The Walking Dead Season 6 Returns on Sunday Feb. 14, 2016

I actually re-watched the finale last night, and that's probably the first time since mid-Season 5 (if not Season 4) that I've re-watched an entire episode (re-watching previous episodes/seasons used to be a fun pastime leading up to a new season or mid-season premiere), and while I'd have to say objectively it didn't strike me as any better, it was very slightly more enjoyable (or less annoying) watching it the second time. I think once you know how the episode is going to be and you watch it, it's easier to handle. The end with Negan maybe even had a teeny-tiny bit more weight to it; though it just reinforced that if they had shown the death, it would have been FAR more powerful.

 

lol...EXACTLY.

 

no, without his gun he'd be bullet ridden as well....dead...both of them.

 

I'm not sure they will have to magically escape. I assume/understood that Negan is releasing them, and expects to start his weekly pickup of half their rations the following week.

It will be on Rick and crew to determine if they want to submit to Negan's demands or do something else.

 

Is there any possibility that more than one person gets whacked by Lucille?

 

I doubt this. She'll probably have another harrowing comeback. She's overcome worse in the past.

 

we'll see..but, I stand by my statement.

 

I'd be fine with Negan taking a bat to about 90% of the cast at this point

 

Anything is possible of course, and I *do* think more characters (e.g. Sasha or Rosita, etc.) will be dispatched perhaps during the season. But they like to get a lot of mileage out of their deaths, so it seems unlikely they'll have two deaths in the Season 7 premiere. At the hands of Negan anyway.

 

A lot of comments on forums, angry about the finale, that are suggesting Scott Gimple do a variety of interesting things to himself with the bat....

 

Just read a NASTY review of the upcoming season of FTWD. Looks like they've pretty much done away with the original premise (the beginning of the zombie apocalypse) and it's just become TWD West! I figured that would happen eventually, just not so soon!

 

Scott strikes me as the kind of guy that's probably already done most of those things anyway

 

It wouldn't have been this one, would it?

Fear the Walking Dead's new season has learned all the wrong lessons »

 

I've never doubted that Gimple has to be aware of the criticism of the show. I just think they (partially unfairly, and certainly conveniently) dismiss the criticism and minimize/marginalize it.

 

YEA, I may have to stop watching FTWD after that review!
NOT!!! LOL...like that makes a difference!
looking forward to Sunday!

 

I think some of the show's shortcomings may be dictated by the AMC overlords. In other words, Gimple might be creatively sharper than the network allows him and the show to be. Previous showrunners Glen Mazzara and Frank Darabont couldn't quite figure out how to operate under AMC's dictatorship, but maybe Gimple has -- by doing exactly what they want him to do and pretending it's actually what he wants to do (lest he be #3 on TWD's canned showrunner list).

 

'The Walking Dead' Season 6 Finale Director Responds to Fan Outrage, Reveals Easter Eggs »

 

Everyone keeps talking about AMC's dark overlords of dictatorial proportions, yet some of the greatest shows to grace television in a long time was under AMC's fascist banner, and they seemed to survive, indeed, thrive, in the hands of the boogy man.

Mad Men. Breaking Bad. Better Call Saul. And the upcoming Preacher don't seem to have had any problems that TWD does.

Hell, at one point the cast of Mad Men held out for more money, so AMC took from other show's budget, like Breaking Bad, and BB chugged right along.

No, I believe there's a price to be paid for success, and that's greed. It doesn't make AMC evil; it makes AMC buy low and sell high. That is, outside of the makeup, FX department and what they spend on actors, all of the other team members, like writers, camara men, and stuff like that, they got out of Woolworth's.

Secondly, I'm afraid that Gimple and Nicotero are simply second rate hacks. Gimple was writing Simpson's comics, for God's sake, and Nicotero is an FX supervisor.

I'm all for upward mobility, but sometimes it works...and then there is TWD...and FTWD.

 

The situation with Breaking Bad and Mad Men was different because AMC didn't own those properties like they do Walking Dead. The creators of Mad Men and Breaking Bad could have told AMC to screw off and defected to another network if they wanted to (apparently, Breaking Bad was shopped to FX when Vince Gilligan was at blows with AMC execs at one point). So those two shows had the luxury of bargaining power -- AMC couldn't just fire Vince Gilligan or Matthew Weiner and replace them like they did Frank Darabont and the second Walking Dead showrunner -- and could very well do with Gimple if he becomes a pain in the ass for them too.

The bottom line is that AMC didn't have the same creative or legal control over those two shows that they do over The Walking Dead.

 

At some point it comes down to art vs money. Frankly, I don't think they've steered the ship incorrectly - it's the highest rated cable TV show for a reason. It's a very polarizing show but that generates buzz which is good for both AMC and the Walking Dead crew. Like it or not, it is a business and it exists to make money. And it does that extremely well.

 

When you read the details of Frank Darabont's lawsuit against AMC and you find out just how much interference there was by AMC and how much of it boiled down to money and control, I think the network inevitably winds up as a thug-headed villain. The reason why Breaking Bad and Mad Men managed to survive is that both shows were co-owned by Sony, so Sony got to call some of the shots, plus the (very experienced) producers/showrunners for those programs were canny enough to insist on a large degree of creative control.

But in the case of Walking Dead, AMC owns 100% of the show, so they had the ability to force out pretty much anybody they wanted to. There are often screaming matches and shoving fights between networks and showrunners, and the network will generally yield if a) the showrunner has a great track record, b) the show is coming in on time and on budget, and c) the ratings are high. In the case of Darabont, he had been promised by AMC that they would increase the budget of Walking Dead for season 2 if the ratings were decent. The ratings went far higher than anybody expected, but they sandbagged him by asking him to cut the budget by 20%, causing him to blow his stack.

Everything I know about the AMC execs indicate that they were not experienced with series TV and were more accustomed to running packages of old movies, which is essentially how they started ("American Movie Classics"), so I think they were taken aback by showrunners who wanted much more control than they were willing to give. My own observation is that they are difficult and cheap, but some producers -- particularly Vince Gilligan -- found ways to work around them. Mad Men's Matt Weiner had to threaten to quit several times when AMC wanted him to fire several actors in order to cut his budget, and he won most of those battles.

My opinion is that these shows often survive in spite of AMC's management, not because of them.

 

"The minute you see somebody not on their knees in front of Negan, you may have an inkling."

So it's Abraham?

 

(a) Abraham was on his knees



(b) you're misreading Nicotero's statement. what he said is that if people see screen shots in advance of Season 7 and see a character no longer in front of Negan, they could assume that character survived the season 6 finale. he then said that would be a mistake because the show could make use of flashbacks wherein a dead character could seem to be alive if one goes purely by screen shots.

 

Righto! Thanks for reminding me of some things, as well as shedding new light on others for me.

It gives me a little more faith in Preacher as it is also co-owned by Sony.

 

oh ok, Abraham stood up for a moment so I thought that was the clue. But it wouldn't be so obvious, would it? I dunno, it feels like leverage against the actors. If they don't come to terms with AMC then they're the one(s) Negan kills.