‘The Walking Dead’ goes full-on whack-a-mole in season finale

The show that kick-started television’s age of Major Character Paranoia ended its sixth season with an almost laughable distillation of its now signature whack-a-mole ethos.

For weeks now, “The Walking Dead” has been foreshadowing, stage-setting, and otherwise heralding the arrival of Negan, creator Robert Kirkman’s uber bad guy, here played by king of the black leather jacket and dangerous yet still adorable grin, Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Negan rules the Saviors, a group of thugs that Daryl (Norman Reedus) and other members of the show’s core constabulary have been running into for much of the season with varied results.

Well not so varied; it was pretty much all about killing, and the necessity of it. Occasionally mercy works in “The Walking Dead,” but more often it does not. Last season, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his crew arrived in Alexandria like battle-scarred Amazons crashing a Tupperware party — behind strangely effective walls, the good folks of Alexandria wore clothing that was ironed and had no idea how to kill a Walker.

But ignorance can be more dangerous than brutality. Attempting to teach the Alexandrians, some of Rick’s team died (along with a lot of Alexandrians), but, as the second half of this season began, those who did not began to remember what it means to be civilized, to eat food off plates and make plans beyond “Kill that one behind you.”

Even Michonne (Danai Gurira) began to smile and relax and say things like “we could make this work.” At which point, it was difficult not to think of the hilarious scene in “Galaxy Quest” during which the guy who played the nameless extra looks at the lead actors who now find themselves drawn to seemingly adorable aliens on an actual other planet and screams: “Didn’t you ever watch the show?”

Because this is how “The Walking Dead” works: Things get a little better and then they get a whole lot worse. Oh, and one or two key characters are inevitably sacrificed to remind viewers that life is uncertain. fictional drama is not about making people comfortable and you never know what’s going to happen on “The Walking Dead.”

Unfortunately, we now know all too well what is going to happen on “The Walking Dead.” Some character we really like will be killed, Chris Hardwick will lead us through his chirpy grief counselling session and soon it will be as if Shane/Laurie/whoever Never Existed.

See, if you kill, or threaten to kill, key characters regularly enough, big deaths become not so much a dramatic disruption as a predictable pattern, cliffhanging just turns into just another hobby.

Indeed, when, in the penultimate episode Daryl was shot, his blood literally splattering the camera lens, it almost seemed like a joke. Yeah, yeah, after all this Negan build-up, they’re going to kill Daryl, whatever. He’s fine. The writers are just buying time.

So. Much. Time. In the penultimate episode, just before Daryl got shot, Maggie had clutched her abdomen. And though her symptoms seemed more in-line with the flu than miscarriage, for the majority of the 90-minute finale Rick and a few others raced around in the Winnebago trying to take her to that obstetrician they’d recently met in the Hilltop community. (Because if you introduce an obstetrician in the first act …).

Alas, like Angelenos trying to get across town on Marathon day, they were stopped at every turn, only these roadblocks were created by Saviors. Who monologued like super villains and whistled signals to each other in such a key of mockingjay that when the Big Scene finally occurred and Negan was about to be revealed, it wouldn’t have been terribly surprising if Jennifer Lawrence had stepped into the circle to hand Rick a white rose.

But no, it was Morgan.

Who, having assembled most of the show’s main characters, and his own very large following, proceeded to put on a show. The world was about to change; the Alexandrians would now be working for Negan in a quasi serf situation because they had killed more Saviors than he felt comfortable with, and once again someone would have to die.

“Eenie, meenie, miney, moe,” Negan said, channeling, no doubt, showrunner Scott Gimple in what one can only assume is the near-weekly ritual in the “Walking Dead” writers’ room, before bringing his barb-wire-wrapped bat onto the head of … the camera. Which fell to the ground and went black as voices murmured and Kirkman cackled about what a terrible summer it was going to be for “Walking Dead” fans as they try to figure out who got killed.

Maybe. Maybe not. The scene we’d all been waiting for was strangely flat, anti-climactic, and, because the action had been so obviously jerry-rigged to make this scene possible, a bit infuriating.

Many interesting things happened around the edges of the last few episodes as we all counted down to Negan — the Alexandrians are now smaller but tougher, the Hilltop community offered the hope of sustainability and yet another group emerged in the final moments to help out Carol (Melissa McBride) and Morgan (Lennie James) off on their own absurdly contrived journey.

As for Negan, well, he is the first character in the show thus far to have an actual socio-economic model, and one that based on expansion and colonization. Never mind the bat, he’s the show’s first real politician, which may be the most frightening about him.

This development offers some hope that these past few episodes were, truly, transition, making way for a different, and more socially advanced plot line in season seven. Otherwise, “The Walking Dead,” like its titular characters, will just keep endlessly lurching around in circles.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

Follow me @MaryMacTV