More Time Than You Know

I told myself I was going to finish watching this series if for nothing else but the sake of completion. Can't do it. I picked up the remote five times and set it back down before I finally turned it off during that oh so cringe worthy train car scene. The dialogue in this show is absolutely horrendous and the acting isn't much better. I've got to wonder how the writers, producers, and production crew can see it being created in real time and not come to that conclusion themselves. Zoey Merchant has to be the worst actor on television and her character is just as bad. Add to that the most unbelievably stupid dialogue and you get a part that somebody had to be snorting battery acid to think was going to work. Maya Eshet is almost as bad. Lennie James with the same worn out performance every single week. He never changes.

I can't do it anymore. I literally don't care what happens to any of these characters and at this point I'd rather wait until it's over and just take a few minutes to read about it. They should have just ended it with last season and left it at that.

Where do I start.

This show has become a burden to complete. It would be much more interesting to read the transcripts of this episode rather than watching it on the screen.

The supporting actors are once again, terrible.

Shrike trying to be stoic just doesn't work and she comes off as childish and annoying.

Wren, unfortunately, seems to have only 3 or 4 facial expressions in her repertoire.

The dialogue is... eugh... "It's too dangerous..."

Really? *roll eyes*

Thank goodness this is the last season.

And I would also like to thank to whomever invented the "increase playback speed" feature.

Thank you, sir/madam.

You deserve to be honored by all "Fear The Walking Dead" fans, or whatever's left of them.

The story is just terrible now. And the completely unrealistic overly precocious kid is way played out. No one wanted to watch "new world" for this reason. Would you listen to any 10 year old give orders and take charge in the apocalypse?? No. The story is just terrible now. And the completely unrealistic overly precocious kid is way played out. No one wanted to watch "new world" for this reason. Just end this show already. You are ruining a legacy with the trash. And what's her name should have never come back. She's the worst actor om the show. Cancel this version. It's done. Take it behind the barn.

This season has been tedious to watch. The story has lost all real meaning and feels like filler material trying to milk 1 more year of revenue from the cash cow. The characters are repeatedly put in the same life or death situations having to make the same hard choices as they have for the past 7 years. Hearing them whine constantly about how someone should go on without the other then they miraculously get saved just to hear them go through the same whiney speech every 10 minutes gets old really fast.

The show is overly focused on Morgan's daughter, a small 8 year old child who adults seem to take direction from in life or death settings, and possesses wisdom and character not displayed by most adults, despite their age and being raised in a society of children.

Halfway through the season now I wish all the characters would die and the show would end, im purely continuing to watch because ive already watched 7 seasons and I only have a little more to go before its over.

The acting, sets and costumes all remain top notch, and the sole reason I dont rate this lower, but the writing and possibly directing make this a truly painful experience. Perhaps this is actually some genius plan to make the viewer feel as much pain as the on screen characters getting eaten alive by walkers, if so this season is a masterful success.

Let's talk about the negatives and the countless inconsistencies of the episode. One issue that has been worsening and making the whole PADRE plot silly and comical is the characters' ease and lack of difficulty in either surrendering to or defeating the group members. This has become increasingly annoying and comedic, but in a bad way. The scene where Mo manages to throw herself to the side of a soldier's gun and then Dwight and Morgan easily subdue them is pathetic and seems like it was directed by a ten-year-old. The lack of care from the writers and directors in crafting action scenes and in building the villains' danger becomes really evident.

Apart from the poor handling of action scenes for much of the episode, it is also full of terrible, cringeworthy dialogues that border on secondhand embarrassment. The final scene's dialogues between Mo and Grace are genuinely good and emotional, as are the ones she has with Morgan before leaving him. However, the dialogues in the scene where Mo is trying to pass through PADRE's "Young Soldiers" are embarrassing. The character tries to deliver an emotional speech, but it is so poorly written that it evokes nothing but shame. Moreover, regarding this character, the episode manages to break any empathy the audience could feel for her, turning her into a truly annoying child. All the events that happen to her throughout the plot should serve as a point of growth for the character, but in the end, she simply regresses, making her whole journey pointless. All the dialogues and scenes she had with her mother before she died should serve as a stepping stone for the character to grow and evolve, but the script simply ignores all of this in an attempt to generate more conflicts, which is a very questionable decision that makes no sense within the character's arc that has been built in this final season.

Besides the various forced inconsistencies surrounding the character, throughout the season, the series works on Mo's lack of knowledge about some things and objects that were common in the normal world but are practically non-existent in a post-apocalyptic world, like the kiss in the previous episode and the phone in this one. The character not knowing about these seems acceptable for the script, but her ability to handle and recognize limited-access medical devices does not seem like a problem. In fact, the scene of her being able to use the medical equipment without any difficulty and apply the radiation to Grace, only with June's help, is ridiculously forced.

Since her introduction in the 5th season, Grace, despite being a good character with a good interpreter, has always been trapped in repetitive arcs and plots, and when they did not happen, she was sidelined, as was the case for much of the 7th season. Her plots really boiled down to her precarious health with the growing cancer in her body, and her trauma involving loss and motherhood. The character has been present in four of the eight seasons of the series, but her plots were only these, which is really a considerable waste. Grace's death was shocking and, at the same time, unpredictable, since a few episodes ago, a probable functional cure for zombie bite infection had been established. Just like Finch's fate, the episode builds tension around Grace's survival. Throughout the plot, the episode slowly bids farewell to the character until it reaches the fateful moment of her death, which, despite being sad, becomes fundamental to the story. The scenes where she says goodbye to Morgan are good and have a necessary dramatic weight for them to work. However, the most emotional one is certainly the montage of Grace and Mo's farewell, where scenes from the present and past are interspersed, telling the whole trajectory of the character through her perspective and narration, to the background of a melancholic soundtrack. This, certainly, is the most emotional scene of the character in the series, surpassing the ending of "In Dreams" in the 6th season.

Even more concerning are the narrative inconsistencies and the character arcs, as what irritates and disappoints the most is the dismissal of all the character arc construction around Mo, who even after everything she went through and experienced in this episode, ends up returning to PADRE in the end. Even though she was the character who, in the last two episodes, was willing to do anything to destroy it and defeat Shrike. In the end, it feels like the script is more concerned with creating cheap conflicts than with maintaining coherence with what has been established in each episode.

The whole PADRE arc, despite being recent and having few episodes, is already more than saturated. The series does not seem to take it as seriously as it should, and all the development around the group and its theme seems tired and repetitive. All that remains is to wait and see if this plot will conclude in the next episode or if it will be extended to the second part of the season. The season is still reasonable despite everything, not as bad as the previous one, but far from reaching the peak that this series has already delivered. Even being a med*ocre episode, it still gives a sense of progression with the story, besides preparing an interesting hook for the next one, and, despite everything, provides a dignified and surprising end for one of its main characters.