Who's Left Standing In The Walking Dead?

*Spoilers for The Walking Dead*

A few months ago I wrote a post about how The Walking Dead had lost it's stones and needed to man up and at the end of that post I said that I hoped to write a retraction following the sixth season finale. Due to my frustrations I didn't bother because it wasn't warranted but now I've watched the seventh season premiere I am ready.

The sixth season finale saw the introduction of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a character who had loomed over the entire group (and the audience) during the latter half of the season. Negan and his group had threatened and bullied existing colonies in the area to do their bidding but Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his tribe weren't willing to give in to any sort of intimidation by him. Before their formal introduction Rick and his group, as well as the Hilltop Colony that we'd met earlier, decided to neutralise the threat by exterminating what they believed was the whole of Negan's crew while they slept. Unfortunately for them Negan is well organised and didn't leave all his eggs in one basket and he decided to let them know that he wasn't to be trifled with. He intercepted Rick's group as they were on their way to Hilltop to get medical care for a sickly Maggie (Lauren Cohan), the finale ending with a Negan speech and his bat (Lucille) getting acquainted with one of their skulls.

Designated Survivor: Will It Survive The Season?

*Spoilers for Designated Survivor*

If you scroll through the posts of this blog you'll probably realise that I love Kiefer Sutherland/Jack Bauer/24 so it should come as no surprise that I sampled Designated Survivor, Sutherlands latest outing on the small screen. I'm not going to lie, I wasn't enthused when I first heard about it. It's not often that someone comes off a successful television show and jumps straight into another, Sutherland attempted to do so with the two season Touch which I didn't hate but I was put off by the network meddling which changed the show completely in its second season. The premise of Designated Survivor didn't quite appeal to me, we already have an entertaining enough real life presidential school fight going on so do I need to waste a part of my week to watch this?

Yes. For now anyway. Designated Survivor follows Tom Kirkman (Sutherland) as he is thrust into the role of being the president of the United States following a catastrophic attack during the State of Union address. Most of the members of the cabinet were present with the exception of Kirkman, the Secretary of Housing and Urban development, who was named designated survivor. A designated survivor is something I knew nothing about but it is a member of the line of presidential succession who is forced to sit out in group meetings and in the case of an event that would wipe out the heads of state they would take on the presidency and make efforts to rebuild the cabinet. I did kick myself for believing that this wouldn't be of any interest to me, it may be because my expectations were low but I enjoyed almost every minute of the first couple of episodes.