CLEVELAND, Ohio – How many times have the characters on AMC’s “The Walking Dead” stood at one of those proverbial forks in the road? Which way to turn? Which way to go?
That way could mean a chance at survival. That way could mean certain doom.
REVIEW The Walking Dead
What: The horror drama resumes its seventh season.
When: 9 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12
Where: AMC
Well, the entire show has reached that point as the second half of the horror drama’s seventh season begins at 9 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12. The series took several wrong turns at the end of the sixth season and during the first half of the seventh.
It staggered way off track, not just because it brutally killed off some beloved characters and relentlessly tortured the rest. We’ve seen that before.
No, it wasn’t what they did. It was how they did it – with clunky storytelling, dreary pacing, preposterous plot twists, goofy contrivances and boneheaded violations of the carefully defined characters we’ve come to know so well. In short, “The Walking Dead” is in danger of becoming a brainless zombie version of the incredibly human show it had been for the better part of six often-brilliant seasons.
The first half of the seventh season was drearily dominated by the uber-villain Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who took fiendish delight in breaking and sadistically tormenting Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his group of survivors. With the episodes jumping awkwardly from group to group, whole sets of characters disappeared for long stretches, and “The Walking Dead” largely became the Negan Show.
And that was unfortunate, because Negan, as imagined by the show’s producers, is the most stereotypical, cartoonish and overdone villain “The Walking Dead” has yet tossed at viewers. When you consider how terrific an actor Morgan is, that might be the most frightening thing about the first half of Season 7.
Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon and Danai Gurira as Michonne in a scene from the episode of “The Walking Dead” that airs Sunday, Feb. 12.Gene Page/AMC
Many fans went from fascinated to frustrated, voting with their remotes. The seventh-season premiere, which saw the horrific bludgeoning deaths of two favorite characters, attracted 17.1 million viewers. By the eighth episode, that had dropped to 10.8 million viewers.
Now, that number could drop even more and “The Walking Dead” still would be posting a monster rating. And it remains strong with the 18-49-year-old demographic that advertisers most cherish.
While the overall ratings slide has been alarming, “The Walking Dead” has plenty of room to fall in the viewership department. But can the series pull out of its creative death spiral?
The midseason premiere suggests that the answer is a definite maybe. Is that enough? Maybe.
There is, finally, a sense in this episode that the supernatural show is getting back on the apocalyptic track.
It helps that most of the episode is spent in the company of Rick Grimes, and he’s at last acting like the real Rick Grimes and making plans to battle Negan. Welcome back, Rick. Welcome back, viewers?
We’ll see. Skeptical fans would be excused for being understandably cautions. For now, let’s just say “The Walking Dead” is coming back with a bit of a comeback episode.
The ninth episode begins where the eighth episode concluded: at the Hilltop settlement. Rick is starting to plan, starting to strategize. How to defeat Negan and the Saviors?
Task No. 1 is to convince the ever-cautious Hilltop leader Gregory (Xander Berkeley) to join the alliance.
“We already started this,” Rick tells him. “And we’re gonna win.”
It will take more than Hilltop, however, and Rick soon is on his way to meet King Ezekiel (Khary Payton). Remember him? It has been a while since Payton made such a great first impression as the leader of the Kingdom, then disappeared.
AMC has asked that no surprises be revealed, so here is its description of the upcoming episodes: “The second half of the season will focus on preparing for war and gathering the supplies and numbers to take Negan down once and for all. Rick’s group will find out yet again that the world isn’t what they thought it was. It’s much bigger than anything they’ve seen so far . . . The lengths Rick and the group will have to go to in order to find weapons, food and new fighters is nothing short of remarkable.
“We’ll meet new survivors in incredible places. We’ll see Rick and the group tested in ways we’ve never seen before. We’ll see treachery from people we trust.”
Only Sunday night’s episode was made available to critics, and, in it, there is a glimmer of hope – for Rick and for fans. Directed by Greg Nicotero, it is titled “Rock in the Road.”
Is it the beginning of the road back? It’s too early to tell, of course, but “The Walking Dead” at least is taking a welcome and long overdue step in the right direction.
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