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

And no one missed him.

He certainly wasn't the exclusive subject of a subsequent story arc though.there was no, next week, find out what happened to Merle!

carol's recovery from her internal bleeding was remarkable. and they went to those lengths to get her into the hospital for...nothing? not even a reunion scene with beth? no plotting? indeed, not a single line?

That's what I mean. It just seems sort of first draft, seat of pants. There is no goal, no end-point, no arc, just action. It's like a big boulder pushed off the top of a mountain, rolling and rolling, fast at first, then with diminishing speed, until it levels off and just ... stops.

to play the devil's advocate... carol did get a whole episode where she had a character arc leading up to the hospital, and more or less completed it before getting hit by the car
tbh she didn't really care that much about Beth as much as Darryl did... she was ready to bail on everybody yet again!

Oh, she had her arc. It's really no excuse to hit her with a car and lay her in a hospital, mute, for a couple of eps, just to have her up and running again by the end of the mid-season break. That's some weak soap opera shit. I'm waiting for someone who looks and sounds a lot like Rick, but with a mysterious mustache or goatee, to suddenly show up. "Something's not right about Rick ... "

Watching this show is like watching a child play chess. They know what all the pieces can do, but they focus so much on the mechanics that they never think more than a couple of moves away. And then they lose.

haha otm

I think I'm done with this show. It's a fucking never-ending bummer. I kinda figured the whole Eugene thing was bullshit (they weren't going to magically find a "cure" for all of the zombies), but at this point, it's just this disgusting series of shitty events.

Yup, that's what it is - don't blame you. But at the same time, I dug tonight's episode - they gave Tyreese a good send-off. Fun to see the ghosts show up and the dreamy editing.

ugh i hated that episode, another needless death caused by idiot sentiment and general stupidity - from entering the house in the first place without waiting for the others to tyreese getting lost in a fucking photograph everything about that had me yelling "whyyyyyy"

and then the hallucinations with their terrible, clichéd lines that they kept repeating again and again

the premise of the episode and tyreese's death could've been handled so much better

I agree. Imaginary haunting conversations with past (usually dead) characters is one of my least favourite storytelling devices. Or at least the way film and tv tends to do it. Easily the worst aspect of Six Feet Under.

Can't believe a show about the zombie apocalypse isn't more upbeat and edifying, c'mon writers!

Finally caught up with this go-nowhere pseudo premiere. I'd call this amateur arty ep a risk that did not pay off.

this episode was a mess! and to think during points of the last season i was actually finally digging it as much, if not more than, the comic.

flashbacks in any TV series can get to fuck

Post terminous this series has been consistently dreadful, they don't know what they are doing.

I thought this was a good episode - heavy drama. Hope this series has an end, because this could go on forever using a random plot generator.

Clearly plot has not troubled this show. I'm beginning to think it is improvised.

"Hey, what do you want to do today?"

"I dunno. Road trip?"

"To where?"

"Virginia."

"Cool. Do we have to leave Georgia?"

"Nope!"

"Even better. Will the trip be very dangerous with no obvious gain?"

"Of course. But Beth would have wanted it that way."

"Who's Beth?"

"Only the emotional lynchpin of the entire show, duh."

"Eh, doesn't matter. I'm in. It'll be rad."

That's a little disingenuous. There have been plenty of haranguing conversations about them starving, they can't stay on the road forever, so on and so on and so on... and it's basically a repeat of the end of season 2 / beginning of 3 when they go from the farm to the prison.

I only saw the midseason premiere, and they road trip from Atlanta to Virginia as a favor to dead Beth to bring Everybody Hates Chris home to see his inevitably dead family. And then at the end they say, huh, we're close to Washington, so even though we have never left the apparent 10 square miles of Georgia we've called home, maybe we should check out some other places. You know, now that taking cars and the roads are apparently safe again.

Where did they get the walkie talkies? From terminus? Maybe they should have grabbed more than two, could come in handy when you're exploring zombie infested gated communities.

Caught up with last week's death march ep. Questions:

Why have they not tried moving closer to the coast, or some place where they can sail/float around on boats, like Huck Finn or something?

Why hang in Hotlanta at all? They could find a lake house in the mountains where it is cooler. One of the smarter things in World War Z (the book) was recognizing that zombies slowed, stopped and froze in cold weather.

One smart thing (finally!) about this show is the realization that zombies are slow and relatively manageable.

I know they've been busy, but there's been just a general lack of exploration, period. Or, you know, bicycle riding.

Other than that, usual bullshit. I know these people are bummed, but you'd think they'd move on beyond the shock of perpetual bad news. Because even on a good day the world is still overrun with flesh-eating zombies.

Oh, almost forgot: the ive-second dog attack was hilarious.
http://i.imgur.com/IpPFq.gif

Also, life is precious, and god, and the bible.

that multi-species super hobo dog gang was the best

OK, finished last night's ep. For a show about desperation and survival, it's amazing how slow and nothing-happens it can be. But zombie attack was good, and I give a lot of credit for featuring a prominent gay couple (who even kiss!) on such a red-meat, red-state show.

Still, how many times are they going to feature a clean-cut, smooth-talking smugly-friendly guy appear out of nowhere?

this was the most clean-cut guy they've ever met, so naturally he was gay

so refreshing to have actual normal dialogue in the most recent episode, and no one inexplicably withholding information and acting irrationally for the sake of plot (i mean, rick, duh, but his paranoia felt built into the plot and plausible). abraham and rosita should get more lines, they don't get much to say but they mostly seem like normal human beings when they do

nothing this show has ever done has convinced me that rick should be the leader instead of michonne/glenn/carol/even carl at this point. i appreciated michonne just being like, NOPE we are doing this

aaron's entire approach was very psychologically astute and - assuming all's as he tells it - that's a pretty brave job he's got going on there

I'm curious where they go with this, because it's a pretty big turning point in the comics, iirc, but I'm not sure how far into it they're going to get this season, if they even do.

[no spoiler intended] Aaron took Jesus' meet and greet role from the comics, correct? Recalibrating what I've read vs. where the series is at.

Nope they are distinct but I can see the confusion because of the repetition of roles and themes (being intentionally vague here for those who haven't read comics)

This show has gotten so good, like everyone is hitting their stride and nailing scene after scene with no overthinking or doubt. The 'how'd you know where the battery was?' bit needed nothing else other than that line for a close-reading and remembering audience, and got nothing more than that

I loved the faux-"An Ending (Ascent)" at arriving at the Alexandria gates

Ha, noticed that, too. Used well in 28 Days Later, just as the series premiere used that movie's start.

really enjoying this alexandria plotline. remains to be seen how they'll manufacture tension and danger - on past evidence, by characters behaving stupidly and implausibly out of character - but there are a lot of interesting tensions to explore beyond that. carol's little video scene >>>>>>>>

haha yeah that was incredibly hilarious

her "aw shucks!" looks when fumbling with the guns too

Definitely an intriguing decision to introduce a douchebag character who literally introduces himself as a douchebag.

that sort of self-awareness is pretty rare among douchebags.

i appreciated the theme of who they were pre-apocalypse; rick asserted it didn't matter but it coloured how all of them reacted to "civilisation". carol was lying but also not, she was just reaching back to who she actually was; everything said was true of who she used to be. michonne and daryl are the most badass badasses on the show but she used to be a lawyer and he was a redneck; of course she'd be substantially more enthusiastic, and he'd have been surly and suspicious in a place like that pre-apocalypse. and if rick finds adjusting to society difficult, naturally, of course he slips into the role of cop easily...

(the only characters whose previous occupations we don't know are sasha and rosita, right?)

Wow is this gated community arc laying it on thick. It got to the point where every time the politician gave one of those "I can read people" speeches or talked about "what this place will become," or someone talked about cookies or making prosciutto or knitting or trying to get NPR back up and running (OK i made those up) I wanted to barf. And then, adding insult to injury, they toss in killing an animal and threatening children, which is the laziest way to get a rise out of viewers.

Plus how literal minded to give Rick an actual scarlet letter A. This show, man ...

Carol threatening the kid was one of the show's best scenes ever! So hilarious. Her whole character during this arc is fabulous.

Main reason I like this arc so far is the way they're playing crazy Rick/Sasha/Carol/etc. being the real danger to this town rather than just doing Governor/Terminus/Part III

Rick going full-on Shane now, etc.

xxxp i think the A is something they might give to all new alexandria inhabitants? the novelty of the literal mark is questionable, but i don't think it means what _that_ scarlet letter meant? it's definitely supposed to be the opposite of W, presumably for "wolves," seen on one of the walkers outside the walls

That pile of walkers in the truck pile-up from a few episodes ago (with the torsos only, no arms or legs) also had the Ws carved into their foreheads

Not a coincidence that Rick, who has been making the moves on the married woman, gets the scarlet letter.

I don't mind this "arc," as such (considering nothing has happened yet). But I do find it already painfully repetitive, which is another frustration of the show: we know things will go bad, because they can never be good, so it actually gets a little tedious waiting to find out just how they will go bad.

There is no way they're making our heroes the villains, though, not after all the effort they've made to make their hosts seem so nice and clean cut, plus having introduced at least one psycho hothead, plus more than a few vaguely sinister people hanging in the shadows. I think it'd be hilarious though if an entire season was just a boring suburban drama with no zombies.

despite the heavy-handed horse symbolism and the cartoon middle-class liberals who inhabit alexandria, i'm enjoying this season because characters are talking to each other and, so far, not acting in wildly illogical or out-of-characters ways just for the sake of moving the plot along. hopefully whatever external threat's coming for them will arrive before the threatening love triangle has time to develop. carol again with the mvp scene! yay for psychologically terrorising small children.

i don't think sasha's crazy as in paranoid/cautious, she has extremely understandable trauma going on right now, and it's odd that deanna - so psychologically astute in how she's handled everyone else - isn't acknowledging this

for once i think the show is actually acknowledging grey areas - it's making our heroes unsympathetic but nowhere near outright cartoon villains.

How are they at all being unsympathetic? I think they are being totally reasonable. They've been wandering the wilderness for weeks, on edge and constantly at risk, and gated communities they've joined in the past haven't worked out so well. (The last one tried to eat them!) So yeah, don't know why Deanna is being so dense, or for that matter how this community has managed to stay intact/sane/Etsy, let alone so weirdly blase about everything. I mean, they've all seen and done their share of horrible stuff. It's a heck of a bounce back to baking cookies, especially when they still have people getting killed, or exiled or any of the other stuff our heroes apparently haven't asked about. I like that people are talking - which of course they do whenever the find some position of stability - but it's a bummer it's taking place in this surreal bastion of banality.

Another weird thing. "Oh, the last people here were cops." "Oh, the last people here had motorcycles." I kept expecting someone to find the house of a former samurai for Michonne.

Deanna seems pretty pissed off when Sasha challenges her on that - i think there are degrees in the community of how blind or aware they are to the structure of their fantasy. Deanna's heavily invested in maintaining that illusion (hopefully she doesn't end up as cartoonishly evil as the Termites/Tasha Yar). Obviously the Gay Recruiters know bad it is out there, but maybe Cookie Locker Lady isn't quite so keen as Mysterious Guns Guy Who's Probably Gonna Die By The End Of The Season (aka alt-Abraham).

Sasha's mental state is totally reasonable, but she's still acting out and irrationally, especially compared to before Bob and Tyreese died. Seemed to me in that intro she was deliberately making noise to draw more walkers to slaughter, not that different from Tyrese's suicidal pack dives.

i think carol being a spy and straight-up threatening to murder a child in his sleep - some things she's had SOME experience with! - while stealing the guns is definitely putting her on the dark side, no? i mean I love her more than ever but she's definitely toeing the morality line now

and like i said, Rick is straight up turning into Shane now - pretty blatantly going after another man's wife and even preparing to shoot him, confident he can take over the town from the sheeple by force when he feels like it and taking steps towards that plan as well. he's way over the line from being "careful". even Darryl by the end of this episode is questioning how far they need to go...

That piece of chocolate Carol snuck is just going to blow everything up

Yeah, she was like, fuck it, I'm taking the chocolate. Also, lol post apocalypse America, piles of guns everywhere but keep a close watch on the chocolate, man. I want to know who took the gun from the blender.

she's still acting out and irrationally, especially compared to before Bob and Tyreese died

Yeah, go figure, the deaths of her boyfriend and brother, one after the other, might do that.

Gay meet-n-greet guys seem the most reasonable, friendly but smart and wary. Everyone else has been drinking the Kool Aid, which makes me wonder where they've been hiding the Kool Aid. Would have been awesome had they served moonshine spiked Kool Aid in lieu of wine at the dinner party. Would have been funny if they used that to invoke another deus ex house. "Oh, this wine? One of the houses had an extensive wine cellar!" They should just keep doing that. "Oh, one of the houses used to have a guy who collected bandaids and bandages." "Funny, thing, the person who used to live here owned a loom and had a storeroom full of supplies!"

Still think bicycles would be in ample supply and good for riding around roads quietly and quickly, but hey, maybe they haven't found the house full of bicycles yet.

Thought: what if Carol gets busted for going all nightmare scenario on the kid, and the new community votes to expel her? That could tip things into chaos, without turning the new people into bad guys.

I kind of want to say fuck this stupid show and its stupid show shit. It's like they've stumbled across a gated community of functionally retarded people, men, women and children alike. They might as well call the show the Walking Fodder.