Shining force 3 trilogy patch8/10/2023 ![]() Now, because the episode had the great Michelle MacLaren directing – for the first time since Zombie Sophia wandered out of Hershel's barn midway through season 2 – and because Gimple and Kang have both demonstrated good command of quieter character stories (most recently, Gimple with “The Grove” and Kang with “Still”), it mostly worked even if it left the season feeling incomplete as a whole. ![]() (More ideally, a lot of the character work would have been done back on Hershel's farm, or earlier in the prison stay, but you can't have everything.)Įven “A” weirdly split the difference between character and plot, with the first two thirds dispensing with Joe and his crew and acknowledging that Rick Grimes has become capable of some very dark things in the last few years, before our heroes arrive at Terminus, quickly deduce that it's a bad place, then get herded into a train car with some of their remaining friends (and their new friends), and with the periodic flashbacks to happier days in prison to remind us of Rick's journey. Some of that worked, and some of it didn't, but the effort was admirable and probably necessary, even if it meant putting the larger story on hold for a while. And as I've said a lot the last couple of months, the show did need some work done to shore up its foundation and make us care about what happens to anyone beyond Rick and maybe Carl and Michonne. Maybe that's just Gimple trying to course correct for some failings the show may have had under Glen Mazzara, just as Mazzara had to spend the beginning of his tenure pivoting away from some of Frank Darabont's decisions, and maybe this means that next season – which in theory will be the first time the show will have the same showrunner for complete back-to-back seasons – will have more forward momentum. But beyond that, this was a season that was all middle. You can look at the way that “A” flashed back to the time immediately before the season premiere as Scott Gimple and Angela Kang shining a light on the year's big character arc for Rick, and that was a story for the season that pretty much had a beginning (Rick puts down his gun to become a farmer), a middle (the Governor's arrival forces Rick to reluctantly go back to fighting) and an end (more dire circumstances turns Rick into the man who could do what he did to Joe and his gang, and who can be that confident that he is going to mess up the folks from Terminus). And we close on a cliffhanger that, given how little time has actually been spent at Terminus so far, feels more like the start of season 5 than anything else. ![]() Then after the break, the show went into some long-overdue character building work with the likes of Michonne, Beth, Bob, etc., with occasional pauses so the plot could be advanced by the likes of Abraham and Eugene, or all the Terminus signs. Then we got a two-week Governor solo arc, followed by a mid-season finale that played like a much belated conclusion to season 3. We opened with relative peace at the prison that was disrupted by the virus and all the collateral damage it caused. What a strange season of “Walking Dead” this was, structure-wise. A review of tonight's “The Walking Dead” season finale coming up just as soon as my hunger is a 28 on a scale of 1 to 10…
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