A number of people were looking for Clarke and went to the Trading Post after she had left. IIRC, Abbie was one of them? There were certainly a few.

Another week, another bizarre rating on AVClub where the completely nonsensical, plot-hole filled, idiot plotted Season One and Two consistently got very high ratings, this exceptional Season Three continues to rate below its far inferior previous years.

Flash and Arrow sit in this middle ground, albeit with some slight bias to one side or the other. Flash is nowhere near as silly as Supergirl but still fun and joyful, Arrow is nowhere near as dark as Gotham but still gritty and tough.

But that is kind of my point about Gordon. He isn't an interesting character in the canon. He's a stable rock to which The Batman clings (along with Albert). I think the creators realised this and added the extra darkness and grit to the character to make it more interesting.

That's not necessarily what is happening with Blaine.

Just absolutely phenomenal stuff, this episode works on pretty much every level and entertains from start to finish. The tension building in both episodes is excellent yet uses very different storytelling and form to achieve this. The absolutely brilliant dialogue throughout, really could only be Rob Thomas.

Another great episode, another bizarre review.

Have had more time to think about the various reactions to this episode (including the review).

There was an awful lot of Matrix in this episode. Not just the costume they put HIve in but quite a few moments of dialogue and some of the shots they used. Hell, they even did the transition shot between the view through a surveillance camera which morphed into the actual view of the room it was surveilling.

Unless showrunners deliberately go about trying to make bad episodes then I just can't take these claims of "next episode will be amazing" seriously.

But that's the thing with Walking Dead. It is a very, very good psychological horror where the building of tension is genuine and successful. They are excellent at building up fear for the safety and survival of characters before anything happens and that#s what has drawn in such a massive audience.

Once Trump is elected, all TV can be replaced with his version of Aló Presidente.

Well if Carol and Morgan is what you want, you can be happy there is a very good chance that the entire Season Seven premiere will just be Carol and Morgan with absolutely no follow up to the Negan story.

Yeah, I think on balance it will really pay off for them. Going by the initial reaction and the more qualified follow ups the next day, I think it is going to be less divisive than the Glen debacle which did appear to hurt it is a little ratings wise (but it still recovered by mid season finale)

The only way to judge will be by the ratings and reaction the show has by the mid point of Season 7. If it gets over a 7.0 for the premiere and is still hitting 6.0 by midseason, then it will be a huge success for AMC.

What's the record for comments within 24 hours on an AVClub thread?

There were two things I got from Gimple on Talking Dead last night.

There is an argument between long term and short term attachment to a show. Shows which generally work towards the best possible emotional response from the audience tend to maintain their audience longer and decline less.

Its true that in terms of how television works, it's the ending you'd expect. The problem is that it completely undermines the emotional impact for the audience leaving them to either do the reveal as a cold open (or close to a cold open) which cheapens the death or to spend a significant amount of time - probably a…

Yeah but these shenanigans aren't hurting the show. It's still the number one show on TV and shows no signs of losing that mantle any time soon. The point is that even if (when) they do this in October, the vast bulk of fans will keep watching and they'll get two huge rating episodes instead of one.