It's been a while since I last felt this attached to The Walking Dead. I never missed an episode, but the past couple of seasons have been... well, mediocre at best.
Now, everyone seems to be excited about the show again, and I think I realized what the show's doing that's gripping viewers so much. It's because during the whole Negan/Gimple era, the whole concept of "mystery" was gone.
Now let me explain. The entire show, since it first aired, has been a post-apocalyptic show that had some of its best storylines based in mystery (i.e. the viewer basically not understanding what the fuck was going on). Things like Sophia's disappearance, what the scientist told Rick, the entire Eugene has the cure thing... There was always this sense of the "unknown" out there, forcing the viewers to WANT to know more.
One of my main criticisms towards the whole All Out War storyline (as well as the season leading up to it) was that there was literally none of that mystery. It was just one long buildup. We all knew what's coming. We spent two seasons basically watching a war documentary where the only question was "who would win?" and perhaps "who would die?", which isn't much of a compelling question in an apocalypse movie. There was never this overlying theme of the viewer not knowing what's happening. I don't know if I'm making sense to any of you here, but I just think the show became a very linear, chronological sequence of known events with insignificant possible variations (like who dies because of the war).
Angela knew what she was doing with the time skips (both of them). Time skips means there's a ton of unexplored territory (story-wise). We're back at this point we were at during the beginning of the apocalypse, where the world was unexplored and we had no idea what's going on. Things started popping up, like the surprising rivalry(?) between communities, the X scars that some characters have, Rick's whereabouts, and just a whole lot of other bits and pieces that plant question marks here and there. And I honestly feel that was the main factor making this season much better than the few that came before it.
Even the way the story is handled is very non-linear. We all knew the whisperers were coming, but never understood the how, the when, the where, or the why. There are callbacks to past events which should have always been significant to the characters (like Shane's appearance). Gimple used to literally ignore every past storyline after it ended.
So I think that all this is what Angela brought back to the table to make the show great again, and as a result the character development got way better, and the relationships between them became stronger. It is weird how when I watch it now, I get the same sense of a "crew" I got during the first seasons, although there's a hell of a lot more characters now than before. Even with the communities, it doesn't feel jumbled.
TL;DR: The viewer isn't aware of what's going on anymore, which makes the show more interesting. Time skip helped bring back the mystery of why things are the way they are. Non-linear storytelling and great tributes to past events. All these were missing with Gimple; Angela brought them back.
Submitted November 27, 2018 at 12:21PM by nourhassoun1997 https://ift.tt/2FN9U6f
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