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.

XXXVIII

Jack makes it to Skeleton Island so all of our captains are back together. Jack gets there just in time as Rogers was moving in for the kill on the beach. A new pirate ship rolling up on Rogers is enough for him to pull back and reorganize the next fight at sea.

Jack was given the task to kill Flint to obtain Nassau and he’s face to face with Flint easier than he could have imagined. Seeing how the pirates were rocked and not knowing where the cash was buried, Jack repositions himself as an ally. He goes along with what Silver and Flint (mostly Flint) want to do after he explains that he went for help in Philadelphia and didn’t get it (he leaves out working with Grandma Guthrie). Flint and Silver know to keep an eye on Jack but he’s really the least of their problems. The mission is still on to rescue Madi from Rogers and then go get the buried treasure. Silver is still incensed about Flint stealing the cash. Flint sticks to his guns. He’s convinced he’s right, everything will work out and their friendship will be whole at the end of it.

Bones is in a deep, dark place. He’s a traitor and knows there is no way back for him. He goes as far as thinking of killing Madi for Silver to find but pulls back from the brink when Madi tells him that her death will do nothing for him. If anything, it will reinforce the bond between Silver and Flint.

Battle on the high seas! The confrontation the season has been building to comes with cannon balls flying, single shot bullets cracking and swords clashing. The final action scene of the series turned out great and as exciting as ever. A phenomenal set piece with some amazing looking shots and the highlight of Bones taking on Flint with no interruptions.

I’m not going to go into the details of how the show ends. There’s a lot to it, it’s very complex and needs to be seen so you can get the intricacies beat by beat. I can’t do it the proper justice here, I don’t even know where to start with Silver and Flint’s conversation on Skelton Island. It all comes together, all threads addressed as they gave an ample amount of time to conclude everyone’s story. The complex friendship of Silver and Flint is the predominant one. Once full partners, then at odds, then forced together when Rogers got the upper hand.

Flint was a problem to a lot of people. A leader from beginning to end, he never took to hearing “no” very often and always maneuvered to get his way. Silver saw this and traced it back to its origin. If anyone wanted to get off the ride when Flint still had use for them, he never let them go. As often as Flint was right, the toll was often tremendous. With the battle for Nassau (and the pirate’s life really) pulled away from Flint’s tunnel vision what could make him stop? To find peace that wasn’t death? When Silver got a lead to that end, he pursued it in the hope it would free them all.

I love Black Sails, I really do. Evey season is terrific and I’m so happy with how they ended it. There is so much to like because everyone who lived past Skeleton Island gets an ending. You get to see what they managed to get out of the ordeal and a good idea of what they do afterward. So well written, I am in absolute admiration on how Silver has been constructed over the years to get to where he is at the end. Luke Arnold is a fantastic actor. Actually, everyone on the show is. I hope they all get massive career boosts from their work here. Very few TV shows get such complete and special runs. It’s a joy when they do. Black Sails stands tall as an example of what can be done with the medium.

Grimm has always been a fun show. Hunting fairytale like monsters in this invented mythos made for a unique cop procedural show. I started watching it a few episodes into the first season (so I actually have yet to see the very start of how Nick got into the Grimm game) and was hooked right away. In fives seasons, it was mostly all good. They hit some rough patches with Nick’s girlfriend, Julia, when they had to figure out how to make her more than just the love interest for him. They led to some dragged out story arcs but they managed to pull out of it twice and gave her a more tolerable life (when it got bad, she was a real drag on the show). Season 5 had great movement and they knew season 6 would be the last so they left the right hooks in to end the show. They answered a few of the series’ longest questions and just needed to get to the landing.

With the show ending last night, I liked season 6 a lot. 13 instead of 22 episode made it tight and to the point, there was no time to mess around. They still had room to make new creatures (they came up with some good ones) and kept all of our favorite cast members engaged: Hank, Monroe, Rosalee, Adalind, Sean, Wu, Eve. Truble kept coming and going which I wasn’t a fan of.

The end of episode 12, the stakes were raised to crazy heights. Wu and Hank were killed by Zerstorer. Then the last episode and it just goes off the rails. All the set up, all the hard work and they couldn’t get to the end they wanted without leaning on the deus ex machina button.

In the finale, the body count hits the roof. Everyone is taken from Nick and it’s down to him and fellow Grimm (and distant relative), Truble in the final battle with evil. He’s devastated and wants to give up. Truble, suddenly the only Grimm with a brain in her head, says hell no. She fights him to keep mankind from being obliterated. He beats her and then suddenly, on his way to screw everyone over, his dead mother and aunt come out of nowhere. They flat out tell him some missing parts of being a Grimm, give him two sentences worth of advice and that changes his mind. They stick around to fight with Nick and Truble to win (Truble never sees Mom and Aunt, another ponderous decision). Then through some equally out of nowhere plot device, a portal appears and Nick is pulled in with the magic staff. He lands at the moment in time where he and Eve brought Zerstorer through into our dimension. Everything is reset. Zerstorer is gone but the staff came through with Nick and he’s the only one who has experienced the last two days. I’m all for a happy ending but this was a shocking implosion on the writing front. I can only imagine they had a week to write it, this whole episode is a convoluted series of events. There’s reasoning I must be missing because I’m befuddled at how this happened.

It’s just a mess and it started awhile ago with Diana. They never figured out to make her more than a creepy kid. And when they did, it was just to make her a lazy and convenient deus ex machina. Constantly they’d give what amounted to an otherwise clueless child, lines to explain things out of nowhere. “What happened?” “Oh, allow me to pull this needed information out of thin air.”

Half the team worked on a solution from the tomes of books (normal for the show) and the last ditch spell ended up doing nothing. So if you go have dead relatives show up, why not spend that time finding a seance for Nick to do? That way there’s a plausible (using the lore and fiction of the show) way for him to talk to the spirits? For most of the finale, he didn’t do anything but travel to a different location to get slapped around so that would have been time better spent. Then he wouldn’t have come into the last fight like a punk. Have Truble with him that entire way, it would have been great (and you could keep the potion they made as a last ditch effort that could have ended up helping. Everyone would have contributed).

All this time building up the staff of Moses and they didn’t explain or rationalize the ending. Ok great, it’s a magic staff, it can do wild stuff so you can work with that. But Zestorer dissolves and a time traveling portal opens out of nowhere? Nick had no clue what was happening. He just didn’t want to let go of the staff because he wanted to bring everyone back to life. Going through was an accident. Why didn’t they make him more of a leader and hero instead of Eeyore for the last episode?

1) Make that last fight more significant (most likely a time and money issue) as it lasted all of 15 seconds. This one is a problem with a lot of shows (Legion). 2) Since the staff is so powerful, make it speak to Nick somehow. Something to give Nick direction and purpose. Voice over on the cheap, ancient Grimm ghost if there’s a budget for it. Have the power of this object, something Grimm’s had a hand in, empower him. His blood means a lot right? Use this power for good (which fits considering he keeps it in the epilogue).

I’d be way happier (and it makes more sense) with Nick and Truble physically going around to restore everyone instead of some goofy time travel nonsense. If you want to bring it to a happy storybook end and ditch the bold and meaningful events of killing characters, at least make sensible and satisfying decisions to get there.

With how well thought out the show is, the finale surprised me for all the wrong reasons. They could use pretty much all of their main beats if they just thought it through better. While I’m bummed at what they did for the end it doesn’t ruin the show for me.  I think it’s totally a show worth exploring and the epilogue offers the potential of a future. Given some time, I’d tag along on new quests with Kelly and Diana with old characters still around.

Season 3 of Sleepy Hollow had a dramatic end with the death of a major character. With half of the core protagonists gone there was some trepidation of the show continuing.

I give a lot of credit to the show runners and writers to finding a new road for the show without Abby Mills. They still had more story to go and I think they found a smart way of telling the rest. Maintain what people liked about the show and mix in new characters to keep it going. Continue the threads for fans and keep it accessible for newcomers. It can be hard to do both but I think they largely succeeded.

Jenny Mills was the only character to come through with Ichabod. They moved out of Sleepy Hollow to D.C. and introduced three new characters. Diana essentially filled the law enforcement shoes of Abby and Jake and Alex came in as the support team.

We got to see quite a few monsters and demons. Ran around for clues and artifacts and a new big bad (Malcolm Dreyfus) anchored it all together. I liked the new cast, the show remained fun and at a truncated 13 episodes there was essentially no filler. They made the best of the time they had. Seeing the Four Horseman of the Apocolypse finally come together was neat and while there were some convenient deals made in the finale I liked the end too. It serves as both a season and series finale which is a good accomplishment.

I’m glad I stuck with the show and came away largely satisfied. If this is the end, it goes out on what I consider a strong note and if it gets picked up for more, I’ll be there to check it out.