AMC's The Walking Dead

I guess I'll just start discussing this week's episode by myself since everyone else seems to be underwhelmed.
The Good: Seeing Rick just run that dude down and shoot him in the head was bad ass. Nice to see him complete the transformation that's been building over the years. Don't mess with Rick Grimes, man.
The Bad: Beth's death was idiotic. Why would she suddenly decide to try to kill an armed cop when she was about 30 seconds away from her freedom? Simply makes no sense. Especially not for a character she spent all of a few days with and not to kill a character who scenes earlier she saved. Just a dumb and needless death. And I say this as a non-fan of Beth. I don't care that the character is gone at all but if you wanted the scene to have more power, Dawn should have intentionally shot Beth in the back of the head as she was walking away after Beth's last line to her. Then you still get all the beauty of those last scenes with Darryl and Maggie and her death makes much more sense from a character perspective for BOTH Dawn and Beth.

The good thing is that this is going to create a VERY interesting character development storyline for Maggie and Darryl. My guess is we're going to learn Maggie had long ago assumed her sister was dead and that's why she wasn't asking about her. Maggie has just about lost everyone who matters to her, with the lone exception being Glenn, so to see her suddenly have hope of seeing Beth and to see that hope extinguished? Man, that's going to be an incredible plot device.
Same thing with Darryl. I was worried he was a goner tonight but now it is going to be incredibly interesting to see where they go from here with him since this 1.) Was his plan and 2.) Came about because he didn't want to go in and kill everyone.
I still think Darryl is closer to Tyreese's side of the world than Rick's but does this push him further into that crazed man mindset? He had just begun to take over a leadership role by maturing into an actual adult (As opposed to the sheltered child he was in S1) so I wonder what this will do to his mindset.
All in all a bit of an underwhelming midseason finale, especially compared to the past two for sure.

 

Rick had some badass moments. That was absolutely on the good side of things.

There is certainly some room to take characters in interesting directions from here. Obviously, Maggie and Daryl are hit the hardest, but I think everybody who saw Beth killed was shaken. It was such a punch in the gut after everything they did to try to save everybody. Wasn't it Carol who said she didn't think they get to save people any more?

Beth's death made no sense, unless you just take it as a stupid character showing she was even more of an idiot than we realized. Truly a Darwinian moment, but I agree that it didn't make sense for her to do attack Dawn in that moment.

 

I never thought of Beth being a strong character, even with all the hoopla of her "growing" while on the road with Darryl and her survival in the hospital. "Strong" would have been killing Dawn after being beaten up by her. Not sitting around chatting with her after she'd put two hideous scars on that pretty face. That was my clue. Beth won't be hanging around because they've messed up that pretty face of the young innocent girl, and sadly, that's really all she was. That and who was the most expendable of the longest-lasting characters? (Side note: Rick, Glenn, Darryl, Carl and Carol are the only survivors from Season 1? Maggie and Beth came in during Season 2). And yes she was stupid to try that at the end, and should have gone for Dawn's neck anyway, but really it was fitting because she wasn't that bright. I DID expect her to have one of those Hollywood death scenes where she talks a while then dies in someone's arms (Darryl's?) Just getting the top of her head blown off was the only shocking thing to me about the ending.

 

Well, I guess Carl is going to have to limit his fapping to just Michonne now.

 

Nah.

There's always Tara and Rosita ...

 

Was I the only one who was underwhelmed. The sooner this show announces an end date and an exit strategy the better. It's getting very close to Lost in the regard that the writers seem to be running on vapor. A) Break up the group B) Have one of the groups encounter a new group C) the groups reunite, but one of the semi-originals die. Rinse and repeat.

 

Problem is, and I've felt this way since season 1, hell, even the comics, is how do you end it? No matter what happens, stopping the governor, finding sanctuary, defeating this threat or that one, they are still in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. I would be shocked if a cure is found, and, quite frankly, at this point, it would be forced.

About the only exit I see is have the dead just....stop coming back to life. That could happen in the midseason finale of the final season and then let the last 6 or 7 episodes wrap up the story, whether it be fight off the last big threat or whatever.

 

Emily Kinney on the post show was more heartbreaking than the death. Wow, that girl really loved working on that show.

 

To borrow from Game of Thrones discussions, "If you're hoping for a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention."

 

Normally, I would buy into this but simply having everyone die as the ending would be an insult. At least give it an Orwellian ending.

 

They have a ton of source material to deal with yet and ratings are at an all-time high. They're not pulling the plug anytime soon.

 

Yep.

The pictures they show when a character leaves the show are awesome as well.