At a certain point, you have to sit back and realize what you’re watching is not satisfying storytelling - it’s manipulation. That is orchestrated cynicism, pure and simple, forcing the audience to wait until the show was safely past its second commercial break before answering the question it left everyone asking.
And then even Abraham's death was a fake-out, as Glenn was murdered in the harshest way possible five minutes later. They didn’t reveal who actually died until more than 20 minutes into the broadcast. The same goes for the pacing of last night’s episode. Gimple and his team dragged out last season with Negan teases because they couldn’t be bothered with telling a story that actually propelled itself. If anything, it seemed cut from the very same cloth another example of the manipulative tendencies and casual disregard for its viewers that the show has been exhibiting for a few years now. But last night’s episode was no accident, and I don’t believe it was meant to be a corrective to last season’s finale, either. A new season is always an opportunity to reconsider and recalibrate. I suppose the question now is whether it could have been saved.īryan: It certainly could have been.
It’s taken years, but it’s ultimately devolved into exemplifying its worst qualities. It’s a television show in its seventh season. These kinds of tactics work in the context of standalone horror films, but TWD isn’t Saw or Hostel. Don’t even get me started on Glenn’s final words, uttered as his eye was falling out of its socket. Whether it was Andrew Lincoln slobbering all over himself in an attempt to convey Rick’s feeling of helplessness, or Lauren Cohan contorting her face into yet another expression of anguish to show Maggie’s devastation, it all felt grotesque. It was at times hard to watch the cast act these scenes out. The episode shows just how hollow the show has become This is what Gimple and crew thinks their viewers want - that, or they’ve decided that the show needed this level of cheap theatrics to retain its audience this late in the show’s lifespan. It sets up what may inevitably be its final arc with depictions of human brains splayed out on the ground. More than anything, this episode proves just how hollow the show has become. But TWD’s premiere last night pushed the limits of good taste and storytelling far beyond its capacity, all in the service of making it up to fans who felt betrayed by last season’s finale. Nick Statt: In the age of Game of Thrones and near-photorealistic video games, it can come off as old-fashioned to complain about violence on television. It was torture-porn masquerading as storytelling, and AMC should be ashamed for airing it. This wasn’t quality television, and it wasn’t suspenseful drama. And the show had the audacity to slap on some cello score and a "what could have been" fantasy sequence to make sure the audience was manipulated as much as possible. The episode added cheap tension by leading the audience to believe that Rick would cut off his son’s arm.
It was all building up to last night’s season premiere, when Negan and his baseball bat Lucille went after the show’s heroes. Whether it was faking Glenn’s death, dropping Polaroids of bashed-in heads into shots to tease comics fans, or the seemingly endless almost-reveals of new bad guy Negan, The Walking Dead seemed more about hyping itself than about telling a story. And it turned outright problematic last season when the show seemed to eschew true character or narrative developments in lieu of tawdry manipulation. But that balance became less nuanced when showrunner Scott Gimple took the helm.
#Glenn the walking dead series#
From the beginning, the series was able to mash up violent zombie deaths with legitimate character development - particularly in its first few years - and the quality of the drama and emotional engagement made it a fascinating horror hybrid. But throughout it all, there was an unstated rule in our thinking: there could come an episode that would finally push too far, and mistreat its audience to such a degree that The Walking Dead Quitter’s Club would actually quit.īryan Bishop: It’s been easy to look the other way while The Walking Dead has indulged in its crueler, more vulgar tendencies. Some episodes bumped our likelihood of quitting higher, others brought it lower. " The premise was straightforward: TWD has shown itself to be a program that enjoys manipulating its audiences with a tremendous amount of cynicism, to the point where viewers might wonder why they were watching in the first place. Earlier this year we started a weekly column called " The Walking Dead Quitter’s Club.
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