Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Judith Jumps The Shark. Memo to Shark: "Eat Judith !"

Spoiler notice - if you're not current with The Walking Dead, Fear The Walking Dead or ZNation, you might wanna stop reading now.

Judith Grimes jumps the shark. Cheer for the shark!

The Rick Grimes family and crew is now under the leadership of his young daughter, Judith. How precious.

TWD used to be so good. Fans can debate, but the last time TWD seemed on course was Season 5. It went down hill after that, and quickly. Last season (#8) sucked. This season reaches new highs in disappointing viewers. 

Just stop watching it. That is the answer. Must be fans keep hoping it will get better. We should know better by now. 

Here's a show, with one of the greatest, all-time TV villains, Negan, and his on-screen time in season 8 is doled out like micro-droplets from a morphine drip until the last episode. Why bother at all? Yeah, Negan was in here and there, but no real screen time. We could have seen more of Negan and less of people walking or driving down a dirt road for several minutes. See, we might not know where they're going if we only see thirty seconds. Yes, we have to watch them go down the entire fucking road. The repetition of the same shit in episode after episode amounts to filler.

At the end of season 7, Maggie was pregnant with Glenn's child for around...3 weeks? In all of season 8, Maggie didn't even show a baby bump. Season 8, in real-time, represented how long? A month? Five weeks tops?

This season, within a span of six episodes, the show has moved 18 months ahead of where it left off in season 8? And Judith Grimes, a child, is telling the group what to do and making life and death decisions for others? I guess if viewers will buy that the defenseless child Newt Jordan  manages to survive being eaten by aliens running around everywhere, when every adult armed with kickass weapons are alien chow, they'll buy any plot. (My reason why Aliens is inferior to the original Alien - all due to the Newt character. Gimme a break.)

I gave TWD the benefit of the doubt since season 5. What a waste of time. Except for those few great moments of Negan. Oh, TWD viewers got plenty too much of The Governor,  but Negan? TWD wastes the talent of Jeffrey-Dean Morgan. 

TWD's new opening title sequence is garbage. All CGI Some think differently. I miss the actual images and the lone zombie in the pasture.  

The good thing is, I don't watch it in real time. I fast-forward through a full episode in ten minutes or less. Same for Fear The Walking Dead.

I loved seasons 1 - 3 of FTWD. The key is, you have to get past the middle of season two. The first season is great. The beginning to middle of season 2 is tough, but after getting past that, I think it sails along and keeps getting better.

Until season 4. Crash and burn. We never see how the survivors survived the bridge and dam explosion. The timeframe shifting with Nick being dead, then not dead ("before") to being dead is done for what reason? There isn't one.

The main character Madison is killed mid-season. Some story at the time noted the writers felt they had explored ALL the options possible with Madison. Three seasons and half of season four and the writers are out of options for Madison. But we get Rick Grimes for eight seasons and half of the ninth? Do we really know if Rick is dead? (Weary viewers can only hope).

Both shows go beyond excess in flashbacks and flash-forwards, showing viewers what's to come, what's happened before, what's current and what might or might not be. Is it a dream? A hallucination? A fantasy? It's not that I can't follow it. There's no reason for it. Thank you technology for fast-forwarding. What a time-saver. Who wants to watch two minutes of someone buttoning their shirt; each and every button?

If you like the zombie genre, and are looking for a very witty, well-written series, you might like ZNation.

The first thing you'll notice with ZNation is it flagrantly jumps the shark. Sometimes, several times within the same episode. And it jumps shamelessly and they know you know they're jumping shamelessly. You won't care. You'll want them to jump the shark. You'll expect them to jump and you'll want it to be more outrageous than the prior jump. And it will.

ZN's season 4 was much darker than the previous three. But the reason is solid, while all the other elements that make ZN so good are intact, including jumping the shark. ZN has its moments of excessive flashbacks, flash-forwards and unknown unknowns. Usually there's a pay-off (not always), unlike TWD and FTWD.

I don't fast-forward during ZN. I end up re-watching favorite parts over and over again. 

And yeah, haven't updated here much. Either working, sleeping or watching teh hockey. I heard we had an election. Is Hillary president now?

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