Instead of JSS (Just Survive Somehow), it should be JDSS (Just Don’t Suck Somehow)… amirite?

Season Six of The Walking Dead is an entire season building up to Negan. And I think they did one thing right. The way everyone says “I’m Negan” and how we never see a face to the villain, really builds up the mystery and the potential for his character. In this manner, he almost has a cult following, where everyone has shed his or her identity and all have assumed the moniker Negan.

Almost an “all for one and a one for all” mantra, with a disturbing connotation given that Negan is the next villain. That being said, the mystic surrounding Negan, even with a whole season of delaying his inevitable appearance, gives the illusion that its building towards something we all hoped would’ve been amazing.

I know some love it, and think Jeffery Dean Morgan is great… but I’m getting ahead of myself. This half of the season still went on and he has yet to be seen (that is unless you picked up on the implication of his presence in the Daryl episode. He’s the guy in the blue shirt, you know, the discount Governor seen from the neck down).

But even leading up to his first appearance, this season slowly starts to crumble and while I stuck through the long haul, and many gave up sooner, this season is really where I stopped caring and JGB’ed (Just Got Bored).

The premiere episode is slow, skipping ahead sometimes from the previous finale. To help make up for things missed, every 15 minutes or so we get a black and white flashback (because they’re “artsy) and in the color segments we watch Rick’s rather stupid, rather waste of a plan unfold. He has taken Alexandrians to a nearby quarry, to lead a huge horde of walkers away. In doing so, inevitable turmoil arises; Ethan Embry, or as the masses may know him as Papagiorgio, gets killed in his only episode.

And then the rest of our characters get separated in order to begin the only plot point over the next 8 weeks… Rick’s plan going to shit. And in all this time, only 2 days of the show’s timeline actually occur. That means this is a weekend. And it just drags and you can feel it in every forced scene.

Episode Two happens. It’s really slow and then, as Kevin Smith puts it best

“giving oral…and you finish, but the person giving doesn’t stop.”

Carol beats the piss out of the Wolves as they attack Alexandria and it lasts the better part of half the episode. Aside from the unneeded backstory of Enid, who really isn’t an interesting character, this is a pretty awesome Carol Episode.

And then Episode Three happens… and for the second time in three episodes, the show does something that I should’ve mentioned much earlier in these articles, but for sake of keeping each from being exceedingly long, I forgot. The show loves to introduce characters and spend a lot of time on them, developing them in their debut episode. And anytime this happens, that character gets killed within that episode.

Kyle Gallner plays Beth’s implied boyfriend in Season Four, gives his whole story and dies. Then as mentioned, Ethan Embry comes on in Season Six, and after disagreeing with Rick (another pattern; if you disagree with Rick, even if you’re right, you die) and giving some of his development, he dies. Now in this episode, Jay Huguley plays an Alexandrian and talks to Michonne for the majority of his time, mentioning his wife and how special she is.

He asks Michonne to give her a note for him. She says he can do it cause he’ll see her, and almost immediately after she says this, he dies. The lesson of the story, if you’re anyone besides the main cast if you speak you die.

And then the episode ends with Nick killing himself, which was a wasted storyline, and him taking Glenn down with him. This is a waste because Glenn tried so hard to get through to this guy. Why not let that develop? Maybe he actually has a turnaround and comes to be Glenn’s biggest supporter. Maybe Glenn died for real here (more on that in a moment) and he had to live with that on his conscious.

Maybe he got back to camp then and he fought to protect Maggie, as a way to make Glenn’s death right. There’s a lot of story here that could have helped deviate this from the source in an interesting way and helped bring a new, wholly unique character from those thus far. But as stated, since his views differed, he died.

And then he brings Glenn down with him and I guess Walkers don’t like Asian Cuisine because they don’t even try to eat him. You can’t say it’s because Nick fell on top of him because his face, legs, and arms were still exposed even with the new body pillow. There are a lot of walkers all around and we’ve seen them bite arms and a faces galore. I’m sorry; I got ahead of myself again.

The episode ends leaving us to think Glenn has died. I actually cared… but then all this speculation started that “he wasn’t in the memoriam on talking dead! He wasn’t in the memoriam!” and so everyone started to think he was alive. A) What a shitty way to ruin that for viewers. B) Seriously? I just outlined the ridiculousness of him not being eaten.

Then we get a Morgan flashback episode, and two more episodes including the Daryl one I mentioned, before we finally learn if Glenn died or not. And by that point, who gave a shit? He hid under the dumpster… no he didn’t. I don’t think someone can fit under a dumpster, but I’m not going to out and try. But even if he can, which he can’t but say he can, the walkers gave up? They crawled under a tank to get in Rick in the first episode. Fine that was Season One, so the zombies aren’t as fresh.

But mind you Season Six in the shows timeline isn’t six years as it is ours; it’s only about two and a half years. So they shouldn’t be that far off from Season One. But whatever, Season Six A ends with Morgan beating the shit out of Carol (let’s get real, she’d kick his ass) and Alexandria getting overrun with walkers. Then Rick takes his new girlfriend, her kids, Michonne and Carl, covered in Zombie seasoning, and they try to escape, with that bitchy kid whining.

I rushed through episodes 3-8 because they suck, and this article is already getting pretty long. Check out Part II to read me rip apart Negan, in Season Six Of The Walking Dead Part II: Last Day On Earth!