The Bitching Dead Issue #33: Carol vs Rat

The Bitching Dead Issue 33 had Bekah, Tara, and I covering three episodes! We talked about The Walking Dead Season 10 Episode 21 ‘Diverged’ and Episode 22 ‘Here’s Negan’ as well as Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 8 ‘The Door’.

Of course, we have to begin by discussing the ratings. With The Walking Dead Season 10 coming back with six character-centric episodes, before the premiere of Season 11 in August of this year, it looks like people continue to grow less interested in the long-running series.

With episode 16 airing back on October 4, 2020, and getting 2.73 million live viewers, the season came back with episode 17 on February 28, 2021, with 2.89 million live viewers. While that’s all well and good, the ratings continued to drop each week, with episode 21 ‘Diverged’ making it the first time the series dropped below the 2 million live viewers milestone by only attracting 1.94 million viewers. To be fair, episode 22 ‘Here’s Negan’ did help the show garner 2.12 million live viewers. However, with fans having to wait until August of this year for Season 11, I’m interested in seeing if the views will remain stable or continue to decrease. (via Wikipedia)

Apparently, according to actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who plays Negan), The Walking Dead series ending with Season 11 came as a surprise to everyone, including creatives Scott Gimple and Angela Kang. It’s kind of weird to see TPTB drop such a bombshell on the creative team without much of a warning and forcing them to change their original plans to give some kind of an ending during the final season. I guess, the higher-ups saw the decline in ratings and thought it would be better to stop everything while they still have a respectable number of viewers? Again. We don’t know the specifics.

Anyway, here’s The Bitching Dead issue 33 webcast!

The Walking Dead Season 10 Episode 21 ‘Diverged’ Highlights:

• An entire episode of Carol trying to catch a freaking rat! Like, why? Also, at this point, Carol should have gone ahead and made actual rat soup.
• How far did Carol walk to encounter a group of zombies while collecting nettles and dandelions?
• The writers continue to mess with Carol and Daryl’s friendship for some reason. The tension between them during the end of the episode felt weird.
• The episode should have had more Jerry instead of focusing on Carol and Daryl again.

The Walking Dead Season 10 Episode 22 ‘Here’s Negan’ Highlights:

• Learning about Negan’s past before the zombie outbreak would have worked a lot better if this episode happened seasons ago.
• The writers trying to make viewers feel sorry for Negan was weird because he was clearly not a good man before the zombie outbreak. He severely beat up another person during a bar fight. He wouldn’t even go pick his wife up from the clinic after her cancer screening because he was busy cheating on her with her best friend.
• At least having Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s actual wife, actress Hilarie Burton, play Negan’s wife was kind of interesting.
• We liked how ‘Here’s Negan’ brought back Laura during the flashback and revealed how she knew him before he became the leader of the Saviors.
• Negan coming back to live in Alexandria, knowing that Maggie didn’t want him there, is a turn of events we can’t wait to see more of in Season 11.

Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 8 ‘The Door’ Highlights:

• We have no idea what the writers were thinking when they decided to kill off John Dorie in such a manner.
• The fact the writers made Dakota kill John Dorie was so unexpected. It’s obvious the writers don’t like kids in TWD franchise. We thought Dakota was going to be different.
• Sigh! John Dorie deserved so much better. We will miss such a likable male character.
• We aren’t sure if the writers killed John Dorie to cause more emotional pain for Jane or if actor Garrett Dillahunt wanted to exit the show. For those interested, Dillahunt will show up in the upcoming zombie movie Army of the Dead by Zack Snyder on Netflix. It will be released on May 21, 2021.
• Morgan continues to be one of the worst characters.

And while you’re here, might as well watch our two previous issues covering TWD Season 10 eps 17-20.

You can read more of our The Bitching Dead coverage here.

What did you think of our thoughts in The Bitching Dead issue 33?

Let us know.

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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