The Waiting Dead. That might be a better name for the show now. For every good moment we get, the time that goes by to get it seems to get longer and longer. Build ups are consistently drawn out, often times by repeating the same motifs as validation for character behavior. But that gets tiresome and worst of all boring.

I think the biggest problem for the show is pacing. That and the cast is too big. For every character that the audience likes and is engaged with, there’s probably three that could disappear and no one would care. Which can be seen every time the story switches to characters, for an entire episode, that everyone forgot even existed.

The show has always been at its worst when they split the group up too much. This season had Alexandria, The Hilltop, The Kingdom, those two episodes at the beach location, the junkyard gang, and The Saviors HQ. The survivors were spread in various amounts at those locations all year long. Entire episodes were devoted to characters that we don’t care about in favor of others that we do. This also lead to new major characters, like Ezekiel, being ignored and end up as footnotes.

Now for the repetition. How many times do we need to know that Ezekiel doesn’t want to go to war? That he wants to maintain the arrangement with The Saviors? How many times do we need to be shown that Negan is dangerous? How many monologues does he need to do before anyone tells him to shut the hell up and kill me already because you running your mouth like it’s Def Poetry Jam is torture? And the neutering of Carol and Morgan can never happen again. This is I think the second time it’s happened. Combine it with how she started and it’s the third time she’s been a reclusive basketcase. People love Carol, she’s been part of the biggest and best moments of the show. Having to watch her mope around and not be an active badass is unacceptable.

Half of the season felt like it was spinning its wheels. Movement came in small bursts. That may be exacerbated by how long it takes a season to air due to the long break in the middle. That’s gone as now it’s all available but the problem with overall pace and tone is still there. That started with the premiere. With such an intense season beginning, it’s near impossible to match such a plateau.

Now, it’s not all bad. Eugene’s path was really interesting to watch and it fit his character. The major death was smartly done and is one of the strongest moments of the season. A legit way to go, I’m sure the entire cast hopes they go out on such terms.

The confrontation that had been built up all season long was…good. I wish I could praise it more but it was pretty weak in terms of TWD battles. Too predictable for one thing. Poorly shot too. It’s just a ton of people shooting off screen with no sense of location or direction. Characters just pop up on screen at random. There’s no anchor in the geography so it feels fake and cheap like a carnival air rifle shooting range (it does seem like they ran out of money. Or Shiva took most of the budget for 12 seconds of screen time). It’s impossible to figure out what’s going on or who is in actual danger. Michonne had the only tangible struggle.

So next season. The main threat is still going to be the main threat (which is what I thought they’d do) and they finished with a clear message of hope and positivity for the future. Something they were scared into doing after the reaction to the reaction the season 6 finale got. I think that after all of this they have a good launching point for next year but the dead weight on the cast tree needs some trimming that can’t wait to be done much longer.