I find it believable that everyone is scared stiff to form a coup and take him out. It's basically how someone like Hitler or Kim Jong Il have stayed in power. You know something is wrong, you know the guy is insane - but you have no one to voice these opinions to. Just by speaking badly you can be turned in and be punished. So you go along with the flow because you assume everyone else is going along with the flow.

Carl has caused more harm than good. I think it was his comments the previous time Negan collected from Alexandria that resulted in Negan confiscating their guns.

Theory - I think when Rick let it out that he knew the baby girl wasn't his and the fact that Negan took such a liking to her is gonna play some sort of role. The previews for next week's show where they show him crying made me wonder what exactly he could be crying about. Either that or Rosita dies after her failed attempt to kill Negan.

That coward guy with the mullet is annoying but accurate. It seems everyone in that universe turned into Rambo but in reality cowards are cowards and some things you can't switch off. Even the priest guy, he is/was annoying but his arc, evolving into semi reliable fighter is believable. He's not totally Rambo but he's stayed true to himself and has adapted.

One thing that doesn't make sense is how could there be so many Saviors and Rick's group encountered them so late into the game. I think in that universe only 3 yrs has elapsed if I'm not mistaken. Just isn't possible for that kind of "community" to come to fruition in such a short period of time.

Well, they've only been in Alexandria a relatively short time.

Walking Dead Wikia puts them meeting Aaron on day 537.
We're only around Day 632 now.

So all of this has happened within around 90 days of them arriving in the Alexandria area.

edit to add: I initially read your post as questioning more how it took Rick so long to meet Negan's group, rather than how long it took for Negan's group to form itself. To that point it seems that they formed right after the troubles began, so they're at a 2 year'ish point now.

I'm not sure exactly what you'd base this on.

2-3 years seems plenty long to form something like this.

As for the last episode...

Well, most of the Carl and Negan seemed unnecessary. I like what Jeffery Dean Morgan is doing with Negan just fine, but it's just a bit too much of him, I think and not enough variety maybe? I don't know. It's just a lot of menacing menace with the same delivery and all.

A lot of what Negan does doesn't make a lot of sense. If he really wants these groups to kneel to him and be so subservient, why keep someone like Rick alive?

The only good explanation that I've come up with is that he's bored. He's definitely a bit of a sadist and enjoys tormenting people, seeing them suffer, and seeing how far he can push them before breaking. So, he's probably getting off on all of that. And, what else is there to do in that world? Watch the same crummy re-runs of shows? There's no new music, TV, movies, sports, you have to entertain yourself some how, I guess.

I liked the Eugene/Rosita scenes and the Michonne scenes.

It feels like the show is spread a bit too thin at the moment. We've only had one episode with Carol and Morgan in the Kingdom.

The show has shed a lot of viewers this season. I think it was a combination of the crappy season finale that angered a lot of people - me included - and the overly brutal season premiere. Those two things drove a lot of people away.

This season hasn't been that strong. A lot of the tension that used to exist seems to have gone.

Ultimately he needs those groups to be useful & productive. At some point he has to have people who can lead the sub-groups in order to accomplish that (otherwise what's to keep them from just wandering off by 2s and 3s?).

Leaving Rick broken but in place as a "road boss" of sorts fits into what we've seen elsewhere with the Saviors and other groups. Each has a titular local leader to keep the rest of the community on task.


I'm ready for Rosita to eat her own bullet after her little outburst. And to borrow from Josh Homme on Talking Dead, Michonne's "plan" was as juvenile & poorly considered as Carl's. Left me entirely unimpressed with her.


THIS was my post-show conversation with my son. The cast for this half season is absurdly bloated, to the point of being unmanageable. I get why that's the case, and I get the reality of how that's likely to change dramatically over the next half season ... but the impact on this half season has been for it to be too scattered, too unfocused, to the point that I'm actually annoyed with the show for the choices they've made about how to allocate screen time. For one example of many possibilities, I'd have taken 10-15 minutes more of pretty much anything with the Kingdom over the drawn out harem scene last night.

Yes. Everyone seems to be hatching their own secret little "I'm gonna kill Negan" plan...

Sasha - Hers seems the best thought out right now. Have ninja Jesus scout them out and find out where they live.

Carl - Sneak into a truck, grab a gun, kill two guys out right, and then freeze up when you have the assault rifle pointed at Negan. Bad idea all around.

Rosita - Has gun and one bullet. Her plan is to get close enough and John Wilkes Booth him?

Michonne - Carjack a red headed woman, beat her up, have her take her Negan and then... Shoot him? Cut him with her sword? What's the end game here, Michonne?

And as a viewer that's familiar with at least the basics of the source material I'm almost ... hamstrung by having some notion of why this is all being done, what situation they're trying to set up for next week, etc.

Those who know only the TV show can at least try to suspend disbelief over the series of individually stupid actions (something we've kinda seen them do before IIRC) and let it play out. It's not as though we haven't seen piss poor strategy on a few previous occasions.

I don't know the comics at all, so I don't if Negan is supposed to be this way, but the TV version of Negan is too cartoonish & over the top to be believable to me. He reminds me of the little cartoon version of the "mobster" Mugsy...

There is seemingly no reason for anybody to follow this guy to the extent they do in the show...yet they do anyway.

IMHO, he could be charming & sinister....but that would mean some of his people would genuinely like him & believe in him as a leader. But his whole spiel of the "Saviors" doesn't seem to have anybody believing in him. They fear this charming & sinister man...enough to carry his bat without killing him with it.

He could be vicious & overbearingly aggressive with everybody around him (even in 1-on-1 situations)....but that would be hard to gain such a following without at least some key "backup" characters with inherent loyalty for him (like a brother, cousin, old friend, etc.)...or at least showing Negan to be a man so aggressive & insecure that he doesn't actually tolerate half of the looks he's gotten without clubbing people.

I dont know...maybe its just me. I really did enjoy Negan as a character in the s6 finale & s7 premier. But since then, he has turned into a caricature.

My point is in 2-3 years he amassed hundreds of troops in the same driving distance of where the main storyline has taken place and not once did Rick's group encounter them. That doesn't seem likely. Especially if Negan's strategy for survival is to enslave different communities to provide the Saviors with resources. If the Saviors are as huge as is alluded to in the show there would've been run-ins with them long ago.

And 2-3 yrs is definitely not a lot of time to amass a huge army like that, so large that you have outposts (at least one that we know of). It would have to start off small, probably Negan and a small team. Then perhaps it grew but not without some backlash (ppl fighting back and killing some Saviors). Then we know they have killed all men in that one hidden village, which is probably something that happened before. Not to mention all the times ppl from within the Savior community tried to fight back. To get ppl to the point where they decide there is no point in trying to overtake him, no assassination attempts (at least none too serious to disfigure him), and make them complacent all while growing your numbers - that takes time!

Negan wants Darryl as a soldier - look how much time he's put into trying to turn Darryl. How many other guys have been hard to break (and eventually did)? No way that all took place in about 2-3 years, all while being hidden from the main storyline.

I think they were driving to Washington D.C. and traveling large distances at a time. Once they got into the Virginia area they definitely encountered Negan quite often. I don't disagree with your questioning of the cult following Negan has but the fact they didn't run into him until last season seems pretty logical.

They're in Virginia now. They spent most of the first two years in the Atlanta area down in Georgia. They have only been up in the Alexandria area for three months real time by most reckonings (for the past 2-3 seasons or so, thanks to all the crap that has gone on).

Herschel's farm, the Governor, Terminus, that was all in Georgia.

Wait so all this is happening in Virginia? I thought everything was still happening in Georgia. I thought they scrapped the plan to go to DC once that coward guy admitted to lying and being a fraud.

There needs to be a map of TWD universe so you can see where things are taking place. If Game of Thrones which is 200% larger than TWD can have intricate maps then TWD should certainly make it completely clear what is happening in what locations.

Here you go. :D

"Alexandria" was supposed to be the tip-off I think.

One of the issues with definitive maps (the show has never released anything along these lines) is that the show uses a mix of real & fictional locations. For example, in the TV show the story begins in "King County, GA" ... which doesn't exist.

We're left to extrapolate locations based on guesstimates & the like, based on apparent walking/driving distances & such.

Also, being too specific about locations might lead to some uncomfortable questions. Such as, if "Alexandria" is indeed Alexandria, VA then why at no point has any single member of our merry band been at least morbidly curious enough to not venture the 8 miles or so to at least SEE the nation's capitol?

Fair play...I walked into that one hahaha

Heh!!!!

Classic, CR!

Budgetary concerns?

I can't believe for the past two or three seasons I thought these ppl were still in Georgia.

If that's the case why hasn't Rick and his crew simply left Virginia in the middle of the night and either went back to Georgia (recolonize The Governor's vacated community?) or somewhere else. They make it sound as if The Saviors are gonna hunt them down across the US. when I thought they were still in Georgia I thought they were "stuck" in their predicament because Georgia was all they knew. But there wasn't any Saviors in Georgia. It seems Saviors have Virginia locked down. So move.

from the ever popular Wiki

Ouch. There goes that idea.

They could go back to the prison and rebuild ... but there are other places than to stay in dodge and live under those conditions (Daryl would understand being left behind).

But if it was me, I would get arms from the other places (e.g. what is Carol up to nowadays?) and take out Negan next time he showed up. My bet is after a bloody fight with rest of his entourage, his group would fracture.

The prison walls were blown to hell that tank, weren't they? I think the property value of the prison is very, very low at this point.

Carol is living in some house just outside The Kingdom last we saw her, which was the only time we saw her all season thus far.

I reckon all of those guns at the lesbian forest compound will come into play at some point.

Too many people have had an opening to kill Negan and have passed it up to allow the Negan story to continue. But that happens a lot in shows and movies. Characters avoid doing things that would quickly end the story. In the end, I'm willing to overlook it if the story is entertaining.

Ok, I quit watching the show after the end of last season, but I've been quietly following along with the thread from time to time to see how it's going...


and that pulled me out of lurking... there's a lesbian forest compound? Details? :D

Well, the trees in the forest are straight (as far as we know).
The women living in the surrounding area, well ... with the complete absence of menfolk(killed off by Negan) there's a certain presumption that something has to pass the time.

Not like they can watch a lot of television or anything ;)

Both these hint at my age old question of why you wouldn't try to find an island or even a large ship anchored offshore to use as a base. But there's no cell phones in this universe, so maybe there's no oceans or all the fish in the oceans have died.

Umm ... I _think_ we saw ocean life in the companion series, so that's probably not it. Plus, isn't the women's camp fishing for sustenance?

I think there's going to be a growing amount of ppl in the "why didn't [insert name here] just kill Negan right there??!" category if those kinds of scenes become too frequent.

Right now Negan is by himself at Alexandria. The guy isn't Superman - if we're to believe Rick and his group are these ultra badasses this is probably the best chance they'll ever have.

Extrapolating this theory - I'm going to assume Rosita returns to Alexandria just in time to see Negan by himself. Fails in her one-bullet assassination attempt and is Lucille'd by Negan while Rick is forced to comply, hence that preview shot of him crying in next week's episode.

from the FTWD showrunner

from a different zombie universe (Day Z), it was noted that there are a lot of people thinking the same way about islands, meaning they're likely overrun with people (and zombies) anyway.

and geographically, for Rick's crew at least, the Georgia coastal islands are all pretty much connected to the mainland by bridges anyway. Not all that isolated.

It was during sweeps.

Woo hoo. Morgan and Carol are back!

Man, I must be in a different world. The only "killing it" I think Negan is doing is the show. He is purely 1 dimensional, acts the same all the time, says the same stupid stuff, and has monopolized about 50-75% of the entire season. I'm so tired of hearing him talk and act so stupid, and we get nothing about most of the other characters. We are 8 episodes in and have barely seen anything but him walking around 2 places babbling.

The other end is probably my son, who said "as long as they keep Negan around, not sure I care who else they kill off"

I'm not that far into it but I do think that JDM is head & shoulder ahead of any other actor they've had in the cast. (worth noting perhaps that I'd never seen him prior to his joining TWD)

The gang is back together. This season has been below par so looking forward to next.

(Once again, missed opportunities for someone brave enough to take out Negan)

FTR, my Facebook will show that I called Lucille being wounded during the commercial break.

Okay, I missed my guess for the aftermath (I figured we'd come back & the entire Alexandrian cast would be dead)

I really enjoyed that episode. I thought it was great. Negan finally did something beyond menace. Someone finally tried to take him out. All of the individual revenge plots came to an end. Darryl is free. Good stuff!

This half season hasn't been great.

There was far too much Negan menacing menacingly and a lot of dull nonsense.

Hopefully, it'll turn around when it comes back in February.

Does the walking Dead ever get back to fearing the zombie apocalypse? I always enjoy that storyline the best. Maybe they relinquished that to the idiots in LA... It's good but this past season was just depressing and for all the wrong reasons.

I think they basically covered every possible zombie situation in the past 5 seasons so now it's more about human vs human. Which I guess if you think about it after 3 years the people still alive probably don't have as much trouble with zombies as they did during the first year.

I'm not questioning the logic, that makes sense, its just not as interesting.

Dutch I think you're right in the sense they need more deaths by zombie. What we're seeing is "the strongest survive" aspect - there should be fewer and fewer deaths by zombie the longer they survive because the weak will get killed off but in the end they are living in a zombie world so that threat still needs to be felt from time to time.

The music they played during the reunion was spot on. It was perfect.

They really don't have much time to assemble the communities to fight. The Saviors are gonna quickly find out Darryl has escaped, they will come to Alexandria first looking for him. That probably leaves Rick's group 1 day to assemble the communities. It's also obvious the lesbian character is gonna have to break her promise to the lesbian forest women (how awesome and weird does that sound) by advising where guns can be had. Outside chance the lesbian forest women will be the fourth group to join the fray. I don't think they're going to give up their guns without breaking their "shoot strangers on site" rule.

This war will be for all the marbles. Eliminating the Saviors means peace between about 4 communities - basically an entire city of allies. This is huge - this is the start of rebuilding humanity and civilization.

Oh, pretty sure Eugene is a goner. When Negan comes back he's probably gonna bash his head in front of everyone. Oh well. In war there will be casualties.

I figured Negan will keep Eugene and set him to work creating more bullets.

He was keeping Daryl hostage to keep Rick's crew at bay. They had to play nice or else risk Darryl getting Lucille'd. Without Darryl Negan lost a major bargaining chip. He has Eugene now, and will probably drive right up to the gates, make Eugene kneel down and threaten to bash his head in (and will).

I think you are correct on what should happen if you correctly follow the show storyline but I think Kodos is correct on what will happen.

From a story perspective they have one character from each storyline over the seasons (save for the original Rick group from season one).

Maggie: the farm years
Lesbian: the Governor years
Sasha: from the group that went to the prison (the group who had the strong black guy who wore that hat all the time)
That runaway teenage girl (Carl's "GF"): last remaining major character from the Alexandria storyline
Jesus: only remaining major character from Hilltop once the current leader inevitably dies

They can kill Eugene because they'll have Rosita from the Abraham group.

There's no where else to go with Eugene as far as arc goes. He will always be a weak coward that it wouldn't be believable for him to be a badass. The Priest, while initially scared, still has kept his core intact even while adapting towards the middle away from an extremely pacifist personality. He's still the Priest, just a more believable character now that he's evolved and isn't so one-sided. Eugene will never evolve, which means there's no where to go with his character. The weak get weeded out in a zombie apocalypse.

Not the least of which has to be that it's one of the worst-acted shows I've ever seen.

The favorite to go next

All Signs Point To Another Heartbreaking 'Walking Dead' Death | The Huffington Post

Kind of surprised there has been no discussion on the first episode Sunday. Nobody watching anymore?