Chandler Riggs made it pretty clear that this was not his decision or his preference. It was a Gimple move, not anything to do with Riggs moving on.
Yep. In fact, I understand that he was told informally that he would be around for a while, and had just extended his college entrance by a year and bought a house near the production studio. Two weeks later he was given the axe. If that’s true, it was a real dick move by someone.
On Talking dead he didn’t seem uncomfortable with the producer /0director or whatever he was.
That was Greg Nicotero, not Scott Gimple. Even with that, he didn’t look at or talk to Nicotero during the whole Talking Dead episode. It was terribly uncomfortable.
He probably doesn’t want to anger any future employers.
do you assume everyone in his position wants to keep doing that? plenty of actors have stepped out of the spotlight on their own decision, it’s not a mark of failure.
Somehow you got into my head and read my exact thoughts.
Carl took f o r e v e r to die and the languishing deathbed method almost put me in nap mode.
I was hoping Rick I would tell him, “Hey, shoot yourself in the patched eye. That part of your head is already messed up anyhow.”
What I had a real problem accepting was that Rick and Michonne left Carl to die alone. Very out of character for them, I thought.
At one time, I loved this show so damned much. Watching the characters grow and evolve. Now… eh. Too many in the cast that I really know nothing about, and too few of the originals that I had grown to know and love. Had it been like this from the beginning, I wouldn’t have made it past season 1.
And the originals we knew and loved are completely different, totally incoherent people.
Michonne went from a bad-ass who survived with style in the apocalypse by making pets out of walkers and chopping the rest into diced cubes with her Samurai sword. Now all she does is sit around and cry, when she’s not putting people at risk just because ‘she has to see’ the enemy’s place.
Rick was this guy walking a fine line beftween his humanity, his police training, and his need to protect his family against the undead and bad humans. Now he’s just a wild-eyed maniac who runs around making incomprehensible decisions that get people killed - when he’s not crying.
Carol went from a meek, abused housewife into the biggest bad-ass on the show. Then somehow she ‘cracked’ and couldn’t kill another thing and had to go away before she was forced to. Now she’s just a cipher. A woman with a gun who shows up at the right time and never seems to get shot despite execrable tactics and terrible gun handling.
Then there’s the stick-wielding ninja whose name escapes me for the moment. He started out trying to keep his kid alive. Then he became a nutbar who had to kill anything that moved. Then he became a complete pacifist who refused to kill people even as they were trying to kill him. Now he’s just a psychotic whose behavior is completely incomprehensible.
The others - you know, the military one, and the other military one, and the young girl, and the gay good guy, and… Well, none of them are even remotely memorable. They’ve been on the show for many seasons, and I can barely tell them apart or remember how they got there or what kind of people they are. Because they change from episode to episode based on the needs of the plot or the skills of the writer of the week.
Sam Stone nails it in regards to the show’s “character development.” Their treatment of Carol was most offensive to me. She had become the best character on the show, but suddenly she has a problem with killing, so she abandons her loved ones? If she had such a problem with killing, why did she sew weapons into her clothes?
The reason is the same source as many of the problems on the show - because it would be cool. Not logical, not consistent with a character, nor because it relates to a plot. Just that it would be cool.
Another example of the terrible writing is how a group like the Saviors can be as omnipotent and omnicient as they were in herding the RV using giant roadblocks wherever Rick and co turned…
and then can be as inept and incompetent as they were on Sunday’s episode, where 15 of them get taken out by Carol and Morgan.
Or the Garbage Pail Kids. 6 years give or take after society falls, why would a group of adults live in a dump and speak as though generations ago they had English?
Isn’t there one person on the set to go, “Um, excuse me? This makes no sense?”
Apparently they were using their limited collection of grenades to blow up the houses. Instead of simply torching them.
I can see not wanting to stay in the drainage tunnel. it probably smelled bad and all it would take is a Savior to poke his head in and they would be fucked.
I’m getting a bit bored of the show, or at least the Savior War. Each side seems to flip back and forth into “ninja superpower mode” at the convenience of the writers.
And the Saviors escape made no sense. Ok, I get shooting themselves a barricade of zombies to run through. But why did the snipers do nothing to stop it? Morgan totally had clear head shots.
And the Saviors would be running out of their compound into…what? A courtyard surrounded by concealed snipers under cover?
I hope they kill Negan this season and move on. I don’t want him escaping, running underground, or any of that. I want him dead, his whole group ended, and for the show to move on to something else.
I think they could have drawn out Carl’s death a bit longer. And why didn’t they use the trope that people become super-wise on their deathbed? It’s also a good thing they used those lights very sparingly in the tunnels, lest they give away their location to The Saviors. And to make matters worse, they did absolutely no fawning over Chandler Riggs in Talking Dead.
Does anyone have an idea why Carl was killed off?
And don’t forget there’s also the Other Guy and that girl who suddenly became a comedian but previous said three words and the guy with the face. And that other one. Such rich characters.
Well, Sam Stone nailed it here: “I get the feeling that the new show runner is trying to take the show in some sort of ‘deep’, artistic direction full of mataphors and lots of psychological hand wringing and such, but the writers just don’t have the chops to pull it off. So instead they just wrecked everything good about the show and replaced it with a pretentious, incomprehensible mess.”
(I agree with everything he’s said in this thread. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter, Sam.)
And I also read the fact that he would be eligible to re-negotiate his contract at age 18 might have come into play. Stupidly shortsighted, which is not surprising with this crew. They also might lose Maggie over contract negotiations.
I started watching on Sunday night, got part way through and noticed it was 1.5 hours and went to bed. I watched a bit last night, but still haven’t even been interested in finishing it. Maybe I’ll finish when I get home, but it’s kinda nice outside so I might go for a walk. It’s telling when a lot of people seem to feel similar. These threads would go for pages a year or two ago and it’s only one now.
Just watched this episode and yeah, Sam Stone provided my own evaluation — if I could have said it or even thought it so cogently. I’ve put up with shitty writing since about Season 4. But this “artistic direction…” is close to the last straw. Too bad! I’d really rather be entertained than frustrated and annoyed.
You don’t want to see him picking tomatoes in the Alexandria garden?
I finally got around to watching this. Chandler Riggs gave a great performance, but there was no reason for this to be an extended episode.