Watching the last episode it struck me just how littered TWD is with named characters that are neither interesting, nor funny, nor badass, nor useful.
Like the last few years Kang kept pumping in diverse characters and then did nothing to build them up, and killed off the ones who had been built in some shape or form by seasons 1-6.
When the Whisperers got their heads on stakes moment I was more happy to see boring characters dead than anything, but then nothing new nor interesting replaced the dead ones, just more of the same.
Now we have a gaggle of these people trying to oust an old white lady from her position of underived authority, all centered around a deaf woman who is writing newspaper stories during the zombie apocalypse.
And if those characters were interesting and funny and/or brooding/volatile, I'd be interested to see them gather together, how might they react to one another, ya know?
But it was Magna the deadpan white girl.
Connie the deaf reporter
Connie's "sister" who signs and talks for her
Eugene the trembling goodboy White guy
Max the powerful diverse female character who says little
Ezekiel the cancer-surviving black dude who should have weed but doesn't
Remember when Ezekiel and Jerry used to have those moments?
Or Rick/Shane? Hell even Carl/Negan had some funny moments.
None of these people have fun stories or inside jokes based on shared history, just desperation and more desperation.
They don't even act like people who've been there before, like kinda professional in the face of danger because they've faced really really scary shit and found their way past it.
Its just these gaggles of desperate characters who walk on eggshells and build alliances via body language, apparently.
And they did this across all 3 shows that have aired.... casts are diverse and heavily female with lots of strong female leader types who then do no leading.
Ever notice Maggie rarely actually leads? She doesn't organize people into efforts ala Negan organizing his people to surround and capture Rick/Maggie/Daryl/Glen/etc.
For all that talk about building stuff using Georgie's book, Maggie bailed on her people to go chase something.
She found a whole new family who got wiped the fuck out, and her first action upon her return with the remnants was to take all the fighters she could and go on a revenge tour that she hoped would end with reclaiming food they left behind.
All of that is so non-leadership.
-Leaves Alexandria undefended and without food as soon as she shows up.
-No plan for long term food crisis solution, just go get temporary supplies, which are either extremely old canned goods, or they are recently made goods that are likely to have spoiled.
-Plan for food is actually a plan to lead Alexandria's fighters on a revenge mission that she didn't clearly define.
-Walks into an ambush and gets some of her group killed and the remainder scatter and rout because they have no strong/central leader.
-While on this idiot mission she consistently conflicts with Negan, arguably the biggest and best fighter, and probably the smartest survivor amongst her group, but she's on a mission to kill him in the middle of a mission to kill Pope/The Wardens, in the middle of a mission to get food for a busted up Alexandria that Maggie abandoned along with her child, the moment she got there.
And I'm sure Kang explained it all away in her post-op, but it still reeks of writers who cannot actually imagine the scenario Maggie was in when she returned to Alexandria and just wrote something hyperbolic that would be so whacky of a proverbial car wreck that viewers wouldn't look away until the end (hopefully).
