It took seven seasons, but I’m finally done. The Walking Dead finally broke me. Even when they stuck around in a farm for entirely too long, I remained steadfast in seeing it through to the end. Same with the prison. And Alexandria. I even stayed after the utterly mindless and disgusting Season 7 premiere that saw a number of characters die in a toothless, empty way that only had a minutiae of the impact that the comics did. The Walking Dead television series has been the obnoxious family member that you give 100 chances to get right—and they disappoint you every time. The show introduces new hooks to keep newcomers and long-time comic fans glued to their TVs, only to ruin them. The Governor was the first straw, and no matter how bungled their writing of him was he actually had a few good moments. But the mishandling of TWD’s biggest antagonist to date, the story arc with the murderous Negan and his group of Saviors is where I have to tap out. The notoriously sluggish nature of the show has been damn near stuck in a standstill—where you wish that something, anything will happen. Besides the emotionally empty premiere, characters like Rick and Michonne act less like the heroic leaders we have known them for, and more like cyphers around a poorly written plot. When Negan does show up, he’s supposed to feel like a force of nature, and unfortunately he became as formulaic in his short appearances as the show has in as many seasons.
Season 7 has been hyped on Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s portrayal of the charismatic yet maniacal dictator, and after the much-hated cliffhanger of last season we were promised that things would change. 16 episodes and the murder of a number of cast members later, I’m unhappy to report that we were lied to, and the finale of this season ranks up there with the worst in the show’s history. “The First Day of The Rest Of Their Lives” is a complete bore to get through, an unnecessarily overlong “extended” episode that has no stakes until after 40 minutes of its run time. Rick has been quietly building an army to take down Negan and The Saviors—gaining unlikely allies and strengthening the bond of his own team in light of the tragedy of losing a number of their own. The thing is, we’ve been waiting for this war to happen for half a year, and the road to get there was completely and utterly stupid. Sensing that the audience is probably over the “Zombie Kill of The Week,” TWD has doubled down on corny, emotional scenes that blur the line between comic book exposition and high school play-level storytelling and the finale spends a lot of its time with these false “emotional” moments. They mean nothing when you’ve spent more than 18 hours (counting extended episodes) gawking at characters walking, staring, and waiting for Negan to show up and kill someone.
The episode is centered around a betrayal, which renders much of Rick’s work this season moot. Until it isn’t. Negan and his crew get word that Rick is planning and coup, and he takes recently recruited Eugene and his prisoner Sasha (more on that later) to Alexandria to get the truth. From there we get the patented NEGAN STANDOFF that we’ve seen throughout the season, complete with moustache-twirling exposition and #edgy dialogue from JDM who I will say is doing the most with the least here. The aforementioned betrayal is from the garbage-dwelling crew The Scavengers, which is laughable in itself because Rick is once again proven to be a complete goof of a leader in trusting them (WHY WOULD YOU LISTEN TO HIM?).
The real crux of the story is the sacrifice of Sasha (played by longtime castmember Sonequa Martin-Green, who is going to greener pastures thank God), who has a lot of heavy handed symbolism before we see her true fate. Negan is confusingly using her as bait—even though he could just as easily kill the whole town—and in true Walking Dead fashion, he opens the coffin he had Sasha trapped in and...she’s a Walker. Sasha had tricked Eugene into making her a pill that would kill her an episode prior, and her grand plan was to die and become a Walker...to help Rick and the crew. Besides the fact that she would have had to bank (correctly) that Negan would act like an idiot and take her to Alexandria so the exact thing would happen in that order, this is quite possibly the dumbest write off to a character on this show. (And there's been many). Between her flashbacks to slain lover Abraham, and the music she listens to on her headphones, the show hammers home this #moment, and explodes it onto the audience with the care of a bag filled with thumbtacks.
This show truly thinks we are idiots, and the season 7 call to arms is major proof of this. We practically could have guessed that the show would take a slow burn to get into the actual battle between Negan and the cast, but that doesn’t mean the writers should have sacrificed hours of our lives to do it. Negan chewed scenery and killed off characters we didn’t care about—while the writing left fan favorites like Daryl and Carol flaccid for what seemed like an eternity. It’s a show that not only doesn’t respect its audience, but it doesn’t even respect the rich characterizations that it was built on in the first place. With every bait and switch or cliffhanger the show has lost its edge and not even the appearance of The Kingdom and a FUCKING TIGER could make the final moments of the finale seem like a cathartic release. This was supposed to be a righteous moment after months of oppression by Negan, but why do we still feel cheated?
As fans of the series, we love the idea of a dystopian world where humans are worse than the brainless husks that have covered the world. We just don’t want to watch a show where it feels like it was written by them. I don’t have any faith that The Walking Dead can right the ship at this point—some of my favorite characters are gone, and the overall narrative has been torpedoed in favor of some truly maddening pacing and writing issues. Sure, the next season could see the comeuppance of Negan and the Saviors. Carl could become less annoying. Maggie could finally have her baby. But it’s too late—The Walking Dead has lost all of its goodwill. We’ll get 16 more hours of glacial pacing, and maybe some good scene-chewing acting from Jeffrey Dean Morgan. You can count me out, though. I’m waving the white flag.
