I guess i'm in the minority because i'm enjoying it

I was afraid to say this for fear of getting pounced on, but I agree - I don't think JDM is that great of an actor.

In the new Rampage trailer (starring The Rock) JDM makes an appearance and sounds exactly the same as Negan. Either the director told him to play it like Negan for laughs, or JDM doesn't really have much range in his voice and expressions. And I was not that impressed with him in Watchmen neither.

Either way, I really cannot stand Negan's TV character. Every third or fourth line will either have the word "shit" or an alpha-male penis reference. He's so tiresome and predictable to watch.

JDM is a good actor. Any time you evaluate a TWD actor, you simply must grant a lot of leeway because the writers give the actors absolutely nothing with which to work. It's impossible to overstate that. Merle is my stock example. On paper, he was one of the worst characters on ANY tv show; he worked and actually managed to be great at times entirely because of Michael Rooker. Not everyone has managed that. Xander Berkeley is a great actor but he's stuck playing Gregory, which is just a horrible, horrible part. He sometimes manages to squeeze some laughs out of the material but not much else. Lenny James is another rock-solid talent whose character (Morgan) was ruined by the writers. Look at what the writers did to Laurie Holden's character. Good actors can do a lot with not much but it's a very rare one that can turn outright sewage into gold.

"I thought David Morissey as the Governor was way more nuanced. I loved him. You actually felt somewhat sorry for him because the ZA forever changed him into the villain he became. Negan was ALWAYS a sociopath."

I completely agree. While I like JDM as an actor, in my opinion, he's got nothing on David Morrissey whose portrayal of the Governor I found to be very compelling. I've not read the comics but from what I understand, Morrissey gave a lot of depth to a character that was originally a one-note villain, which I think is a testament to his acting ability. Negan, on the other hand, fits the bill for someone with Antisocial Personality Disorder. I think he was the way he is *before* the apocalypse, and that the apocalypse simply served as a catalyst for him to be hostile and to subjugate others. (At least that's my take on TV Negan; comic book Negan may be a different story, I don't know.) His warped sense of morality, his gleeful killing of people, his lack of remorse and blaming of his victims ("it's your fault I'm doing this to you! If you hadn't pissed me off, I wouldn't be bashing your head in!") are all indicative, to me, of someone who has innate deficits in empathy, apocalypse or no.

It will probably end along the lines of World War Z. Not exactly a happy ending, but a hopeful one. With the walkers decaying more and more each day, they will find a more efficient way of dealing with them, decreasing the casualties, also there will be no more human threats in the horizon. But the world won't be 100% fixed, on screen, for us viewers to witness it. They will only hint at it and from there on we will have to assume. So there will be an apparent sense of safety and resolution left in the air.


Whether or not Rick will still be alive, leading, or dead. I guess we will have to wait and see, Carl is there to pick up his mantle, in any case.

I doubt they'll do a cure, they'll just start finding dead people who should have turned but didn't. Then discover babies being born immune.

True, but there are also people, like myself, that used to like the show and are frustraded by the dip in quality. I never thought that TWD was the best show ever and the way my brain is wired I am incapable of being a fan, but until Season 5 it was engaging and interesting.

I am more than willing to go with the flow and suspend disbelief (otherwise what's the point of watching fiction?), but the last three seasons had a lot of cheap manipulation, tricks, bottle episodes, storylines that didn't advance, events stretching, long winded speeches, repetitions and pseudo-intellectual directing style that is starting to get on my nerves.

I'm happy for you that you like this season better, but I don't. We are already six episodes in and nothing really happened and I feel they are stalling for milking purposes.

Lastly, I disagree that JDM is doing OK with what's been written for him. A more understated approach and more deadpan deliveries would make for a better Negan. And no knee-bending and strange body contorsions, it's just silly and too much cartoonish. Either he didn't get the character or he doesen't care. Or he just can't do any better. Other actors are being given the short end, but they still make their character work. Maybe they're just better actors?

"It's sad when it happens on a site that hasn't quite hit the critical mass to be able to absorb it, so almost all you see are the complaints that somebody really really wanted to see X, but got Y instead (which is what all of it comes down to)."

When X makes sense buy Y doesn't make any, that's an entirely valid criticism. The days of TWD's peak popularity are long gone; it will now draw as many or more complaints as praise and the complaints will become more numerous with time. That's true across even the sites tightly regulated by its awful fanboy faction (who tolerate no criticism of the show). It's never coming back from that. The problems I've been pointing out since its second season have swallowed it whole and everyone involved has just been milking it for whatever dollars can still be squeezed from it--that's the way it's been since the season 5 opener.

The montage of faces is acceptable in the comic frames. In the show, it's lazy and filler. Shame on them to show that not once, but twice.