I'm writing from home tonight, off until Sunday morning. No movie tonight, but I did binge-watch three episodes from Season 7 of "The Walking Dead". That's the season that aired last year. I got the complete season dvd set at Northridge Libe, and I am trying to finish up the episodes I hadn't seen so that I can be done with it. I used to love the show. I never saw a single episode until two years ago, when I wondered what all the fuss was about and checked out Season One from the Libe. It was great at first, I was immediately hooked just like the rest of America was when the show premiered in 2010. So I binge watched all through the last half of 2015 until I caught up. I thought the first four seasons were great, but then by Season Five it started to tail off a bit. Too many characters were added, I thought. Too many minor storylines about characters that had not been developed enough to care about.
But I kept watching until I finished Season Six, all on dvd. Then, last October, a year ago in 2016, I watched my first ever episode of "TWD" live, as it aired. Pearl has cable, and has AMC, and so I tuned into the first episode of Season Seven to watch it unfold with the rest of America.
What I wound up seeing was the most violent, disgusting and downright obscene thing I can imagine. It was the worst thing I have ever seen, in movies or tv. I mean - they showed this on TV - where anybody could have seen it, including kids, and it was so horrible that it shocked even me, the Unshockable One, the Ultimate Horror Fan. I swore off the show after seeing that first episode. It was no surprise that AMC got a lot of complaints, so many that the producers of "TWD" had to issue a semi-apology.
So yeah, I swore I would never watch another episode after the first one last year.
However.......and isn't there always a However in life?.........the damn show had got me hooked, even as much as I hated the Negan character (how'd you like to be Jeffery Dean Morgan, the actor?), and so I took a sneak peak at the next episode and the next one. Just a few minutes of each, as they aired. They seemed to be toned down, and so when the dvd set was finally released in August, I figured I've give the season a go - minus that first episode. Nobody should ever watch that, ever.
So I've been watching the rest of Season Seven on dvd, here and there since August, whenever it has been available at Northridge Libe. These TV people know what they are doing and they get you hooked. Just ask all the "Game Of Thrones" fans, of which I am not one. Never seen a single episode. In fact, I've never watched any of the big cable shows, no "Madmen", no "Sopranos", no none of 'em.
Not a single episode of any of 'em. What happened was that Grimsley went on and on about "Breaking Bad" until I couldn't take it any more, and so I said, "okay, okay, I'll check it out". This is on dvd of course, years after the show was over. And Grim was right; it was a great show. And it got you hooked. So I binge-watched it in early 2015, and then when I was through, I was looking for something else to replace it. And I thought, well what about this "Walking Dead" that everyone's been talking about for several years.
As an aside, one thing about me is that if everyone is talking about something, that is the most sure fire way to get me to avoid it. I just never want to be part of The Crowd.
Now, that doesn't mean I won't check it out later, haha. But in 99% of cases, I won't.
But in the case of "Breaking Bad", I did, because of Grimsley's hammering. And that led to "The Walking Dead".
My verdict is that is was a great show, but isn't anymore. The writing just isn't as good as it was, and they spend long, long periods of downtime in which the several dozen characters express their tortured feelings and psychoanalyze one another. It was an action show, and now it's all touchy-feely (save the horrific first episode). Now, I love psychological drama, but this ain't Method Acting and it ain't Playhouse 90. It's the freakin' Zombie Apocalypse, doggonnit, and I know that the show isn't really about Zombies but about what happens to people when there are no rules or laws, when society breaks down, but still..............it's a pretty boring show nowdays, and so I am binge-watching my way out of it.
I know that makes no sense, but I binged my way in, and now I'm binging my way out. They got me hooked and I've gotta at least finish out the season. One more episode to go. And then I will try not to watch next year, when Season 8 comes out on dvd. :)
On a reading note, I finally finished Peter Levenda's monumental three volume masterwork, "Sinister Forces : A Grimoire Of American Political Witchcraft" and I must say that it is the most profound study of it's kind that I know of, and I'm not sure anybody has ever tackled the subject before, of the mutitudes of connections and coincidences that exist as a nefarious undercurrent in American politics, religion, and culture that tie so many violent events together. The sentence I have just written is but a paltry description of what Levenda has achieved with his trilogy, which took him 30 years to complete.
I am lost for words, except to say that if you think CNN, or the Washington Post represents what is going on in this country, or what has gone on in it's 241 year history (and prior to that with the earliest settlers on the North American continent), then you should read Peter Levenda's "Sinister Forces" trilogy. If a book, or books, can be said to be life changing, this is it.
See you in the morning (and SB let's get married already). :):)
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