posted
You know, they could have spent that same time on finishing a major emotional story arc. I won't say which one, but there's a perfect one that's obviously right around the corner.
I would have bet money they would have ended on it. However... they did the CDC thing instead, and they didn't really do much with it. Why would you end the season that way? They wrote this before they knew they'd get renewed, after all! End with a punch.
End with what we know is going to happen. End with the confrontation between Shane and Rick that was so much better done in the comic. The final panel is the perfect way to end this season. The perfect way to make us want more. The perfect way to set the tone permanently.
And instead they dallied in the CDC. Some episodes I love this show, like episode 4, that seemed to have real conflict. Other episodes... man, why waste time with this?
I mean... if this was a regular episode of the series, not a finale, I wouldn't have much to complain about. It's not bad. This is going to be a Zombie Road Trip series, after all, and why not have some interesting stops?
But as a finale? There's a much better one, right on the page.
Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
My feelings on the final episode are that it wasn't bad. It would probably be more enjoyable if I wasn't aware of what SHOULD have been happening. And I agree that its weird to have a climatic moments in a zombie show that doesn't involve zombies.
Alot is being made of what the doctor whispered in Rick's ear. My guess is that he explained to Rick what really causes zombification because according to the comic, you don't have to be bitten to turn into a zombie. But if Rick learns that information NOW, then that may alter a later event that is connected to the whole Rick/Shane confrontation. Its a minor event but one that is atleast important emotionally.
I'm starting to fall out of love with this whole "new fresh story detours" idea. I mean, there's already A TON of material available in the comic and Kirkman isn't going to stop writing anytime soon. Stretch it out with new, inferior material is really screwing with the pacing for me. The comic is slow to begin with, "Zombie Road Trip" is a great description, so why not amp up the pacing and get us to the various good story arcs. Knowing where Season 2 ends and having seen the amount of added material already, I worry that next season isn't going to have enough good moments to keep an audience around. It did well this season and of course it did, its a tv show about zombies! But once the shine is off the walking corpses, will there be enough good emotional storytelling to keep this running for more than two or three seasons?
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I actually quite like the Merle subplot, and I think the CDC thing would have been interesting if the show had done anything with it. A little hope would in fact be kind of nice, IMO.
I'm willing to bet that the doctor has told Rick that his wife is pregnant.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Yeah, I agree with Tom on what the doctor told Rick.
I didn't like how they handled the CDC. Day 164 and he doesn't even know if it's a virus or not? Spilling acid on his samples? And all with the knowledge that in less than 24 hours, the entire building is going up in flames?
...never mind the fact that if it was actually 5,000 degrees F inside the CDC, our entire troop of friends outside it would have been melted by 1,000+ F temperatures. They were way too close.
One thing I liked about the show to that point was that it seemed like a reasonably realistic portrayal of what life in the zombie apocalypse might actually be like. They lost that angle with the CDC stuff, all for a bunch of "mad scientist" type cliches. Bleh.
Edit: Well, they'd already lost me a bit with the gang thing in the previous episode. It felt like a very artificial twist and reminded me that I was watching a TV show.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Watched the whole 6 episodes over the past few days. Can't wait to see the next 13. I'm so glad this kind of series can finally be made. Fantastic writing (front-page opinions aside).
Biggest disconnect for me: The older blonde sister who was unable to let go of her little blonde sister, and in fact risk everyone's and her own life by sitting with her for a night. Almost everyone at the camp had family members die already. I would have thought the "shock" she underwent should have already happened with the initial fallout, and everyone should have come to terms with what happens when you lose a friend. What seems more realistic to me could be likened to a soldier's tendency to stave off the hard-hitting emotions while losing a comrade in the line of fire.
There's no grey area with infection. The arguments about "what keeps us human" or whatever make no sense to me after someone is infected. Like "burying our own" vs burning the "others". They were ALL human before, with families and hopes. Why treat them any different than your friend who gets infected? The logical approach is to recognize that as soon as they're infected, it's over, and treat all infected the same.
In my camp, a newly infected but still conscious human would be allowed to live out their life, but bound and quarantined. What's humane is not risking other survivor's lives for the sake of an infected. I'd make a painless suicide available to the victim followed by a knife to the back of the neck, severing the brain stem. I would think that after 6 months of surviving the zombie apocalypse, these folks would have already gone through this process multiple times.
I don't want to seem completely harsh, I'm just arguing for true realism as opposed to what seems more "dramatic" for television. I obviously can't complain too much because this is definitely the most realistic portrayal I've seet yet.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
I can understand Andrea's grief after losing her sister. I can understand that desire to freeze time and just hold a loved one. Amy was all she had left in the world. Besides, one zombie can be easily put down by any of the armed members of the party. Its when they swarm and overwhelm that they become particularly dangerous.
As for burial, after an attack like that which isn't the last, its impossible to bury every body. But why not atleast bury former companions? Sure, they were all human once but they're still essentially strangers. On the field of battle, I imagine many soldiers would burn the enemy for practical reasons but sacrifice the energy to give their comrades a more respectful sendoff.
Infection plays a decent-sized role in the comics and if the show commits to showing that on some scale, we'll see that there's a payoff for those willing to take the risk and find a way to fight the infection.
I think your arguments make alot of logical sense, but I know I'd be far from logical in the face of an apocalypse. That emotional element is a big part of Rick's character. We're going to see him do plenty of stupid and risky things for the sake of his ideals and his desire to protect the group.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I guess I'd like to make the argument that my logical realism is somehow MORE humane and sympathetic than the "gotta do my duty" emotional risk-taking of Rick.
Also, don't get me wrong, I definitely can understand Andrea's grief after losing her sister. I just find it hopelessly stupid that she hadn't already dealt with the possibility of it happening. Even irresponsible! And the rest of the camp allowing it was also irresponsible.
"One zombie can be easily put down" could also be said "It only takes a drop of zombie blood to kill you". Cavalier attitudes get people killed.
As for how we treat our dead, is burying more respectful than burning? I'm getting my cultures mixed up. Either way, the actual point of taking care of the dead is to improve hygiene for the living. Rotting flesh stinks.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
While cremation has its place in western culture, burying a friend just seems more respectful than throwing them on a burning pile of half-rotted, recently walking corpses.
I think what makes the material interesting is that we have these characters will different reactions to the situation around them. Daryl, already over the "loss" of his brother, was ready to put Amy down and took issue with Andrea's course of grieving. I think Andrea and Amy's talk on the water mentioned that they didn't know what had happened to their parents so Amy is Andrea's closest family. The doctor also mentioned that reanimation times vary and can take hours. If she lost friends during previous attacks or while fleeing her home, she may not have been with them when they reanimated (if there was anything left to reanimate.) It could very well be the first time she's seen it happen. Having now been there and knowing how she reacted, it'll be interesting to see how she'll council someone else when it happens again.
And yeah, I'm with you on the humane bit. I sympathize with alot of Rick's choices even while cursing his stupidity for others. And sometimes his decisions, while seeming like a horrible idea, do have a good payoff. You're not meant to love every character and the decisions they make. They're going to make mistakes and do stupid things. You'll probably relate and sympathize with Daryl more than the other characters while I've always been a fan of Glenn and Andrea.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I'm actually interested in seeing whether "infection" is actually necessary in the TV show. There's a pretty major plot twist in the comic that revolves around this point.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
In the comic, Andrea is a younger but harder character (and a surprisingly good shot), who reacts to her sister's infection and fatal wound by shooting her in the head almost immediately. She then cries about it at some length later.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Now THAT is what I wanted to see, Tom. *grumbles about tv producers "improving" upon source material*
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
I'll have to go back and re-read Amy's death. Personally, I'm okay with letting her later bad-ass personality emerge with time.
I do love how Andrea literally "becomes" her sister in the comic. Once Amy dies, the artist started using her character design for Andrea. I imagine it was partly a mistake and partly because Amy's look was more distinctive than Andrea's original design.
posted
1) The CDC has a giant wall-mounted counter that, in at least one mode, does nothing but count down to the second that the building's computers will initiate an automated "decontamination" of the building.
2) Because all decontamination is done by ridiculously destructive, uncontrolled fires (see the previous episode), the CDC has chosen to accomplish that by putting a fuel-air bomb in the basement that is triggered by computers.
3) The CDC has backup power and underground wiring. Presumably so do other federal installations. And yet not a single router permitting dedicated Internet traffic between installations remains online?
4) The giant countdown to "the moment we're out of power" does not speed up when the researcher turns on the giant overhead plasma screen to demonstrate trivial points, or when he uses his computer to do work, or when he leaves the server's audio interface running to monitor the commands of an empty room, or when everyone takes hot showers despite his warning to not exercise the hot water heater too much. This might mean that the generator draws a consistent amount of fuel at all times and supplies more than enough capacity to power everything in the building (and apparently cannot store any unused power in batteries), and that the countdown is to the moment that the fuel is gone -- but if that's the case, why walk around in the dark? Why not jerry-rig a battery for the excess?
5) An installation designed for long-term research that doesn't even have some solar on the roof? Heck, couldn't they steal solar panels from one of the many places in Atlanta that have them? And wouldn't that completely solve their problem, since the only problem is that they don't have enough power to keep things frozen and the air circulating?
6) Really? The only way to decontaminate the facility is to blow it up, hurling whatever doesn't die in the fire into the air? And destroying the facility in the process? You can't just walk around pointing a blowtorch at the samples you want to kill? I get that he didn't want to do a manual override of the countdown because he was suicidal, but surely someone could have pointed out that if he didn't blow up the building, they could probably find solutions to his fuel problems.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Of all of those inaccuracies, #3 is the one that confused me the most - surely someone, somewhere, maintained hardline Internet connections between CDCs. I mean, I like things blowing up, so I was fine with explosive decontamination, and I wasn't paying attention to the counter anyway, so that didn't really register.
But the Internet, man. That grated. Especially in the face of global catastrophe.
It's not like the zombies could have turned off the routers.
But hey, I still liked the show.
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
Didn't he admit in the end that he did know what the other researchers were up to when he said the French were the last ones to hold up? That implies he was in contact with them.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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The rest of Tom's points, though, were bang on. I'm actually thinking of getting the #1-48 compendium of the comic and reading it.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
The pacing is good. The only criticism I have is that it basically just follows the episode from beginning to end without really telling a unique story on its own. My favorite videos of this type focus on one particular element of a show to particularly match a song, rather than just matching the pacing a given story arc to a song's tempo.
That's more of a reason for it to be "good" rather than "great" though, so overall kudos!
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
This is the only thread on the topic I could find. I just noticed something and felt the need to share. Morgan Jones (the father from season 1) is in Woodbury. I was just watching a rerun of last week's episode and he's shown extremely briefly. I've seen the actor in other shows and am confident it's him. Apparently it's already been announced that he'd return this season, but they haven't said when. Nobody seems to have noticed, judging from a quick Google search (the shot is very short).
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Having him anywhere near Woodbury kind of destroys any adherence to his comic book storyline. Not that I'm surprised. I getting to the point with the show where I'm trying to decide if I get enough enjoyment out of yelling at my tv to make it worth the displeasure of yelling at my tv.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I think it was during Andrea's motivational speech, but I'm not positive. It was definitely outdoors in Woodbury in the second half of the episode.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
I've tried to watch this show but I just can't get into it. I've watched three eps of the first season and it just seems meh. Does it get better?
Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by brojack17: I've tried to watch this show but I just can't get into it. I've watched three eps of the first season and it just seems meh. Does it get better?
In my opinion the third season is the best so far, with the first being the worst. So by that logic, it gets better. I think the writing staff changes a couple of times.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
The first season is incredibly brief, it's almost hard to really call it a season. But I do think it gets stronger as it goes on.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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My only major gripe about the show is that it would be so easy to kill zombies, just hop in a car, run them over twenty or thirty times, wha la. Preform que de gras as needed with a shovel. No muss, no fuss.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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I only watched the first season. I heard the second season wasn't great, so I've prioritized other things.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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It's also worth noting that running over a human-sized object twenty or thirty times can do a number on your car.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I liked all the seasons.
My only major gripe about the show is that it would be so easy to kill zombies, just hop in a car, run them over twenty or thirty times, wha la. Preform que de gras as needed with a shovel. No muss, no fuss.
Yeah I guess, if they come at you one or two at a time, and you're always in your car, and you always have gas, and there's always a road.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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My biggest problem is the super computer from the end of season one. It simply should not have been there, not to mention how hinky that whole setting and story was aside from the random AI.
I wouldn't mind seeing more of these "herds" that we saw at the end of season two, THAT is the true threat of the zombie apocalypse. And I am curious about how ransacked the world is one year later. How quickly did how much percent of the world/country/area become walkers? What percentage of people have to survive for how long before the average American town all plush extra food and supplies is left barren for the eventual survivors of the survivors?
SPOILERS Is it me or should that fence/gate have been much stronger considering its real world intended use? SPOILERS
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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Doing that though, may have bought them more time when they were being invaded on the farm. It would actually be pretty cool if you were able to attach a front that sort of splits them out and spares the front of the car. But they also could have crashed into each other if they were all just gouging the center of the herd.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
If they waded into the herd they would be likely to be killed. Somehow the Walkers have displayed an amazing amount of strength in the past when it comes to obstacles. In season one they just kinda forced their way past the doors of the department store. It stands to reason that they would break into the cars as they drove past and injure and or kill the drivers.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
Wasn't that them collectively pushing on the door for a matter of minutes? And they're slow. As long as you don't get completely draped on a pile walkers, the cars would cut from one end of the herd to another in four seconds. Most of them that make major contact would be run over or bounce off the car.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
It's really as easy as a bulldozer and welding on some protective driver cage. Kill every single zombie you are near, and with those tank treads no worries about roads. Simply be careful not to run out of gas mid herd and you are all set.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by brojack17: I've tried to watch this show but I just can't get into it. I've watched three eps of the first season and it just seems meh. Does it get better?
That's interesting. For me, the first couple of episodes were the only good ones. Then the beginning to season 3 was pretty great, but that's petered out into mediocrity as well.
Not nearly as good as the comics, or the game.
Posts: 1574 | Registered: May 2008
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posted
Agreed. It'll be interesting to see how they handle Alexandria. Especially given that every time the team stays in one place for too long, fans complain.
But really, you can only take the show so dark and have them be so far gone befor you have to try to inject some humanity back into them. I think its at that point.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I've never read the comics...but as a viewer I have no problem with a bit of safe & settling down. I think having to build a community (where anyone dies for ANY reason) is interesting enough! I sure hope it is as it seems and not another misdirect.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I've read the comics up to a point a little past this.
It gets interesting, and it's pretty unlike anything you've seen thus far.
I haven't ready anything from the last couple years yet. They're following the general plot, but a lot of the cast of characters is very different.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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