This post contains spoilers for the Walking Dead's Season Seven Premiere.
This post is untitled because I don't want to spoil the Episode for People on the West Coast. It's title would be "When You Cheat Your Audience, You Declare a War You Cannot Win."
We all knew that season six was going to end with Negan braining someone with Lucille. The only reason to watch that episode was to find out who. The producers decided to cheat the audience of that moment because they knew the "Who Shot J.R.?" factor would create a lot of buzz. But it was a cheat of the fans that was destined to fail for two reasons. The first reason is that the deaths were inevitably going to leak in the age of social media and camera phones. And leak they did. In fact, good portions of the script were out there for the past week. Once that cat was out of the bag, the episode was doomed to failure because the melodramatic emotion of the cast members could never play straight without the suspense or shock factor of the deaths.
This cheat was especially bad because they had to know that lots of super devoted fans would obsess on figuring out who the kills were. The most convincing case based on the evidence was for Michonne. The finale contained several POV shots. The first few were all from Michonne's perspective. The last one was from the victim's. If you respect the audience, you would keep that commitment. And I will admit that even as the show started, I hoped it would be Michonne. Michonne is one of the best characters in the show but the integrity of the show required her death. I was really hoping to not be cheated. I hoped the leaks were disinformation. That would have really been something.
You put your audience into suspense, those who really care enough are going to find a way to end the suspense. So some of those devoted fans scoped out the shooting locations and figured out who was missing. Then someone put their mitts on a script and shared its contents online. I normally avoid spoilers because I'd rather enjoy a show than play "I've got a secret" with its creators. But I had no hesitation in reading these spoilers and watching the associated YouTube videos. If you don't respect me enough to present an honest work of art, I do not feel bound by the normal rules of fandom. And I'm obviously not along.
Execution.
To be fair, the episode could have been worse. My initial expectation was that Lucille's victim would be Abraham. He's important enough for the other characters to care about but not so important that his absence would undermine the show. Glenn is a great character, so his death upped the stakes considerably. But the moment was so anticlimactic that I actually chuckled at the detail, meant to be shocking. that his eye was hanging loose from the socket. I had a similar reaction to Carol shooting Lizzy in the back of the head while she looked at the flowers. This show overestimates its emotional range.
The storyline of Negan feeling the need to break Rick made sense. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan seems capable of carrying the story forward as a villain with the right mix of pathos and mischief. That's very encouraging.
If I could give one note to the creators going forward, it would be to shift away from the relentlessly dark tone toward something more constructive and at least occasionally amusing. They went all in on making Negan's arrival frightening. They need to step in the other direction for a bit.
AMC's lousy spin off, Fear The Walking Dead saw its ratings plummet this year and I think the cliffhanger was part of that. It was probably the first tangible fallout from mistreating the mother ship's audience so blatantly. But none of this will immediately impact the show. Tonight's ratings will be huge and people will stick with the show for the rest of this season. If they follow the comic books, season eight should contain some great action that might give the show a revival.
AMC needs this show and the cash it generates. There are enough die hard fans that it will go for at least another four seasons. I"m not giving up on it, because the premise remains fascinating and there are still a handful of characters that I feel invested with. But the show's best moment probably passed, and there is now one fewer death that had the potential to be truly shocking. Damn shame they ruined that moment by provoking their fans.
What Happens Next.
Keeping Darryl as a hostage was a good wrinkle and I am looking forward to what happens between him and Dwight. The Kingdom shoul introduce a handful of new characters and at least the tiger will be cool. The coming arc is pretty obvious: Rick and his people will rebuild and reform. We've seen that before, but never from such a low starting point.
So yes, I'm still on board. I might even blog about the mid season finale or some other milestone. But if Rick and the gang looked down, they would probably see a dorsal fin sticking out of the water.
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