This is one of the most popular series on television, and last night’s season 7 premiere not only spent an hour torturing the show’s characters but arguably tormented the audience. It was like someone thought to themselves what would George R. R. Martin do if he was put in charge of the show? While there were deaths, and a character the audience thoroughly despises and wants dead, I’m not sure it worked as a zombified “Red Wedding.” Because we’re getting really close to the definition of weekly misery porn.
The Walking Dead has basically fit itself into a groove, and been in that groove for a while now, where the characters travel somewhere, think it might be safe, things go to shit, someone dies —during a season premiere or finale— they pick up some new stragglers, and the core characters move on to repeat everything over again. Lather, rinse, repeat, with Negan (Morgan) being the latest asshole the characters have to deal with and overcome.
That’s fine for what it is, since many of the series’ fans are attached to the characters as archetypes whom they have a lot of affection for, instead of anything that resembles a plot. Because there really isn’t a narrative point to the show. I mentioned this the last time I covered The Walking Dead, but I sometimes wonder what the audience ultimately wants for the series. This is not a story in which we're supposed to be building to a great revelation. Questions about the origin of the "walkers," the state of the rest of the world, or even if there might really be a possibility for a cure are largely on the periphery and irrelevant to most of the episodes. But that means there’s nothing really to look forward to other than waiting to see who’s gonna die, and trying to do it in more and more shocking ways.
Season 7 begins by answering the big question left by last season’s cliffhanger, while finding Rick and his crew at the mercy of a complete monster. So, it goes without saying, spoilers after the jump.
Earlier this year, when the season 6 finale left the audience with a cliffhanger and wondering who was beat to death, there was outrage from fans of the show who felt season 6 had built to Negan and a character death and it was a cheap stunt to make it a tune in half-a-year later to find out what happened event. Executive producers Scott M. Gimple and Robert Kirkman argued the cliffhanger wasn’t the point of the story, and it was all about breaking Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) down. And last night’s episode was literally an hour of beating Rick —and the audience— down into a place where someone just wants it to stop.
Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) is the first to be on the receiving end of Lucille, after the show spent 20 minutes trying every way in the world not to reveal who has died. If it had stopped there, it would’ve been in some ways a copout and a clear signal that the “real” heroes were safe. Abraham was significant, and his relationship issues were front and center at times, but he wasn’t central in the way some of the other characters are. So that’s why his death is used as a fake-out where one thinks everyone else is safe … until they’re not.
From Leanne Aguilera at Entertainment Tonight:
So why did the Walking Dead showrunners decide to kill off this original character?
"I think the hardest thing about [these deaths] was starting the script and thinking, 'What would break Rick?' then taking it further and looking for way to break the audience too," Gimple revealed. "Not in a way to hurt them, but for them to believe that Rick Grimes would be under the thumb of Negan. That he would go through the experience that would do that to him. That the audience would go through the experience too, so that they would believe that Rick would do what this guy says."
Kirkman added, "The introduction of Negan -- besides how heartbreaking it is and how gut-wrenching it is -- was really just to set the stage in a way of saying this show and this story isn’t going anywhere. We still have a lot to do and we're setting the stage for a lot more to come. There's so much that comes out of this scene that has to be resolved. We feel like, after as many years that we've been doing this, we wanted to send a clear message that we are just getting started."
I have to give Kirkman and Gimple this: Glenn’s death genuinely shocked me. I wasn’t expecting it, and it is arguably the most horrific moment of the show to date, not only from a violence and gore standpoint but also just as emotional torture. It also sells Negan as someone who’s not fucking around, and whom the audience wants destroyed limb from limb.
When Negan demands Rick chop Carl’s (Chandler Riggs) arm off, as a final test of how far he can bend Rick to his will, I really didn’t know whether the show would actually go through with it. This is bottom —rock-fucking-bottom— for Rick’s crew, and the fact the show takes them there is in some ways great setup for their eventual escape, but it’s also damn miserable too.
From Meredith Woerner at the Los Angeles Times:
It was too much for many audience members to bear. Fans took to Twitter, “Wow that was gross & violent even by [‘The Walking Dead’] standards. I can’t even love to hate Negan. He’s just a bully, plain & simple,” wrote @widowwinchester.
Others lamented not only the grisly manner in which “Walking Dead” ended Glenn and Abraham, but the despair the copious death scenes filled them with. Jenny Martin [@readjennymartin] posted, “I can handle grim. I can take descents into darkness. But a show that cleaves every scrap of human joy, & pulps it into misery? Enough, #TWD.”
Some just wanted answers. Lanie James [@JLanie] directed her query to the creators on the live after-show, “The Talking Dead”: “Currently question if I can go on with the show. It hurts. So dark. So brutal. Ask the EPs why I should stay.”
And others gave up on the series entirely.
- A variation of the comic-book: Negan’s arrival in the comic-book on which The Walking Dead is based ended with Glenn’s death as well. However, there it was only Glenn’s death, since the Abraham character had already died long before Rick’s crew crosses paths with Negan and the Saviors.
- A long-held secret?: According to Gimple, Glenn’s and Abraham’s deaths have been planned for at least two-years, and both actors (Steven Yeun and Cudlitz) have known what was going to happen for over a year.
- Heroes of their own story: Both Kirkman and Gimple have sold Negan and the Saviors as being people who’re just like Rick and his crew, survivors who’ve fought their way to get what they have, and the conflict is two groups coming at things from a different perspective under difficult circumstances. But that interpretation doesn’t really work, because they’re not the same. Rick, at his most ruthless, would not play with people before killing them just to prove some damn point.
- Carl’s southpaw: The scene where Negan threatens Rick to cut off Carl’s arm, and Rick offering to take Carl’s place, is also a reference to the comic book, where Rick only has one hand after having it cut off. However, it was not Negan who took it. In Kirkman’s comic, it was The Governor who sawed it off with a knife during their first encounter.