Walking Dead Season 7 Premiere. . .

I don't believe in hard rules for what makes a narrative work or not. I had a creative writing teacher who used to preface criticism by basically saying "what do I know?" with regards to the basic rules of narrative, because the only thing that matters in the end is execution and whether it winds up connecting or not. Some of the most memorable stories ever told broke several rules that lead them to being imitated repeatedly to the point that the break becomes cliche. Still, there are stories that are designed to be somewhat meta, at least a little, and when those types of stories break rules, it usually ends up working really well. But if a story was never set up that way, if it was set up to make you live each moment with the characters, and then it breaks that flow, more often than not, it will fail.

I already wrote about how The Walking Dead season 6 finale failed in exactly this way and the Season 7 premiere only added to that failure. For starters, it dragged out the big reveal of who Negan killed for no reason. We get treated to close ups of Rick slowly disintegrating, then Negan taking him out to the woodshed, so to speak, for nearly half the episode. And then, even worse, they play with us by showing what I guess is Rick imagining if Negan kills everyone and when we finally get the reveal of what happened, it's now a flashback and more of a relief than it should be. You just want them to get over with already. We don't get to experience the helpless agony with our characters, instead we get manipulated repeatedly by technique that reminds us we're watching a TV show. The sad thing is, they had the elements to make this work all along. Killing two people was a good way to extend the shock, had they killed one in the finale and then the other in the premiere, in real time.

But instead, because they separated the act from the emotion of the moment by elongating it all, the act itself is less about helplessness and loss than it is just shock for shock's sake and torture porn. The extreme violence and gore of the scene would have been fine had it been anchored by real time humanity. We could have been crying right along with them. But after being played by editing tricks and media hype it comes off as little more than a sadistic spectacle. At least that's my take and I don't think it's because I read the comics.

Not that sadistic spectacle isn't called for. Negan is a nasty, scary fuck. He's a character who is vulgar to his core and that is a big part of what makes him scary. The ease with which he dispenses extreme violence is part of that vulgarity. From that perspective, everything works. He's vile and powerful and sets up a new status quo that makes the Governor look like basket of puppies. I just wish it hadn't all been about his show, so we could spend more time feeling the impact of it. It's fine line before this sort of thing wears thin or, worse, Negan becomes more like-able than the main characters.

I will say the final moments of the episode began to make up for it all, in large part to Lauren Cohan's Maggie. Her performance, her character's true to form reaction and strength, even as she's completely fallen apart is a balancing act that could have been more central to these events from the start. Nothing against any of the others. Andrew Lincoln played it right too. But Rick's break, while understandable, is obvious. I don't know. Let's hope the makers of the show can get out of their own way for the rest of the season, and not continue to make this a show about how clever they are.

The Walking Dead Season 6

Knowing the source material can give you an unfair advantage on an adaptation that works like a double edged sword. Sometimes it means that you won't be surprised by what happens, but thankfully, The Walking Dead fixed that early on by veering far enough away from the comic to make it fresh enough for us comic fans. The dynamics of the characters hasn't been the same as the comic for most of the series at this point. Different people have lived and died in each, so even when they do follow the events of the comic closely, the impact is going to be different enough to make it interesting. Daryl, as much as I think he's the most boring character on the show and has been since season 2, doesn't even exist in the comic, so right off that's a new element in the mix. These are good things. But, because we live in the age that we do, where people that have never read a comic book in their miserable lives can look up whatever they want online, the show has been toying with all of us this season with anticipated deaths and the coming of Negan. And not in good ways.

Don't get me wrong, I think the show is still doing a great job, overall, of giving us this unflinching, dread laden tale of humanity at it's best and worst. And that's what it's about: humanity. Not the zombies. The best episode of the season to me was probably The Same Boat, where Carol and Maggie are captured by some of the saviors and Carol proceeds to break down for reasons you wouldn't expect, before finally having to do the horrible things that were necessary to survive. This episode's reminder that actions, no matter how necessary, have consequences on the conscience of good people could have been cheesy, but instead it was harrowing beyond the violence and gore. You understand why Carol is not just tired, but completely spent on an existential level. And Maggie's moment at the end, after being all hardcore, when she just breaks down and says "I can't anymore" is what makes this show special. There's no glory in the horrors of having to survive this way.

But before we got to that episode there was the whole "is Glenn dead or not?" crap from early on. It was set up as a cheap ploy from the get go with ambiguous editing and media hype immediately following.  Then they intentionally didn't get back to Glenn for a couple of episodes before revealing his fate. It just wasn't organic storytelling the way the show has mostly been until now. They clearly were depending on the Internet furor to build up the tension instead of letting the story do it.  All it did is spark the conversation about Glenn's interaction with Negan in the comic, which furthered the hype until the last episode of the season. Cheap and unnecessary. 

The final episode was actually amazingly well done. The sense of dread and inescapable danger just closing in was almost too much for me. I felt sick to my stomach throughout the episode, partly because I knew what was coming, but partly because I didn't. It was back to old school Walking Dead tension where anyone could die, but someone is going to and it's gonna be hard. By the time we get to Negan's intro, he's everything he should be and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is perfect. You're afraid and this guy may as well be the actual devil, but the fact that he's kinda charming doesn't take the edge off. I've heard people say you kinda like him, but I don't think that's it at all. I think it's the realization that certain other people might like him which means nobody is going to help you. The look on Rick's face is how you feel and hope it never comes to that feeling for any reason in real life. Shit's hit the fan and now the fan is going to hit back. With a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. And it will be messy as fuck, both physically and emotionally. But then, the show went with hokey gimmick again instead of emotional knockout. Instead of just going through with the scene in the way that the comic did, where when I read it, I felt like I'd just lived it, they basically stopped the show. Never mind the shitty POV of whoever is getting beat, but ending the finale before the scene plays out makes the entire season feel incomplete. That is not an ending. 

The best cliffhangers end on a big reveal, with what's next hanging in the balance. Locutus appears on the screen, Ryker says "fire" and cut to black (gets me every fucking time). We know what happened to Picard now and we know Ryker has made the hard but only decision. Next season will tell us what's next, and I will be anxious all summer, but there was an emotional arc that came to a close. But on The Walking Dead finale, not knowing who gets killed, even though we're watching the killing is sending the wrong message. It's almost telling us that it doesn't matter who gets killed. But it totally does matter and not just because we love some of these characters. On one level, it matters because one of the questions we are left with should be how will they react and that will depend on who gets killed. But on a higher level it matters because ending this way separates the show from that humanity I spoke about earlier. This scene, in the way it was shot, even though it doesn't actually show much of it,  makes it about spectacle and gore and violence. That's the focus of the anticipation we're left with. It's not about consequence at all. The POV especially makes it a video game. It also disconnects us from our heroes because they can't make the violence stop, but we get a break. We're no longer living it with them. It should be an unrelenting scene, but it relents. It relents until October, I guess.

And beyond that, as a cheap TV ploy, it gives the creators of the show a way to gauge who should or shouldn't be killed in terms of ratings, something I don't think they had done before. Let's not forget it's not really all just big main characters in play here. Aaron is in the group too and while he might be a good character, he's barely been there. We just aren't invested in him the way we are with any of the others. If we come back next season to learn he was the chosen one, then the show has officially jumped the shark. This death is supposed to mean a whole lot more to everybody than some guy they just met. I have my suspicions on who it might actually be and if so it's a bold and maybe even dumb move. But it's a move that would at least work to do what it needs to do from a narrative perspective. That's assuming they don't just go with the straight comic version.  Either way, I'm sure before the next season it will be spoiled by set pictures or whatever because that's what they've opened it up to. We'll see. . . 

Revisit The Walking Dead Issue 100

This was originally posted on my Tumblr back on July 13th, 2012. This will be important to read as context for my upcoming take on The Walking Dead season 6, which should be posted in the next day or so. Interestingly, I didn't read this again until after writing most of the show post. 

Comic of the Week - No Contest

I was always a big fan of Nirvana. One thing Kurt Cobain always talked about in interviews was the “loud quite loud” dynamic in his music which he attributed to the Pixies. Basically, the idea is that by having this dynamic in music, it makes each part stand out and have that much more impact, be it the loud part or the quiet part. The loud makes you listen more closely to the quiet. The quiet lends gravity to the loud. I believe Robert Kirkman has been brilliantly following this dynamic in The Walking Dead and issue 100 was about as loud as it gets.

Sometimes big milestones happen in comics and it turns out to be more hype than anything else. The Walking Dead hit 100 issues this week and it was one of the most tense, gut wrenching, harrowing issues I’ve read of anything in a long, long time (probably since some other issue of The Walking Dead, if I were to really think about it). By now, anyone reading the series knows that it’s not about the zombies or the gore. The horror, the fear, the nauseous feeling you get sometimes when reading this, comes from the humans. And more importantly, it’s as a result of emotional investment in the characters. Just like the events of issue 48 would have had less impact if they happened sooner, the events of issue 100 work because there are 99 issues of build up behind it. In the time this series has existed, people have often complained that nothing was happening for long stretches. But by now, you should be prepared for anything to happen after a long stretch like that. Yes, there’s a formula at play here, but Robert Kirkman uses that formula like a master.

Right off the bat (no pun intended) the issue opens with scenes that imply, somehow, that something horrible is about to go down. Sure, we know this is true because it’s been hyped, but even if we didn’t, and didn’t know that this was a big milestone 100th issue, there is something about the way the scenes are presented that just ooze tension. There’s a threat looming behind each group we see. They are, for the most part, saying they are optimistic about the future, but somehow, you know they’re really not. They feel it and you do, too. Charlie Adlard, through lines on a paper, in black and white, conveys a sense of doubt and apprehension behind the eyes and through posture that rival the best actors. The subtlety is amazing and yet the feeling is impossible to miss, so your stomach starts getting tied into knots as you turn each page. And yet, you’re never really prepared for what happens.

By the time we find out which group is in danger, the scene plays out slowly and horrifically. You know something is going to happen, but you aren’t sure what and once you do know what it is and even to who, you still aren’t sure how much you’re going to see or where it will end. But you see everything, in heartbreaking, agonized detail. And once it’s done, the threat of more stays hanging there. I for one felt just as powerless as the characters I’ve gotten to know for 100 issues. It was like I was right there with them, unable to stop what was happening, witnessing and getting very nauseous. Once I closed the book, I was not entirely sure what to do next. I eventually read the next book in my stack, Batman, and as good as it was, I still couldn’t shake The Walking Dead. I guess that, much like Macho Grande, I’ll never get over The Walking Dead.