The Walking Dead stuff
I thought the pseudo-finale was good. Spoilers, you were warned.
And it seems they heard my cries of more dead zombies because the episode did feature a full on zombie slaughter. Of course, it had some silly drama too. And more guns. I thought the ending was particularly brilliant. So much time spent convincing Herschel that zombies were not sick people but were vile monsters. And then, Sophia appears. Everyone who was killing stopped. The one man not killing stepped up. And the man who instigated all the killing couldn’t step up and just sat there paralyzed. Good twist.
I liked it.
But I hate this half season now, half later nonsense. No more episodes until February. That’s weak.
November 29th, 2011 at 11:53 am
Hey Unc,
Where are the suppressor’s in this show?
I mean it’s Georgia, not Jersey, and they have that kind of stuff down there. And even if they didn’t, wouldn’t they try to build their own?
November 29th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Keep in mind that so far in the story line only a few days have passed between Rick arriving in Atlanta and the end of Season 1. Season two has only been a couple of weeks as well, and they have been laid up on the farm for almost all of that. I don’t think they have really had a chance to pick up a bunch of kick-ass hardware.
I mean, they were heading to Fort Benning (where there should be some cool shit) when they got sidetracked looking for Sophia.
They don’t exist in a world where they had a chance to watch “The Walking Dead” and read “World Waz Z” before the outbreak happened and so know what to expect. It hasn’t even occured to them to call the walkers “Zombies”.
I thought the finale was great.
November 29th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
“Hell On Wheels” after TWD is pretty enjoyable too. AMC shows are great. “Breaking Bad” is still tops on that channel, maybe on all channels.
November 29th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
I agree. For the first 45 minutes I would look at my wife and say,”How many dead zombies?”
Excellant ending, brings the series back from the brink.
November 29th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
I’ll have to look into Hell On Wheels then.
It was great. I mean, slightly sad, but really great TV. How long was she in there / did Herschel know she was in there, but still let people go looking for her?… Actually now that I think about it, his son/nephew/whatever only helped that once, during the lookout scene with rick and Herschel he wasn’t interested in looking at the map rather the scenery, then Herschel comes to interrupt the last time they’re looking at the map… all great tv.
November 29th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Correction, its been less than two-weeks since Rick woke up in the hospital. The executive producer said that there are lots of little pointers and snippets indicating how much time has passed in the shows, and its only been a couple of weeks.
November 29th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
My wife is now sucked into The Walking Dead. She hates gore and didn’t understand why I liked watching such a show, but now she’s into it. Why? The story-line.
November 29th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
…and now she’s pissed that there aren’t any new episodes until February.
November 29th, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Hell, at least there are more than 6 episodes all year!
November 29th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
The Walking Dead lost so much momentum after a great start (first season).
I hope this marks the beginning of a more propulsive narrative phase in the story.
November 29th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Hell on Wheels is fantastic. AMC now has me locked up on Sunday nights…
November 29th, 2011 at 2:11 pm
If the zombies come, I would get as far away as possible from the pack of retards in this show.
November 29th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
If they keep following the graphic novels, those of you hoping for more action are going to be disappointed. It’s more about character development than zombie killing. Although, depending on where they go with things, there are sections with lots of zombie-killing action. But they tend to be rare. If you’re hoping for things to change, I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
As for me, I’m liking it as it is.
November 29th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
They really aren’t covering much of survival tech. They seem to have all they need, food, fuel, ammo.
I just wonder why there haven’t been an abundance of “walkers” visiting the farm?
With so much land that has been opened up, why the group just doesn’t divide and move on to other available farms. But that would ruin the plot wouldn’t it?
November 29th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Yeah, I agree with ern. If you are wanting long scenes of men hip-firing SAWs with interspersed cuts of brass hitting the floor, you’re probably not going to enjoy The Walking Dead.
You would be better off looping the roof top scenes from “Legion”, which I have.
November 29th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
Seeing one episode of Hell on Wheels makes me wish I were in the alternate universe where AMC took over Firefly.
November 29th, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Perhaps Miles will have a transporter malfunction that will make that happen. That is why he is there, right?
Right?
November 29th, 2011 at 3:36 pm
“They don’t exist in a world where they had a chance to watch “The Walking Dead” and read “World War Z” before the outbreak happened and so know what to expect. It hasn’t even occured to them to call the walkers “Zombies”.”
The problem is they apparently don’t live in a world that had “White Zombie” (came out in the ’30s?) or “Night of the Living Dead” (’60s) or any of the thousands of classic stories and movies of undead and ghouls and such in the Western cultural canon of thousands of years of storytelling.
To handwave all that away is, at root, just bad writing and only accentuates the inability or unwillingness of many or most screenwriters to actually write even moderately competent and adaptable characters and then create dramatic situations suitable to such “real person” competence.
The group has had more than two weeks, recall Rick slept through much of the “learning phase” the other characters had. Even the characters as written in the culturally unrealistic situation as created should have come up with some SOPs and practices that would remove much of the day-to-day threat from the Walkers by now.
My dad isn’t a gun nut or geek or any of the other things that might be to blame for me losing patience with the show and even he said the screenwriters have piled on too much disbelief to suspend.
November 29th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
“The group has had more than two weeks, recall Rick slept through much of the “learning phase” the other characters had. Even the characters as written in the culturally unrealistic situation as created should have come up with some SOPs and practices that would remove much of the day-to-day threat from the Walkers by now.”
Haven’t they come up with some SOP’s? They just “emptied the barn”, they have a lookout. Also they don’t shoot unless they know its safe to do so, or they have no choice. They are teaching even the children to handle a gun.
“The problem is they apparently don’t live in a world that had “White Zombie” (came out in the ’30s?) or “Night of the Living Dead” (’60s) or any of the thousands of classic stories and movies of undead and ghouls and such in the Western cultural canon of thousands of years of storytelling”
Which of these characters do you think have “studied” zombies movies in pop-culture? The Old Fart? The attractive, single, childless thirtysomething that has never fired a gun? The ex-highchool jock (he seems to have a clue)? The redneck who probably doesn’t have an internet connection or reading light in his outhouse? The urban sterotype? The abused housewife? Overprotective mom or her nearly estranged husband? The gamer kid? Ok, the gamer kid has no excuse I guess.
November 29th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
“The problem is they apparently don’t live in a world that had “White Zombie” (came out in the ’30s?) or “Night of the Living Dead” (’60s) or any of the thousands of classic stories and movies of undead and ghouls and such in the Western cultural canon of thousands of years of storytelling.”
It’s kind of required for a decent zombie-based story to last more than a few minutes. “Oh, it’s zombies. Don’t get bit and shoot them in the head” knowledge would give them too much edge far too soon in a story. In the few things that have played it the other way (“Shawn of the Dead” or the short graphic novel “Zombies Calling
” for example,) the characters tend to not want to believe they actually are zombies (those are just in movies, they’re not real!!)
November 29th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Herschel let them continue to search for Sophia for days, knowing all the while that she was in the barn. That’s heinous.
And Zombie Sophia looked pretty good, not chewed up at all. She must have been bitten and managed to escape, or she would have been a half-zombie like the first one Rick encountered. In the comics they come to learn that a bite isn’t necessary for a corpse to come back as a Walker, but that hasn’t been established in the TV series.
November 29th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Well, in the “scenes from the upcoming episode” Herschel denies knowing that she was in there. Apparently Otis was responsible for gathering up Zombies for the barn. Herschel even says as much when he gets Rick to help him wrangle.
They get stuck in the creek fairly often according to what he says, and Daryl found the doll in the creek. So I think they are laying the groundwork that Otis brought her in early on, before Shane used him as bait.
She may have been bitten right after she ran, then survived long enough to hide in the pantry of the abandoned farmhouse before she turned and Otis found her.
November 29th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
The author built his world without prior knowledge of zombies.
That said…if these guys can shoot moving zombies in the head….how did the military NOT clean out the zombie infestation. One SAW….one herd. Heck…one minigun in a helo could clean up entire towns.
But then we wouldn’t have the show….
And while there might have been no zombies in this world….did the author also leave out Cabelas?
November 29th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
I don’t have any issues with the show not degenerating into a zombie-killing action-fest, but the first season seemed to be livelier and more suspenseful, while giving us teasing bits of information about the zombie “disease” and the scope of the outbreak.
I think the show just slowed down too much this season, while also not delving too much into the nature of the threat and what exactly is going on in the “outside world.” It would have added something extra to the show if a character discovers an old ham radio set and hears an intriguing whisper or two. Or if early one morning a character hears (or thinks they hear) an aircraft fly by.
As for the “you have to get bitten” idea, one gripe I have is that the characters don’t seem to be too concerned about blood-to-blood contamination. As they battle the walkers and traipse around in the woods, they get plenty of small wounds that are vulnerable to bloodborne transmission.
November 29th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
By February the Walkers will all be too rotten to walk. In case nobody notice, they are falling apart. Pretty soon they are going to run out of chassis.
November 29th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
Well, remember Rick *did* hear an aircraft fly by – specifically, he and his horse ran smack-dab into the middle of the zombie hordes because he was chasing a helicopter.
I think as many of us as were calling for more violence, that blood-orgy they had Sunday night was for us. I also think the writers put in the end for us: which is, we can clamor for senseless violence all day long, but what if it’s not senseless? Did they make Shane’s realization ours, too? It’s an intriguing premise, one I’d love to ask the writers about.
November 29th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
I never understood how Maggie could come riding in on horseback to take out a walker with a Louisville Slugger to save Andrea in one episode, then in a later episode get all squeamish about killing the zombie in the well.
November 29th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Civilization would have broken down early. Think about it. A lot of first responders would have gotten bitten and infected before they realized what the danger was. And the scene where the hospital was evacuated showed even the military being overwhelmed. It’s hard enough killing the living. It’s even harder when they’re dead and keep getting up after being shot multiple times and try to eat you.
November 29th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
CSGV on facebook is holding Shane up as an example of “typical gun owner”! LOL
November 29th, 2011 at 9:44 pm
I haven’t read the books…
I do hope there is a semi-rational explanation – that the virus is airborne and 99% were susceptible and that ALL the survivors are resistant to that mode of transmission; the next mode of transmission is through transfer of fluids, and many survivors are resistant (a bite or mouth full of walker juice won’t get you); and, finally, everyone turns when dead.
November 29th, 2011 at 10:07 pm
My only issue is not collecting military hardware outside the CDC where it was laying around in spades. I would have grabbed the duece and a half and used it. Drivers door up high. Bed up high. It is a rolling safe gun platform. Maybe I am over thinking it.
November 29th, 2011 at 11:09 pm
If you think YOU’RE overthinking it…you should see the Zombie Squad forum on it. Already at 105 pages as of yesterday.
November 30th, 2011 at 12:15 am
Agreed on the ending. I was pretty ho-hum until this episode. I really think this one may keep the show on an even keel until they get some better episodes out there.
November 30th, 2011 at 3:42 am
Timmeehh, I can’t find that. Where is it?
November 30th, 2011 at 9:43 am
Shane’s character is fascinating. His dual nature of being calm and collected when he and Andrea took out the walkers in the subdivision is in earnest contrast to his overwrought emotionalism at the barn’s contents. While those penned zeds were a threat, they were at least contained and disposing of them should be in theory methodical and deliberate. The roaming group that he and Andrea dispatched were much more of a threat(I think if they get within handgun range, you have already lost) and he was cool like a glass of water. I think Shane is the type that inwardly hates ‘normal’ even if it is the ‘new normal.’
Dale is a doddering old fool. Looks like an old California hippie still trying to moralize.
November 30th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
“Which of these characters do you think have “studied” zombies movies in pop-culture? The Old Fart? The attractive, single, childless thirtysomething that has never fired a gun? The ex-highchool jock (he seems to have a clue)? The redneck who probably doesn’t have an internet connection or reading light in his outhouse? The urban sterotype? The abused housewife? Overprotective mom or her nearly estranged husband? The gamer kid? Ok, the gamer kid has no excuse I guess.”
Who needs to “study”? All you need to have done is have read a newspaper or magazine, been near a television or seen a movie preview at some point in your life. Who is really that ignorant?
Again, the basic monsters are part of the Western common cultural zeitgeist, have been before electricity. Quick, what’s a vampire and what are it’s basic weaknesses? Werewolf? What mad scientist said “It’s alive!” about his monster?
Even the California maroons on “Jay-walking” would get those right.
For your defense of the writers to work Halloween itself, as practiced in the USA for the past 40 years (with round the clock ads and toys/costumes in stores and tv reruns of horror movies), would simply have to not exist.
My mother knows the basics about zombies and other monsters and she has probably never actually seen a zombie movie, even on tv, as she doesn’t like horror movies or sci-fi/fantasy stuff.
I don’t have a problem with writers being consistent within their own world, if I were a writer I certainly would aim for that, but to put on a patina of “realism” and then resort to unrealistic ignorance, fatal incompetence and consistently bad (if not suicidal) decision-making in the characters, as well as resorting to soap opera level interpersonal drama, rather than writing realistic, nuanced characters being faced with truly difficult problems is cheap, bush-league even.
November 30th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Crotalus:
http://www.facebook.com/CoalitiontoStopGunViolence
Those who watched Shane in The Walking Dead mid-season finale last night got a surprisingly accurate crash course in the mentality of the modern pro-gun extremist.
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