Walking Dead season finale cliffhanger...the moment you realize you are now rooting for the psychopath with the leather jacket and a baseball bat named Lucille because you no longer care who lives or dies from Rick's self-righteous group.
Seriously...a Moldavian Massacre cliffhanger is so 1980s....if you promise us a shocking finale, you have to deliver on that promise. Instead you give us 90 minutes of the most boring episode ever only to leave us with a who-is-it mystery to ponder for next seven months?
Yes, Negan is awesome. But you can't build an entire season around his arrival. You have to develop plot points and character arcs that make sense and are deep and resonant with the audience. And btw, I'm so done with the idea that every person in the apocalypse is a murderous psychopath. Negan would be more shocking if we hadn't met various versions of him already.
And the reason Moldavian Massacre cliffhangers don't work in 2016? 1)You piss off your fans and you will hear from them loud and clear. Fans are passive like they were in the 1980s, thanks to this new-fangled thing called the Interweb. 2) Casting news over the next couple of months will make it clear to us who the dead Alexandrian is way before the series comes back in October. AMC can't hold anyone under contract. People need to work. Someone from this show will get cast at some point in a new pilot, especially if their agent has anything to say about it.They couldn't keep the news of Negan's casting secret, and they won't be able to hide that either.
Nowadays, cliffhangers work best when they are resolved quickly. The Glenn cliffhanger only lasted a couple weeks and was one of the worst creative decisions the show ever made. And I think the introduction of Negan, and how this was handled, might be their worst misfire yet.
Comments