Man, I feel bad for Chris Hardwick. Seems like he's taking the internet bullshit pretty hard. I mean, its just a bunch of pissed off fans. Hardwick should understand it and just stay off the boards and stuff for a while. He's an insider with the show, obviously, so maybe he just can't see it and thinks it really IS clever having it end like they did. Maybe when Gimple speaks, Chris just soaks it all up and it makes complete sense to him. Who knows.
I thought it was a terrible episode and not just because of the cliffhanger. That's the biggest foul play obviously, but let's talk about the rest of it for a moment:
-The log barricade across the road immediately comes to mind when I think of stupid moments. So not only did Saviors know Rick and co. would be headed to the Hilltop, but they knew days ahead of time and had the manpower AND machinery out there to bring down all the trees/logs to basically build a decent wall across the road. Then they doused it all in gas, which is apparently not that scarce, and lit the whole thing on fire from somewhere in the shadows. Oh, AND they threw a guy off the bridge without anyone being seen before or after.
I mean read all that and just think about it for a moment. Pretty dumb. Sure, it seems scary to come up against a bunch of ninjas who moonlight in construction/logging, but its not very realistic now is it?
-The rest of the roadblocks were also dumb and with each additional roadblock, my eyes rolled further back. Were they going to just sit out there all fucking day, all fucking week? What if Rick and co. hadn't piled into the RV? Were they all just going to be camping until maybe one day the group finally came out again? Seems pretty dumb. Seems like they want viewers who don't analyze anything to sit there with their mouths open going "Oh man, look it all them guys thar! Rick an' them is outnumbered, I tell you what!"
-The whistlers in the woods. We had a few hundred Saviors just sitting out in the woods, in the dark no less, not being seen or heard by Rick's group, and just waiting for their moment to emerge and start whistling? That was duuuuuuumb. Whistling is for the guy chasing the lone girl through the woods in some slasher flick. This just seemed like more "how dey do dat?" kind of stuff for simpletons to be impressed with. Sure, the whistle itself sounded creepy, but everyone out there doing it? You can barely get people to sing the chorus of a popular song in time at a concert. And all of them are ninjas? Are they same ninjas who threw the guy off the bridge and laid lumber across the road? Which one of them is Dwight's sensei? Clearly they've all been trained in the shadow jitsus, so Rick and friends might as well all die now.....Wait....unless Rick somehow discovers scrolls of the shadow jitsu at Negan's compound next season! Then it'll be a battle of the ninjas for jitsu supremacy! OH! I take it all back, Gimple and AMC! You've clearly done it again!!!!
I mean I know TV asks you to suspend disbelief all the time, and this show in particular has its peaks and valleys, but MAN this episode was important and all the other details they overlooked like these roadblocks just make the cliffhanger sting that much more. Had they gotten the last scene right, we would all be talking about that instead. But since they traded that for a hashtag, we are left sifting through the rest of the episode to find something else to latch onto. But alas, all we have are logs across the road and a concert hall's worth of people somehow hiding in the woods, waiting for their moment to whistle in unison.
Poor showing, AMC. You can and certainly have done much better.
