Quote:
Originally Posted by Punker
How about - this guy, who doesn't seem that amazing, has been able to mobilize and keep in line this giant army of people to do exactly what he wants. Why is that?
Rick's (and other main villains on the show so far, such as the Governor and the Terminus guys) philosophy to this point has seemingly been "raze our enemies to the ground, take everything they have and leave nothing". Negan's is basically "here are the rules my enemies will live under. Follow them and you're good. Don't follow them and there will be consequences". He's doing so in a way that engages his new "followers" with lots of talking and explaining, instead of putting on a hat and shoving a magnum in their face and firing.
Is Negan really the bad guy? Is there something to be said that Negan is a more just and fair leader than Rick? Someone ITT posted "why isn't Negan conflicted about his decisions" - so, is he? It's unlikely he's going to hem and haw and agonize about things in front of his giant group and this new batch of recruits even if he really does. Or maybe he doesn't - he's accepted that these are the rules of life now and his role is to set them and follow them and make them seem acceptable to everyone. Rick's now in a situation much worse than short term danger - he's in a spot where things seem clearly long term hopeless for how he wants to live and he's lost basically all of his best team muscle (Glenn/Abraham dead, Daryl in the free candy van). How will he react to that?
That doesn't interest you, like, at all? Or are you just caught up in "TWD is dumb lol" group think?
Count me among those who think the premiere delivered. I expect quite a bit less zombie culling and more human on human interaction this season, and that's the part they have to focus on by this point - there's not really much new they can show in terms of slaughtering zombies.
That is a plausible analysis. For me, though, I was more turned off by two things.
1. An entire hour of "who is going to get their head's smashed in." The theatrics and the time spent on this was a little much.
2. The really odd and incongruent behaviour from Rick and Negan. First, Rick is the leader and he knows someone is getting their head smashed in. Rick's son is one of those who possibly could.
That Rick, Negan's biggest threat, didn't offer himself up to ensure his son lived and the others would as well seems odd. I mean once the bat came down on his son's head, it is too late for a hero play at that point. In short, Rick was a coward and that was not consistent with his character.
2nd, after Abraham gets his head caved, Rick decides the best thing to do is tell Negan that he is going to kill him. So, the whole point of Negan's exercise was to demonstrate who was in control, and what the consequences are for challenging that control, and Rick threatens the guy?? I mean really.
Isn't this like being tied up in a chair while being tortured and deciding that you best cliché move is to spit in your torturer's face?? Actually it is more stupid, as Rick's threat puts all of them in jeopardy of another head smashing. Anyway, I am pretty sure I am not spitting in my torturer's face, and I am also pretty sure that I am not telling Negan that I am going to kill him (but, in my mind, I am planning too).
It would have been 90% likely that after Negan got threated by Rick, that Nagen walk over and crush Rick's kid in the head.
Anyway, it is easy to understand that Negan needs control and needs to remove threats. To that end, he needed to kill Rick, Darrel and Abraham in front of the others, and the problem is solved.
The viewers are all smart enough to know what Negan is doing, and we are smart enough to know that Rick will
always be a threat to Negan. And, it would be impossible for Negan not to know that Rick will always be a threat.
There were lots of things wrong with the episode, but Rick and Negan taking turns acting contrary to what they each needed to do in that spot was pretty lame, imo. And we had to watch them act contrary to their interests for a whole hour.....