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

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.

Good zombie fx lately, though.

...you missed the whole physical abuse, slavery and rape of the people they're "caretaking"?

I totally forgot that. But I'm pretty sure they were established as bad people before that revelation, weren't they? But yeah, you're right, they're more than just assholes. Not sure of their motives either, though. And again, they seem like 80% police, plus Beth and ... one patient and a time? And a couple of doctors/nurses? It's unclear who they are protecting or enslaving.

hospital is basically a camp of indentured servitude/slavery

Yeah, but we haven't seen anything much more than police there in the show, have we? Still have the more recent ep to watch.

Some sort of amusing religious in jokes though. The Biblical stuff about eating the flesh, the priest pulling a nail from his foot ...

yeah they didn't show that many other people and I'm not sure there were that many in there, which is why they were so frantic to get more.

Was cool seeing Keisha Castle-Hughes show up as the recaptured escapee / amputee / walker. Curious how she got the role (her and show mutual fans of each other?). Wish she'd joined the cast for a longer stint. Glad she's continued to act. Thought she was great in "Whale Rider", and fun seeing her appear in "The Almighty Johnsons".

As far as the cops, not sure how many bad apples there were besides the two that died in the hospital, but was also surprised they only showed Noah leaving with Rick's group. The remaining cops were either cowards, allowing the few to abuse the civilians, or the civilians prefer the devil they know versus leaving with a wild-looking bunch.

At the pace they're going, seems like they're 1 to 1.5 seasons behind the comics. It's been long enough, I can't remember Beth the comic character, if there was one.

don't think there was a Beth in the comics, Maggie had other sisters but they all died pretty quickly

it was a little vague to me how it ended, it wouldn't surprise me if Noah was the only hospital person to go with them or if a few more tagged along as well
but then again, looking at it from their point of view, Rick and co. looked like a bunch of psycho hobos and probably even scarier than the cops

i do like how DGAF Rick now doesn't even try to look presentable. or maybe he learned a lesson about wearing other people's jackets. I don't know