So here's the thing, I watched that episode when it aired with my fiancee, my dad, my brother-in-law, and my sister. By the midpoint of the episode my dad had left the room saying the show is trash and my fiancee wasn't looking at the screen during Glenn's murder. My sister and my brother-in-law were wholly unaffected by the episode at all. Me? I thought it was impactful and well-done.
Now, what I think happened here were a few things. This room is representative of many kinds of viewers that made up the 21-million viewership.
Class A) My dad is watching the show just because most people are. He has zero emotional attachment to anything going on and just wants to see what the hype is. Upon seeing Glenn bludgeoned with his eye dangling out, and Negan mocking him, my dad leaves the room because this isn't his idea of entertainment and that's all he's looking for from the show.
Class B) My sister and her husband, they're just watching for this sort of thing. They don't want to think too much about story, they don't care about the introspective stuff with the characters, they just want to see zombies go boom. Their reaction to Glenn's death was, "Dude! Cool! His fuckin' eye came out!" That's all they're looking for and they completely check out during the talky bits.
Class C) My fiancee. The casual viewer that'll skip weeks in a row and tune in just 'cause it's on. She'll ask questions about what's going on, she likes certain characters-- Glenn being one of her favorites-- and when she sees characters she actually cares about being bludgeoned it's upsetting because she's empathizing with the characters and their pain. She looked away not because of the gore, but because of the level human depravity and cruelty on display. She checked out the entire season until the finale because-- as she said herself-- she doesn't want to go to that dark of a place emotionally every week before bed.
Class D) Me. I've been watching since day one. I've read the comics. I collect stuff. I knew this was coming and I was prepared. I found the episode masterful and really, short of something catastrophic like introducing a whacky cartoon animated bunny into the mix as a main character, they can't do much to chase me away.
I think the drop-off was mostly people checking out because of the bleak premiere and those who hung on were either diehards or people looking for zombies going boom. Because a lot of the season was character focused and not action focused, those people looking for all action and no thinking checked out leaving just use diehards for the most-part now.
So that's what I think happened. What do you think it was?
Submitted April 30, 2017 at 11:06AM by SomeKrazyGuyUKno http://ift.tt/2qspW91
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