This is where it starts to get tricky.

If I take out that group of people,
Then I have to take out the strings that would have connected them to the larger story,
Which means certain characters will no longer know certain things,
And someone has to be a lot less secretive.
Which is why I now have to make some changes to 603 before continuing with 618.
Continuity, gotta love it.

And we're there.

Halfway done, and things aren't looking too good for our heroes.
(The story's coming along well, though.)

Sorry, Eight, you were so close to reaching the middle,

But that honor goes to Nine.

Sometimes I forget why I hate one character and love another.

Then they have a conversation like that, and I remember.
(And kind of love the one that I hate.)
(Because when it comes right down to it, I don't really hate him after all.)
(He just does stupid, stupid things.)
(A lot.)

Seven down,

Who knows how many more to go.

(But if the past is any indication, and Eight takes me to the halfway point as I believe it will, there are seven more to go.  Of course, I could be wrong, but it would just figure that I'd need seven more when the little darlings are sold in packs of three.)

I'm not, but he certainly is.

I wanted to like it, really, I did.

So The Walking Dead season finale happened, and if you haven't seen it and intend to, well, I'd stop reading if you don't want things spoiled.  If however, you don't care, continue on, my friend, continue on.

As I said, the season finale happened, and I really wanted to like it.  I wanted to like it a lot.  I liked it, but I can't say that I loved it.  I thought it started relatively strong and they did a good job of ratcheting up the tension.  Andrea was in trouble, Milton was in trouble, the group, well, of course the group was in trouble, and the Governor had cemented his position as Eternal Mayor of Crazy Town.  All that remained was the showdown.  And it didn't happen.  It was like we were heading for the Walker Fireworks Factory, and we got there only to find out that they made circus peanuts instead.  Somewhere along the way the tension laid down, abruptly died, and that was that.  Sure, bad things happened.  To Andrea.  To Milton.  To Carl.  To Rick.  To a lot of people.  But did anything really happen?  Has anything really happened?  They're still at the prison.  The Governor is still out there.  Woodbury is still there as far as I know, even if it is empty, though I think they probably should have burned it to the ground rather than leave it as a nice base for old Phillip to use for regrouping.  The walkers are still out there.  And the group is still, at its core, the group.  Sure, there are a bunch of new people at the prison to meet next season, but who's to say they won't be anything more than the background characters they were in Woodbury?

I think part of the problem was some of the cuts between storylines.  If you get right down to it, there were two main ones and one or two that bounced in and out more for character development than anything else.  The two were what I'll call the prison and the shed.  They lost the prison tension by going back to Andrea and Milton in the shed right in the middle of the supposed showdown when they shouldn't have.  Sure there was danger in the shed, but it was still a ways off, so whatever tension that had been building up in the prison was lost, meaning that when they did return to it, it became a scene featuring the Governor and his pals taking a walk in the dark.  Sure, it was a dark filled with danger and chomping teeth, but it was still just the dark.  They could have let things go longer, had bigger chunks of prison and shed, and still made it feel like the two were happening at the same time while keeping the tension of both because both had it, but they were different kinds.  The prison was a rolling, building, what's behind that door tension, and the shed had a much slower, simmering, quieter tension, which when compared to the prison didn't necessarily feel like tension, meaning the two were not interchangeable.

Then there was Andrea.  I freely admit that I've haven't been a big fan of her ever since she went all Commando with Shane, but Andrea, Andrea, Andrea.  You don't stop trying to free yourself to talk or stare in horror.  You know what's going to happen to Milton when he dies, and you know what he's going to do when he wakes up.  You don't have time to look like a baby deer lost in the woods.  Pick up the darn pliers and get to work.  The moment all of those pauses began to kick in, I knew she was a goner and the tension of survival was lost because she might as well have been holding a big sign that said Bite Me.

Thinking even more about it, I guess my problems with the episode started at the beginning, when the character who hadn't been in actual danger, though he had been in a threatened, unspoken danger, was suddenly in real danger.  Now, I'm sure they wanted us to think it was Andrea and then be shocked when it wasn't, but I found it all a little more jarring than shocking.  After all, the show seems like to show the capture as much as the torture and this time they skipped that first step and Milton was just there with no explanation.  He hadn't been there before and now he was.  I'm not sure where they could have put the capture, but I think they needed it.  Maybe it could have happened at the end of the previous episode, though that would have destroyed that episode's emotional sock to the gut, so perhaps they could have done a quick cut back to town right before the very end and gotten away with it.  Whatever they could have done, they didn't, though I don't think it really affected the tension since it was right at the beginning, and I think that the lack of tension was really what bothered me the most about this episode.  I don't know.  I've watched it twice now, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and the same issues kept jumping out.  Well, that the three thing at the end, but I figured out where I'd gone wrong with that, so it doesn't count even if it does come off as a little clunky.  Anyway, I'll keep watching the show because I will, and because I've got until October to forget about this.