Warning: Contains major spoilers for this season.
I currently have mixed opinions about The Walking Dead TV show.
I was in denial for the first half of season 8 as, after looking back, I saw the episodes were not as good as I said they were in my reviews because I was just holding them to the expectations of what the show was currently producing.
So I decided to hold back on my reviews until the season ended so I could just gather my overall thoughts on season eight as a whole.
Anyway, after the painfully slow season seven the show finally delivered the All Out Story arc from the comics in season eight… only for the first half to be a disappointment.
Don’t get me wrong, there were some great moments in this part of the season, like the episodes The Big Scary U and Time For After but a lot of it was very lackluster.
What really brought the first half of season eight down was its scope and the way it filmed action scenes, which made it all seem kind of boring.
Even though this was supposed to be a big explosive war, the battles always felt relatively small and a lot of the time the way the action was shot left me with little investment in what was happening and a little bored.
In the mid-season finale How It’s Gotta Be, Alexandria gets blown up by the Saviours but I just did not care because of the way it was shot and a lack of investment in what was happening.
Then there were the downright stupid decisions they made this season, like killing off Carl, which has to be, without a doubt, the absolute worst deviation they have ever made from the comics.
Carl was the future of The Walking Dead and is very important in the story going forward in the comics.
Who is going to replace him with now, Henry?
However, I will admit that the second half of this season was significantly better than the first half.
There were only two bad episodes out of eight in the second half and the good episodes felt like The Walking Dead was finally getting back on track.
That does not mean I did not have problems with these episodes but they were still very enjoyable compared to what had come before.
All around I felt the acting from everyone was good, some actors like Chandler Riggs, as Carl, gave great performances in some episodes.
However, even though the performances were good the characters these actors played were very inconstant at times.
For example Negan, (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) kept changing from wanting to send a message to the rebelling communities to just wanting to kill everyone at the drop of a hat.
The main problem with this season though was how drawn-out it was.
It felt like the show should have just dealt with Negan in one season instead of putting the conflict with him into two.
They should have just had the first half of season seven deal with the build up to All Out War and the second half feature the entire war.
That would have allowed the story to be much more streamlined and cohesive.
Overall, season eight was good but it did have quite a few failings, especially in that first half.
Although, the second half did a really good job of redeeming the season.
Despite the fact that I think the Walking Dead has been in a decline of quality even since the season six finale, I believe the show can still go back to its glory days and maybe be even better than that because season nine will feature the New Beginning story arc.
This story arc will allow The Walking Dead to have a fresh start and draw in more of an audience, including the ones it lost because of the more recent seasons.
We will just have to wait and see if this happens though.
Season eight was a good season but the show really needs to get a handle on its issues if it even wants to get back to the glory days of seasons four and five.
THE REVIEW MONSTER 