Spoilers The Walking Dead (2010)

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
Cohan Could Leave “Walking Dead” Over Pay?


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A half-dozen offers for broadcast pilots are reportedly out to “The Walking Dead” star Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie on the hit zombie drama series.

The news will be something of a shock for fans of the series because her character is alive and well on the show and has been a part of the cast since the start of the second season. Cohan’s contract is up at the end of the current eighth season, making her available for new series.

Deadline reports that Cohan had sought near parity with her male co-stars Andrew Lincoln and Norman Reedus who are paid significantly more than all of their female colleagues. However, it was NOT a make-or-break requirement for Cohan as she came later to the show and has notably fewer scenes than Lincoln and Reedus.

AMC reportedly offered Cohan a modest salary increase in exchange for a long-term contract, which was rejected. The network did not follow up with a new proposition and there have been no further talks leaving Cohan contractually free and clear to entertain new offers.

Her availability has now led to a feeding frenzy from multiple networks and she has reportedly been engaging, taking pilot meetings. Cohan hasn’t indicated that she would not be coming back for a ninth season though so AMC could still lure her back.

Last year’s seventh season finale saw actress Sonequa Martin-Green depart the series and head to CBS All Access and Netflix’s “Star Trek: Discovery” which has been a smash hit in what few independent audience metrics there are to measure such things for a streaming service series.
 

johnnybear

Member: Rank 6
What I can't believe is the length of the break between halves of the season! It's been three months or more and the 25th or 26th of February is just far too long this year!
JB
 

johnnybear

Member: Rank 6
Modern US television and it's annoying habit of centreing on different characters every week makes the shows last longer somehow and gets us into a tizzie because we won't to know what happened after last weeks ending and not focus on the other plots in the show!
JB
 

johnnybear

Member: Rank 6
Well I do believe the three month hiatus is nearly over and the show returns to the UK this Monday night! Wonder if we'll see Carl fully change or will Rick deliver the final blow to his child first? Either that or we'll get the story of the third bad guy from the left of Negan in the first episode and Carl's plight later on going by previous build ups and resolutions!
JB
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
Yes, I hate that sudden realisation that this episode is going to completely ignore a cliffhanger and instead be entirely about two cheaper actors in a shed talking about their pasts, complete with pointless flashbacks. :emoji_head_bandage:
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“Walking Dead” S8 Finale Is “Too Big”


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Scott Gimple, showrunner on AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” says that this year’s eighth season finale of the zombie drama will be almost “too big” for viewers to handle.

With the ‘All-Out War’ coming to a head, he tells EW that this will be very much the end of one key chapter in the saga and the starting point for a whole new one:

“It’s very big. Probably currently a little too big. It was pretty amazing the scope of some of the things that we got to do. And yet the emotional intensity was insane. And it very much sets up the start of the next story.”

The series has previously played things fairly loose with the source material, including changing up who survives and who dies, to the inclusion of characters not in the comics such as fan-favourite Daryl. That will be doubled down on in this ‘big’ finale with even bigger changes from the comics in store:

“I think emotionally we’re aspiring to evoke the same feeling that [creator Robert Kirkman] achieved in the book. But from the butterfly effect and different characters around that weren’t and vice versa, and even just the thrust of the story, how things play out are quite different in a lot of ways. There are some big changes that change the very outcome of certain aspects of the story – still trying to be true to the emotions of the story, but changing some big parts of it. It plays out very differently.”

The episodes serve as Gimple’s farewell with new “Walking Dead” showrunner Angela Kang set to take over for the show’s ninth season. The back half of the eighth season returns tonight with the finale to screen on April 15th.
 

johnnybear

Member: Rank 6
Looks like they're thinking of upsetting the viewers!!! Ridiculous to have got rid of Carl I still have to say as he was Rick's anchor in this insanity!
JB
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
It kind of lost me when it got to the Negan/Lucille thing.

Yes, all very powerful, tense and dramatic - but, my God, they didn't half drag out that tension and reward us with mindless gore - and something snapped in my opinion.

I just suddenly thought, why am I watching this unpleasantness?

If it were offset by even a tiny promise of hope for the characters; that they are going through all this with a prospect of being rewarded in some way by finding a cure - or at least a new home that didn't get overrun by walkers at some point, then there would seem some point to the whole thing.

But no. It just seems to be never-ending misery. Even the title can be taken two ways. Are they all the walking dead? All doomed to die at the teeth of zombies - or to destroy each other?

It is just too nihilistic, I think.

And yes, I suspect Carl was removed as they didn't think he was the world's greatest actor, but in narrative terms it is getting a bit ridiculous for poor Rick. How much misery can one guy take?

If and when they wrap this farrago up, I hope that they will at least have the decency to surprise viewers with some kind of ending for the show that doesn't make people feel that they wasted all that time invested in watching it.

* And the use of pop ballads over montages was starting to get on my wick too. :emoji_alien:

** I have never even seen any of FEAR THE WALKING DEAD. Was that any better?
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“Walking Dead” Ratings Slide With Return


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When you’re the unarguable king of TV series in terms of ratings, there’s only one direction for those ratings to go ultimately – down.

Without question, AMC’s “The Walking Dead” hit its peak in terms of audience around its fifth or sixth season with the ratings for the show’s various premieres, finales and mid-season episodes having since slid with each year passing.

That trend continued this week as Nielsen Live+Same Day data for the eighth season midseason premiere saw the show drawing a 3.6 rating in adults 18-49 and 8.3 million viewers.

While that’s up from the 3.4 and 7.9 million viewers for the mid-season finale, it’s still the lowest-rated “Walking Dead” midseason premiere to date even with its major farewell to one key character. Previous Live+Same Day results for mid-season premieres have been (first season was just six episodes so no mid-season premiere):

Season 2 (2012) – 4.2 rating, 8.1 million viewers
Season 3 (2013) – 6.1 rating, 12.3 million viewers
Season 4 (2014) – 8.2 rating, 15.8 million viewers
Season 5 (2015) – 8.0 rating, 15.6 million viewers
Season 6 (2016) – 6.8 rating, 13.7 million viewers
Season 7 (2017) – 5.7 rating, 12 million viewers
Season 8 (2018) – 3.6 rating, 8.3 million viewers

Nevertheless, the show was easily the top-rated show on cable on Sunday and remains the number one show on television among adults 18-49 for the sixth season in a row. Angela Kang, who has been a writer on the show since 2011 and co-executive producer since 2013, is replacing Scott Gimple as showrunner next season.
 

johnnybear

Member: Rank 6
Fear started off well! The first zombie we see is Nick's (main character and Johnny Depp lookalike Frank Dillane) girlfriend! They've both been hitting hard drugs in an abandoned church and when he awakens he finds the love of his life eating one of two guys in the pulpit! The other guy probably didn't taste too good as she left him dead in the corridor! But when his stepfather goes to investigate the place is deserted! Now how do three bloodied zombies get out of a locked derelict church and get into the civilian population without getting noticed? Good use of the armed forces in episodes four and five though...
JB
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“Walking Dead” Sinks To S1 Level Ratings


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AMC’s zombie drama “The Walking Dead” is continuing its sharp ratings decline with the most recent episode, the second back since its mid-season premiere, drawing the show’s lowest Live+Same Day numbers since its first season.

The episode drew a 2.9 rating in adults 18-49 and 6.8 million viewers, the last time the show’s rating fell below 3.0 was the penultimate episode of the first season which drew a 2.8. In total views, the 6.8 million hasn’t been seen since “Better Angels” which nabbed 6.89 million viewers.

Despite the drop, the show was still easily the top-rated and most-watched cable show of Sunday by far. AMC has said many times it has no plans to end the series anytime soon.
 

McQualude

Member: Rank 3
This show, validated my whole life in that I have been a zombie fan since a teenager in the 80's. There were times when I watched a lot of garbage zombie movies because good zombie movies were few and far between. Then The Walking Dead happened. A zombie tv series that is actually good -- and unexpectedly popular with a wide audience. I will always watch it although the first half of S8 was really bad, really bad. It felt like a B action movie with dumb shootout scenes and suddenly things happening for plot convenience rather than plot evolving naturally from the characters. The latter half of S8 has been better, with some legit good episodes, but still there are lots of dumb things happening. Case in point, the last episode has Maggie opening the gates for Negan's assault team, allowing them inside the walls then attacking them. No one, no one, in their right mind would do that. It's stupid. You keep the gate shut and set up an ambush outside. It wouldn't be that difficult to disable most of their vehicles. At this point I expect the survivors to be better. When Rick's group took out the Savior outpost in S7 (or 6?) they were like Delta Force but then suddenly they are idiots. Attempting to appeal to a wider audience is only working against them. They need to get back to better quality writing and focus on the apocalypse and forget Rick vs Negan.
 

johnnybear

Member: Rank 6
I did enjoy this last episode with the injured survivors of the saviours attack becoming zombies and attacking the sleeping inhabitants of the Hilltop! But the last show with Negan being kidnapped by the gorgeous Jadis a bit far fetched and even more annoying is this current story telling where you don't get a continuation of the cliffhanger for a few weeks and the story drifts onto other plots instead! The saviours plan to poison the people of the Hilltop was discussed many weeks ago and yet it was only this week before we get to see it happen! I much prefer episodic television from the sixties and seventies to the long serialised epics we get today!
JB
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
Yes, my heart sinks when we are awaiting the resolution of a cliffhanger, but instead we get an hour of two people in a shed talking to each other, complete with dreary flashbacks to before the zombie apocalypse. And you just know that one of the two people is probably gonna be dead by the end of the episode. Pointless filler. And cheap television to boot. Better to reduce the episode count in the first place, surely? :emoji_angry:
 

johnnybear

Member: Rank 6
Yes indeed! Lost started this style of television writing as far as I know! It's really confusing to us sitting at home wondering how they're going to wrap up the last week cliffhanger! Can you imagine how long the old Doctor Who series would have lasted if we'd never have got an immediate answer to how the Doctor and his companions escaped from the threat from last week's episode?
JB
 

McQualude

Member: Rank 3
I don't know. These people are well into zpoc and they still don't close doors behind them. Literally everyone who has played a zombie game knows to close doors. These aren't smart zombies. It's like watching a cooking show where the contestants are still burning toast in the finale. You're supposed to get better at things after doing them for awhile but TWD characters are only as capable as the lazy writing allows them. Get real, if you have a bunch of wounded people who could potentially turn into zombies, even if you don't know the arrows are poison, you'd put them into a room and at least close the door so they can't wander about the house biting people. You don't open the gate then see who is in the car (Saviors/Negan). You don't allow your bitter enemy to go free after his group kills every person you know. You don't leave guns laying around where your enemy can pick them up. This show has gotten stupid. Fire the lazy writers and showrunners and hire new ones.
 
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