AMCWhat did we ever do to you, The Walking Dead?
Time and again, the AMC zombie thriller has proven that it will never pass up the opportunity to troll its audience and troll 'em good. And frankly, it's becoming a bit exhausting.
In this week's new episode, which saw Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) out on a scavenging mission to find the guns necessary to convince their potential new allies with the supremely bizarre way of speaking to join the fight, the writer's didn't hesitate to try and trick us (and Michonne) into thinking that Rick's continuously unwarranted confidence finally got him devoured by a horde of walkers. Of course, he hadn't. It was a deer that he'd had the good sense to shoot while he was falling off a decrepit carnival ride in an attempt to lure the walkers away while he somehow barrel-rolled into a shed.
At least, that's what we're assuming he did because, to preserve the trolling surprise, we didn't get to see how Rick managed to survive this one. While hardly as egregious as some of its earlier trolling, the moment was yet another that had us wondering whether the writers value our intelligence and time at all.
Our relationship with The Walking Dead first began to sour back in October of 2015 when, in the third episode of season six, while attempting to divert a walker horde from heading straight to Alexandria, Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Nicholas (Michael Traynor) found themselves surrounded on a dumpster. As Nicholas panicked and, not seeing a way to survive, shot himself in the head, he was thrown into Glenn, knocking them both off their perch and right into the walkers. As the episode ended, we watched the horde descend upon the men and got their munch on, as Glenn seemed to scream in mortal pain. Was Glenn a goner? We wouldn't know for a solid month, during with time Yeun's name was removed from the opening credits.
Of course, he wasn't dead. Like Rick this week, he'd somehow managed to get under the dumpster in a space that definitely didn't seem big enough for a human. It was ridiculous, unnecessary and the beginning of an alarming trend.
As season six progressed to the promised arrival of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the cast and creators of the show wouldn't stop talking about the devastating loss headed our way at season's end. We were primed to expect a major death once the show's uber-villain finally made his leap from the page to the screen. So, imagine our surprise when, at the very end of an especially nerve-wracking season finale, we were forced to watch the shocking death as it unfolded from the POV of the victim. That's right—months of promises proved to be completely empty as we were forced to wait an egregious six and a half months for the season seven premiere to finally reveal who died.
You'd think the negative reaction to being forced to wait half a year to get an answer that we thought we'd already have would've pushed showrunner Scott M. Gimple and his team to reconsider how they did things moving forward. And you'd have been wrong. In that very first episode back, the proceedings picked up right after the big kill, choosing to show us Rick's mental anguish in the aftermath, rather than giving us what we came for. It wasn't until about three-quarters of the way through the episode that we learned that both Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Glenn met their grisly ends, making their deaths feel like more of an afterthought. A disgusting, gory afterthought. But an afterthought nonetheless. After all, it was clear that Rick's reaction was more important than the actual event, based on the episode's structure.
And if the decision to focus the entire sixth episode of season seven on whatever happened to Tara (Alanna Masterson) while Rick and the gang were in the throes of their Negan-induced misery wasn't some epic trolling, we don't know what is. We posed the question at the time, and we'll reiterate it again: Who asked for a Tara-centric episode?
That brings us to this week's episode and the questionable carnival moment. Look, we understand that cliffhanger moments are the stock-in-trade for a thriller like The Walking Dead, but there's got to be a better, smarter way to generate suspense without thumbing your nose at your audience and insulting their intelligence and dedication. And based on this season's ratings freefall, if a change isn't made soon, there might not be anyone left to troll.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.