^

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.

People who run protection rackets are almost always bad people.

well, except for Glenn and Abraham!

also I'm not sure your argument is really that would pass any moral standard. but whatevs I think it's irrelevant, I don't think TWD is presenting Negan as a moral case study, he's just a straightforward villain

I think a lot of people forget that Rick's group invaded their camp and straight up murdered a huge number of Negan's people. They got off pretty easy iyam.

With how bad this show has been, I think this is the best episode in awhile.
Or maybe I just hate the characters so much that by any of them getting killed is a win for me.

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.....

Haven't watched this show since season 3, but I'm pretty impressed with the reaction to Glenn's death. Lots of girls on my Facebook feed literally cried with what you guys called "torture porn". So I guess they've done something right if people care that much about a ****ty character like Glenn.

I agree that Negan makes a big illogical mistake by not killing/imprisoning Rick. It is so obvious that Negan should kill Rick that Rick should be aware of this and take appropriate action (axe to Negans head) when he has the chance. I don't see how Rick can not assume they won't all be killed by Negan anyways when everything points to Negan being a sadistic bastard.

Kansas, fans have always been irrational over the characters' deaths in this show. I think Glenn was the last original survivor on this show (I think he was in the first shot or so of the series with the tank, but can't remember for sure if he was introduced before or after Rick), so there's going to be an audience connection with him. He was a potentially great character that had his potential wasted with all the changes that happened on the show. His character has been low priority for them for at least the last two seasons, so the loss of his character (while shocking in context) had about as much of an impact as Abraham. I just don't get why they keep killing off the nuanced characters and leave us with people like the mullet guy.

The most effective character death in this show's history was Bob, in my opinion, but you may have checked out before he was even introduced.

It's almost like you didn't even watch the ending of the show. If Negan kills Rick, the group splinters and a lot more blood is shed between the two groups. If he leaves him alive and emasculated, Rick can produce for him and still have a group. No matter what you say about Negan, and his sadistic representation, he absolutely knows what he's capable of and he doesn't appear to perceive Rick as any kind of serious threat. He looks at him as a dog fighting trained pitbull that needs to beaten into obedience. The Governor was more like a Mayor, Negan thinks of himself as a vicious king who wants everyone to bring him tributes under the penalty of anything he can think of. It's seemingly some kind of allegory to Machiavelli. And it makes you curious about what this guy was before the apocalypse. It's kind of funny how the NBC canceled show Revolution was essentially a knock off of The Walking Dead, and now The Walking Dead appears to be showing someone looking at something larger than just a community or two he's in charge of. He wants it all.

Maybe this will be our second Call of Wild inspired type show this season.

But Rick has done this before, and it worked out exactly as he said - he told the Terminus guy exactly how he was going to kill him, and did it. I think the whole first episode is just as much about training Rick that he's not the boss anymore as it is about training the audience. Like, in previous seasons, you kind of knew Rick&group were going to come out on top. Now?

No Glenn, no Abraham, Daryl gone, Rick in meltdown, how is this group supposed to rebound and take down the superior force? If they don't, what happens? I'm interested enough to see what happens this season to keep watching.

My one fear is that this turns into the "Carl takes over" season.

As for Negan not killing Rick - what has he seen from Rick that he has to be scared of? Just another leader of a small group that he's handled pretty easily once he focused his attention on them.

a real eye opener

Too soon

But this doesn't fit the scope of the attention Negan gave to sorting Rick out. With Negan's large cast of muscle as support, and against just a few people on their knees, Negan clearly thought things were important enough for this "Roman Coliseum" type of event. Not to mention that Rick merited special one-on-one time with Negan in that whole bus and axe dog and pony show.

Rick was clearly worth an extraordinary amount of time, but you feel that Negan has no reason at this point to think Rick is a big deal????

It cant be spun both ways. Either Rick is a threat that could haunt Negan and should be terminated, or he is no big deal.

It's both. Nearly all characters like that die of their hubris. But again, it's important to note that there is absolutely no upside for him if Rick is killed right now (he's attempting to enter into a beneficial business transaction for himself...a hostile takeover, if you will). He also knows Rick isn't afraid to die, which is why he cuts at him through everyone else. Rick's almost like that guy in the Twilight Zone episode who built a society, and essentially believed that he was their god (he was wrong, of course). That kind of thing has always been said about Rick, by various characters, but he always holds his own. This time, it was different, and everyone with him knew it was different.

At this point, any group still alive is probably considered useful to a guy like Negan, because he knows it's not easy to survive this long (no idea where we're at in the timeline, but I'm assuming it's at least 2 years).

Yet does not offer up himself for the bat, even if it means his son might get killed.. Did Rick have some magic undo button if it was Carl getting clobbered? Did Rick know Negal would not make him cut his own son's arm off to save the rest, which is really ironic, considering Rick didn't offer at the beginning to offer himself to save everyone.

I mean it is neat to deconstruct this, but the narrative has to support the argument, and I just believe they really botched what both Rick and Negal's typical behaviour's should have been in that situation, and that people are now revising the character profiles and their complexity in a way that doesn't represent what went on.

Anyway, it is ok to agree to disagree.

I feel like we need more context from the season finale. The two scenes are the same, but there was some more dialog going on at the end of the season.

I think Rick is very not risk averse, and hasn't been for a long time. I think it was you who said it was stupid for him to say he would kill him before the moment had passed, but I think Rick might have thought he was bluffing prior to killing Abraham, and he just said what came to mind when he realized he was wrong. He's crossed paths with some seriously crazy people whose bark was much worse than their bite. But he slowly realized this guy was different. He's certainly no James Bond villain. Other than not having Rick chop off Carl's arm, he meant serious business. And again, he even mentioned that he was trying to get the fight out of Rick's eyes.

I do agree with you that it's botched writing to not have that "Rick isn't afraid to die" subtext right there, but this is The Walking Dead we're talking about. It hasn't had anything resembling tight writing since Darabont was fired, and it often wasn't tight after the first few episodes of the show. All you can go on is what you know of the characters. We know nothing about Negan, but we know that Rick has put himself in a lot of crazy situations to both save and solidify his place in the group. You seem to think he's a coward, which was what a lot of characters (like Shane) thought of him until he did what had to be done. If you think it's a regression in the character, I'm cool with that, but I don't agree that he's a coward. It's probably more bad writing than anything else, but I'm not really sure what you wanted him to do. They were screwed, and him making a bad move kills all of them, or worse, he becomes a main target for torture after they kill the rest. He was trying to figure out what to do, and when he thought he had it figured out, it got one more of his group killed, and one kidnapped. He just didn't get the gravity of the situation, because even with all the psychos they've run across, they've never seen a guy like this.

But again, this was a strategic meeting with business interests for Negan. I don't think he ever intended to kill all of them. He probably just looked for the people who he thought had that look that Rick had. The most James Bond-ian villain thing he did was taking Daryl. That will probably have dire consequences.

Your recollection is off a little. When Rick made his little threat to Negan, Glenn was already dead at that point. Darryl punching Negan in the jaw is what got Glenn killed.

Negan is sadistic and bored. Killing Rick, although the correct move, is boring for him. He wants to break the will of people, not just kill them.

really doesnt make much sense to kill ricks kid. that would drastically lower his leverage over rick. not sure why he doesnt just kill rick tho. guess he needs someone to stay in charge and provide some tribute to him.

It's funny how because TWD is such a big thing on TV right now, people tend to treat the show like it should be well written, have great characters, depth etc when in fact it's just an entertaining enough zombies show that somehow picked up way more interest than it deserves from the viewers.

Time to take TWD for what it really is, enjoy the ride, or quit, imo.

It annoys me when people say ITS JUST A ZAMBIES SHOW, ENJOY THE GORE. The Strain and Z Nation are "just zombies shows". TWD hasn't always had world class acting or writing but it's supposed to be immersive. More than most shows, you're supposed to ask yourself "what would I do in this situation?". That's why it lent itself so well to those adventure games. In 7x01 there was no "what would I do". The characters were deliberately robbed of agency.

meh, I actually did (briefly) consider what I would do in Rick's situation (being asked to cut my kids arm off). at that point I'm ok being shot and getting out of this terrible world.