THAT PLACE WHERE I POST STUFF (AND THINGS)

Ok… I assume this is something you’re getting from the comics? (Please warn for comic spoilers before you say them!! I’m not reading and don’t really want future plot points spoiled for me. Thank you

Because nothing of the sort was ever explained in the show. And that bugs me because it’s lazy for the writers to expect us to look to alternate sources to explain plot points or characters’ behavior. Yes, everything can’t be explained in 45 minute stretches, and maybe they’ll go into more of Dwight’s backstory next season (like seven months from now) but if you’re going to actively change a character’s behavior then the least you can do is throw in a line explaining it, or showing that the other characters know it’s strange too.

I mean… how hard would that have been? It would’ve acknowledged the change, piqued the viewers’ interest, and taken all of 3 seconds.

The other issue I have is that Dwight isn’t acting like someone who’s scared or who’s been threatened. He seemed totally cheerful about killing Denise; not like someone who’d been forced into his actions out of fear or has any qualms about it, but like someone who genuinely enjoyed killing and being a part of the Saviors. He didn’t seem at all like someone who’d wanted to get out but was scared back into it.

So I don’t know. I guess jury’s out on his character until I see how the show handles it, but so far it’s been very clumsy writing.

I just feel so… bleh from it. Like I was honestly really enjoying the episode until Negan came out, and while I love Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and I get what they were going for with the blase cheerful faux-reasonable killer type, I was fairly underwhelmed. Maybe because there was just five minutes of him talking and then… nothing. No payoff. Like… really?

Because the fact is that I wouldn’t react to everyone’s deaths the same way. I can’t get too upset when it’s possible that someone like Abraham or Rosita (no offense to Rosita but she’s basically made no impression on me) is dead. And so now we’re all just stuck in this bleh limbo for six months when I was expecting to come out of this episode devastated.

It was just… I sort of have no reaction to it.

Because I wasn’t given anything to react to.

And that’s really not how you should feel coming out of a finale. :/

We started to really see a change in Carol’s conviction following the time jump after the mid-season break, so I think the breaking point for Carol was probably during the Walker invasion of Alexandria – when the entire town was on the brink of destruction and there were hundreds of flesh eating Walkers literally meandering up and down the streets, but all she could focus on was killing the imprisoned Wolf… who, let’s face it, wasn’t their biggest problem at the moment.

She’d gotten such tunnel vision at that point, fallen into this honestly irrational mindset of kill every possible threat right the fuck now without asking questions or thinking things through, and it was to the point where she couldn’t focus on the bigger problem in front of her. In her mind, in that moment, the Wolf was the enemy, and Morgan was the enemy for bringing him in… and honestly as I was watching I wanted to shake her for starting a fight over the tied up guy (giving him a chance to knock them down, kidnap Denise, and escape) when there was so much else going on.

And I think it shook her too. She realized that there was no real in-between for her: she could either be that cold-blooded, efficient killer or she could be the sweet happy homemaker, but she didn’t know how to find a balance. I think she was teetering on the edge of too far for a while, and that incident made her realize it and snap back.

We also can’t forget that there were a couple months in there that we didn’t see, which were seemingly pretty peaceful and just about rebuilding. We saw Carol baking for the neighbors and seeming happy enough about it. I think that in the downtime she had time to settle and rethink things, probably for the first time since the prison, and realize that she actually liked being that happy, homey person. She liked not having to make tough calls, or to kill when no one else could.

Honestly I don’t love the way the arc has played out. While Melissa is a beautiful actress always, the writing behind her struggle (as well as most things this season, I feel) has been incredibly convoluted. It’s hard to see where her shift is coming from and how much of her struggle is real and how much is an act (I think it’s always some measure of both). And maybe that’s the point, maybe she isn’t sure either, but I wish it could have been handled better and I wish it hadn’t been such a drastic change.