What are your thoughts on the season 9 premiere of The Walking Dead? Any disappointments?
I’m still not sure. Both my partner and I are seriously addicted to the show, so of course we couldn’t wait for the season 9 premiere. It didn’t take long for my partner to decide she didn’t like it at all; I wasn’t sure. The new look and feel of the show makes it busy, sometimes hard to keep up with what’s going on if you’re not paying close attention.Our core group isn’t together anymore, and that’s kind of a difficult adjustment.Daryl’s at the Sanctuary and doesn’t want to be.Maggie’s now been voted in as the Hilltop’s leader, although, if you watched it, Gregory wasn’t the good little resident, accepting of Maggie’s leadership, that he made out to be. Again, if you watched it, his slimy nature never went away, and his attempt to get Maggie killed didn’t end well for him. IMHO, I think that whole plot line was carried out too soon and too quickly. Maggie’s showing signs of becoming dictatorial, and I think that won’t end well for her.Rick and Michonne are back at Alexandria. Judith is finally talking and she’s adorable. I’m so glad they’ve used the same twins since season 6 to play Judith. Rick asked Maggie to come visit Alexandria, but she refuses because Negan is still alive, rotting away in the jail cell Morgan built, as promised.Carol and Ezekiel are at the Kingdom, and now they’re in a relationship. Yay!! Best part of the show for me. But not so fast! Ezekiel asked her to marry him and wanted to give her a ring. She didn’t want to take it and had a long list of bullshit reasons why. Truth is, she’s scared of making that kind of commitment. That’s the impression I got. And if the lousy, rotten producers decide to follow the comic where Ezekiel’s concerned, knowing how they love to break our hearts, Carol will come back to the Kingdom (she’s taking over at the Sanctuary for a while) just in time for, or just after, Ezekiel has encountered Alpha. If you don’t know the significance of that, I’m not going to be the one to tell you!It’s going to take some getting used to, that’s for sure. And, knowing we’re going to be losing Rick just puts a dark cloud over the whole thing. Darker than usual. I can’t imagine the show without him, no matter how many people say how amazingly awesome it’s going to be despite his absence.It’s not the same show anymore. Once Andrew Lincoln leaves, I don’t know what it’s going to be, but it will never be the same.
What are your thoughts on The Walking Dead expanding into movies?
Nah - the walking dead never recovered from “Swinging the bat” in the Season 7 Premiere which sadistically killed off beloved characters, and dragged the audience through a depressing, maudlin, otherwise vacuous 60 minutes which permanently lost them millions of fans.(Will ‘swing the bat’ enter the entertainment lexicon along with ‘jump the shark’?)What made the Walking Dead fun to watch wasn’t just the gore and destruction. Rather, it was the little islands of humanity that arose in an ocean of doom.Life got simpler and more authentic. It became reduced to trusted friends and defenders, small villages, great crusades to secure such simple things as gas or medication. All the world is hostile and dangerous except for the little camp of survivors that has become home.It was that sanctuary that kept us watching. How people got along, fell in love, learned to shoot, shook off the past. Planting fragile gardens as death swirled just outside their walls.That episode obliterated this precarious duality. The sanctuary was over-run and now everything was death. This wasn’t just depressing - it was boring. That was the last episode I watched, because I lost any emotional attachment to the characters. I just didn’t care.
What are your thoughts on The Walking Dead mid-season finale of Season 9, episode 7?
Well, this is the first season finale in a few years that I cared about. This season gave me hope that the writers weren’t just wandering around with no idea where they were going.A couple of random thoughts I had:why did they tease us with badass Judith in the first episode and then….nadawhy didn’t they explain what happened to make Michonne and the others stop talkingwhy didn’t they introduce Michonne’s child to us?why did the whisperers want to find humans and kill them, what is their stake in that?if the whisperers are people in walker outfits hanging out in hordes, what happens when they need to pee, sleep or cough or whateverwhat is with the X scar?how did Carol get the ring back when the survivors were in a huge, blazing fire?I would hope the teens that grew up in the apocalypse would be more walker savvyit was disappointing to me that the whisperers were live people, it would have been a lot more of a horror story if the walkers were changingWhy do the walkers do what the whisperers say, they have never shown any intelligence beforeIn all these years, why haven’t they put up some kind of fencing to keep the walkers out of the road when they travel?now that Negan is free, are there any bad saviors left to join back up with him?will Rosita, Father Gabriel and Eugene be a huge love triangle?will Darryl’s dog be ok?I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but I hope they don’t take all of next season to answer them. I am looking forward to the return for the first time in a long time. Hoping to go back to the roots of this show, no one is safe, the world is dangerous and people banding together is the only hope of survival.
What are your thoughts on the season 3 premiere of The Leftovers?
Liked it. Interesting.Why is the government figuring so prominently in suppressing those who would refocus everyone on the departure?Who knows Kevin died twice and returned?What is the ongoing thread on dogs about?The second season pregnant woman who had her child taken after her death set the stage for ….Similarly the failed predictions of the apocalypse starting season 3 is telling for where we are going.There is an earlier reference to a guy in Australia who cannot die. Is that Kevin Sr?What was the Nora doppelgänger about? Where/when was that?
I live in Wisconsin, what time will The Walking Dead premiere air on amc on sunday?
8 PM