S1.E6 : The Last Time

[OoohMaggie]

Who ever said there's no way they could wrap it up in one episode?

[OoohMaggie]

Well they crammed a lot into that one, 

wanna find Anne's damning evidence, no problem just look in a cats ass, the slight problem of dealing with 2,500 red band CRM, Bada Bing Bada Boom what problem.

That reminded me of the rushed end to 'Thrones', they could easily stretched that into two shows, especially as that's the last we'll be seeing of them.

They could have made more of the grand family reunion of not so little Judith and RJ, but to me that was no bad thing.

Even though it carried over the bad points of the previous three episodes I quite enjoyed it, probably knowing it was the last played a part in that.

All's well that ends well, now more Maggie and Daryl to look forward to 😁

[Daltrey]

14 minutes ago, OoohMaggie said:

Who ever said there's no way they could wrap it up in one episode?

It wasn't me!....🤔was it? 😆

It happened, as I surmised last week, the only way it could, with something of a time jump and some exposition, albeit in somewhat of a unique, intercut fashion.

Terry O'Quinn makes everything better.

Rick proves he's more Glenn than Glenn by not only surviving a dumpster made of walkers but also blowing said walker dumpster up while still inside and walking away without a scratch.

Why leave the prosthetic behind? I guess it's supposed to symbolize his rejection of echelon and the CRM and maybe that he's going home to a peaceful life but c'mon! Who's he kidding besides himself?! There's always going to be something or someone and that thing can do some serious damage...though I suppose the stump would start to hurt after Balboa-ing enough dudes to death.

That's about it, for now....I need to get some sleep, lol. I will say, in spite of my expectations, I did get a little joyfully choked up at the reunion. The character callbacks throughout were a nice touch, to.

[maystone]

I'm too tired to do coherent prose in structured paragraphs, so this is going to be by the numbers.

1. They jammed a ton of story into a little more than 53 minutes - and that includes the opening credits. I wish they could have added a seventh episode so they could show rather than tell how Richonne brought down the CRM and saved the US. Michonne's voice-over exposition at the end did a lot of heavy lifting. I'd be up for seeing how that unfolded.

2. Who among us did not figure out in Ep 5 that Jadis's deposition about Alexandria would be found inside one of her cat sculptures? I liked the call back to her and Michonne's appreciation of feline art pieces.

3. Terry O'Quinn was great. As always. I was hoping that there would be more to the Echelon briefing than, "Yup. We're gonna kill 'em all." I know Beale was supposed to be a charismatic madman, but I just don't get wiping out the living population of the continental US while there still exists millions upon millions of zombies to be dealt with. Not to mention the accumulated and sometimes arcane, needed knowledge that would be wiped out indiscriminately. Beale may have had lovely twinkling eyes, but he was really shortsighted.

4. I admit to getting  teary-eyed when the big reunion finally happened. AL did a good job of standing awkwardly on the sidelines while mom and the kids had a hug fest. Judith was a toddler when she and her dad last saw each other and here she is a teenager. RJ looks to be 10 or 11? (I don't have kids, so I'm terrible at guessing kids' ages.) How much time was supposed to have passed since the bridge went boom?

5. Now I think that the crackly radio talk Daryl and Carol had back in his spin-off did have Carol referring to Rick and Michonne's return when she told him "they came back." Again, I suck at figuring out the timeline in these shows, but maybe it's plausible.

6. I didn't see a katana when Richonne got out of the helicopter. Is that right? Boy, that's the end of an era right there.

7. Guys! We made it! We few, we happy(ish) few, who have stuck with the mother ship TWD over the years have finally seen it come full circle. Welcome home, Rick and Michonne.

[Brown44]

Terry O'Quinn zombie walk looking like he in Thiller.

[nodorothyparker]

That was I think an even longer tease with such a rushed payoff than Winter is coming, winter is coming, winter is coming, oops there it went. 

Eleven seasons of random black helicopter sightings on the mother show, multiple sightings on multiple spinoffs over multiple seasons, and it took them all of about 20 minutes to take the whole operation down once they made up their minds to do it.

[Brown44]

I just realized Judith doesn't share dna with nobody she's hugging 🤣🤣🤣

[txhorns79]

7 hours ago, maystone said:

7. Guys! We made it! We few, we happy(ish) few, who have stuck with the mother ship TWD over the years have finally seen it come full circle. Welcome home, Rick and Michonne.

It was nice to see a happy ending.  I'm sure there will be other threats, and yes, Rick blowing up a walker horde surrounding him without any real injury to himself was ridiculous.

[Spartan Girl]

9 hours ago, Brown44 said:

I just realized Judith doesn't share dna with nobody she's hugging 🤣🤣🤣

Hey, family isn’t always about whose blood you share, it’s about love. There’s no way that Lori and Shane would’ve been better parents to Judith.

I’m glad Rick and Michonne got their happy ending. 

[Boofish]

I don't mind any of the "come on now really" scenes because I'm watching a show about people turning into zombies when they die so I tend not to nitpick too much.

I appreciate Danai and Andy coming back to give fans closure. Ended how it started - with Rick reuniting with his family. And as President of the Sucker for A Happy Ending Association, I have already watched the finale 4 times.

[iMonrey]

This felt like badly written fan fiction to me. The constant cuts back to Rick and Michonne making love and exchanging sappy dialogue just felt very fan-servicey and corny. Meanwhile they really yada-yada'd the whole bombing operation. 

Terry O'Quinn may have a very devoted fan base, but to me he's just a sore reminder of what a colossal bamboozle Lost turned out to be. In any case he was completely wasted here as a two-dimensional villain. Something no spin-off has been able to break free from is this tedious and repetitive formula of "good guys have to take down latest evil regime." 

I realize they probably couldn't re-create the sets for Alexandria or the Commonwealth, but did Michonne and Rick just radio their kids to meet them in "that empty field over there"? I can't even remember where the kids were living the last time we saw them. I think they had the kids all rounded up in one house in Alexandria but I think everyone moved to the Commonwealth after they took over it.

I guess overall this gave diehard Rick and Michonne fans some closure by reuniting them with each other and finally with their children. But the path they took just felt like tired formula to me. And with only six episodes, entirely too much time was wasted on Jadis, a character nobody ever gave a crap about.

11 hours ago, Brown44 said:

I just realized Judith doesn't share dna with nobody she's hugging 🤣🤣🤣

We don't know for sure she's Shane's kid. In fact both Shane and Lori had dark hair while Judith's hair is the same color as Rick's. 

[Brown44]

3 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Hey, family isn’t always about whose blood you share, it’s about love.

I'm not talking about family, that's Judith's mom and dad and brother. But biologically she doesn't share dna with any of them, her biological mom, dad and brother are dead.

[Crashcourse]

I was conflicted about Rick and Michonne because I haven't liked them since way back when they coldly drove past that poor bastard walking down the road, flagging them and asking for help. 

So, part of me would have been glad if they'd been blown up, but then I was also glad that the kids got reunited with their parents.  

[Mr. Sparkle]

Such a sappy ending, and so many "improbabilities" that are par for the course for this franchise. That said, I enjoyed watching the episode, and was indeed moved by the reunion at the end. 

As said already, there is no need for a second season. Just stick to the other shows or make a new spinoff if you really see a need to. 

[baldryanr]

On 3/31/2024 at 4:39 PM, maystone said:

How much time was supposed to have passed since the bridge went boom?

8+ years?  Michonne said that RJ was almost 8 a couple of episodes ago, so tack on a few months to that.

[millennium]

I know most recognize Terry O'Quinn as John Locke from LOST, but I still see him as Peter Watts from a late 1990s Chris Carter show called "Millennium."  He always plays a bastard.   Never imagined I'd see him doing a zombie walk, though.

On 4/1/2024 at 12:01 AM, txhorns79 said:

Rick blowing up a walker horde surrounding him without any real injury to himself was ridiculous.

LOL, no more so than the main explosion merely leaving Thorne more pissed off.   Good thing Rick and Michonne found one of those magic tarps to shelter under.

The reunion felt threadbare.   There should have been more people on hand.  Folks from Alexandria, crewmen from the chopper ... Guess it wasn't in the budget after that super high quality CGI explosion.   The general emptiness of the scene reminded me of the finale of Supernatural (which I would prefer to never be reminded of).

Still, this episode moved at a good clip, the Echelon briefing was kinda chilling, and Eugene didn't make the flashbacks, so I suppose that's something.

[rmontro]

I was actually (pleasantly) shocked that they finished with a happy ending.  I was certain there was going to be some sort of cliffhanger.  Maybe they don't have the actors locked down for a future show?  

Years ago, they would have done things like this in a movie instead of a six episode series.  I would say I prefer the former, except they usually came off as sloppily put together. 

[mandolin]

It has been one meeeeeellion years since I've been to TWD forums! Good to see some of the same names.

I anticipated this series quite a bit. It wasn't perfect by any stretch, and the mothership went way off course for my taste after Rick and Michonne left (I did eventually watch it all, as well as all the spinoffs-with varying degrees of paying attention) but I'm glad they all ended up together. I wish we'd seen more of the world they went back to after.

Edited April 6 by mandolin

[Daltrey]

On 4/1/2024 at 7:38 AM, iMonrey said:

Judith's hair is the same color as Rick's. 

Her hair's not gray, whattaya talkin' about?! 😜

[Starchild]

On 4/3/2024 at 2:34 AM, millennium said:

I know most recognize Terry O'Quinn as John Locke from LOST, but I still see him as Peter Watts from a late 1990s Chris Carter show called "Millennium." 

Great show, gone too soon.

[millennium]

23 hours ago, Starchild said:

Great show, gone too soon.

We were lucky to get a Season 3.   Morgan and Wong wrote the ending of Season 2 as the series finale.

My avatar is Lucy Butler.

On 4/3/2024 at 12:48 PM, mandolin said:

It has been one meeeeeellion years since I've been to TWD forums! Good to see some of the same names.

I anticipated this series quite a bit. It wasn't perfect by any stretch, and the mothership went way off course for my taste after Rick and Michonne left (I did eventually watch it all, as well as all the spinoffs-with varying degrees of paying attention) but I'm glad they all ended up together. I wish we'd seen more of the world they went back to after.

 

All we really need to know is that Father Pee Pee Pants will be there for them.

(welcome back!)

[Starchild]

1 hour ago, millennium said:

My avatar is Lucy Butler.

I thought I recognized her.

[Brown44]

On 4/1/2024 at 10:38 AM, iMonrey said:

We don't know for sure she's Shane's kid. In fact both Shane and Lori had dark hair while Judith's hair is the same color as Rick's. 

That's Shane's kid, we know it and Rick knows it.

[BasilSeal]

I'm late to the party here and most of the relevant points have already been made by others. Though the fact that i watched this over a week ago and i'm only just bothering to comment says as much as anything about how underwhelming this much vaunted big finish actually was.

We've been told for years that this story would be a trilogy of epic big budget movies and it finally sees the light of day as a modestly budgeted 6 part TV mini series.

For dis hard fans of  Rick and Michonne it gives some resolution to their stories, but ultimately it adds little to the overall TWD cannon. at the end of the show we still  don't know much more about the CRM, or how it  works

On 4/1/2024 at 3:33 AM, nodorothyparker said:

That was I think an even longer tease with such a rushed payoff than Winter is coming, winter is coming, winter is coming, oops there it went. 

Eleven seasons of random black helicopter sightings on the mother show, multiple sightings on multiple spinoffs over multiple seasons, and it took them all of about 20 minutes to take the whole operation down once they made up their minds to do it.

this pretty much sums it up for me, we were teased some incredibly complex and multi layered new world order type society, and what we get is just another poorly thought out  two dimensional villain.

Presumably the moral message of all this is that isolationism is bad, that thinking you can simply shut yourself off from the rest of the world and refuse to assist or cooperate with outside groups / countries is unrealistic and morally wrong.

The problem is that the CRM's isolationist plan isn't just morally reprehensible, it's batshit crazy and makes no logical sense. how can they possibly think they're going to run out of food? they live on a continental landmass that  previously supported330 million people and they now have a population in the hundreds of thousands at most, and they have maintained a pre-Fall level of technology and the logistical and manufacturing capacities to run a mechanised military force.

Then there's the unique structure of the CR / CRM that allows rick and Michonne to turn it from a fascist, totalitarian, genocidal police state to a benign force for good in one fell swoop. Apparently there is a civilian administration just  kicking its heals for the last ten years waiting to take over and run everything in a liberal, progressive and entirely non killy manner, also, it's only a tiny minority of the military CRM  force that are part of team genocide, and they've all put themselves in one location right next to a convenient means of killing all of them. How lucky is that?

The denouement is somewhat contrived and rushed, culminating in a half baked reunion scene where no one from Alexandria bothered to turn up and welcome back the guy who saved them in the bridge explosion, yeah, i know, there's a huge cost to getting actors back just for a few seconds of air time but at least think of a decent reason why they aren't there, particularly when the actors from TWD original you have got back to appear in this are the two least popular characters from the entire show's history.

I could go on, but i think essentially the problem is this has been billed as something epic but it was in actuality rather mundane and run of the mill TWD fare. when Michonne first  found the not Station eleven people back in the original series, we catch a glimpse of a much bigger picture, a trick that TWD often does, to imply a greater story going on off screen. We are introduced to these characters from an whole  new group of survivors but  because of the pace the story needs to move at, these charcters are wasted, personally, i was more interested in  Nate and his friends that the CRM, i'd have much rather Michonne had stayed and had some adventures with them and forgotten about Rick

tl.dr: Watchable and gives closure to Richonne fans but ultimately falls down on the world building and details.

[Iguessnot]

I'm so glad the theater thing didn't pan out. I can't imagine what unholy things were taking place in the room where they decided to make blockbuster films from this storyline.