Like hell, he did. Rick and company killed more than a few of his people and then thought they were gonna be in some Deebo shit without knowing ds scope of Negan's power or how big his group was.
The Walking Dead: All Seasons (DON'T POST SPOILERS)
- Thread starter SamSneed
- Start date
Like hell, he did. Rick and company killed more than a few of his people and then thought they were gonna be in some Deebo shit without knowing ds scope of Negan's power or how big his group was.
naw
negan's people came at them first (the bikers on the road that Darryl blew up)
that's so fucking false it's not funny...the "character development" plea to excuse boring/lazy writing is so over
Right. Niggas want or expect every episode to be non stop action, walker killin', enemy group killin' gore fest or sum'n. And let that be da case, folks would then complain about lack of build up which is da shit they tryna do now.
it doesn't have to be A to Z...character development and an exciting story are not mutually exclusive
idk not a knock but maybe you and gene's selection of books and/or television viewing have led you to believe it is
I do too.
Right. Niggas want or expect every episode to be non stop action, walker killin', enemy group killin' gore fest or sum'n. And let that be da case, folks would then complain about lack of build up which is da shit they tryna do now.
I enjoyed it. The only thing is, it is sort of a repeat of the Andrea/Michonne story line a bit from Season 3.
Out on there own, one isn't doing well (sick vs injured), they get found by another group and taken to there camp to fix/heal the sick/injured one, the leader of the camp shows interest in one of them, one wants to leave the camp...
Obviously Ezekiel and Governor and their towns are very different, but there is some similarities in the setup...
I don't think Negan know that was Rick's group. The only ones that did were blown up or killed by Carol and Maggie in the episode after the raid of the Savior outpost (satellite building).
So in Negan's eyes, Rick's group struck first...
I doubt Neagan gives a fuck who struck first. I'm pretty sure Neagan will go mob style of any group of people they meet and let them give up their shit
basically, Negan says the world belongs to him.
The 3 women and guy that took Maggie and Carol hostage. They radioed to the rest of the saviors who were supposed to come in as backup.
Negan said:
The first group is the people at the satellite building
The second group is the ones Carol killed on the road when leaving Alexandria in the car with spikes in it
While I agree with your assessment about Negan, see the Negan quote in my last post. He believes Rick attacked first, which is what was being discussed...
So she told them about the killing of the weapons locker but not they had killed the motorcycle crew? They killed them all them dudes. Even the backup got killed. So how would he know? the 2nd group is the group that shot the arrow threw the girls eye. Dude who had took darrells bow. No way he could've known about carol that fast when she killed all those dudes expect the one stalker.
You have to character build. Movies and television have proven time and time again you can't build characters without slowing shit down to a crawl.
This. The principle weakness of this show has been its inability to build complex characters. Compare TWD to shows like The Wire, Game of Thrones, and even Breaking Bad, and you'll see how weak the character building has been.
I was being sarcastic. This episode wasn't bad to me, but when there is obvious filler, the excuse is always 'character building.' Naturally, you don't have to bore people to fucking death to build characters. There shouldn't be a day without serious problems when dead people are walking around.
I don't see how anyone would know about the Motorcycle crew.There were no survivors. I don't remember it being said that they were even affiliated with the Saviors.
why not?
if systems are in place as has been shown over the last few seasons - the dead are just an environmental hazard - and as has also been shown the real threat is human - even in war zones there will be uneventful days and days of routine
this was never the best written show on TV, last week was fun but had problems... this week established new characters and a community - it did a great job as reset episode (this is why none of the great shows do cliff hangers) next week should be another reset in or on the way to Alexandria...it doesn't have to be A to Z...character development and an exciting story are not mutually exclusive
you want strong writing? go to HBO or wait for Saul and Preacher to return, or go to FX do Atlanta and wait for Americans or Fargo to come back
I just think the writers are masters of showing what is implied. Those uneventful events don't have to be entire blocks of episodes. That's the main complaint about TWD. Instead of using half a show to show uneventful shit to 'build characters," they will string together 2 or 3 episodes in a row. The show is known for filler.
Now a show like The Strain will show flashbacks to let you know about characters while other shit is going on. Even the flashbacks aren't boring. Last night's episode wasn't bad to me(saved by the fact the cat with the tiger was a black man), but if TWD holds true to form, filler is coming soon.
This was an incredible episode!
Show was NOT filler. I don't think you guys know what filler actually is lol.
Non action doesn't mean not important.
Successfully introduced King Ezekiel. Pulled back the curtain on him as well in the same episode. He has a fucking tiger and we got his entire origin story in 1 conversation.
Morgan becoming a teacher and trying to find his way by changing his mind.
Learning the Kingdom works for Negan as well.
All those moving parts in 40 minutes. really well done.
Non action doesn't mean not important.
Successfully introduced King Ezekiel. Pulled back the curtain on him as well in the same episode. He has a fucking tiger and we got his entire origin story in 1 conversation.
Morgan becoming a teacher and trying to find his way by changing his mind.
Learning the Kingdom works for Negan as well.
All those moving parts in 40 minutes. really well done.
If you roll up to a woman house with a tiger...you got her.. even Carol couldn't fight that.
Ezekiel Jackson, Zookeeper, Atlanta Georgia.
fuck a door bell, let the cat roar
The Walking Dead Was Fun for the First Time Ever
Whenever things get too dark on TWD—usually when a main character dies—the show likes to follow up with a light-hearted episode. Case in point: while last week’s episode was unbelievably brutal and horrific, last night’s “The Well” was easily the most delightful The Waking Dead has ever been. But there was a lot more to it than just trying to cheer the audience up.
Without getting into the issues of WhodoesNegankillgate for the umpteenth time, I can say that “The Well” was the real season seven premiere. Whether you loved it or hated it, last week’s episode was a coda, an epilogue to the previous season. This was the beginning of a new chapter for the show, featuring a new community, a great new character, and raising a ton of new possibilities for both Rick’s group and the show itself—all very welcome after the sixth season put on the narrative breaks, scrambling to fill time until Negan’s arrival in the season finale.
Also welcome: no sight of Negan or the aftermath, as the episode is devoted to Carol and Morgan, and what happened to them after they were found by the armored men on horseback last season. After a zombie attack and a few hallucinations that zombies are actually living, breathing people (a very striking effect, by the way), Carol wakes up in a strange bed. As Morgan explains, they’re in “The Kingdom,” a community in a nearby city—an actual city, not the glorified suburbs of Alexandria. As Morgan wheels her around on a wheelchair, we see that the Kingdom makes Alexandria look like crap in pretty much every way possible: There are giant gardens, fruit trees, choir practice… more importantly, it looks happy and peaceful, presumably in the way Alexandria was before Rick and pals arrived. Then Morgan brings Carol to the leader of the kingdom, Ezekiel.
Ezekiel has a tiger. Ezekiel is awesome. The tiger is also awesome, but that probably went without saying. Ezekiel is king. He talks with a regal, broadly heroic English accent, he carries a sword, he sits on a throne, and when Carol discovers she’s in the post-apocalyptic equivalent of Medieval Times it’s all she can do to not to laugh hysterically.
If there is a polar opposite of seeing Glenn and Abraham get beaten slowly and graphically to death, it’s watching Carol’s face for her entire talk with Ezekiel (just watch the video above). The Kingdom is so weird, so shocking, so stupidto her that she’s almost delighted at discovering something so ridiculous. Carol uses it to fuel her “cheery innocent middle-aged lady” act, but she still looks like she’s humoring a bunch of adorable but extremely idiotic children. Add Ezekiel’s right-hand-bro Jerry (“It’s fruit time!”) and the discovery that the Kingdom serves a cobbler with every meal (what in god’s name is a lunch cobbler) and this episode was funnier than TWD probably has any right to be.
But alas, not everything is well in the Kingdom. Unlike the Alexandrians, the Kingdom hasn’t just gotten lucky and avoided the copious murderous assholes plaguing the land. The Kingdom pays tribute to the Saviors, an arrangement which Ezekiel is keeping secret from almost all of his subjects. Turns out the Saviors and the Kingdom get along great, because Ezekiel pays them what they want and on time. This time it’s a bunch of pigs, although unknown to the Saviors, Ezekiel’s trusted lieutenant Richard has fattened them up by feeding them zombies, because seriously, screw those guys.
Ezekiel may not have the power to fight the Saviors now—despite his “knights” he still doesn’t have enough real warriors—but he knows the guns that Carol and Morgan brought with them are the Saviors’, and thinks he’s found someone who can help him finally fight back. Carol, still dealing with her emotional crisis and self-loathing from last season, just wants to leave and be alone. Morgan’s first priority is taking care of Carol, but he’s happy to help train one of Ezekiel’s subjects, Ben, with a bo staff (after its determined the kid sucks with all the other weapons) while he waits for Carol to recover.
By making the Kingdom beholden to the Saviors, TWD obviously ties in this new community to its new overarching conflict, and gives it a flaw, which keeps it from being too silly. Still, Ezekiel and the Kingdom are a much-needed and much-appreciated counterweight to Negan and the Wolves and Terminus and… well, pretty much everything else in The Walking Dead. So much of this show is about meeting characters who have found new and creative ways to be reprehensible (“Hey, guys, let’s carve W’s on our heads and kill every single living person we see”). It’s so gratifying to see one group of people in the TWD-verse get weird for a good cause. Ezekiel, his tiger, and his kingdom help even the scales in a way the Hilltop Community didn’t and couldn’t. They’re a sign that The Walking Dead is more than just torture porn—that there’s more to the show than just gore and watching miserable people get more miserable. They’re a positive reason to keep watching. They’re fun.
I don’t think it’s coincidental that this is also the essence of Ezekiel’s speech to Carol in the episode’s final scenes. After catching Carol trying to steal a bit of fruit on her way out, Ezekiel drops his royal accent, and lets Carol in on his secret: He was a zookeeper who used to dabble in community theater, he helped heal the zoo’s tiger and became friends with it, and when the zombie apocalypse arrived he freed it. Having a tiger made him larger than life, and he used esteem to become the leader, to give the people he was with hope and direction, and create their community. It’s all an act, but it’s one for the greater good—and it seems to have worked. Carol, hilariously, informs Ezekiel she does not even slightly care about his backstory, and still just wants to leave. That’s when Ezekiel replies with this:
I’m sorry. For whatever bad you’ve been through. There’s so much of it out there now, you know? Too much. Out there, it feels like it’s all bad. Especially when you’re alone.
The thing is, though? It’s not all bad. It can’t be. It isn’t. Life isn’t. When there’s life there’s hope, heroism, grace, and love. When there’s life, there’s life.
Yes, a character on The Walking Dead just said he believes there is some good left in this world. Ezekiel may be talking in general, but I think the show is speaking for itself. There are still truly good-hearted people in the world ofTWD—genuinely, proactively good people. Negan might have killed Glenn and Abraham in a moment of total evil and wretchedness and nihilism, but there’s still hope in this show somewhere. There are heroes, even if Rick doesn’t seem to be one. And, uh, there’s love, even if love sometimes get beaten to death with a baseball bat. But there’s actually a reason for these characters to keep living beyond mere survival, and for you to keep watching.
I love the idea of this message, but I’m not certain The Walking Dead can back it up. Mainly because the show’s real trade has been in making its “good guys” compromise their principles to the point where their only morality is that they don’t seem to take pleasure in murdering the people they have to murder. The fact that Ezekiel is so good-hearted—he’s tells Carol he wants to help her, because helping makes him feel good, for god’s sake—makes me think he’s doomed morally as well as physically. But I would love for The Walking Dead to have a real hero again. I would really love for that hero to be Rick, but that’s been off the menu because I don’t anticipate Rick rediscovering his moral code anytime soon.
Which leads to the second problem with Ezekiel and the Kingdom, which is that they’re so much better than Rick and Alexandria, respectively. The Kingdom looks as secure as Alexandria, but seems to be much better organized, producing more food (Alexandria doesn’t have a damn pomegranate tree, that’s for sure), with happier people in it. And it seems like Ezekiel has achieved all this without proactively killing potential threats, without murdering a citizen in the town square, and without Michonne needing to knock him out because he was screaming like a crazy person at all his neighbors. Yes, Ezekiel is kowtowing to the Saviors, but that just means he’s handling a threat without getting his people killed (or having them live in fear, since he hasn’t told them)—which is objectively better than Rick trying to murder them before they get a chance to try to murder the Alexandria group, and failing spectacularly.
As I watched “The Well,” I kept thinking how I wish The Walking Dead was about Ezekiel and these people instead of Rick and the gang. This is good in that the show has brought us a great new character and storyline to get invested in, but bad in that I’d be so completely willing to abandon the main character and storyline if given the chance.
Since that’s not an option, I will try to enjoy everything about Ezekiel and the Kingdom for as long as they both shall live—especially Ezekiel convincing Carol to move to a nearby house outside the Kingdom, so she’s “left” the Kingdom and “not left.” And how Ezekiel sidles up later to Carol’s house, trying to get her to taste one of his pomegranates. And how in all ways Ezekiel is basically just the best.
All hail King Ezekiel. Long may he reign! With his tiger.
Assorted Musings:
• I’m not sure I get the deal with the pigs eating zombie meat. I can’t tell if Ezekiel is trying to achieve something beyond avoiding spending more of his food stores on food his people don’t get and a secret “screw you” to the Saviors. If eating pigs that ate zombie meat caused any kind of physical issue, surely the Saviors would notice and retaliate; also it’s implied this is not the first time the Kingdom has pulled this, so clearly it’s not affecting the Saviors.Thanks to pop culture, I know pigs eat corpses. Obviously, eating very rotten flesh isn’t optimal, but wouldn’t they just digest that too?
• Carol made her bed before she escaped, because that’s how Carol rolls.
• Zombie Kill of the Week: A knight (man, if they aren’t called knights, they should be) cuts off a zombie’s face. Nicely gruesome.
• If you found this episode to be too frivolous, next week looks like it’s all about Daryl in Savior-land, which probably won’t be a hoot.
• If Glenn and Abraham’s deaths were the price we paid to discover Melissa McBride’s heretofore-unknown comic reaction genius, I have to say I think it was probably worth it.
Whenever things get too dark on TWD—usually when a main character dies—the show likes to follow up with a light-hearted episode. Case in point: while last week’s episode was unbelievably brutal and horrific, last night’s “The Well” was easily the most delightful The Waking Dead has ever been. But there was a lot more to it than just trying to cheer the audience up.
Without getting into the issues of WhodoesNegankillgate for the umpteenth time, I can say that “The Well” was the real season seven premiere. Whether you loved it or hated it, last week’s episode was a coda, an epilogue to the previous season. This was the beginning of a new chapter for the show, featuring a new community, a great new character, and raising a ton of new possibilities for both Rick’s group and the show itself—all very welcome after the sixth season put on the narrative breaks, scrambling to fill time until Negan’s arrival in the season finale.
Also welcome: no sight of Negan or the aftermath, as the episode is devoted to Carol and Morgan, and what happened to them after they were found by the armored men on horseback last season. After a zombie attack and a few hallucinations that zombies are actually living, breathing people (a very striking effect, by the way), Carol wakes up in a strange bed. As Morgan explains, they’re in “The Kingdom,” a community in a nearby city—an actual city, not the glorified suburbs of Alexandria. As Morgan wheels her around on a wheelchair, we see that the Kingdom makes Alexandria look like crap in pretty much every way possible: There are giant gardens, fruit trees, choir practice… more importantly, it looks happy and peaceful, presumably in the way Alexandria was before Rick and pals arrived. Then Morgan brings Carol to the leader of the kingdom, Ezekiel.
Ezekiel has a tiger. Ezekiel is awesome. The tiger is also awesome, but that probably went without saying. Ezekiel is king. He talks with a regal, broadly heroic English accent, he carries a sword, he sits on a throne, and when Carol discovers she’s in the post-apocalyptic equivalent of Medieval Times it’s all she can do to not to laugh hysterically.
If there is a polar opposite of seeing Glenn and Abraham get beaten slowly and graphically to death, it’s watching Carol’s face for her entire talk with Ezekiel (just watch the video above). The Kingdom is so weird, so shocking, so stupidto her that she’s almost delighted at discovering something so ridiculous. Carol uses it to fuel her “cheery innocent middle-aged lady” act, but she still looks like she’s humoring a bunch of adorable but extremely idiotic children. Add Ezekiel’s right-hand-bro Jerry (“It’s fruit time!”) and the discovery that the Kingdom serves a cobbler with every meal (what in god’s name is a lunch cobbler) and this episode was funnier than TWD probably has any right to be.
But alas, not everything is well in the Kingdom. Unlike the Alexandrians, the Kingdom hasn’t just gotten lucky and avoided the copious murderous assholes plaguing the land. The Kingdom pays tribute to the Saviors, an arrangement which Ezekiel is keeping secret from almost all of his subjects. Turns out the Saviors and the Kingdom get along great, because Ezekiel pays them what they want and on time. This time it’s a bunch of pigs, although unknown to the Saviors, Ezekiel’s trusted lieutenant Richard has fattened them up by feeding them zombies, because seriously, screw those guys.
Ezekiel may not have the power to fight the Saviors now—despite his “knights” he still doesn’t have enough real warriors—but he knows the guns that Carol and Morgan brought with them are the Saviors’, and thinks he’s found someone who can help him finally fight back. Carol, still dealing with her emotional crisis and self-loathing from last season, just wants to leave and be alone. Morgan’s first priority is taking care of Carol, but he’s happy to help train one of Ezekiel’s subjects, Ben, with a bo staff (after its determined the kid sucks with all the other weapons) while he waits for Carol to recover.
By making the Kingdom beholden to the Saviors, TWD obviously ties in this new community to its new overarching conflict, and gives it a flaw, which keeps it from being too silly. Still, Ezekiel and the Kingdom are a much-needed and much-appreciated counterweight to Negan and the Wolves and Terminus and… well, pretty much everything else in The Walking Dead. So much of this show is about meeting characters who have found new and creative ways to be reprehensible (“Hey, guys, let’s carve W’s on our heads and kill every single living person we see”). It’s so gratifying to see one group of people in the TWD-verse get weird for a good cause. Ezekiel, his tiger, and his kingdom help even the scales in a way the Hilltop Community didn’t and couldn’t. They’re a sign that The Walking Dead is more than just torture porn—that there’s more to the show than just gore and watching miserable people get more miserable. They’re a positive reason to keep watching. They’re fun.
I don’t think it’s coincidental that this is also the essence of Ezekiel’s speech to Carol in the episode’s final scenes. After catching Carol trying to steal a bit of fruit on her way out, Ezekiel drops his royal accent, and lets Carol in on his secret: He was a zookeeper who used to dabble in community theater, he helped heal the zoo’s tiger and became friends with it, and when the zombie apocalypse arrived he freed it. Having a tiger made him larger than life, and he used esteem to become the leader, to give the people he was with hope and direction, and create their community. It’s all an act, but it’s one for the greater good—and it seems to have worked. Carol, hilariously, informs Ezekiel she does not even slightly care about his backstory, and still just wants to leave. That’s when Ezekiel replies with this:
I’m sorry. For whatever bad you’ve been through. There’s so much of it out there now, you know? Too much. Out there, it feels like it’s all bad. Especially when you’re alone.
The thing is, though? It’s not all bad. It can’t be. It isn’t. Life isn’t. When there’s life there’s hope, heroism, grace, and love. When there’s life, there’s life.
Yes, a character on The Walking Dead just said he believes there is some good left in this world. Ezekiel may be talking in general, but I think the show is speaking for itself. There are still truly good-hearted people in the world ofTWD—genuinely, proactively good people. Negan might have killed Glenn and Abraham in a moment of total evil and wretchedness and nihilism, but there’s still hope in this show somewhere. There are heroes, even if Rick doesn’t seem to be one. And, uh, there’s love, even if love sometimes get beaten to death with a baseball bat. But there’s actually a reason for these characters to keep living beyond mere survival, and for you to keep watching.
I love the idea of this message, but I’m not certain The Walking Dead can back it up. Mainly because the show’s real trade has been in making its “good guys” compromise their principles to the point where their only morality is that they don’t seem to take pleasure in murdering the people they have to murder. The fact that Ezekiel is so good-hearted—he’s tells Carol he wants to help her, because helping makes him feel good, for god’s sake—makes me think he’s doomed morally as well as physically. But I would love for The Walking Dead to have a real hero again. I would really love for that hero to be Rick, but that’s been off the menu because I don’t anticipate Rick rediscovering his moral code anytime soon.
Which leads to the second problem with Ezekiel and the Kingdom, which is that they’re so much better than Rick and Alexandria, respectively. The Kingdom looks as secure as Alexandria, but seems to be much better organized, producing more food (Alexandria doesn’t have a damn pomegranate tree, that’s for sure), with happier people in it. And it seems like Ezekiel has achieved all this without proactively killing potential threats, without murdering a citizen in the town square, and without Michonne needing to knock him out because he was screaming like a crazy person at all his neighbors. Yes, Ezekiel is kowtowing to the Saviors, but that just means he’s handling a threat without getting his people killed (or having them live in fear, since he hasn’t told them)—which is objectively better than Rick trying to murder them before they get a chance to try to murder the Alexandria group, and failing spectacularly.
As I watched “The Well,” I kept thinking how I wish The Walking Dead was about Ezekiel and these people instead of Rick and the gang. This is good in that the show has brought us a great new character and storyline to get invested in, but bad in that I’d be so completely willing to abandon the main character and storyline if given the chance.
Since that’s not an option, I will try to enjoy everything about Ezekiel and the Kingdom for as long as they both shall live—especially Ezekiel convincing Carol to move to a nearby house outside the Kingdom, so she’s “left” the Kingdom and “not left.” And how Ezekiel sidles up later to Carol’s house, trying to get her to taste one of his pomegranates. And how in all ways Ezekiel is basically just the best.
All hail King Ezekiel. Long may he reign! With his tiger.
Assorted Musings:
• I’m not sure I get the deal with the pigs eating zombie meat. I can’t tell if Ezekiel is trying to achieve something beyond avoiding spending more of his food stores on food his people don’t get and a secret “screw you” to the Saviors. If eating pigs that ate zombie meat caused any kind of physical issue, surely the Saviors would notice and retaliate; also it’s implied this is not the first time the Kingdom has pulled this, so clearly it’s not affecting the Saviors.Thanks to pop culture, I know pigs eat corpses. Obviously, eating very rotten flesh isn’t optimal, but wouldn’t they just digest that too?
• Carol made her bed before she escaped, because that’s how Carol rolls.
• Zombie Kill of the Week: A knight (man, if they aren’t called knights, they should be) cuts off a zombie’s face. Nicely gruesome.
• If you found this episode to be too frivolous, next week looks like it’s all about Daryl in Savior-land, which probably won’t be a hoot.
• If Glenn and Abraham’s deaths were the price we paid to discover Melissa McBride’s heretofore-unknown comic reaction genius, I have to say I think it was probably worth it.
They don't know them as enemies. They appear to be servants
Yup power and compliance makes you miss the hidden disdain and plotting. Everyone will eventually get tested. Ezekiel is just smarter about it and will strike when ready.
This episode gave me some chuckles:
Carol's laughter when she met Ezekiel
Ezekiel's chipper assistant
The Kingdom giving Negan's people zombie stuffed swine(I like them already)
Carol's laughter when she met Ezekiel
Ezekiel's chipper assistant
The Kingdom giving Negan's people zombie stuffed swine(I like them already)
