The Walking Dead Season 7! Sunday October 23rd 2016!

You're missing the joke xD

 

I think it served to just freak Rick out further, not knowing if the others were being killed while he was away. It messed with his head, and Negan was very successful in that sense. It was a continuation of breaking Rick's will.

Maggie seems to be the one most determined to fight against Negan's crew going forward. At least at this point. Maybe she becomes the leader, or at least unites them together again.

 

Brutal, ugly and sadistic. I read a review of this episode that observed TWD just isn't fun anymore, and I'm starting to agree. For all the sloppy writing and plotting, there was something weirdly enjoyable about the show. This episode was torture porn, and that's not my idea of fun.

 

The Nagan, Carl and Rick moment was right out of the Bible.

"God said to Abraham kill me a son .... ". His test.

 

Whatever happened to the baby ? I guess I missed something

 

no I didn't...LOL.

 

Indeed...it was very moving...

 

and I welcome yours and everyone else who has an opinion!

 

Indeed!

 

still at the complex...yes?

 

Well it wasn't on the roof of the motor home

 

lol...that's funny.

 

She was left behind in Alexandria I believe. I don't recall who they left her with though.

 

YES...

 

The brutal way they presented the killing of two characters the audience cared for was daring but I think they may have alienated half of their audience with it.

 

I can accept the brutal-ness. It's a zombie apocalypse. I don't expect harp music while a puppy licks my face. But they should have shown the death last season. At least Abraham's. Then cutting right to Glen's would have been a surprise opening the new season. But killing off a secondary character, and then killing off someone who was presumed dead last season only to be saved by dumpster...and making me wait 30 minutes for the money shot...was typical Walking Dead laziness.

 

No, daring would have been to have Negan kill Daryl or Michonne(Rick's real Right Hand Man & Right Hand Woman) or kill his kid(Carl). Maggie being pregnant, I figured was off limits to be killed, even for Negan.

 

The rumor was that they were going to kill off Glenn AND Maggie but that was changed when word leaked out that,was the case.

I still think that it was pretty daring to kill Glenn who had so many close calls previously. He was and is a pretty popular character

I do agree that it does border on torture porn the way it was handled.

 

The gory deaths were pretty shocking. They'll get some added mileage out of that and Negan for a while.

In my opinion the premiere is setting up for the beginning of the end for the series, whether intended or not.

 

It worked for me, but I have heard/read a few people talk about those flash cuts and they were "reading" them in the same way that they read the actual flashbacks to the real killings. I would have to watch it again. Don't think I have the strength.

 

It seems to me the show has set itself up in such a way that it needs to regularly kill off key characters, and it has to keep upping the shock factor each time it does so. Otherwise a certain section of the fanbase will say, "wasn't as good as X's death last season". I think they are on a hiding to nothing if they keep running down that channel. In this respect, it is very much like torture porn, where each new entry in a franchise has to top the one that went before in terms of spectacular, graphic and inventie death scenes. But writers were doing the same with Jacobean tragedy four hundred years ago (you thought a poisoned bible and a poisoned helmet and a Mexican stand-off were cool? I'll see those and raise you a brother and sister incest, and a heart on a dagger), and it was similar with the grand guignol in fin de siecle Paris, and in the earliest days of splatter movies - Herschell Gordon Lewis, etc. Nothing new under the sun. But these things always end up running themselves into the sand.

 

Will Negan end up in Morgan`s cage he built in Alexandria?People already just want to see Negan die now while what he did still has an impact,not three seasons from now.Personally I don`t care anymore if I just binge watch on netflicks a few years from now without commercials.
This episode seemed like a big turning point,perhaps an anti climax dragged out for a few seasons.This one almost as intended seemed like an end as if it no longer matters what the group decides to do next.

 

As others have mentioned, it was the sadistic tone of the entire episode that turned a lot of people off, myself included. Yes, the deaths you mentioned in previous episodes were all disturbing and Hershel's death was especially gruesome. But season seven's opening episode was entirely dedicated to killing off two beloved characters and seeing the psychological breakdown of the group's leader by another human being. You could easily forget you were watching a TV show about a zombie apocalypse. I hate to use the "torture porn" tag, but that's what it felt like. Usually, that kind of stuff doesn't bother me; but when you've spent several years routing for characters you like as opposed to a 90 minute film where many of the characters "deserve" to die, yes, it feels different. At least it does to me. In other words, the world is miserable enough as it is. I don't need to be reminded of the brutality that humans are capable of inflicting on other humans. I'm all for the zombie violence, but not when it reminds me of all the bad **** happening in the world right now. I come to TWD to be entertained, not to have my nose rubbed in butchery just for the sake of it. That said, I'm sticking with the show. I fully expect others to die and I'm OK with that as that has been the premise all along. But this was too much for me...just my opinion.

 

I find these discussions really fascinating. It is a case of "how far is too far?" ... "Give it to me, give it to me..." and then "Ow! I didn't want THAT!" And we are in an age where there is SO much feedback available to writers and showrunners. I don't know, do they just try and tune it all out, or do they get obsessed with it? Perhaps when they start listening too closely to their audiences, it all starts to fall apart.

I agree with the torture porn comments to an extent but as Barnabas points out, torture porn usually does not involve us with the victims of the violence. And it is a whole other ballgame again when one has been following these characters through many episodes and over many years - a completely different experience from a 90 min film.

I remember thinking at the time that the episode The Grove was the most shocking thing I had seen on TV. And of course that was almost entirely devoid of gore.

The new episode was probably more shocking on a visceral level. And it was interesting noticing how my heartbeat rose on my fitbit! In the end, I think The Grove will stick with me longer than the deaths of Abraham and Glenn, simply because the moral complexity of Carol's dilemma in The Grove is more resonant. I used to think you could teach a very interesting moral philosophy course based around TWD. I haven't been feeling that for a good season or so now.

 

I've stopped watching after the Glenn fake-out and other silly narrative contrivances in the second half of the last season left me ambivalent. I don't know if it will be more of the same this season, I'll let you lot tell me and maybe pick it up again if it improves!