The Walking Dead – Season 7
Grade Average: B
For the most part, the seventh season of The Walking Dead was good. It wasn’t fantastic, or incredible, like I would’ve called the previous season. As a whole story, from episode one to sixteen, the season was erratic, messy, and didn’t work for me. What saved the show this season is the individual episodes being great for what they were. There were some great character moments, some bad decisions made, but ultimately, I’m hoping this disappointing—yet still good—season of the show is a bridge to something even better next season.
HIGHLIGHTS
A lot of great standalone episodes
saved this season from being terrible. “The Cell,” “Sing Me A Song,” “Hearts Still Beating,” “Hostiles and Calamities,” “Bury Me Here,” and even “Swear,” the Tara-centric episode at Oceanside that was divided in criticism, were some of the highlight episodes for me. The first episode, despite its violence and drawing out the surprise deaths to nearly the middle of the episode, was still technically a great episode.
LOWLIGHTS
Fractured group of the main characters
and disjointed episodes made the season feel less cohesive than in previous seasons. I love episodes that focus on a specific character or group, because sometimes they’re the best of what the show has to offer—Morgan’s 90 minute episode with Eastman last season was incredible, as was Maggie and Carol’s episode. They even did something similar after the prison, with everyone separated and all getting to Terminus, but that worked because it was done well and the point was that they were separated. Here we have a problem the same way the show derailed itself with the Governor’s episodes that didn’t quite work as well as the rest of the episodes that season—it was too much. An episode here and there focusing on one character or group is great, but almost the entire season? It just didn’t work. We barely saw Carol at all, or even Rick, really. Almost every episode was focused on either a small group of characters, one character, or one of the main groups, like Hilltop or the Sanctuary. Because of this, we had limited time with a lot of characters that are favorites. Having such a disruption in the way the show tells the story, no longer having all the characters together, or even just separate but in the same episode, made the entire season a disappointing one. Not to say that each of these episodes weren’t good separately, but all together, it didn’t work as a solid season.
Negan
has just become so so so annoying. At first, I liked Jeffrey Dean Morgan playing him, but now I’m just over it. There is nothing more to Negan than what we see. There’s no depth to his character. There’s nothing there but one-liners and him being an asshole. I can’t help but compare him to the Governor, the only other real villain the show has had, who was given a range of emotional depth, a backstory, an arc bringing him from a so-so leader of a small village to a dangerous threat. The only way they’d be able to save Negan as a character is to give him a backstory, give him some emotional depth, give him something to be or do other than being a dick and bashing in people’s skulls.
Mauve Reviews 