{"id":49055,"date":"2022-11-21T23:55:57","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T04:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=49055"},"modified":"2022-11-21T23:55:57","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T04:55:57","slug":"thoughts-on-the-walking-dead-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=49055","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on The Walking Dead \u201cFinale\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-49056 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/TWDwtf.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"314\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/TWDwtf.jpg 560w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/TWDwtf-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Although I can\u2019t promise that what words come from my fingers in ensuing paragraphs might not be blatant spoilers, don\u2019t read too much into the quotation marks in the title.\u00a0 S11E24 of <em>The Walking Dead<\/em> was most definitely the finale to the series, but there\u2019s a lot of nonsense in the final eight minutes of the runtime that very much implies otherwise, and that\u2019s all I\u2019ll say about that, at least not without a tastefully placed cut.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Honestly, leading up to the long-coming series finale, I actually did not have any high expectations that it was going to be any good.\u00a0 Frankly, I still maintain that the series still peaked with Negan and the Saviors, which I think was season 7 or 8, so that means the last 3-4 seasons have definitely been on a downhill trajectory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">However, all things considered, in spite of the low bar I had set, the final episode was actually better than I had anticipated.\u00a0 Without giving anything away, the episode resolves the supposed final conflict fairly early on, so the rest of the episode was actually allowed to breathe and methodically wind things down, instead of a mad dash of trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible in a sloppy manner \/<strong>cough<\/strong><em>Gameo Thrones<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">I make the analogy a lot, but The Walking Dead also feels like the <em>Rurouni Kenshin<\/em> bell curve, where the television series peaked hard with Shishio and the Kyoto arc, but then went downhill until the series was mercifully ended.\u00a0 TWD\u2019s surprisingly positive finale still doesn\u2019t save it from a similar fate, and much like <em>Breaking Bad <\/em>ended with generic Jack the White Supremacist when Gus Fring was so good, Pamela Milton and the Commonwealth seems like such a weak antagonist to end with, especially after Negan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Alright, enough with the eggshells.\u00a0 <!--more--><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Speaking of Negan, his redemption arc was really my favorite thing about the series as it began winding down.\u00a0 Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and by proxy Lauren Cohan as Maggie, had the most interesting dynamic, an intense on-screen chemistry, and the way the showrunners handled Negan, were my favorite parts of the show as it came to an end.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Be that as it may, it\u2019s not enough to really motivate me to watch <strong>his spin-off series<\/strong>, TWD: <em>Dead City<\/em>, or <strong>any of the fucking numerous spin-offs<\/strong> that were revealed in the final minutes of the episode, unveiling an overarching fucking <strong>THE WALKING DEAD UNIVERSE<\/strong>, as if a franchise dedicated to zombies and the general shitty nature of people when left unchecked has enough gas in it to overcome the notion that people just might be tired of zombies and TWD.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">I mean, I played <em>Left 4 Dead<\/em> nearly every single night for like three years.\u00a0 I loved all of the films George Romero produced, I loved Lucio Fulci\u2019s <em>Zombi<\/em>.\u00a0 I played the fuck out of the <em>Resident Evil<\/em> and <em>House of the Dead<\/em> franchises.\u00a0 I ran in two different mud runs solely because they had a zombie survival theme.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">I\u2019m a fan of the zombie genre; but even I grew fucking exhausted with TWD.\u00a0 A part of my anticipation with the series finale was the fact that it was supposed to be the series fucking finale \u2013 an end to the series, full stop.\u00a0 I can officially take The Walking Dead off my list of shows needing catching up\/keeping up with, and move onto a whole new series to dive into.\u00a0 Close the book, literally and metaphorically on The Walking Dead, and moving onto something else with a clean slate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Sure, the series did end, in the sense that the format of ensemble cast and needing several concurrent storylines swirling around bigger ones, but it just set up a weeding out of the most compelling characters, and creating series <em>beginnings<\/em> for multiple individuals instead of a big ass Dom Toretto family.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">I mean really, Negan gets a spin-off, Daryl gets a spin-off, and the reveal everyone knew was coming, Rick and Michonne were confirmed still alive and doing their own thing, and boom, they\u2019re getting a spin-off as well.\u00a0 Fear the Walking Dead remains in production, and they\u2019re basically like when <em>Angel<\/em> continued to air, after <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer <\/em>had closed shop, and it\u2019s a weird dynamic to know that the spin-off exceeded the origin.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">I went through the final episode thinking how refreshingly novel they were allowing the series to close out, feeling very positive about everything.\u00a0 Actually getting emotional that the series that started while I was single and living in my old home 12 years ago, was finally coming to a close after I moved, got married and had two kids.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">But then the final eight minutes of run time happens, and the show is all like <strong>fuck you<\/strong>, this isn\u2019t the end, this is all just the beginning BOOM The Walking Dead UNIVERSE.\u00a0 And I\u2019m just fucking groaning in disgust and exhaustion, because regardless of my initial disdain and disapproval of this swerve, I know that deep down, I\u2019ll probably still at the very least, give each of these spin-offs a chance, because I\u2019m a sucker for familiarity and I really do like these characters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Even though all of them will undoubtedly continue the trend of zombies exist, but human beings are still worse, I\u2019ll still think it\u2019s nice that Rick and Michonne and Daryl and Negan are still out there doing shit. \u00a0All I can hope for at this point is that there\u2019s a nice long layover between now and when these shows start to come to existence, because as far as TWD goes, I think just about everyone needs a goddamn break.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although I can\u2019t promise that what words come from my fingers in ensuing paragraphs might not be blatant spoilers, don\u2019t read too much into the quotation marks in the title.\u00a0 S11E24 of The Walking Dead was most definitely the finale to the series, but there\u2019s a lot of nonsense in the final eight minutes of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=49055\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thoughts on The Walking Dead \u201cFinale\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,83,69,49,145],"class_list":["post-49055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-comparison","tag-observations","tag-television","tag-wtf","tag-zbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49057,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49055\/revisions\/49057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}