Some random thoughts on TWD-UNR

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Over the past couple of months I binged the entirety of TWD and these are some thoughts and observations I had during my journey:

Possible Spoilers Ahead

1. Walkers in the early seasons of TWD were much better: During the early seasons of TWD, especially S1/S2, the Walkers were much more ambulatory, agile and aggressive. In my opinion the Walkers were much more terrifying that way. And the reactions to Walkers were way more justified. But later the Walkers seemed dull, slow and much more cliche generic zombie types, yet people reacted to them the same way, which felt kinda forced.
2. The rules of the Dead don't seem to really apply: I noticed at times that there were dead people around that didn't seem to be reanimated or never did. In later seasons, this wasn't such a big thing because maybe they had been stabbed/shot in the head by someone else long ago. But in the early seasons, it didn't make much sense to me why some people just died, and didn't reanimate. Case in point, in S2 E1 when Carl finds the melee weapons in the truck on the highway, there is a dead guy inside. Completely dead, doesn't reanimate, he is just dead. Based on what Jenner said at the CDC, it seemed a universal constant that if you die, you reanimate, until you get put down with a brain trauma. But that apparently isn't the case?
3. Norman Reedus/Daryl Dixon is 100 proof awesome: Since I only binged TWD this year, my only previous exposure to Norman Reedus was as Anton Hesse in "Hawaii 5-0" whose death resulted in the murder of John McGarrett, Steve's father. So right off the bat I was predisposed to disliking Daryl. And Season 1 didn't do a lot to change that predisposition. But then Season 2 opened my eyes. The way he took the search for Sophia as a personal quest and how he really became a member of the group was so awesome. But what really put him over for me was the Cherokee Rose speech he gave to Carol. That scene is definitely in my Top 10 of all scenes for TWD. Not only is Daryl my favorite character in the entire TWDU, but is also in my Top 20 of all fictional characters, period.
4. Governor/The Saviors are the best villains in the entire TWDU: Both Governor and Negan/Saviors delivered what I consider to be the ideal villain for the post-apocalyptic setting of TWD. Especially so with The Saviors, the whole Mad Max / 3rd World Warlord vibe really fit with the feeling of TWD. At least to me, they were far more believable in the setting of TWD than Commonwealth or CRM. And Jeffery Dean Morgan as Negan...he certainly delivered the goods. I remember sitting through Season 7, my teeth clinched most of the time out of pure anger/hatred for Negan.
5. If you ask me, CRM caused the apocalypse: Total tin foil hat conspiracy theory, but the only way CRM could exist the way it does is if they knew what was going to happen before it did, therefore making them the prime suspects for triggering the apocalypse. The thing that I find so jarring is their weapons and war material. It doesn't appear to be repurposed US Military equipment. They have their own uniforms, special equipment, experimental weapons and tons of vehicles that were operating long after the rest of the country went to horses and wagons. The only way you can explain that is if they were manufacturing and stockpiling BEFORE the apocalypse. Their existence feels akin to a Bond Villain's nefarious scheme to remake the world in their own image. I know Beale told a story to Rick (in TOWL) about the origin of the CRM, but frankly I think he was lying his ass off. None of the cities in the CRM could provide ALL the manufacturing and refining capabilities needed to create the CRM army after the apocalypse. To my knowledge, no US City is so complete as to offer food processing, fuel refining, weapons manufacturing, Tech research and vehicle manufacturing all in the same city. And Philly, Omaha and Portland together doesn't account for the totality of their needs either. Furthermore, how was their existence kept so secret, even in the early days of the apocalypse? Unless of course they were prepared for it before it even happened.
6. Commonwealth just baffles me: Part of the Commonwealth society makes total sense. They took over a town, they were effective at scavenging it. They set up an economy based on the old world, and they run it like the old world, but with more disparity, to the point of a caste system. But then you have the military arm of the Commonwealth, which is running around in brand spanking new stormtrooper armor, brand new vehicles, and fully & uniformly armed...it can't be readily explained. Had Commonwealth been shown using repurposed SWAT body armor, surplus military equipment (like they raided the National Guard armory) and driving repurposed Humvees and MRAPs, it would have been much more believable. But just like CRM, they seem to have been equipped out of thin air with technology that didn't even exist before the world fell apart, much less built/manufactured after the world fell. So was Milton part of some secret society that knew the world was about to fall, and thus began prepping before the apocalypse actually occurred? Did Milton splinter off from the CRM to run her own little empire? Why wasn't Commonwealth wiped out and stripped of it's resources by CRM?
7. TOWL should have been Season 10/11 of TWD: The story of what happened to Rick, and what Michonne's life was like while searching for Rick, was too important to be crammed into 6 measly episodes of a micro-series. Furthermore, the CRM and Commonwealth are so similar in nature, much of the TOWL story (overthrowing oppressive post-apocalyptic regime bent on ruling all) is redundant. So why not tell the epic story of Rick's fate and Michonne's journey in a full season of episodes? Please keep in mind I didn't read the graphic novels, so I don't know what could be omitted or not, but in my mind CRM was a better focus for that kind of story-telling, and was cross-seeded with FTWD, so having CRM and Rick/Michonne be the focus of the final season(s) of TWD makes the most sense to me.
8. There are so many that should have been part of the finale of TWD: I get that in a show where lots of people die, it is a tall order. But through flash backs, dream sequences, whatever...there were so many great characters that built the franchise who should have been there for the end. Herschel, Glenn, Abraham, Lori, Carl, Shane, Andrea and Sasha to name a few. I know Herschel would have been hard since Scott Wilson died in 2018, but could have been covered through reusing some previous footage. But these characters (and many others) were an important part of the foundation that took TWD through 11 seasons, and seeing them again if only briefly would have been awesome.

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