S08.E11: Fighting Like You / S08.E12: The Road Ahead

[Mr. Sparkle]

Two Part Series Finale! 

The horde led by Troy surrounds the walls of PADRE. Madison and her people must fight for their survival to save what remains.

As the series comes to an end, the fate of PADRE's survivors seems to rest in the hands of an unexpected hero.

Airs Sunday, November 19 on AMC and AMC+.

[Iguessnot]

It just keeps getting worse. 

[Mr. Sparkle]

How many times can they say the word "believe?" 

[Iguessnot]

I think World Beyond was even better than this dreck.

[Iguessnot]

Made no sense. Love Skidmark though

[KeithJ]

I have never before been happy that a show I watched for eight years ended.  This last season was awful.

The whole thing with Madison and the oxygen was so stupid.  She was completely fine for the first hour of the show and then all of a sudden we see her sucking down oxygen like she was on her death bed.  30 seconds later she’s killing Troy and then chasing after Tracy with no issues.

I still don’t understand why Troy killed Alicia.

How did the barge find padre?

Tracy runs away from Victor, we go to commercial, and all of a sudden she’s with Madison? This little girl dug her out of the rubble and then carried / dragged her to wherever they are now?

I don’t understand the ending. Everyone all went their separate ways?

At least we got one final shot of Alicia and her tight jeans.

[Brown44]

They ended up doing the opposite to Madison what they did to Negan. They made Madison not even likable. Her character has done a 180 since the 1st episode, Daniel and Strand basically stayed the same.

[Brown44]

I'm not gonna lie till they was sitting down together and you can see there faces at the same time I thought Alicia and Kim wasn't in the scene together. I thought they went to Australia with a body double and re-created the set.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Brown44

[Mr. Sparkle]

Yep, not much to add. It ended just as boring as it's been for years. I really hope this is the last we see of these people. 

[Daltrey]

This was all kinds of hilarious in it's ridiculous stupidity. I'm not going to break it down because I didn't realize it was a two parter and I'm up way later than I should be but... I said "oh, fuck off!" at least five times before Tracy shot Madison. That little exchange probably brought the second biggest gale of laughter...the biggest was reserved for the moment I realized they were going to have the medal in the empty clip stop the bullet, followed by another five "fuck offs" when it it was revealed to be exactly what happened.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣☠️

All that said, I was surprised to find myself ever so slightly watery-eyed at the end of it all. That last five or ten minutes was probably the best thing the show has done in the last two seasons.

[nodorothyparker]

It's ... an ending, I guess.

There were about 5 seconds in there that I thought (or maybe just hoped) maybe the show was going to go full grimdark and let everybody get eaten so close to the finish line as a result of Madison's unrelenting stupidity and awfulness. It's an ending that the original recipe mother show would have loved had it not gotten itself so publicly locked into multiple spinoffs before the final season even rolled. But then as it always has, it whiffed on doing anything other than retreading on some generic hopefulness and "something to believe in" in sending everybody inexplicably off to the four winds so they're conveniently positioned if the franchise ever decides to drag them into yet another spinoff on the apparently misguided notion that we might ever want to see any of these people ever again.

But hey, they let Morgan exit stage left early so he'd be positioned for exactly that even though it's hard to imagine anyone's really clamoring to see more of the dithering bag of crazy Morgan became, so never say never I guess.

Beyond that, the only amusing thing was how quickly the same people who'd been so happy to see Madison not dead became just over her endless me me me my kids selfishness and refusal to listen to anybody or stick to any kind of plan. But oh, she sacrificed herself again in some kind of nonsensical nonsacrifice, so oh well.

Everything else was a lot of the usual blah blah blah second chances, have to kill XXX, have to save XXX, believe believe believe, Alicia's the mother, Alicia's not the mother, demon spawn waving a gun around, hey Alicia didn't you have just the one hand last we saw you, random kitty sighting, sure let's head off into what's surely a bombed out urban wasteland a dozen years into the ZA because it's what the ashes of Junkie Nick rattling around on the dashboard would have wanted. End scene.

But then I actually stayed awake to see it through to the end, so what does that say about me?

[nodorothyparker]

And Forbes does not disappoint:

‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Two-Part Series Finale Review: A DreadFul End To A Terrible TV Show

Quote

 

“A story,” Alicia says, “About a woman who sacrificed herself here. And the person who told me said her name was Madison.”

THIS ALL JUST HAPPENED A DAY AGO. You’re telling me this “story” spread across the land so fast that Zombie Apocalypse Jesus heard about it and got here to the exact spot—the impossible to find PADRE—just as Madison woke up?

This has to be a joke. Nobody is this much of a talentless hack. These showrunners have to be pranking us. Surely, surely nobody is this stupid.

 

 

[Brown44]

1 hour ago, nodorothyparker said:

they let Morgan exit stage left early so he'd be positioned for exactly that even though it's hard to imagine anyone's really clamoring to see more of the dithering bag of crazy Morgan became, so never say never I guess.

Morgan is a nexus character he's gonna make an appearance on these spinoff shows.

[Mr. Sparkle]

So uneven. Troy has changed, you have to believe. Troy is bad, can never change. Daniel hates Strand and Madison. Nah, Strand is ok. People change. Or maybe they never change. 

[Mr. Sparkle]

So apparently Scott Gimple's wife, the delightfully named Julia Wackenheim-Gimple, is one of the Alicia 3. That explains it. 

[heisenberg]

3 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

But hey, they let Morgan exit stage left early so he'd be positioned for exactly that even though it's hard to imagine anyone's really clamoring to see more of the dithering bag of crazy Morgan became, so never say never I guess.

They killed Madison and bring Morgan to reboot the show because the Madison family was too crazy/lame.  They finish the show with Madison even more crazy/lame after destroying Morgan's character.🫤

[Crashcourse]

Good gawd, this was awful. 

At least I won't have to look at Madison's constantly screwed up, constipated-looking face anymore.

[heisenberg]

3 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

And Forbes does not disappoint:

‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Two-Part Series Finale Review: A DreadFul End To A Terrible TV Show

 

"Classic rock cannot save this nonsense."😄

"Everyone else should have died and these two should have walked away into the sunset, into the spinoff The Walking Dead: Daniel and Skidmark."🤣

[Daltrey]

I think my favourite bit of logic was Troy with a 2 inch diameter tree branch through his chest, mere inches from his heart and out the back of his shoulder blade, and Madison says something about that's going to make it hard to WALK! She then proceeds to pull it out which gives him the super human ability to painlessly operate a shovel to bury his zombie wife without even losing a single drop of blood.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣☠️

[iMonrey]

Two hours was painful to get through, and I was able to FF thru the commercials. I don't know how anyone could have stood watching this live. Not only was there a nonstop tennis match between the good guys getting the upper hand and the bad guys getting the upper hand but everybody was ping ponging around locations like they all had the ability to teleport. How the hell did Tracy get to Padre in order to dig up Madison? And get her back to shore again?

Ugh, this show.

Why on earth would Dwight suggest taking people all the way to the ruined remains of Sanctuary? Now that Troy's people are out of the picture they can take back both the hotel and Padre. WTF. Both are way closer. And if they're going to travel all that way what about Hilltop or Alexandria? 

I guess it was nice they brought Alicia back for the finale since they've spent every single of the last eight episodes extolling the virtues of Saint Alicia, and why not? The girl survived getting chomped by a walker, hacking off her own arm, suffering from radiation poisoning, being left behind on the beach at death's door, and apparently getting stabbed half to death by Troy, yet came out of it all looking none the worse for wear. 

At the hands of halfway decent writers, we might have had something here. Alas, Andrew Chambliss is a hack show runner and monkeys with typewriters could have churned out better scripts.

I have zero confidence anyone left in TWD universe will do the Rick and Michonne spinoff any justice.

Edited November 21, 2023 by iMonrey

[heisenberg]

7 hours ago, Daltrey said:

I think my favourite bit of logic was Troy with a 2 inch diameter tree branch through his chest, mere inches from his heart and out the back of his shoulder blade, and Madison says something about that's going to make it hard to WALK! She then proceeds to pull it out which gives him the super human ability to painlessly operate a shovel to bury his zombie wife without even losing a single drop of blood.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣☠️

For his defense we can say it was itching a little...  Sometimes...😄

[Starchild]

On 11/20/2023 at 8:04 AM, nodorothyparker said:

hey Alicia didn't you have just the one hand last we saw you

It was a fake hand. I'll admit though, that at first I thought it was real and that Madison was having her final death dream.

 

On 11/20/2023 at 7:55 PM, iMonrey said:

Now that Troy's people are out of the picture they can take back both the hotel and Padre.

Padre was completely blown up.

Well, I said last week that the only thing that could even partially redeem this season would be a Madison-Alicia reunion. It was almost true.

To say the execution was lacking would be a massive understatement, this was just crap upon crap almost to the end.

But the reunion was touching, if rushed, and I was glad to see it happen.

Bit of a dick move on Alicia's part to not let anyone else know she was alive, though.

If Madison makes it into a spinoff (with or without Alicia) I'll watch, though it would be nice if they could find a skilled surgeon to fix her lungs, that oxygen nonsense is painful to watch.

[iMonrey]

On 11/22/2023 at 8:17 PM, Starchild said:

Padre was completely blown up.

The infrastructure, sure, or at least part of it. But wasn't the appeal of Padre that it was isolated and nobody knew where it was? Couldn't they rebuild?

Speaking of which, didn't we end last season with Madison sending out radio messages that Padre had fallen and generously offering up the coordinates to anyone within earshot? Why the about-face to "Nobody can find out where Padre is!" Troy spent half these episodes trying to find Padre, all he would have had to do was turn on a radio last season, or run into someone who had.

[Starchild]

Yeah that was as inconsistent as everything else.

Watching this 2 hour finale, I remember thinking that the story was being told in the same way that a child might try to tell you, in a breathless run-on sentence, everything that happened in the entirety of a 5-season series.

Like, this is all very interesting but I don't think all these things happened as close in space/time as you seem to think, junior.

These showrunners/writers ruined, or allowed to be ruined, the promise of Madison's return. So disappointing.

I had said that I would watch Madison in a spinoff, but if it's the same showrunners/writers I'd have to think twice.

[BasilSeal]

On 11/20/2023 at 8:31 PM, Daltrey said:

I think my favourite bit of logic was Troy with a 2 inch diameter tree branch through his chest, mere inches from his heart and out the back of his shoulder blade, and Madison says something about that's going to make it hard to WALK! She then proceeds to pull it out which gives him the super human ability to painlessly operate a shovel to bury his zombie wife without even losing a single drop of blood.

Oh Come on, who amongst us hasn't been impaled on a branch, had it yanked out by a mad woman with a variable lung condition and then dug a grave?

It's absurd that an injury this severe wouldn't cause troy to pass out from loss of blood and / or go into shock but but here he just walks it off. It's the epitome of the 'will this do' writing that's plagued this  show for the last three seasons

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

The infrastructure, sure, or at least part of it. But wasn't the appeal of Padre that it was isolated and nobody knew where it was? Couldn't they rebuild?

Well indeed, they supposedly have access to PADRE's extensive inventory of post apocalyptic survival gear, it there really no construction equipment or materials? Then again non of this makes any sense, this is just one aspect of the many things that cause one to say 'but why don't they...?'. there's so much wrong with this show it's pointless trying to list it all so i'll just go for a few of the highlights that stood out. there's a basic lack of narrative progression, we move from one scene to another and stuff has just happened for some reason and we're expected to just suck it up. How did this character find the other character? how did they get from here to there? what reason do they have for doing / saying this when last week they said the exact opposite? and so on.

How does Madison get from the garage to the island in time to draw off the walkers? How is it that half a dozen people inside the garage take down 40 or 50 walkers no problem but the entire population of PADRE, who were trained for years to fight walkers, couldn't manage the 300 or so that were on the boat?

Everyone on the island is dead, oh no, they're all alive and Madison saved them and they're all so grateful they will dedicate the rest of their lives to helping people because that was what Madison believed today although she'd probably have changed her mind by tomorrow again and hang on wasn't this all Madison's fault anyway for killing Troy because if he was alive he could have simply told his guys to stand down? and despite the fact that everyone's so grateful and all they're not going to bother digging her out of the rubble, yes, best leave that job to an eight year old, hang on how did Tracy get to the island? oh never mind more to the point how does she manage to dig Madison out from under the rubble from an explosion big enough destroy the entire PARDE complex and kill 300 walkers? but never mind about that now because Alicia has turned up because she heard a legend about a woman called Madison who saved everybody because word has spread far and wide about this miraculous event that happened <checks notes> yesterday.

And that's just a five minute segment of the show, you could pretty much do the same for the  entire hour and a half.

2 hours ago, Starchild said:

Watching this 2 hour finale, I remember thinking that the story was being told in the same way that a child might try to tell you, in a breathless run-on sentence, everything that happened in the entirety of a 5-season series.

That sums up the narrative style pretty well. it's such a sad and unsatisfactory end to a series that started out with so much more potential than this, and IMO in it's earlier seasons actually did rather better than the original at expressing it's themes and ideas.

I always though that much of the problems with TWD stems from the source material being a comic, the nature of the comic book means that many of the original characters were stylised and cartoonish which works well in the visual medium of the graphic novel but doesn't always transfer to the screen as live action as well. the advantage Fear had was starting from scratch with no baggage. I remember someone on youtube making the observation that TWD was about superheroes, but Fear was about ordinary human beings. i think this was correct and the show was all the better for it.

I'm repeating myself but the main theme of fear was always the morality of survival, IIRC the original tag line was 'you can't save everyone' and much of the early  show is about how the characters come to terms with the stuff they have to do in order to survive.

You can't save everyone turns out to be what the soldiers protecting the Clarkes' neighbourhood have decided, they have created a safe zone in the local area, but outside to cordon sanitaire they kill everyone, living and dead. it's a cynical realisation that the govt can only save a few and anyone  else is just a potential vector for spreading the 'infection' and needs to be killed, (an idea covered in more detail in The Last of Us).

This idea isn't just limited to the military though, when they discover that the soldiers don't intend to try and hold their position but will withdraw and 'euthanise ' the civilians, they escape but drop everyone else in the shit in the process.

Strand takes them along with him on his escape plan, not because he's a good person but because he's calculated correctly he needs other people to help him execute his plan. Once they're on the Abigale and in a strong position, there are lots of desperate people who need their help but if they help them they weaken their own position, and there's always the chance that if you did help others they'd be desperate enough to kill you and take what you have because it's the only way they can survive.

Ultimately, everyone who survives does so at the expense of others, much of the ensuing story is about how they try to come to terms with the guilt inherent in this realisation by helping others, with varying degrees of success, and the conflict this brings with people who think people shouldn't be helped, for, er, some reason

Strand and Daniel are such important characters is because they had already compromised their morality by doing bad things in order to survive in the old world

Their final conversation is pivotal because when Daniel speaks to Victor in German he is addressing  Strand's new persona, Anton, he's acknowledging that Strand has changed and become someone better.

the big theme at the end is can people change, can good come from bad and the answer seems to be: up to a point. People do change, murderers can repent and spend the rest of their lives doing good works but more often than not they don't. It's hard to see how someone like Troy could change. though one should be wary about diagnosing mental conditions over the telly, if troy isn't a sociopath he sure did a convincing impression of one. After all when we first meet him he's a neo Nazi, killing people for shits and giggles to see how long it takes for them to turn so he can write it down in his biog book of nature along with all the stuff about torturing squirrels as a kid.

Daniel and Victor aren't sociopaths, they are people who were capable of doing bad things when the need arose, but they can also do good. Everyone in the story is compromised morally in some way and the end is about all of them finding peace with this. this might have worked but is ultimately unsatisfactory because the characters have been so badly served by the writing of late so it's hard to care or take seriously their current state of mind as no one has gone thorough a convincing mental journey to reach this point, they've just arbitrarily flip flopped between opposing ideas for no good reason. "We must trust everyone" "No one can be trusted we must kill everyone" "helping people gives life meaning" "no it gets everyone killed" "We must risk everyone's safety to save this awful person who did terrible things" "It's vitally important that we murder this child"

No one cares if they've found inner peace because they'll all have changed their minds tomorrow and anyway if there's one thing we've learned from this show its that driving round the apocalypse in a big truck full of stuff helping people turns to shit real quickly.

[Starchild]

Here's a run-on sentence for you (hey maybe I could have written for this season)! You know what, I'll put in some extra white space to make it easier to read:

I've decided that the showrunners (sorry can't recall their names and that doesn't bother me at all),

who came on and immediately fired Kim Dickens,

are so humiliated by having to eat a mountain of crow shoved down their throats

by a significant portion of fans who immediately clamoured for her return,

that they decided to go scorched earth on this final season and burn it all to the ground,

just to spite us (and her).

[Crashcourse]

The only other show I had seen Kim Dickens in was Deadwood, and I thought she was fine in that.  However, in FTWD, I think her acting is awful.  

[Starchild]

I've liked everything else I saw her in, so I think it's something specific to this production.

[iMonrey]

18 hours ago, Starchild said:

that they decided to go scorched earth on this final season and burn it all to the ground,

I don't even think they're clever enough to do that. When you watch those after-show "behind the episode" interviews, it's jaw dropping to hear Andrew Chambliss and some of the actors talk about what they think the episode accomplished and what it was trying to say. I don't know if they're all just trying to put lipstick on a pig or if they are so delusional they really believe it. It's hard to believe that in the course of filming nobody stops to say "Hey, this doesn't make any sense" or "Hey this is a direct contradiction of what I said last episode." Are they really so focused on the minutia, or maybe just on the big set pieces, they can't see the proverbial forest for the trees?

On 11/24/2023 at 10:58 AM, Starchild said:

I had said that I would watch Madison in a spinoff, but if it's the same showrunners/writers I'd have to think twice.

As I've said, I have zero confidence there is anyone left in the TWD-verse competent enough to tell a decent story. I know the Daryl Dixon show got a lot of praise and even I thought it was a step up, but that's a pretty low bar. And it was still plagued by the tedious tropes this franchise can't seem to break away from.

[TV Anonymous]

It is not yet mentioned here? Alright. How did Tracy, a physically small girl with no apparent extraordinary strength, bury Troy with no apparent tool and with walkers walking around?