THE WALKING DEAD SEASON SEVEN: BRUTAL

One word describes the latest season of THE WALKING DEAD, season seven: brutal. When we last left the show the previous season we were introduced to the main bag guy, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Fans of the comic book knew right away things would not be pretty. Let me back up a second first.

If for some reason you’ve never watched the series you need to start. Binge watch it. Get caught up. Don’t pooh pooh the series as nothing more than flesh eating zombies and a horror series. It’s much more than that. It has more to do with survival and dealing with day to day situations. It’s more about interpersonal relationships during the worst case scenario, people coming together, working together. And along the way different groups face off against one another, perhaps more often than they do against the zombies. In short, it’s more drama than horror.

Back to season seven, perhaps the most controversial. Negan has captured Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and has them kneeling before him. He tells them up front that they had the chance to obey his demands but failed. Now one of them must pay the price for the entire group. Not only will this be his form of “justice”, he knows that it will force Rick to realize how hopeless his situation is. No spoiler alert here, I won’t tell you who dies.

That was what had most tuning in for the season premiere when it aired. The aftermath was that while it drew a large number of viewers it also cause some long-time fans to abandon the show. Yes, the sequence was that upsetting to so many. A character was bludgeoned to death in front of us with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. It is perhaps the most vicious, brutal and graphic moment ever seen on TV.

There was a reason for this that those who tuned out may have missed out on. Moments like these have happened in the past but not nearly as graphically as this one. Those moments have been placed there to move the story forward, to provide impetus for characters to develop into something they weren’t before or to change them further down the line. In the case of this season it forced Rick to realize that he stood to lose so much if things didn’t go his way. And no, things definitely did not go his way here.

The result was a kowtowing Rick, afraid to put forth an idea, afraid to fight, afraid to be the leader that he was. The entire season was watching him change once more as we’d seen him do in the past. We first had a character with no idea what happened, we had a wandering character, we had an attempt at homesteading and we had an attempt to find a cure character. As this season progresses from that first moment, we see a different character again and one we’re not comfortable with. The question is will he remain that way.

We also find something else out in this season. There is more than one groups of survivors establishing settlements in this post zombie explosion world. While we learned of the Hilltop Colony last year this year we find the Kingdom. Ruled by Ezekiel (Khary Payton) it is a peaceful community with its own police force of sorts. Ezekiel is an interesting character and not just because he has a full grown tiger who sits by him most of the time. His is a land that has made peace with Negan but a tentative one at that.

While Rick is still suffering from the onslaught at the beginning of the series other members of the group are trying to form alliances with the small groups we discover this season. The hope is to unite them all to take down Negan and his group ironically as the Saviors. It becomes a game of politics of sorts as well as that all present quest for survival in an inhospitable world. Zombies still run amok and with each death their numbers grow. But the biggest dangers are less the undead as they are the people who continue to live and fight to control anything left of the old world.

As with each season we were left with a cliffhanger. We witnessed not one but several main characters we’ve grown to love lose their lives. Each death of those characters had an important role in moving the narrative forward, none were senseless when it came to storytelling. And while we might not like having to wait till the next season to find out what happens, it retains those who are now loyal fans.

While I’ve focused on storytelling here the fact remains that this is one of the best series technically on the air as well. Direction, cinematography, locations, make-up, costuming…everything comes together like a well-oiled machine to present some of the best drama on television today. One can only hope that they continue doing this for many more years.

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