THAT PLACE WHERE I POST STUFF (AND THINGS)

The Walking Dead’s garbage people.

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 <3)

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.

Daryl: Thought you wanted to get out.

Dwight: There’s no getting out. I realize that now. You’ll realize it too, soon enough.

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.

Ehat? I haven’t watch it omg… I’ve been waiting like a mad person,

Dude. You need to blacklist #twd spoilers if you don’t want the spoilers!!!

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.

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.

Yeah, I can’t tell if the writers are just getting lazy or if the characters are supposed to be getting clumsy and overconfident. Because they’ve survived this long, more or less, by being smart and being careful, and now all of a sudden they’re just wandering about blindly, taking trips out into the wild on the flimsiest whim, risking their most valuable people (I’m sorry but Denise, really? I loved you but how stupid and irresponsible to have the only doctor in the entire community go wandering off just so she could feel tough. Like I knew all episode she was going to die, she just kept taking dumb risks and Daryl and Rosita weren’t watching her nearly closely enough) and starting a war with a new group they know literally nothing about, without trying to do any kind of recon first. Since the time jump it’s like Rick just thinks he can survive anything, like nothing can touch him and his... which feels like an especially strange transition considering how his son just lost an eye (not to mention his girlfriend & family dying). Like where is this stupidly blase attitude coming from?

I’ve never really thought the group deserved what they got before (well, at least since that time in s2 when Lori randomly took a drive out to town on her own, and didn’t watch the road and got herself into a car accident) but this season I’ve been feeling like pretty much everything that’s gone wrong could have been avoided by them just being less stupid about things. And that (along with the weird pacing) is making me way less invested in what happens to them.

Ok first off: holy frick replies are back??? When did this happen?? I’m so out of touch with Tumblr, guys.

But yeah, he’s just so different now, and with no explanation whatsoever, so it’s really hard to process or honestly to take seriously. I’m wondering (as a non-comic reader) if maybe the Saviors are an actual cult and he’s been brainwashed into a happy killer person since going back there.

If they could’ve had some line somewhere, just a throwaway with Daryl saying something like “guess you found your place back there,” and Dwight saying how Negan had shown him the light or something (haha, get it, because his face is burned now) then at least there would be a hint of an explanation to tie things together, but as it is it’s like the writers just created a new character and gave the role to the same actor for some reason. Like no one has acknowledged how different he is in-show (or mentioned his new scar or anything) so it just feels like sloppy writing.