The Walking Dead: Here's Negan (10x22)

So, that's the end of the season, then. Let's talk about it!

Cons:

On a bigger level, I will say that I was right, that this season built to absolutely nothing. It's almost like the Whisperers were the Season 10 A-plot, and these last few episodes after the long hiatus were about cleaning up the aftermath and setup for next season or even for spin-offs. And that's... weird. It means I can look at an individual episode and think it's perfectly interesting or even excellent, but I feel no sense of momentum. I'm reading short stories instead of a novel, you know? Different experiences. Less good, in my opinion. At least with this show.

But if we take this episode on its own merits and don't think about how it (doesn't) connect to the rest of the show... I really did enjoy it. But there were certainly some issues. The main one? Lucille has a bad case of "dying perfect wife" syndrome. She's beautiful and strong and brave and if she gets angry it's because Negan is failing to live up to her angelic standard. I wish that sad dead wife characters, learned about through flashback and dreams, could have some actual nuance. Could be someone with a personality and flaws. Lucille was too much of a Cool Wife for me to feel like she was a real person.

I also question what this episode is supposed to make me feel about Negan. We already knew he had Sad Dead Wife backstory, and that doesn't make me feel any less frustrated with him as a character, or any more inclined to forgive him for his gleeful and gratuitous torture and murder of people entirely at his mercy. Yeah, it's a brutally awful and sad backstory. It's emotionally affecting to witness, because how could it not be? But how am I supposed to react to this? How it it supposed to make my opinion of this character grow or shift or change? What new context was I really granted that I hadn't already known?

Pros:

The acting was good, the story was a gut-punch, I liked the way the story jumped through time, showing the progression from Negan being this devoted husband who was squeamish about killing Walkers, then back to when he was a cheating piece of shit who lost his job and took no personal responsibility, and then forward to how he reacted after Lucille had died, as sort of an origin story for this cult of personality that Negan was later able to construct with the Saviors. It was all an interesting character study, even if I'm not sure that it made me feel sympathetic to Negan.

I also liked that ending, where Negan made the decision not to play by the rules anymore, and to either make a place for himself in community with the others, or strike out on his own. Carol ends the episode by warning Negan: "if you stay here she will kill you," referring to Maggie. I liked that as a setup for conflict next season. I mean, I'm on Maggie's side. How could I not be? Why should she care if he regrets his behavior?

The long, drawn out scene at the end where Negan finds Lucille dead and zombified was... well, it was chilling and intense and the acting was wonderful and I was freaked out by it, so I think that scene totally wins.

That's all I've got. I'm distracted, this episode was about a character I don't really care about, and the whole show is just not something I'm interested in like I used to be. See you for the final season whenever it actually airs!

7/10