*Spoilers Ahead*
If there is one thing that the writers on The Walking Dead love it’s drawing things out. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing but there comes a time where you need to get to the point. That, ultimately, is the problem, the show never gets to the point until it’s much too late for us to care about it.
“Last Day on Earth” is an episode that could have been exciting and climatic while introducing us to the threat of the Saviors. Instead, the show uses the extra-long runtime, as it did last season, to stall. The episode keeps us waiting for the big moment we all knew was coming and chooses to keep us waiting.
Maybe that idea would work better if we hadn’t spent the over 40-minute lead-up to it watching Rick and the gang coming across various roadblocks set up by The Saviors and attempting to find a way past them. Perhaps the writers believed this was compelling TV and maybe it would have been if the episode wasn’t so long and the dialogue so laughably dumb. The episode’s attempts to incorporate it’s title into the dialogue being the worst of it.
While Rick and the gang are dealing with the threat of not being able to drive on a road, Morgan and Carol are wasting our time in their own special way. Morgan finally tracks down Carol but she doesn’t want to be saved. Much like the main plot everything is drawn out here too as we get to watch the Savior who has been stalking Carol torture her for a bit before Morgan kills him to save her. That’s right folks, Morgan kills and it’s treated with all the importance of when anyone else murders someone on this show. I understand the storyline reason of Morgan doing it to save someone important to him, in Carol, but it further highlights the shows problem with it’s characters. They’re not so much living, breathing people who act rationally for their established characters as they are plot devices that will be used in whatever way the writer’s feel like regardless of if it makes sense.
We, mercifully, make it to the last half hour and that’s when things take a slight upturn. Rick finally discovers just how many Saviors there are when they surround the group and make them give up their weapons and get on their knees. The group running in the woods attempting to escape their fate while ominous whistling is heard all around is a great set piece and it finally gets us to Negan.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan nearly saves the episode with his performance as Negan, one part comical, one part menacing and one part charismatic. It’s a breath of fresh air since so many characters in this show are interesting in spite of the dialogue they have to spout out. Negan is interesting because of what he says. The problem though, is that he talks for entirely too long. Nearly 15 minutes are spent on Negan’s monologue, which doesn’t work when it consists of talks about “pee pants” and barbed wire baseball bats. It’s suppose to add to the tension but only further tries my patience.
Eventually, Negan picks his target but we don’t get to see who he chooses. Perhaps this cliffhanger would seem interesting or compelling if the previous hour plus had been better or if we hadn’t already had a similar trick played on us earlier this season with Glenn, at least this time we know someone will die. The cliffhanger ultimately fails because it doesn’t invest me in wanting to see who was killed it simply angers me for once again trusting this show to play something, anything straight. The idea of a trick like this is to use it to heighten the story you’re telling but there is so little story in this episode that the trick is revealed for what it really is, a manipulative rug pull designed to both keep people coming back and give the writer’s a few extra months to decide which b-list character they’re going to off.
This season of The Walking Dead had a lot of potential but chose to squander it by taking far too long to get to the point. The whole first half promised a big zombie attack that we didn’t get until the beginning of the second half. The second half promised a big moment that we’ll now have to wait for the conclusion of next season. As always, it’s one step forward, two steps back for this show.
Season 6: 7.0/10
Bits ‘n Pieces
- The backlash for this episode has been pretty strong so my hope is that it clues the writer’s in on how much this type of storytelling annoys and detracts from your audience, although the rating probably won’t be hindered much.
- If they’re smart they’ll kill off someone big like Daryl but I wouldn’t be completely surprised if someone like Aaron or Rosita bit it just because.
- After all that talk about not taking the big guns away from Alexandria last week, all the big guns go out leaving Spencer and Gabriel to hold down the fort. That should end well
Jesse Swanson is a would-be writer, podcaster and funny guy who covers TV shows of all shapes and sizes. You can find him on Twitter @JesseSwanson