So not only is ammo of any desired caliber superabundant years into a postapocolytic world, but there is a steady supply of flashbangs, smoke grenades, 40mm shells and launchers...

Doesn't sound so bad to me.

What I don't get is this....Eugene's initial value to the Sanctuary was his ability to manufacture ammo. BUt with a seemingly endless supply of everything from 9mm, 5.56 and even 50cal rounds as well as grenades and other explosives, why exactly did they need Eugene's skills?

quote:

why exactly did they need Eugene's skills?

It's a sacred mystery.

Even though the show has been renewed for season 9, it all looks like they are purposefully trying to tank it. Except for the acting. The actors are trying their best, including keeping a straight face. Many good actors there.

quote:

Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:
So not only is ammo of any desired caliber superabundant years into a postapocolytic world, but there is a steady supply of flashbangs, smoke grenades, 40mm shells and launchers...

...full auto firearms of every type (they are all FA it seems), cans etc.

It isn't like the FA weapons are military issue either, which would be believable. Nope, all sorts of cool toys.

quote:

Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:

What I don't get is this....Eugene's initial value to the Sanctuary was his ability to manufacture ammo. BUt with a seemingly endless supply of everything from 9mm, 5.56 and even 50cal rounds as well as grenades and other explosives, why exactly did they need Eugene's skills?

And from the sound of it, they don't even have Eugene making ammo yet, per his discussion with Negan about replacing the ammo they would use to escape the zombies - basically Eugene said he could replace it if Negan got his machines 'up and running', or something similar.

Very very weak and sloppy season. They could use some good weapons techs / advisors, because I think the producers thought that the "war" and gunplay would carry the day on most of the episodes; however it just ended up weak, disjointed, and downright stupid the large majority of the time.

Like the show "Dexter", which foundered in its final few seasons, I'll probably continue to casually watch TWD but its no longer a have to watch show by any stretch.

I wonder how many concussions Rick's had by this point. The CTE has to be setting in soon. And people seem to recover from bullet wounds awfully quickly. Especially considering the unsanitary conditions.

pretty much punched out after the 2nd episode. To have the bad guy dead to rights and give him this "give yourself up" routine and then fast forward to Rick trying to shoot a 9mm PCC thru a bulldozer blade to kill Negan was just too much. And the cars with just basic metal roofing welded on as "armor" just looked silly.

Then the fight between the saviors is just plodding along and being stretched out over multiple episodes just too slow. And the forced moral conundrums is just too much.

And for the love of God, just how many Saviors are there?

Finally watched the last episode last night. And then went to series manager on my DVR and selected "cancel series recording".

I wanted to see it through, but I just cannot hang on.

This was written after the last "cliff-hanger" in Dec. New episode is tomorrow.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...pretty/#37601fec2b0f

There's Only One Way To Save 'The Walking Dead' Now, And It Isn't Pretty

Erik Kain, CONTRIBUTOR
DEC 11, 2017

Last night, The Walking Dead gave us one of the worst mid-season finales the show has ever aired. It was terrible in almost every conceivable way.

The story, which sees a Savior counter-attack against Rick's people, was riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies, capping off the first half to a truly terrible eighth season.

And to make matters worse, we learn at the end that they've killed off Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs) one of the most important characters in both the show and the comics. It's bizarre. Everything about the show these days is bizarre. It's certainly not the show we used to watch and love.

If You Love Something...

I'm told quite often by angry fans that I should just stop watching if I don't like it. That's a peculiar response for two reasons.

First, I do this as part of my job. I'm a professional critic who writes reviews of TV shows, movies and video games. Sometimes I love the things I review and sometimes I don't. I'd be a pretty lousy critic if I only wrote uncritically about stuff I liked!

The second reason I find this kind of thinking bizarre is that ratings matter. If enough people take this advice, The Walking Dead's ratings will fall. They've been falling already. Now it seems the show's most diehard fans would like people to stop watching the show so that they can fall even further! This makes no sense to me.

I, on the other hand, want the show's ratings to improve. As a critic, one of my goals is to point out the flaws in something like The Walking Dead in the hopes that its creators will listen and adapt. Criticism is far more useful and beneficial than blind fandom. Sure, the critics aren't always right (and I'm not always right, either) but certainly listening to both positive and negative voices is part of a big creative endeavor like making a major TV show. Critical voices can help showrunners, producers and writers improve. In some ways, we're like the canary in the coal mine: We can help creative people avoid disaster.

And disaster is coming to The Walking Dead. Ratings continue to slide. The show's Rotten Tomatoes score is slipping precariously closer to Rotten. Reading through the show's Reddit discussions illustrates just how many fans are angry.

It All Comes Down To Gimple

Time and again I try to understand just what it is about this show that's making it go downhill so rapidly. Partly it's just where the show has gone and its bizarre change of tone. You can attribute that to the cartoonish villain, Negan, and to the rest of the cartoonish, unbelievable characters like King Ezekiel, the Trash People and Eugene. None of these characters talk like real people and it's grating and annoying.

Partly, too, is the substandard production values lately. Bad choreography, inconsistent plot details, shoddy lighting and sound, and utterly atrocious editing all combine with sloppy dialogue and...well, you get the point. Across every corner of The Walking Dead, there are problems both great and small.

So what's the one thing tying all this together? What's at the center of this mess? Better yet, who?

The answer is simple: Scott Gimple. He's been the showrunner of The Walking Dead since season 4. And while there have been some great episodes between now and then, ever since Season 6 the show has been getting worse and worse. Obviously we can't blame Gimple for everything---comic creator Robert Kirkman is responsible for the direction of the story to some degree as well, or at least for introducing characters like Ezekiel and his tiger---but we can blame him for most of this.

Whatever Gimple was doing right back in Seasons 4 and 5, he's not doing it anymore. Since Season 6, the show has been changing into something entirely different from what it once was. Production value has fallen (except for the zombie make-up which is still excellent) and we've seen a lot more disjointed storytelling with lots of weird continuity errors, attempts at making the show "artsy" with weird close-ups and soft fades, and just very strange time jumps and an inability to give viewers context.

How many survivors are there? What's the plan? Where is everybody? How many Saviors are there? Do bullets run out? Didn't Negan just ask Eugene to make him bullets because they were out? Now they have them again? What is going on?

We shouldn't have to ask all these questions!

Now, with the death of Carl, we're seeing anger not just from fans but from actor Chandler Riggs' own father who wrote on Facebook that he never trusted Gimple to begin with.

"Watching Gimple fire my son 2 weeks before his 18th birthday after telling him they wanted him for the next three years was disappointing," Chandler's father, William Riggs, wrote on Facebook (via the Hollywood Reporter.)

"I never trusted Gimple or AMC but Chandler did. I know how much it hurt him. But we do absolutely know how lucky we have been to be a part of it all and appreciate all the love from fans all these years!"

The decision to kill off Carl was made by Gimple in order to make some future events make more sense apparently. I won't spoil those events, but it's a truly bizarre line of thinking that my colleague Paul Tassi discusses at length here. It's also pretty revealing about the way Gimple treats the show, and why he shouldn't be in charge of its future.

New Blood

Sometimes shows need new blood. The Walking Dead doesn't need to kill off main character from the comic books to give us a "shocking" midseason finale; it needs new leadership and new writers. AMC needs to realize that the current stewards of its most valuable program are doing a poor job. We've lost confidence in their ability to produce a quality television show.

It's time for fresh talent to breathe new life into this animated corpse. New producers, new writers and most definitely a new showrunner. Anything short of a major shake-up and we'll just watch this series continue to decline in perpetuity. AMC wants The Walking Dead to last for years to come, but the short-sighted decisions of its current producers will almost certainly make that impossible.

I'm sorry if that's harsh, but TV is more competitive than ever and that's the only way I can see this show turning around. Maybe the show's creators just don't have the right perspective anymore, or maybe they're just burned out and have no new ideas. For whatever reason, they've lost their mojo. It's not coming back. Pass the torch and let someone else give this series a go for a while. It might not be enough to save The Walking Dead, but it's worth a shot.

Because mark my words, any day now we'll see a big new Netflix Original zombie show. It'll be dark and gritty and realistic with great actors and a huge budget and it'll blow everything else in the genre out of the water. I just wouldn't be surprised.

So let's stop accepting this half-baked entertainment. Let's demand better. We shouldn't have to choke down our disbelief when we watch the Trash People. We shouldn't have to accept that the reason Carl didn't have his dad to back him up was because for some crazy reason Rick thought it would be a good idea to go singlehandedly coerce the Trash People into helping Team Rick. We shouldn't accept that Rick's group wouldn't post enough sentries outside the Sanctuary to stop what just happened from happening in the first place, or that Negan is just so amazing that he can coordinate this elaborate (unexplained) counter-offensive.

None of this is acceptable. It's okay, as a fan, to say that. It's okay, as a fan, to ask for better quality TV. It's okay to be upset by what we've lost. In the end, it's also okay to just stop watching. But that's the last thing in the world AMC wants you to do.

Thankfully the kicked Gimple upstairs, out of the writing and day to day production of the show.

Hopefully they get it back on track.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...g-dead/#5980c41e2ea5

"Scott Gimple is being kicked upstairs at AMC following a disastrous first half of The Walking Dead's eighth season.

Gimple, who has headed up the zombie drama since the show's fourth season, is being replaced by writer Angela Kang. But he's not off the show entirely, instead moving into a brand new position as Chief Content Officer. That's a position created just for Gimple, and positions him at the top of the content food chain for both The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead and whatever other spin-offs AMC cooks up.

Spoilers follow.

Many fans are still angry that Gimple will have anything to do with the show still, but let's not ignore the silver lining. Very importantly, this change means Gimple will be away from the day-to-day production and writing of the show starting in Season 9 (and that applies to Season 4 of Fear as well.)

Gimple has done some excellent work in the past, but whatever creative energy he brought to The Walking Dead has long since faded. Season 7 and Season 8 have been unmitigated disasters, and the midseason finale of Season 8 tipped fans over the edge with the sudden, inexplicable death of Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs.) After the first half of Season 8, I argued that the only way to save the show was to get rid of Gimple. For all intents and purposes, this is exactly what AMC has done, just minus any rolling heads.


Hopefully Kang will bring in new writers and new ideas and make Season 9 feel fresh, with coherent storytelling and character-driven narrative."

My wife os a cryer, tissues are out!

quote:

Originally posted by Tommydogg:
My wife os a cryer, tissues are out!

Haha, I feel ya'. Meanwhile I'm just rolling my eyes and screaming at the tv, "come on! Get on with it already!"

I actually thought last night's episode was one of the best of season 8.

They gave Carl his long goodbye which was well done and mixed in enough action to keep it interesting.

quote:

Originally posted by daikyu:
I actually thought last night's episode was one of the best of season 8.

They gave Carl his long goodbye which was well done and mixed in enough action to keep it interesting.

I thought so too, aside from the silly gun fight towards the end Morgan and Carol got into. At this point, I'm curious as to how many Saviors are left?

It'll be interesting to see if the dream sequence Carl envisioned will become true. I understand the comics sort of went that way but Carl is still alive in the comics.

quote:

Originally posted by terra:

It'll be interesting to see if the dream sequence Carl envisioned will become true. I understand the comics sort of went that way but Carl is still alive in the comics.

A disturbing development but as we see the Saviors continue to become more and more sympathetic, not impossible I guess. Rick vowed to Carl to follow the dream but, as we've seen, Rick's word is as good as Jack Bauer's.

In the follow-up Talking Dead, a poll showed 90% or so approved of Carl's snowflake vision for the future. Swell but how is that a show?

Pleased to see Henry being stealthier than Jesus. Who is teaching the kid those tricks? One minute he's here, the next he's going ninja. And no one saw him approaching even though they were facing him.

Yes, my wife cried her heart out. I almost did but for a very different reason.

I kept hoping that Henry would pop out and stuck Carl as he did Gavin (or whatever his name was).

I watched last night with very low expectations and was not disappointed. I'll watch next week, again with low expectations. The show has not jumped the shark, but it seems like they're slowly going there.

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:
I watched last night with very low expectations and was not disappointed. I'll watch next week, again with low expectations. The show has not jumped the shark, but it seems like they're slowly going there.

It seems like they are stringing people along to an unsatisfying Lost-like finale.

I watched the first two seasons and lost interest but it sounds like it's gotten a whole lot worse since.

A couple of things.

There have been a few times in season 8 that characters have been trying to steer Rick away from exterminating every savior. Jesus and Carl both have been railing against indiscriminate slaughter. I think at some point when the war is finally over there will be some incorporation of the surviving savior population into the Hilltop which is the last standing colony at this point.

Gimple is off the show as show runner and I think that fact will breathe some life back into the series. Starting with season 9 there will be a new head writer and show runner. I am hoping that the new writer will turn out a more consistently good product as the past season or 2 have been wildly inconsistent.

Wipe out all the management and take in tje workers would be a good compromise.