I didn't mind the first few seasons, as they have a binge-able quality to them - I wanted to keep watching the episodes, and became somewhat invested in the characters, despite the many annoyances and cliches that came up here and there.
Skipping ahead, once Negan came into play as the central villain, him and his merry band of "Saviours", the show took a steep downward slide, and only worsened with each season. The show has a few soft landings here and there, but once Negan is dealt with, it rolls off the edge of the landing and begins its inexorable flight into a garbage can that has been kicked around and vomited in.
The middle seasons are all about Negan's people against Rick's people, in a never-ending paramilitary-esque battle, one that involves similarly never-ending bullets, and bad guys. The show became all about hollow-feeling gunfights that were poorly-choreographed, and just plain stupid and unrealistic. It was here that the God-awful writing came into full-view, and started to anger me: so many opportunities to kill Negan... Rick, in his boundless tactical genius, decides to ram through Sanctuary's gates, fire in the air and wait for Negan to come out and monologue, rather than just shooting him dead there and then. The whole thing, I found, was becoming more and more unenjoyable as time went on.
Anyway, I don't fancy writing a lengthy essay about this show, as it's just not worth the time, and the sheer amount of things that I would like to say and weave into this review is breathtaking, and would require a type of literary deftness and care that I don't possess at this point in time. So, instead, from here onwards, I will venture to be terse and offer you a series of complaints in a more digestible format. I should tell you, too, that I'm in season 10 and I can't take it anymore. Each episode is like dental surgery... without pain-relief; or like a cancerous, rectal prolapse, one that's being ravaged by fire ants... while you have an acid-drip over your eyeballs. Yes, it's that bad. In fact, the worst show that I've ever seen. OK, I'll stop. Here we go: 1: Recycled plot - the characters move around from place to place, get comfortable, a danger emerges, they move, repeat.
2: Zombies seem to be very fast, strong, and dexterous one moment, and slow and basically pushovers the next. Sometimes they can rip someone's guts out with their bare hands, other times they can be shoved away limply.
3: Too many characters that I don't care about. The later seasons especially... They just keep introducing characters, and none of them are even a little bit interesting.
4: So much just happens - Maggie was pregnant for the usual length of time, at no point did she show, and then one day she's just had the baby... she sticks around for a while and then pop, she's gone again without any explanation or goodbye. Rick isn't killed, but just flown off into the sunset and we're left with... the rest. If you're going to take him out of the show, why not just kill him off?
5: The flashbacks and storyline. I have never in my life seen a show, or anything, that is arranged and edited so abysmally. What's with the obsession with flashbacks, and the flashbacks to the flashbacks, and then a flash-forward? A flashback is used as a tool to enhance the story in some way, for a specific, worthwhile purpose - take a look at Breaking Bad (of which I think this show copied quite a few things from). The flashbacks in this POS show offer nothing, and only show mundane things that could have been ordered linearly in the storyline. I don't even know which way is up in this show, and I don't think that the crew do either; the only thing that I need to know is - "where's the damn off button?" This list is by no means exhaustive, and given that I'm stuck in season 10 and have been wriggling in pain with each minute of every episode, I don't think that I'll continue. It's sort of like smashing your head against a brick wall repeatedly, hoping that it'll make your headache go away.
Skipping ahead, once Negan came into play as the central villain, him and his merry band of "Saviours", the show took a steep downward slide, and only worsened with each season. The show has a few soft landings here and there, but once Negan is dealt with, it rolls off the edge of the landing and begins its inexorable flight into a garbage can that has been kicked around and vomited in.
The middle seasons are all about Negan's people against Rick's people, in a never-ending paramilitary-esque battle, one that involves similarly never-ending bullets, and bad guys. The show became all about hollow-feeling gunfights that were poorly-choreographed, and just plain stupid and unrealistic. It was here that the God-awful writing came into full-view, and started to anger me: so many opportunities to kill Negan... Rick, in his boundless tactical genius, decides to ram through Sanctuary's gates, fire in the air and wait for Negan to come out and monologue, rather than just shooting him dead there and then. The whole thing, I found, was becoming more and more unenjoyable as time went on.
Anyway, I don't fancy writing a lengthy essay about this show, as it's just not worth the time, and the sheer amount of things that I would like to say and weave into this review is breathtaking, and would require a type of literary deftness and care that I don't possess at this point in time. So, instead, from here onwards, I will venture to be terse and offer you a series of complaints in a more digestible format. I should tell you, too, that I'm in season 10 and I can't take it anymore. Each episode is like dental surgery... without pain-relief; or like a cancerous, rectal prolapse, one that's being ravaged by fire ants... while you have an acid-drip over your eyeballs. Yes, it's that bad. In fact, the worst show that I've ever seen. OK, I'll stop. Here we go: 1: Recycled plot - the characters move around from place to place, get comfortable, a danger emerges, they move, repeat.
2: Zombies seem to be very fast, strong, and dexterous one moment, and slow and basically pushovers the next. Sometimes they can rip someone's guts out with their bare hands, other times they can be shoved away limply.
3: Too many characters that I don't care about. The later seasons especially... They just keep introducing characters, and none of them are even a little bit interesting.
4: So much just happens - Maggie was pregnant for the usual length of time, at no point did she show, and then one day she's just had the baby... she sticks around for a while and then pop, she's gone again without any explanation or goodbye. Rick isn't killed, but just flown off into the sunset and we're left with... the rest. If you're going to take him out of the show, why not just kill him off?
5: The flashbacks and storyline. I have never in my life seen a show, or anything, that is arranged and edited so abysmally. What's with the obsession with flashbacks, and the flashbacks to the flashbacks, and then a flash-forward? A flashback is used as a tool to enhance the story in some way, for a specific, worthwhile purpose - take a look at Breaking Bad (of which I think this show copied quite a few things from). The flashbacks in this POS show offer nothing, and only show mundane things that could have been ordered linearly in the storyline. I don't even know which way is up in this show, and I don't think that the crew do either; the only thing that I need to know is - "where's the damn off button?" This list is by no means exhaustive, and given that I'm stuck in season 10 and have been wriggling in pain with each minute of every episode, I don't think that I'll continue. It's sort of like smashing your head against a brick wall repeatedly, hoping that it'll make your headache go away.
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