‘Walking Dead’ Season 7 Midseason Premiere Tries To Bring Back Interest In Show

The Walking Dead Season 7 midseason premiere for the show’s seventh season took to the air on Sunday evening. After gaining a huge audience following its introduction on the television screen. It provided a refreshing and unique take on the zombie genre and provided with complex character relationships. Not bad, making itself popular with the masses even though its story originated from the comic book medium.

Season seven of The Walking Dead started off strongly, with a tremendous viewer rating. Fans gathered to their television screens to get the answers from season six’s finale episode cliffhanger, as the fate of the main characters came into question. The results backfired, as fans went into an uproar against the decision to kill off fan-favorite characters in Abraham and Glenn. Although both characters died in the original Walking Dead comic books, the gruesome way that the Walking Dead show replicated the deaths shocked viewers, according to a past Inquisitr article.

One of the main changes that the show has gone through was the transition to the group fighting for survival against hordes of the undead to them subjugated in human to human violence against the villain Negan’s rule. Fans hoped that the Walking Dead could return to its zombie roots, and the seventh season’s midseason premiere looked to do just that.

The 86 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes was the show’s highest since the second episode of the same season. If the show were to end after this season, some feel that this episode would provide momentum to finish strongly. USA Today had the following to say.

“The Walking Dead, it seems, is back. It’s back in its usual Sunday-night perch, sure, but it also seems to have regained its urgency — maybe even its relevance… What in less experienced hands could feel like a collection of futile videogame sidequests — and, in fact, has — instead shows a return to what made past seasons so great. –Wired

“Despite its broadened scope, this episode felt much more like The Walking Dead of old, flitting from location to location, propelling the story onwards in unprecedented — if convoluted — manners. –Independent UK

“After opening its seventh season with a run of over-long, graphically violent and generally painful episodes, The Walking Dead returns with a renewed sense of energy and — dare I say it — fun. All it took was clotheslining a bunch of zombies. And keeping Negan almost entirely out of the episode.”

Most reviews shed light on the show as building back towards what made it popular with the masses. It seems to have split some fans away, however, as some of The Walking Dead‘s storytelling seems distracted, with unnecessary humor and filler storylines distracting from progress towards the main goal.

The ratings for The Walking Dead season 7 have steadily declined. Not only is the current season dropping in quality, but the entire series is losing interest from fans who have watched The Walking Dead since the beginning. The viewer ratings are at its lowest since the third season, when the series was beginning to gain traction. Although it has not yet become a huge source of worry for AMC, there is a point where things need to get back into gear before the show falls too far.

When the show was at its best, it eschewed a wider universal story for a bunch of more compelling episodic stories. Its focus was with its characters and its plot momentum and therein lied its biggest appeal. The Walking Dead Season 7 midseason premiere seemed to have finally pushed the show back into covering more ground in its plot. Fans can optimistically hope that the show will stay on a good course.

[Featured Image by AMC]