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

That was like some sub John Carpenter meets General Hospital shit. Glad it was a bottle episode. Keep the infection isolation so that it doesn't spread to the rest of a so far solid season. Unless it's too late, in which case, down the elevator shaft the season goes.

I guess I didn't mind so much because I was happy to see Beth finally
But yeah, not up to recent standards

Also, bad lady cop didn't blink. Do they teach that at acting school?

Wow, did not recognize or know that was Keisha Castle-Hughes. Or the kids from "Everybody Hates Chris."

ohhh I knew her face was familiar
I knew it was the kid from Everybody Hates Chris, but largely because he was in that amazing Family Matters Key & Peele sketch from a few weeks ago

Kind of a dud last night - Abraham got pretty annoying

- could not believe the car flipping over. great, a callback to TWD's most stupid character's most stupid moment
+ at least they somewhat explained it, i guess this counts as the show's improvement
- abraham's behaviour seemed like it was falling into its old ways of characters behaving in inexplicable and extremely dumb ways to move the plot forward - yeah yeah we get he wants to keep it moving, as do we all, unlike this group that's spent 5 seasons walking in circles around one city, but at the expense of gaining supplies and through a field of zombies? this is implausible and removes any trace sympathy we have for him as a character or a leader (why is the more level-headed rosita not the leader, eh)
+ wrapping up the eugene story so early was a good, and surprising, move - love how fast these plots are moving, let's hope there's something that can replace them
- flashbacks didn't flesh out abraham's back story even a tenth as much as they should have. why were his wife and kids afraid of him? no insight into his character back then at all. (i've read comments outlining what his backstory was, pity the show didn't reflect any of it) (when are we gonna get rosita's backstory)
+ non-flashback eugene and rosita became more like characters and less like the comic book cutouts they'd been at least - rosita did a lot with very little, her staredown of abraham with her hand on her gun was the episode's most powerful moment imo. who is dependent on whom there, how much power does she have over him
+ two consecutive episodes without rick and koral
+ probz more of a cliffhanger than last week - we all know what carol's gonna do in the hospital but i've no idea how this group will react to eugene's revelation

why were his wife and kids afraid of him?

Uhm he just beat some guys to death with canned goods...

it's the zombie apocalypse, that's barely remarkable at this point

and especially considering the backstory in the comics that he was saving them

or was it an abusive relationship in the first place? the show indicates none of this

irl lol at "Rick and Koral"

I'm glad they didn't overplay the "Eugene with the firehose" thing, no self-satisfied smirk or cheesy thumbs-up or "crowning moment of awesome," just a realization by him that he needs a new strategy because shit is about to fall apart with his original plan.

This episode was in many ways an encapsulation of the show itself - spinning wheels, going nowhere, backtracking, detouring - but I thought it was OK. If anything, it feels like they let the Eugene reveal wait too long, but at least it seems to have happened at the right spot. Some thoughts:

1) This season is the first that seems to acknowledge night is dark.

2) The zombie battles, including the hose, were pretty perfunctory.

3) I do enjoy the fact that starting last season and continuing through this one, that so many of the secondary characters can hold their own, episode-wise. Rosita was good in this.

4) The Eugene thing works as a pretty solid analogue to everyone else: in the zombie apocalypse, you do not survive by staying true to yourself. And everyone has something that's keeping them going.

5) Flashback, the impression I got what was that it was pretty early in the apocalypse. Abe's family probably just panicked.

Yeah. They probably didn't realize he was a violent psychopath inside!
I'm surprised they let the Eugene reveal linger on this long tbh, especially compared to how fast it came out in the comics

Decent ep, Carol and Darryl are good enough actors to carry a whole episode like this. Wish plot was a little more but what can you do, was a bottle-ish episode for this show
Yvette Nicole Brown with a lot of good insights on Talking Dead! (And uh, looking great)

Mostly a good episode. Thoughts:

1) Still like how night looks like night.
2) Who starts a voluntary bonfire when trying to sneak up on someone.
3) Why, after establishing that the van was not stable would Carol then climb in after Darryl?
4) Like the use of silences/not talking.
5) Don't like the on the nose book placement this show's gotten into the habit of.
6) How would a zombie get trapped in a zipped tent?

All these bottle eps, detours and side-tracks makes me think they finally have some sort of narrative outline they're following. Also a good way to make something happen when, you know, nothing really is happening.

Also, this show has always been but is increasingly more of a Western, with zombies. It's even got two Clint Eastwoods.

three if you count Carol!

6) How would a zombie get trapped in a zipped tent?

Be alive.
Enter tent, zip up tent.
Die.
Reanimate.
Play magical xylophone.

That's one of the details I liked - you don't really know what the story is with those people camping there. The blood marks on the bags would imply someone came by while they were sleeping and shot or stabbed them. No magical xylophone!

Yeah, I guess someone could have stealthed into the tents, killed them badly, then ... zipped them up again before stabbing everyone in their sleeping bags? It doesn't matter, of course.

I do like the helpless, stupid zombies. What I don't like is how poorly this show CGIs charring - buildings, bodies. It just looks like this weird digital smudge.

am i missing something? they could have been bitten by a zombie as opposed to stabbed by a non-zombie?

So both tent people were bitten by zombies, made it back to camp, went into their respective tents, then zipped themselves in? Then died and turned? All either before or after all those people died and turned in their sleeping bags? I guess they could have all killed themselves at once.

the zombies that attacked those people could have come and gone? Idk dude, I feel like you are overthinking this. People who were camping out in that building got attacked by zombies. They died and turned. Zombies have low brain function and cannot use zippers. It was funny.

However, I think this episode, we saw the first child zombie since ... the Governor's daughter? I feel like child zombies are exceedingly rare.

I'm definitely overthinking it! as if there was ever any doubt.

Tbh probably not a lot of kid left after a zombie attack.

ooh, very good episode again. daryl and carol are welcome to carry an episode any time they feel like it. enjoyed the tent zombies, my spoilsport pernicketiness was elicited by daryl driving them off the bridge and walking away with just a sore shoulder between them.

i loved that the intro contained no drama or action, just carol being extremely capable and practical on her own!

Is it wrong that I am no longer hate-watching this and am instead actively looking forward to each ep? And that I'm sad there are only a couple left?

http://i.imgur.com/iRoUbkA.gif

that gif is RIPE for some kind of meme splice

xp ah come on, the show's been pretty consistently good for like two years now?

I think it was hit or miss last year - which, recall, began with the belated wrap up of the governor plot - but really hit its stride by the end of last season. Still, it was nowhere near consistent enough (at least not in the positive sense) to expect several episodes of good to excellent quality in a row, which is what this season has given us. The previous 4 seasons of this show were wildly inconsistent and erratic, as if, I dunno, they were constantly changing showrunners or something. But this season has been consistent in tone, direction, acting, writing - a Walking Dead first.

Going to start a Walking Dead sock called Vanlandingman who does nothing but complain about the van landing on its wheels.

http://img.pandawhale.com/post-11336-Cat-flipping-lands-on-feet-For-jRIN.gif

Is that Josh Homme?

When Josh Homme falls, he always lands on his feet. It's just his thing.

I felt like it was pretty obvious sleeping bag zombies were suicides who didn't realize they'd reanimate

how would they kill themselves while being still wrapped up in the sleeping bag? maybe they took pills, but that wouldn't explain the bloody holes on the sides of the bags

Maybe they took pills then were stabbed by their friends, who felt bad, took pills, zipped themselves into their respective tents, died and reanimated.

Damn, sad. Didn't see that coming!

disappointed idiot priest didn't die yet, wtf was he even doing digging his way out of there? what was the point of that whole thing? die!

also wish mullet eugene had never woken up.

Fuck. That was brutal even by this show's standards.

Felt like a lot of false notes were hit ... I mean, up until Michonne told Maggie that Beth was alive, Maggie didn't really seem to care that much about what happened to her sister. All the teaser talk about this episode intimated that a main character was going to die, and with all the focus on Carol in the last few episodes, I was afraid it was gonna be Carol that died, and I was prepared to be really sad.

I forgot that she was maggie's sister until she told her that actually

genuinely thought when michonne told maggie that beth was alive, maggie's response would be "...who?"

sad about beth but that was a damp squib really, mostly because of existing flaws like the entire hospital set-up being dumb and illogical, and maggie's grief being accidentally hilarious after literally not mentioning her sister for 1.5 seasons

also what even happened at the end, why didn't beth go for dawn's throat or eye???

the priest is a bumbling idiot who needs to die soon, wish michonne and carl had left him outside in a ~poetic reprise of his own actions

we're p much back to where we were in episode 2, right?

oh and the entire "carol's in the hospital!!!!" subplot was for nothing, then

oh and really bored of tyreese's speeches now

yeah, never really cared much about the hospital. They kept talking about it like it was this structure that had to be kept going and there was this intense hierarchy and whatnot, I kept being like, aren't there like 6 cops and 5 orderlies? Who cares?

They still have Talking Dead for this season? Been struggling to even watch the main course so far. Sad to see such a good series go so rapidly terribly below average, life is too short so fuck 'em.

you really think this season is below average?

yeah, it's pretty decent at the least - if only for that that nobody ended up staying in one place for more than a few episodes
there were only maybe two, three incidents of terminal stupidity which is pretty good for this show

it's probably gone up a level this season if anything, it's just that the elements of stupidity all came home to roost in this episode. as an episode it was crafted pretty well i thought, it was previous mistakes that did for it

Just catching up with the second to most recent ep. Not a lot happening, but I still don't get the deal with that hospital that seems like 80% cops and 20% docs. Also, like, I get that they're assholes, but I'm a little unclear what they've done wrong. Too fascist? Not letting people leave? It's like I missed an establishing episode.

I do like how muddled motives have gotten, but what a dummy for letting the cop up. Or not keeping an eye on the priest. Because duh.