Review: Season 7 Premiere Is the Show At Its Worst 

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Season 7 Episode 1,"The Day Will Come When You Won\'t Be," kicks off with a lot of tedious misery.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan in “The Walking Dead.”

Abraham and Glenn. I know, more guys than you thought, right? Twisteroonie! Remember when there was that big chunk of last season when we thought Glenn died but he was just hiding under a dumpster? They sure tricked us! It’s almost as if the only storytelling trick the show has left is jerking the audience around.

The plot of this episode, such as it is, is that Negan wants to break Rick and ensure his obedience. Apparently just killing Rick is too easy, or else Negan knows he’s the protagonist of the show. Or maybe Negan’s just a sadist who likes seeing the light of resistance go out in people’s eyes? That seems more likely, since this episode is certainly sadistic. It’s 45 solid minutes of misery, and as good as Andrew Lincoln is in conveying that misery, it’s still incredibly tedious.

You may recall that I was not a big fan of Negan’s monologuing in the Season 6 finale. Well bad news for me, because here’s an entire episode of it. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a perfectly good actor, but he’s not doing much to make Negan anything other than one note. He’s a pretty generic psychopath, with no wit in how he’s written. Negan has the same smarmy attitude whether he’s beating regular cast members to death or ordering Rick to chop off his son’s arm. This episode has one point to make (“Negan is not very nice”), and it makes it over and over, with almost no variation.

So it turns out Abraham is the one who died at the end of last season, and we get the entire sequence again, only with on-camera violence this time around. Abraham makes sense, since he’s gotten enough development to matter (no way was it going to be someone like Aaron or Rosita), but he isn’t one of the untouchable leads like Rick, Daryl or Michonne. Once Negan’s done with Abraham, he mocks Rosita for her reaction, which is a bridge too far for Daryl. He jumps up and punches Negan, which causes Negan to murder Glenn as punishment. So we get yet another extended beating, featuring Glenn’s eye protruding from his head in one of those moments where “The Walking Dead” seems to be reveling in its violence instead of condemning it.

Which is really what this episode does: revel in Negan’s sadism… to a point. Negan’s still not convinced that Rick is on board, so he drags over Carl and tells Rick to cut his arm off, or else he’ll shoot everyone else. So Rick begs, and Michonne begs, and Carl, hilariously, is just like “Dad, let’s get this over with,” but just as Rick’s about to go through with it, Negan stops him. So Negan’s a terrible sadist who wants Rick to break, but he’s also considerate enough to keep the show from having to pretend Chandler Riggs doesn’t have an arm for the rest of its run. Convenient!

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Andrew Lincoln in “The Walking Dead.”

A big chunk of the episode is given over to one of those “Oops, we’ve got an hour to fill” bits “The Walking Dead” is so fond of, as Negan takes Rick on a mini-road trip and forces him to fetch an axe from a gaggle of zombies. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, because either Rick is key to Negan’s plan to take over Alexandria or he’s not. If he’s not, he’s the leader and he’s vowed to kill Negan, so kill him first. If he is that important, why put him in unnecessary danger? Again, if the idea is just that Negan’s a sadist, the idea is played out and we’re only one episode in. Imagine a whole season of these Negan speeches and nonsensical punishments. The mind boggles.

But what’s weirdest about these scenes is that Negan keeps taunting Rick like he’s never seen anyone die before. “Bet you thought you were gonna grow old together!” he mocks. Dude, Rick’s seen like a hundred people die horribly right in front of him, including his wife and best friend and sort-of girlfriend last season plus everyone else who’s been on this damn show. Glenn is admittedly a big loss, but it’s crazy to think that the idea of him dying never crossed Rick’s mind. You guys live in the zombie apocalypse! People die all the time! Think of all the people that died

! Nine times out of ten, new people who are introduced on this show are horrible monsters. But the show spent most of last season and a heck of a lot of advertising dollars on hyping up Negan, so it has to pitch him as the Worst Thing To Ever Happen. It’s a bit much to swallow.

READ MORE: ‘The Walking Dead’ Preview: Producer Greg Nicotero Says Negan’s Kill Will Drain Viewers

In the end, the Saviors pack up and leave, saying they’ll be back in a week for their first tribute. Maggie insists that she’ll go on to The Hilltop while everyone else returns to Alexandria, since it’s her fault they were outside the walls in the first place. Sasha says she’ll go with Maggie to form the Walking Dead Widows’ Club. (Sasha keeps it together pretty well, considering.) And as they pack up the bodies and prepare to head out, Negan’s speech about growing old together plays again. And then, get this,

. Everyone in the cast, sitting around a big Thanksgiving table, happily eating together. It’s not a flashback, since Glenn and Maggie’s unborn kid is there. Abraham and Glenn give each other a look, as if to say, “Man, we’re never gonna get beaten to death in front of our loved ones!” It’s meant to make us grieve for who was lost, but it only succeeds in giving the audience a chuckle after this unpleasant slog of an episode.

So that was “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.” It was miserable, and tedious, and made me feel bad. Not in an emotionally compelling way, just in a “I could be watching something of value” way. Who needs this shit?

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This Article is related to: Television and tagged The Walking Dead, TV Episode, TV Reviews

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Jeff, you really sound smart when you write, but you are clueless. You do understand that the TV Show writers are following the comic book, right? You act as if the writers had a choice. They portray Neegan as he is in the comic novel and both Abraham (except much earlier) and Glenn die! That must be a shocker to you, but you write as if they are unnecessarily killing off characters. Please read up on it first before writing your articles, it makes you look silly.

Marty, it’s clear from the article that what is unnecessary n unacceptable is the sadistic, pornographic nature of the violence. Jeff’s assessment is spot on. That was tedious, gross n pointless. Just watching is a form of participation which gives energy to the worst in us instead of the best. Not that we’ll act on it (hoping not, anyway), but it will anesthetize us to increasing levels of hideousness until we don’t recognize ourselves as human anymore.

On a bright note, Sunday nights are now free for an evening stroll.

Perhaps it’s not appropriate to greet the death of one of “The Walking Dead’s” oldest and most beloved characters with a cheap “South Park” pun, but after an episode as grotesquely gory and as cynically contrived as “They Day Will Come When You Won’t Be,” laughter is the only sane response.

As if spending half a season building to the iconic moment from the 100th issue of Robert Kirkman’s comic book when the Saviors’ menacing leader, Negan, smashes in a character’s head with his trusty barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat wasn’t enough, showrunner Scott M. Gimple left viewers hanging over the break between seasons as to exactly whose melon went splat — and kept it up for 20 minutes into the new season. Glenn wasn’t even the first to be introduced to the wrong end of Lucille: that was Abraham, who managed to spit out a final word of defiance before Negan turned his skull into pulp. But after Daryl lunged at Negan, he decided the submissive spirit he aimed to instill in Rick’s band of survivors needed to be underlined once more, and without warning, he split Glenn’s head as well.

It’s probably a good thing you have given up on watching the show. You clearly don’t understand that this is a series based on a series of comic books and that as hard as it was to watch last night the acting and the scenes were so well done they all need tremendous rounds of applause. So I’m sorry this may be mean but anyone who feels this way should definitely not be watching the show anymore because the rest of us are sick of hearing opinions about how bad something is. Newsflash no one is making anyone watch it so if you don’t like then don’t watch.

I am done with the show if next week is more of the same. Its not the gore, its the storyline. Even the acting went downhill. A waste of an hour.

I agree, the show seemed awkward, the long waits and Neegan’s droning on and on, it has just turned me off. After last season’s terrible fakeout with Glenn’s death and then killing Abraham first as another fake out, it just seems to cheapen the iconic death of Glenn from the comics. The show runners have made some big mistakes in their deviations from the source material. All this together has left me burnt out with the show and finding it difficult to return for another episode.

I feel like we already went through this seasons ago. Negan sure feels like a poor man’s Gobernor.

Your review is 100% on point. The show has descended into mindless torture porn. The good news is that this episode will save me from spending anymore time watching this trash.

Right on! I’ve been with this show from the beginning, but am so over Gimple’s self righteous manipulation. Thanks for putting my thoughts into words!

You’re a complete dick. You don’t understand the show at all and you sound like a fourth-grader ranting about something he doesn’t like.

I get ripping on plot devices, flashbacks, dream sequences etc. Death is ugly, miserable, horrible to rip on a show called the Walking DEAD for being too violent is wrongheaded and does nothing to serve the argument. To rip it for bad acting clichéd plot device, or hackneyed script ok I get that. Yeah it was a little long winded and could use some tightening up, but all in all I think it was a solid episode not one of the best or in the top 10 but solid.

Exactly what Bart said. I get the critique of certain plot devices, but i thought it was a good solid episode, especially considering the months of speculation that have gone on and the viewers’ expectations. It’s always been a gore fest from the start, but torture porn? You don’t actually see much more than usual, just more upsetting cause it was Glenn maybe. And yes, of course you wish Negan would STFU, but I challenge someone to write a script for this psychopath, based on the character in the comics, that is less wordy arrogance. Maybe Kevin Spacey style in Seven would have cut it with the critic here, but that isn’t the character I’d recognise (also, then the episode would only have been about 15 minutes long :p) .

This review is bad. For one thing, you ripped off every point that the IGN review made. Their review was also bad. But it did publish first. So I guess that makes their review bad, and your review lazy?

For another, your review reads like you predicted Abraham or Rosita would get bashed. Not one of the “untouchables” (your word) like Rick or Daryll or Michonne. So we get the copy/pasted paragraph that was probably written in May of this year about how *yawn* some middle-of-the-road character got bashed. Except that the middle-of-the-road was a feint, and you didn’t see the reality coming, and actually one of your “untouchables” did get bashed. (Let’s be honest: If you don’t count glenn as an untouchable, you’re fooling yourself and you shouldn’t be writing these reviews.) So my bet is that the person who wrote this review got fooled, got pissed, and wrote a bad review to lash out.

Glenn wasn’t an untouchable, everyone knew from the comic that he met his fate like this. Many people are upset over it, but most expected it since the comic came out. The show runners seem to have felt they didn’t want us all knowing and used the terrible story of a dumpster saving him last season to tease us and then let us believe he was safe after Abraham taking Lucille first. Both of these makes it feel cheaper and taken something away from what the source material gave us.

But that said. That’s the exact tactic that IGN took. That is, they predicted it would be abraham. They gloated about how they got it right. They mentioned that it wouldn’t be an “untouchable” (they used that exact word) and they named daryll, michonne, and rick…leaving out glenn. I’m telling you guys: IGN blew the review. They wrote the crap review of a great episode. Sucks for them. But even worse, Indie Wire ripped off their crap review and just paraphrased it as their own. Shame. Watch the show. This episode was actually really good.

The attitude of this review could be attached to any big serial drama which involves characters dying on a regular basis, like Game of Thrones, and the same question can be asked “Who needs this shit?”, as the novelty is pretty thin when we expect misery. Perhaps instead of trying to sound elitist and above something popular, try and accept that this brand of television has a big following for a reason. Because people INVEST in the characters and WANT conflict and shock. God, I sometimes wonder why I visit this website.

I honestly thought it was the best episode of the walking dead yet. I’m really surprised a lot of you disliked the episode. The show has been pretty gruesome and horrific since the beginning of the sereies considering its a show about the walking dead, I don’t understand how some of you have made it to season 7 if you are suddenly shocked and disappointed with what we have all just seen. I mean seriously guys what did you think was going to happen in this episode after watching the season 6 finale.

I agree with Jake. This was one of the best episodes of the series to date.. for a show to actually make me feel something similar to what the character’s I care about would be feeling in this situation is pretty impressive. The gore was nothing unusual, Glen get’s killed the EXACT same way in the comic.. I feel like if they made it less graphic and less like the comic people would be complaining just as much..

It was an awesome episode, can’t wait for the rest of the season.

Bad , reshaped review.How can you not like surprises ? Even if Glen gets killed ? And the level of gore was just fine… One of the main actors dies , why not make it more shocking ? What the 2016 (offended by everything) audience can’t swallow that pill? It’s a horror movie for crying out loud.small cats

My question to the reviewer (and the people of dubious intellect who agree with him) is what do want from the show? If it isn’t what you consider graphic, it’s ‘boring, tedious, nothing new, nothing original, blahblahblah.’ When it does cross the line that other *horror* shows won’t, you’re too big a pussy to deal with it and they’ve ‘gone too far.’ So the show can’t win with halfwits who have already decided not to like it (and yet keep watching for some baffling reason). This is one of the few shows where I’ve actually seen imbeciles upset that it has cliffhangers. Cliffhangers. Which is what every show in existence does to hold on to its audience and, you know…entertain. Here’s a pro tip to Jeff Stone: STOP REVIEWING STUFF YOU’RE CLEARLY PREJUDICED AGAINST. The difference between a bona fide critic and just some asshole with a keyboard and an opinion is that a critic reviews objectively. S/he reviews based on how the show hits the mark it’s aiming for, not what s/he personally *wants* it to be. This may be a new concept to you, being a pseudo-critic and all, but if you’re reviewing a show you already don’t like, what’s the point? Please, for the love of all that is holy, either grow a pair or find something else to write about, because you’re not doing anyone any favors here. Besides yourself, that is, in attempting to create an echo chamber.

“I didn’t enjoy something, it must be bad” – now that’s one hell of a professional opinion. Next time I review a staffmember at the office I’ll be sure to tell them that simply because I personally don’t like them, they are bad and everything they do can be boiled down to them being a one trick pony in some form or another. Put your hands up for great skills!

Go watch something else, if it bores you so much. Jeez, such negativity for clicks.

Who needs your shitty review? If you don’t like the show don’t watch it, instead I’m sure an episode of Care Bears is running. That seems more your style.

One of the best shows tht was ever on TV JUMPED THE SHARK with last seasons finale and this season’s opener. It was BORING. I’ve loved this show since the very first episode, but the creators have seriously just gone off the rails at this point. narcissist negan is a douchenozzle, yeah, we get it. Every boring minute of his dialogue, we might as well have been at a trump rally – Negan’s gonna make baseball bats great again.

It was terribly disappointing and your review was spot on. I don’t want to hear another word come out of Negan’s mouth for a long time. Not even just even Negan but any Jeffrey Dean Morgan show. I’m so sick of his voice! And what kind of sickos enjoy that much blood and gore? I look away when it happens like when I watched Hostel and when it goes on too long I think ok ok we get it now get back to the story. It’s going downhill like Lost did and I can see myself not watching after next week just to give a second chance but then watching the final season to see if they find a cure or cause.

This is a show based on a graphic novel. They have toned down the violence and gore to an extraordinary amount when compared to the source material. If you don’t like blood and gore, I’d recommend not watching a show based on, well, blood and gore.

It’s a zombie program. By the very definition they eat blood and gore. Wouldn’t be very effective if they neglected to show it on TV.

But big up on calling all Walking Dead fans “sickos” ! I’m sure that’ll go down well.. #CryMore

the episode was completely underwhelming , the negan character comes across as completely camp , a one dimentional stereotype,. and who is cleaning his very polished biker jacket in the woods six years into the apocalypse? also he aint going short of hair dye and styling gel either. and has anyone watched the crime channel ? you cant do that kind of damage with a baseball bat! get realistic PLEASE!and as the group decended from lets kill them all in their sleep to sniviling girlies who cam up with that story arc? don’t worry im switching off this dull rubbish!

Waah! To violent. What? It’s based on a comic? Waaa.

Yea … enjoy your Sunday stroll, wine and cheese.

The show goes on with you whiny people. You’re not as important as you think you’re opinions are.

Thoroughly disagree. I notice one aspect of your disgust came from Glenn’s protruding eye – a scene that perfectly mimicked the comic books. Sure it was OVER THE TOP gory, and I have no doubt the rest of the episodes will tone it down considerably – not forgetting this episode was based on a landmark episode in the comics – issue 100 – so it had to be different.

Not entire sure how I would have acted if I was told “If I make a sound I’m dead, now watch this!” as a guy stronger than me gets taken out by a baseball bat. I’d be shocked – and the cast – NOT including Daryl who’s macho punch was way off key for me – summed up shock perfectly.

For anyone who’s giving up the show on the strength of this episode, I’d implore you to give it one more week and remember – this was a novelty episode, and not a normal episode.

I feel like this episode could have been seriously toned down. Now dont get me wrong here, I know the walking dead isn’t gonna be unicorns and rainbows. Its gonna be brutal, and dark. It always has been, but this was just too much. Did we really need Negan continuing to bash the dead character’s heads in long after they were dead? Or his running commentary on what they looked like with each blow? By 40 minuets in when the scene with Carl’s arm hit I was thinking to myself “Jeez okay we get it Negan is mean. Enough is enough” I dont have a problem with the character deaths themselves, in fact Im glad it was characters we love because it had an impact and made up for the many fake outs of season 6. But the graphic nature of the deaths and the prolonged sadism of it all was just overdone. I still like the show and look forward to the new season though

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