This is the end (for me)

Season 7 of The Walking Dead. Ugh. Where to begin? I guess at the beginning. But it’s tough to remember the beginning because this sixteen episode season felt like at least three years. I am literally having a difficult time remembering what the hell even happened in the first half of the season.

I’m a firm believer that TV shows should be no longer than 10-12 episodes. Period. If you can’t tell a story in that amount of time, you’re terrible and need to quit. I know shows like the Walking Dead just print money for the networks, but come on, man (quit that banging). By episode three I was falling asleep. NOTHING WAS HAPPENING! And it’s a surprise to people that the ratings suffered?

The people in charge of this show really pulled the old bait-and-switch between season 6 and season 7. Yeah, the first episode had a “bombshell” by killing off two major characters (of what feels like 17 or 18. Someone count it up for me, please.), but who really cared about those characters? I know I didn’t. Spoilers ahead. Tread lightly if you care (which I can’t imagine anyone would).

Glenn. This guy somehow made it all the way from the first season. He had/has a baby on the way. (But who can tell? Maggie has to be to the point of showing now, right? Dumb.) But, lo and behold, the writers of the show completely stole any emotional impact of his death by doing one of those oh-so-cheap he’s dead!!!! Just kidding!!! He’s not dead!! He just improbably hid under some other poor sap’s body while the zombies went to town on him and then somehow hid under a dumpster until they all left or something. Holy shit. This goddamn show. Anyway, when he finally did get killed by Negan the only reaction I could muster was, “Huh. They should have just killed him under the dumpster.”

Should have been "Glenn dying underneath"

Abraham. He died. I don’t know. He was a main character (I guess) and he was in a relationship with two characters that should have died at least a season ago. He said funny things here and there but then that mild charm wore off on me by about the third time he said something WACKY (!!!) and profane.

Anyway, so that was the beginning of the season. Then all sorts of stuff happened but also nothing happened. I think one of the episodes was in black and white for a while. There was this town of women by the sea for some reason. We met some trash people. There’s a tiger that somehow knows the “good guys” from the “bad guys”. Everyone has Stormtrooper-caliber aim when shooting at any slightly main character. I mean, good God. Negan flipped like 15 people the bird while driving away in a canvas covered truck with the window down and not one bullet hit him? Since when did trucks become completely bullet-proof? And I loved that all of the good guys just waltzed into Alexandria and didn’t take any cover and somehow didn’t get destroyed. I guess I’m a fool to expect some realism from a show about the zombie apocalypse. (Speaking of which, were there any zombies in this season? This is like Prison Break. They’ve outlived the very name of the show.) (And please don’t bother listing all of the zombies that were in this season. I’m just trying to make a weak point here.)

Also, Darryl did a lot of grunting and scowling this whole season. This show is at that point where each character is just a caricature of what they were nearer to the beginning (see: Friends). They are all one-dimensional and the attempts to make them less so just fails miserably when the next episode shows them being…you guessed it, one-dimensional. Even Morgan, arguably the one character with the most potential, has just gone back to being like every other character.

But there’s gonna be a war! Next season. Or the season after that. There still seems to be a lot of milk left in this cow. Didn’t they mention a war sometime last season? Where was that? You had sixteen episodes and some of those were extended. And they didn’t even kill Coral. When can we be rid of that kid?

Just like this show.

All of this is to say, thank you to the writers for making my decision to quit watching this show an easy one.