting tiresome pretty quickly). The sub plot with Carol and Morgan was utterly tepid. The only bright spot in the episode was Dean Morgan as Negan, and the performances of Lincoln and the rest of the principal cast as they contemplated their fate.
Such a waste...
4/10
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