The Walking Dead

[Chris]

I don't think Rick killing those Saviors was to push us to compare Rick and Negan. Rick has always been pretty clear about people being with them or against them, no in-between, a take no prisoners type. Ive always felt Rick sees people against them just as he sees walkers, there is no cure or redemption.

That's where I think this was brought up for though. Maggie is leader of the hill top and really believes in redemption. She took all those prisoners when people wanted to just kill them. She kept them inside the gates to protect them.

Carl's note was all about how everyone need to come together and redeem themselves for what they have done to move society forward. Will Rick be able to come to the same conclusion, it doesn't seem like it right now. Maggie and alot of the people at the hill top are in the same boat as Carl was. Rick, Daryl, and alot of the people fighting on the front lines are holding true to what has kept them alive. Maggie is really the one who has faction off.

I really believe the Rick killing those saviors was a set up on how the group will move on after they beat the saviors. Maybe they won't be one group or Rick and some of the main characters will move on without Maggie and the hill top.

Rick and Negan have been being compared since Negan entered the storyline, though. Whether intentional or not.

Rick refused to read Carl's letter but he already knew what it said. He wanted blood. So he went and got it, slaughtered a bunch of dudes that didn't deserve it and a few who did, and then he went to read Carl's letter now that his bloodlust had been sated. He knew that if he read it and then went out and killed those guys, he'd have been disrespecting Carl's memory. So now, moving forward, I expect Rick to seek an end to the fighting, be that peace with Negan or whatever. I already know what happens in the comics and we've been speaking candidly about it in here because nobody seems to care, but who knows if the show will take the same route.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Getting back to Rick Grimes, I have to say I can still see the double standard at work here. Didn't Rick just murder a bunch of dudes who didn't deserve it, pretty much in cold blood? One of them just saved Rick, and he buries a hatchet in the guy's back. Isn't this murder? One of the things that has made Negan so irredeemable is the murders he has committed, right?

This is like looking at atrocities committed by American soldiers, and judging the Allies to be no different than the Nazis because Nazi soldiers committed atrocities too. It ignores why they are fighting in the first place.

Rick is fighting so that he and his people can be left alone, and no longer terrorized by the Saviors. That is a noble cause. I'd agree that he has engaged in excesses in pursuit of that cause, and shouldn't have killed those guys. But his action does have some justification. Maggie took prisoners, and look what happened. Some of them escaped, and those escaping guys captured Rick and Morgan, and came within a hair's breath of executing both. Jared may well have done exactly that if those walkers hadn't arrived. So to Rick, killing the guys who escaped is a way to ensure that his cause wins out -- that the Saviors do not retain enough strength to attack again. He committed an atrocity, but his cause is just.

Negan's cause isn't just. It's horrible. And that's the difference.

Having not read the comics, I suspect there comes a point where Negan "realizes the error of his ways." Thing is, I don't find it remotely credible that show Negan doesn't already know exactly what he is, and exactly what he is doing to the communities around him. Nobody needs to be told that murdering people who won't give you half their stuff is really, really bad. Everyone knows it.

 

[Chris]

This is like looking at atrocities committed by American soldiers, and judging the Allies to be no different than the Nazis because Nazi soldiers committed atrocities too. It ignores why they are fighting in the first place.

Rick is fighting so that he and his people can be left alone, and no longer terrorized by the Saviors. That is a noble cause. I'd agree that he has engaged in excesses in pursuit of that cause, and shouldn't have killed those guys. But his action does have some justification. Maggie took prisoners, and look what happened. Some of them escaped, and those escaping guys captured Rick and Morgan, and came within a hair's breath of executing both. Jared may well have done exactly that if those walkers hadn't arrived. So to Rick, killing the guys who escaped is a way to ensure that his cause wins out -- that the Saviors do not retain enough strength to attack again. He committed an atrocity, but his cause is just.

Negan's cause isn't just. It's horrible. And that's the difference.

Having not read the comics, I suspect there comes a point where Negan "realizes the error of his ways." Thing is, I don't find it remotely credible that show Negan doesn't already know exactly what he is, and exactly what he is doing to the communities around him. Nobody needs to be told that murdering people who won't give you half their stuff is really, really bad. Everyone knows it.

No, it's really not the same. I'm asking why Rick gets a free pass.

Individual Allied soldiers who killed German POWs are murderers, no doubt about it. I don't judge Rick's entire group to be murderers, because they aren't all, they haven't all done what Rick has done. But Rick is a murderer, not really debatable. We can argue about how he's in a zombie apocalypse, the world is different from our reality, etc etc, but it all comes back to that fact. Rick pursued those prisoners to sate his bloodlust, simple as that. Some prisoners escaped from a pen where they were held captive, and Maggie had just executed one of them- we are blaming them for escaping? Who is to say all those Saviors are bad people and not just guys trying to survive? Isn't there one of them, or a few of them who have already shown themselves to be decent dudes? The ones who escaped only "captured Rick and Morgan and almost killed them" because, wait for it...Rick and Moragn pursued them to try and kill them.

You keep trying to like, say how terrible Negan is and it's making you totally miss the point being made. Nobody is saying Negan is good. Nobody is saying Rick is even bad. Acting like it's black and white, however, is misguided. Almost nothing in life is black and white.

 

[Jack Brickman]

Getting back to Rick Grimes, I have to say I can still see the double standard at work here. Didn't Rick just murder a bunch of dudes who didn't deserve it, pretty much in cold blood? One of them just saved Rick, and he buries a hatchet in the guy's back. Isn't this murder? One of the things that has made Negan so irredeemable is the murders he has committed, right?

Rick has always been one of my favorite characters and he is, indeed our "hero" of the story. I defended him way back in Season 3 when ya'll were ripping on him. But he tiptoes along that line mighty finely, at times, and we just kind of gloss over it. Nobody cares about the shit he does. When he got to Alexandria he was a raving lunatic.

But he's the hero, we've followed him for the whole story and we've seen all of his good moments so they seem to wash out the bad, they make us more forgiving to his actions. If we followed Negan for 8 years, and I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan actually said this exact thing, I wonder how forgiving we'd (the audience) be towards his actions.

Been a while since I've seen the show, but in the comics, Rick does all manner of horrible things in the name of survival. So does basically everyone.

Not everyone in this world was lucky enough to be near Alexandria when the shit hit the fan. They didn't have fancy government walls to protect them. For the vast majority of the people, the world quickly devolved to chaos and it was kill or be killed. Rick has killed a long line of people to stay alive.

I don't really think Rick and Negan are all that different. It's kind of like Batman and the Joker. They're basically the same person, but one uses his insanity for good and the other for evil.

 

[Chris]

Been a while since I've seen the show, but in the comics, Rick does all manner of horrible things in the name of survival. So does basically everyone.

Not everyone in this world was lucky enough to be near Alexandria when the shit hit the fan. They didn't have fancy government walls to protect them. For the vast majority of the people, the world quickly devolved to chaos and it was kill or be killed. Rick has killed a long line of people to stay alive.

I don't really think Rick and Negan are all that different. It's kind of like Batman and the Joker. They're basically the same person, but one uses his insanity for good and the other for evil.

I don't know that I totally agree, but we're near the same page on this I think. Clearly you understand what I've been getting at.

 

[Jack Brickman]

I don't know that I totally agree, but we're near the same page on this I think. Clearly you understand what I've been getting at.

Yeah, I'm not saying they're identical, but I do think they're similar. They're leaders trying to bring order to a chaotic world. The main difference is their methods. Negan went with order by fear and threat of violence. Rick went the opposite way, trying to bring people together to rebuild society. But even Rick has used violence numerous times to keep order. If you cross him, you typically end up dead. He's not as brutal as Negan, but rest assured, if someone robbed him or killed his men like Rick's people did to the Saviors, Rick would kill them just the same as Negan killed Glenn. Hell, we've seen Rick do this like a dozen times at this point.

 

[Chris]

Yeah, I'm not saying they're identical, but I do think they're similar. They're leaders trying to bring order to a chaotic world. The main difference is their methods. Negan went with order by fear and threat of violence. Rick went the opposite way, trying to bring people together to rebuild society. But even Rick has used violence numerous times to keep order. If you cross him, you typically end up dead. He's not as brutal as Negan, but rest assured, if someone robbed him or killed his men like Rick's people did to the Saviors, Rick would kill them just the same as Negan killed Glenn. Hell, we've seen Rick do this like a dozen times at this point.

Shit, I thought Rick was gonna kill Aaron when he came to tell him about Alexandria.

 

[Stark]

Do we agree that the person he picked up on the road is prolly the Savior chick that got away from Dwight?

Oh, I like this a lot more since people probably wouldn't see that coming.

I couldn't think of anybody besides Gregory, since he broke out of the Hilltop with the Saviors that Rick and Morgan slaughtered, and obviously wasn't present during that.
______________

Spoilers below:

Show has definitely re-surged for me a bit since Carl's death. I'm not a super huge fan of them shoving "new Carl" Henry in our face, but Simon's betrayal has been a fun side-story that we didn't get in the comics, and watching Rick kind of go off the rails a bit again has been fun, especially since it'll probably be the last time we get to see "insane Rick" in action if a certain thing happens in the final showdown.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

No, it's really not the same. I'm asking why Rick gets a free pass.

I don't think Rick is getting a free pass -- he shouldn't have killed those guys. That still doesn't make him morally equivalent to Negan.

You keep trying to like, say how terrible Negan is and it's making you totally miss the point being made. Nobody is saying Negan is good. Nobody is saying Rick is even bad. Acting like it's black and white, however, is misguided. Almost nothing in life is black and white.

It is a truism of warfare that when one side is exceptionally brutal in terms of how they behave on the battlefield, the other ends up going in that direction as well. That was true in the Pacific theater of WWII, where repeated Japanese atrocities resulted in Marines later refusing to take prisoners, and occasionally engaging in atrocities of their own. It happened in Russia, where German and Russian brutality fed off of each other. On the flip side, the western front was generally more civil, with exceptions by American troops generally being triggered by specific German atrocities. In the North African theater, the converse was true -- "gentlemanly" conduct of war by both sides was generally maintained. And that goes back long before gunpowder. During the Crusades, if one side became brutal on the battlefield, the other generally responded in kind. And vice-versa (Richard and Saladin, for example). @King Stannis . It even happens with our own troops now when they have been fighting really bad people for a long time.

This happens partly because of fear -- "we need to kill these prisoners or they'll go back and fight, and maybe do horrible things to us", and partly out of bloodlust/revenge. My point is this -- I am not going to judge someone as harshly for doing something which so many other humans would do in the same situation. In our current military, we still have to punish them legally, but I personally don't get upset over a lot of that stuff.

Now, consider Rick's current situation. He's just lost his son, and before he left to kill those guys, the ep. showed him looking at his daughter. Most importantly, he knows that Negan's people just massacred every single person in the Heap. In fact -- though Rick didn't know this he surely suspected it -- Simon's plan was to massacre every single person at the Hilltop as well. So Rick now reasonably believes that the Saviors will never stop until he and every single one of his people, including his daughter, is dead.

At that point, I'm not going to judge him harshly for not giving those Saviors a second chance. He did spare the Saviors who actually stayed behind and helped close the gates. But the ones who ran -- Rick could not know whether they'd just be a Fifth Column waiting for a another chance to betray him back at Hilltop, or if he just let them go, they'd go back and join Simon's plan to massacre everyone left. What he did was cruel, and I wouldn't have done it because I think those guys were probably trustworthy. But Rick didn't want to take that risk, because what might happen if they turned out to be untrustworthy was too horrible to risk.

He didn't want Hilltop to end up like the Heap.

Bottom line is I still think Rick is a guy who wants very badly to do the right thing. He wants peace, and the chance to build a community of free people. He is just not willing to risk the possibility that the Saviors can ever get the upper hand again.

 

[Chris]

I don't think Rick is getting a free pass -- he shouldn't have killed those guys. That still doesn't make him morally equivalent to Negan.



It is a truism of warfare that when one side is exceptionally brutal in terms of how they behave on the battlefield, the other ends up going in that direction as well. That was true in the Pacific theater of WWII, where repeated Japanese atrocities resulted in Marines later refusing to take prisoners, and occasionally engaging in atrocities of their own. It happened in Russia, where German and Russian brutality fed off of each other. On the flip side, the western front was generally more civil, with exceptions by American troops generally being triggered by specific German atrocities. In the North African theater, the converse was true -- "gentlemanly" conduct of war by both sides was generally maintained. And that goes back long before gunpowder. During the Crusades, if one side became brutal on the battlefield, the other generally responded in kind. And vice-versa (Richard and Saladin, for example). @King Stannis . It even happens with our own troops now when they have been fighting really bad people for a long time.
w
This happens partly because of fear -- "we need to kill these prisoners or they'll go back and fight, and maybe do horrible things to us", and partly out of bloodlust/revenge. My point is this -- I am not going to judge someone as harshly for doing something which so many other humans would do in the same situation. In our current military, we still have to punish them legally, but I personally don't get upset over a lot of that stuff.

Now, consider Rick's current situation. He's just lost his son, and before he left to kill those guys, the ep. showed him looking at his daughter. Most importantly, he knows that Negan's people just massacred every single person in the Heap. In fact -- though Rick didn't know this he surely suspected it -- Simon's plan was to massacre every single person at the Hilltop as well. So Rick now reasonably believes that the Saviors will never stop until he and every single one of his people, including his daughter, is dead.

At that point, I'm not going to judge him harshly for not giving those Saviors a second chance. He did spare the Saviors who actually stayed behind and helped close the gates. But the ones who ran -- Rick could not know whether they'd just be a Fifth Column waiting for a another chance to betray him back at Hilltop, or if he just let them go, they'd go back and join Simon's plan to massacre everyone left. What he did was cruel, and I wouldn't have done it because I think those guys were probably trustworthy. But Rick didn't want to take that risk, because what might happen if they turned out to be untrustworthy was too horrible to risk.

He didn't want Hilltop to end up like the Heap.

Bottom line is I still think Rick is a guy who wants very badly to do the right thing. He wants peace, and the chance to build a community of free people. He is just not willing to risk the possibility that the Saviors can ever get the upper hand again.

Yeah, nobody said he's morally equivalent to Negan. You're still missing the point. I think going forward this discussion is kind of pointless. I can only say the same thing so many times.

Agree to disagree! Hopefully the season finishes on a strong note.

 

[Jack Brickman]

Hopefully the season finishes on a strong note.

 

[Stark]

I posted this at the end of season 7 for what I was hoping season 8 would be:

Morgan, Tobin, Eric, Jerry, Arat, Junkyard bitch all go down at some point in the first 4-6 episodes. Morgan takes Nick's death from the comics. Rick gets shot by what is believed to be an infected arrow.

Midseason finale: Daryl dies. Eugene betrays Negan. Kingdom, Hilltop, and Alexandria defeats Junkyard people and the Saviors. Negan breaks Rick's leg, crippling him. Negan is imprisoned. Simon survives and becomes the de facto leader of the Saviors once Dwight joins Rick's crew full time.

Midseason premiere: 18 months pass. Magna and Dante are introduced as major characters. Rick is Alexandria's leader. Maggie is Hilltop's leader. Dwight/Simon struggle for control of the remaining Saviors. Ezekiel and Carol run the Kingdom. Whisperers teased as the group prepares for the fair.

Sometime between midseason premiere and finale: Gregory tries to assassinate Maggie. He is unsuccessful and hung by Maggie and Jesus for treason, causing a struggle between the Hilltop (Maggie) and Alexandria (Rick). Carl kills two boys attempting to attack Lydia (whisperer girl) which causes an issue when Rick won't exile him.

Midseason finale: Whisperers attack during the fair. Rick, Michonne, Carl, Lydia, and Tara stumble across the heads on pikes; including Ezekiel and Rosita. Rick announces that they're going to war against the Whisperers.

This season hasn't been that bad (still far below the quality of S4-6), but I still wish they would've went in my direction. Let me save this show, AMC.

 

[Chris]

Do we all agree Eugene is gonna come back in the end? I still think he's going to sabotage the ammo supply or something.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Do we all agree Eugene is gonna come back in the end? I still think he's going to sabotage the ammo supply or something.

I thought that as well, and I still think he's going to do that. But as far as I'm concerned, that is much too little, much too late on his end for him to be considered part of "the family" again. Way too many people have died in the meantime because of his scheme for enabling the Saviors to break out of the Sanctuary.

Doesn't mean I think he should be killed or anything, but there's no way in hell I'd ever renew a friendship with a guy like that.

 

[Chris]

I thought that as well, and I still think he's going to do that. But as far as I'm concerned, that is much too little, much too late on his end for him to be considered part of "the family" again. Way too many people have died in the meantime because of his scheme for enabling the Saviors to break out of the Sanctuary.

Doesn't mean I think he should be killed or anything, but there's no way in hell I'd ever renew a friendship with a guy like that.

Yeah I kinda agree but I’ll wait and see how it’s handled