AMC zombie series from Frank 'Majestic' Darabont - The Walking Dead

Tyreese

I don't think he did! Really hoping that dude doesn't double back and kill Tyreese's sister or something else awful.

Love this show, but it's so fucking cynical. I guess I'd like to think that humans would not be in such a big hurry to kill each other when faced with a zombie apocalypse.

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That is probably what will follow, alas he only beat him half to death.

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Remember that your nut job survivalist types who can't wait to go round killing the less prepared would probably be the ones who thrived in this sort of scenario. Sadly doesn't seem that cynical.

i don't think you even need a zombie apocalypse for humans to start killing each other, just the breakdown of law & order

props for how well this show deals w/race & gender (having been so terrible at it initially). tyreese as babysitter and carol as action heroine going into battle made total sense and was allowed to just happen without being a big deal.

it's weird to have started the new series and have no idea where it goes from here. we need either a new base, an artificial splitting up or a serious cull at this point. feel like being able to name all 15 in our merry post-terminus troupe should deserve a prize. tara probably the most obvious to be killed off but almost too obvious - hard to be shocked/upset about a character you'd forgotten about. glenn and maggie are still terrible but i live in fear of one of them dying and the other one moping for a whole season. abraham/eugene/rosita all still underdeveloped (has rosita even had any lines yet?) but their story hasn't really begun has it? i fear for bob/sasha - just developed enough that we care, but not too established that they're here for good.

i would like some michonne/sasha dialogue, i think

My understanding from interviews is that, as with this opener, they're going to bracket episodes at the beginning and end with stuff from what happened at Terminus before our intrepid heroes arrived. Gareth is definitely not dead - I've seen stills of him from later episodes, probably so Rick can deal with his "Remember when I said I'd kill you last, Sully?" promise.

A good episode from this show is such a red flag, considering its complete inability thus far to sustain a season-long narrative from start to finish. To that end, really this should have been last season's finale, the same mistake they made with the governor, but whatevs.

Other thoughts:

-Who cares what happened at Terminus before our heroes arrived?

-Why did they tie that dude's hands but not his feet? Also, I totally forget what turned Tyreese into the cowardly lion. The murder/death of his sister? That psycho kid from the end of last season?

-You want cynical? When they lined up the eight people at the trough, four of them strangers, four of them our heroes? What a cynical way to just get some horrific gore going without really putting any familiar faces at real risk.

-One of the very first episodes Rick realized that smearing yourself with zombie offal and other effluvia at least briefly disguises you. Certainly Michonne realized that walking around with mangled zombies protects you. Here Carol gets all gutted up to sneak around. Why don't more characters do this all the time? Is it just too gross?

-Carol did somehow clean up well, though, for the reunion.

-Took a while to steal the savvy fireworks idea from "Land of the Dead."

who did rick give the watch to? I remember that happened but don't remember who it was and didn't recognize anyone.

oh I just googled it. at the blood trough. ok.

Who cares what happened at Terminus before our heroes arrived?

Gimple said on Talking Dead that he wants to show what happens to people when they're put in situations that change them, that the Terminus people were good to begin with and became what they were due to the experience with the psychos who took over. "You're either the cattle or the butcher," or whatever the dude said. I think the implication is that Rick & Co. are going to undergo some heavy shit that might make them change their moral attitude and how they deal with people.

Not sure how much rape camp torture porn we really need to see to make a point that has already been pretty heavily made

I think this show errs on the side of going too far a lot, actually, so I'm expecting the flashbacks to be pretty dreadful.

"Undergoing some heavy shit that might make them change their moral attitude and how they deal with people" is the closest this show has had to a theme. And every other apocalypse tale before it, too. I really hope this season's bright idea is bigger, but I don't expect anything more than the usual wheel-spinning, honestly. Because again, no matter what, the world is over and done with. Life is nothing but wheel-spinning, which that needling neo-conversation between Tyreese and the smug gum chewer reiterated over and over. It's not so much "cattle or butcher" but "we're all going to die." And when we die, we're going to come back, and maybe never die. And also eat people. Per Lex above, yeah, I'm impressed that I can name all 15 or so of these folks now, too, but won't that be a problem? Who of this batch can they kill? Would they kill anyone of them? If they don't kill any of them, won't the posse just keep accumulating names we know, making it harder and harder to depict the group as in any real danger?

i appreciated the terminus flashbacks, always good to have the villains somewhat fleshed out. would like some more b/c it's still a big step from vowing not to be taken advantage of to actual cannibalism.

this show's big themes are silly and/or overblown, i don't watch it for those, i guess i see it as an ~adventure series? there is no point or ending to aim for, but it's a group of characters i'm somewhat attached to getting into life-threatening scrapes. making me give a shit about the characters (without feeling as though i should have an executive producer's credit for projecting what i want a character who hasn't been given any lines in 5 episodes to be) should be the show's no 1 aim imo. (the terminus flashbacks do decent work in this area.)

the tactics to move around zombie herds safely do seem to be conveniently forgotten/remembered, though i think the zombies randomly being able to suddenly move silently and quickly enough to surprise characters bothers me more.

definitely loled when carol showed up fresh out of a shower advert,

http://i.imgur.com/rjXdsSj.jpg

made some perfect bacon

http://i.imgur.com/Hy5A7tY.jpg

oh no stop ur killin em

lol oops

omg at bacon pic!!

Mmm. Hoegarden.

Now, see, something is all screwy. Clearly the last episode should have been the season finale, and this one should have been the season premiere. It's as if they don't know how to tell a story, even when they are lucky enough to have a story to tell.

Anyway.

1) Not sure how much I can handle a smug, talky villain this season.

2) Didn't Rick and a few of his friends already have a run-in with the CDC c. season one? The crappy season one finale, maybe? So shouldn't he know that the idea that DC has anything to offer is silly?

3) Also, you'd think they'd recognize that staying away from population centers would be a wise thing. Though sure, if I spent all my time wandering the same 10 or so square mile area, I'd get pretty bored too.

4) Speaking of smug, talky villains. You'd think our tracker heroes would notice someone grillin' nearby. But hey, whatevs

1) hipster villain is a funny demented twist though
2) i think that some point the writers are going to remember this and someone will call out the mullet guy. the CDC thing didn't happen in the comics

poor Bob though, you knew as soon as one new black cast member entered, another would have to leave... thanks AMC

Maybe the villain didn't start out hip. Maybe what happened to him ... made him hip.

Want to say mullet and his story have already lasted longer than he/it did in the comics?

Though actually, hipster Gareth does have a direct analog in the comics, so let's see if the show follows that storyline to its probably not far off conclusion.

the CDC in season 1 was in Atlanta, Eugene and co are talking about some other govt thing in washington DC. Tho I can see the cogs of "we done this before" vs "we got nothing better to hope for" gearing up perhaps

lol some familiar flaws on display in this episode. godawful dialogue spelling everything out for us, characters inexplicably doing stupid things...WHO would have left the church on their own at night just to have a little cry? still, last scene was POW and it set up some promising storylines.

I thought he was leaving because he was bitten in the food pantry attack and wanted to split to die.

Not sure what Carol's motivation for leaving is after everyone's so accepting...and Daryl just follows her?

But yeah, seems like a lot of the same plot over and over again. The return of Gareth is the return of the Gov. etc.

WHO would have left the church on their own at night just to have a little cry?

I thought he was leaving because he was bitten in the food pantry attack and wanted to split to die.

There is absolutely no indication yet that this is what happened, but ... if this continues to follow the comic as closely as it appears (the Gareth speech at the end is almost word for word from the book), then I don't think we will have to wait long to find out.

I think Carol wants to leave, btw, because she realizes she might be better off on her own than in a group. Daryl follows her because he larves her and ... omg, it's a car! Beth!

the white cross on the back of a limo/hearse/whatever is pretty conspicuous
i think Carol's far more into despair than she's letting on

We still don't know who kidnapped her and why yet, right?

techbro cannibal is a much more entertaining villain than the governor

Well, then.

What an absolutely great episode. Sort of knew what would happen, generally speaking, since even the comics arc is only a couple of issues. But boy, was this well directed, well acted and well paced. Great use of darkness (both kinds) and stillness. Stuff that happened actually enriched our heroes as characters, changed them. One of the many problems with the show over the seasons has been the way it sort of elides the sheer horror of this existence. Between the end of the last season and the start of this one, we're finally starting the see the deeper pain and damage surviving in this world is inflicting on good people. Not just in the death surrounds us sense, but in the we are living in hell and every single day we must navigate a different degree of damnation. If there's any problem with this development it's that things can quickly get depressing, but, well, a show like this not being depressing is a bigger issue.

Not sure how much I anticipate the Beth storyline, but these past few eps have given me hope. It's as if after so many years of this they finally have righted the earlier wrongs and actually know where they want the story to go. Fingers crossed.

How does Abraham keep his hair and 'stache like that? Everyone else looks like a head-to-toe wet mop.

maggie not only still failing to give a shit about her only living relative but now buggering off even though she now knows beth is still alive is ludicrous

that apart, this show is actually on a genuine streak of sustained quality! and a plot that actually moves!

The water bloated zombies in the previous episode were wonderful. One of the best monster makeup jobs I've seen in years. Take that cgi!

what was with that weird ending?

not gonna be beth or carol in the bushes

Or maybe Carol carrying Beth?

it's gonna be a rando hostage or Lennie

the imdb description of next week's episode says that Beth finds herself in some weird hospital

hoping beth isn't traumatised to the point of the next 5 episodes having to nurse her back to health

That would certainly give them an excuse to anchor them all in one place again just to talk a lot.

I liked how the "next week.." add said, with pauses inbetween WHO...TOOK...BETH and the first thing I thought was World Health Organization.

Wow what a crappy episode. Writing and directing was some amateur hour bullshit.

i like beth and i liked the idea of spending an hour with her but the logic of that whole set-up would have collapsed with one poke. do they actually think about the logic of why certain things would not actually happen? could've been so easy to get it right, too - tighten up the logical holes in the hospital, go for the creepy vibe, bang you've got a nice all-cops-are-bastards/danger of authority theme going on. oh well

The creepy rapist cop character also read like a really standard, lazy idea, which kind of clashed with the... well, I don't really know what the rest of the vibe was supposed to be there to be honest. Weird dystopian hospital society with approximately six people in it.

I only got to the end of S2 yesterday and this is so flimsy on almost every level and yet so watchable because I hate most of the characters and am eagerly looking forward to them being disemboweled. The taking down of Dale (who was less 'moral centre of the group' and more 'self-righteous bore') was a case in point. Also the group dynamic is basically exactly the same as that of Lost and I'm not sure which ripped off which.

medals should be awarded to everyone on completion of season 2