The Walking Dead Season 2 (AMC) - Page 29

Is it unfair of me to expect this to be a bit spoiler free less than 24 hours after the show aired?

 

so much to love in this episode...   the semi showdown between Shane and Rick was awesome as well as the shot of the zombies coming running over the hill. Also the reveal that everyone is infected and turns when they die was just what this show needed.

 

Also, some trees make better doors than windows. That off camera neck breaker was an excellent way to piss me off. But I liked it.

It's a rickety zombie melodrama. It's totally not to be taken seriously, and I kind of have to agree that the people getting riled up over plot points instead of just poking a bit of fun at them and moving on are probably better off just not watching.

 

Shane getting offed here definitely ups the likelihood of another showstopping death next week. I hope for Lori, but I fear for Daryl. Lori dying now would be kind of perfect in its nastiness right now. Rick has just stabbed his best friend to death to claim his family as his own, so what better way to fuck him over than kill his wife and unborn child and leave him with Junior Psycho as his only ray of hope?

 

Yes.

 

If I care about spoilers, I avoid discussions of a show that has aired until after I have seen it. Doing anything else is just asking to end up upset.

 

Discussing events that people can't have seen yet is spoiling it, since people can't reasonably expect unaired info to be sitting like a land mine in the discussion. Once an episode has aired, people should reasonably expect it to be the central point of discussion.

 

Shit, with Game of Thrones, I'm avoiding all discussions of the show until the series finale airs. 

In an episode with a lot of questionable direction, I dug that bit. It left just enough doubt to keep Shane's plan interesting.

Rick stabs Shane.

Shane's gun goes off.

Just out of eyesight zombie horde: *Shrugs*

 

Carl's gun goes off.

Just out of eyesight zombie horde: HEY NOW!

That would go a long way towards luring me back for Season 3, I must say.  I find her the most insufferable character on television.  

 

Bleh.  Everything from Dale's funeral to the final showdown between Rick and Shane was just so clumsy and awkward.  Rick's eulogy was fine (I like that he all but straight up acknowledges that Dale was an irritating old coot), but the way they kept cutting to the camp badasses (and T-dog!) blowing off steam by killing random walkers felt weird.  By the end, I was kinda hoping Shane would just kill Rick.  That way Daryl's top notch detective work would have been relevant, instead of 'hey audience, here's what happened in that scene that took place behind a tree".  

    

 

 

 

 

So you want to watch the show with a zombie brain?

 

While the show is getting a bit better it has a long way to go to be considered good.  The Zombie kills are usually great and there are a couple of good moments but having every character be fucking stupid is a problem.  How did these people survive being this dumb?

 

I wish Lori would die but I think they may wait till they introduce a few more female characters.  I just hope when sge does die they get a Wentworth Miller look a like zombie to do it.

 

 

 

They totally smelled Shane's viscera or something. No wait! Cal has subconscious telepathic zombie summoning powers!

 

I want to know more about Daryl "I live in the woods and eat squirrels" Dixon's crime scene/blood spatter expertise, this could be even better than Psychic Dale. I hope the show keeps assigning awesome unexpected skills to the characters e.g. at some point in future T-Dog somehow saves the day after the surprise reveal that he is a brilliant hacker.

 

The final Shane/Rick confrontation sucked. Aside from the already mentioned problems, it's clear now that Lincoln will never be any good, especially in the heavier scenes. Looking forward to next week though. I can't see them screwing up a good zombie siege.

I know this is a ridiculous/obvious thing to point out, but these people have been shooting guns on the farm a lot this season (especially the Sofia-Barn-Walker shootout); yet hasn't attracted any hordes?  But, oh, Carl's one gunshot is the straw that broke the camel's back.  Just seems lazy and too convenient to me.

 

*sigh*

Can I derail this discussion for a moment and ask a question of everyone who is cheering for Lori to die because it would be a particularly nasty thing for the writers to do to Rick? I can understand throwing out tongue-in-cheek pleas for her to be killed off because her character is annoying, or the actress sucks or what-not, but what is it about horror fans that clamors for people to be tormented?  Maybe it is too inherent to the genre and I'm just missing the point.  I remember when The Mist came out, everyone talked about how great it was. I finally saw it and i was visibly angry at the end.  It just struck me as Darabont being pissed at the world and intentionally wanted to create likable characters only to torture them.  Then i came on Chud and everyone was like 'aww man that was awesome! so mean! I loved how it went there!!' which surprises me.

Ill agree that having a happy ending isn't always enjoyable either, but isn't it kind of understood that a happy ending, or a meanspirited one, both are required to be executed well?  I mean an idea is great on paper but done poorly, yea that sucks, but it seems like to me amongst some of the Chud-types there is an out-right championing of doing mean things to people.  Why does killing lori automatically make TWD a better show?  Yes, it might raise the stakes and make for some unique television, and show us some depths of humanity we haven't seen before, but why is that so much better and preferable than a story where the people we are invested in survive and deal with their own issues (again, assuming that the execution is done well)?

 

I don't want to make any grand claims about people or say that we've become desensitized from years of watching horror cinema, and maybe its that I'm a family man, and in rooting for Rick and Co to make it out alive, Im kind of shocked by such a callous suggestions that the show would be so much more fun to watch if Lori were killed and we got to watch Rick/Carl in torment.  So maybe i'm biased and not being objective, but its a strange phenomenon to me.

 

Furthermore, in this thread we are begging for mean-spiritedness, and in The Lost World thread, everyone is tearing that movie apart because of Speilberg's meanspiritedness.  We criticize a show for having characters we don't like or give a crap about, then if a show does have those things, we ask for it to hurt them and torture them.  Again, im sure it comes down to execution, but what does that say about us as people?

 

Maybe I'm sounding a little too much like Dale here....

Quote:

Because the writers have proven time and again that they are incapable of delivering such a story.

 

I don't think its entirely fair to bring The Lost World into this discussion.  The meanness there betrays the all the awe and child-like wonder of the first film.  

 

 

 

I'm not sure anyone "loves" the people dying at the end of The Mist. It's a bleak, hopeless ending. I like the film - and its ending - because Darabont didn't pull any punches. If you see The Mist as a 9/11 parable - and it's been argued pretty persuasively that it is - then the bleakness is a way of expressing a lack of hope or optimism that we'll get back to pre-9/11 worldviews, and that the demonization of The Other will lessen or stop. What if Darabont views the actual world as a place full of likable characters that only get tortured and killed? Then it's not about an arbitrary plot but an artistic expression of his outlook. You may not like or agree with that point of view - it's certainly not one I cozy up to - but that doesn't mean it's invalid or lacking artistic merit.

 

Re: Lori's death being difficult for Rick: first, remember, we're dealing with fictional characters. None of these people are real. Wishing despair on them doesn't mean something bad about the posters or viewers. Also, from a storytelling point of view, inflicting damage or hurt to a character is a time-proven way to elicit deeper and fuller characterization. 

 

 

 

Has anyone actually argued that killing off Lori would "automatically" make the show better? I'm reading the posts more as disliking the character AND disliking how inconsistently she's been written AND disliking the actress' artistic choices in portraying the character.

 

 

 

It helps to remember that these are imaginary characters. Nobody's calling for real life executions.

 

 

 

I don't know that I agree that people are "begging for mean-spiritedness." I'm reading it more as people wanting the show to not pull punches. To commit to a viewpoint, and to 1) give us characters we care about and 2) a world with consequences, some of which we won't like.

 

 

Fair enough, ill grant all of your points, because its clear you qualify them.  And i partly agree, myself.  It's a similar scenario to Dexter, season 4, which (spoiler) gut-punched me at the end by killing Rita, and my wife and i were depressed for days (we dont get out much, haha!) however since then, the show has used that event to take Dexter and his character and the show in general to all kinds of interesting places, so I feel like its been worth it. (maybe dexter is a bad example as I know many here have serious issues with its consistency)

 

and yes, of course the characters are fictional, so none of this matters in the long run.  There's no real reason to be upset that a non-real character has died, its all squibs and CGI-blood anyway.  But I wonder what part of ourselves revels in contemplating and vicariously experiencing the torture of even fictional characters?  Im sure some kind of psychologist or sociologist has written tomes on this subject, but it is one ive been contemplating in recent years since i had children of my own. Maybe this is a philosophical discussion for a different thread...

Personnally, one of the main issues with TWD is the same one that I had with Lost.

 

I just one at least one character to be stand up and be consistently 'smart' about their situation.

 

On Lost, I wanted one character to raise their hand and say to the whole of the group "excuse me, but is anyone else concerned that a lot of weird shit is going on?" instead of all the small one on one 'gossipy' conversations that occurred....get everyone on the same page, so to speak.

 

IMO, the characters on TWD are suffering from a similar lack of 'group meetings'. There have been a few, IIRC, but never a concise "hey, let's train everyone to shoot" " and "don't let anyone venture off into the woods by themselves" ( looking at you, Carl! )...etc.

 

This immense lack of logic and consistency is the frustrating part for me. I don't necessarily want all the characters to get eaten but when they are writing is so discordant maybe 1 or 2 less characters will allow a bit more development on the remaining group.

I wonder if there is a show 'bible' that lays out all the details and backstory of the characters...it certainly doesn't seem like it.

 

Don't worry, Anjin, after this post, I'll stop wasting brainpower on this hunk of garbage.

 

So, much like last week, we get 50 minutes or so of subpar character work that is completely different from the earlier subpar character work*, then things get bloody at the end and somebody dies and BOOM, all that other crap didn't happen because ZOMBIEZ BRO!

 

Next week is the finale, so they've spent the entire season on that goddamn farm.

 

Bye bye, show, and I'll see you fine folks in other threads.

 

* Remember when Lori gave that Lady McBeth-style speech at the end of the one episode? Unfortunately, I do, and it's totally different from the empathetic version of Lori that was portrayed this week. Was I not supposed to remember that? Should I not be thinking about these things? WHY WON'T MY BRAIN LET ME HAVE FUN?

Count me as one who thought the ending of The Mist was nihilism for nihilism's sake.

 

I don't buy the notion that these characters need to be written smarter. People do stupid shit in the face of minor disasters, let alone something of the nature of the story of this show. People crack, they make poor choices and they get themselves and others killed because of bad decisions. It'd be absurd (and pretty boring) if they were all savvy, hardened people that made rational, correct decisions every minute or stopped every five minutes to have a referendum. The relative "stupidity" of the characters on this show shouldn't be an issue.

 

 

Edited by Bancroft Agee - 3/12/12 at 1:10pm

Another complaint: It's a zombie apocalypse. A terrible turn of events. The world is a constant nightmare. But, man, Rick somehow achieves the impossible and makes it all out to be worse than it actually is. How about one decision where he looks like he's not having a bout of pancreatitis. 

 

Another complaint: Remember when Lori went all Lady Macbeth? Glad to see that scene amount to nothing.

 

Another complaint: Glen is turning down lovin' with Maggie because her dad is nice to him? Uh-huh. Right. No, no. It makes sense. No, it does. Really. Perfect sense.

Edited by Kevin Matchstick - 3/12/12 at 2:05pm

I'm going to defend the gun shot.  The zombies are closer to the farm because the weather is cooler, the swamps have dried out and the smell of the cattle is in the air.  They mention this at the start of the episode, there's going to be more walkers around.  Maybe they heard Shane's gunshot and wandered towards the general direction and kind of hung around, and then when they heard Carl's gunshot they all moved towards that.  It's not a huge leap of logic, I don't see why every body is getting super hung up on it like it's a plot hole.  It's not.

Its not a bad idea for a Creature Corner thread.

For one thing, not everyone is necessarily reveling. We don't watch horror to feel happy or safe, so it's not that it necessarily makes us feel good when characters die, it's that we want to feel bad. I love THE MIST, and one of the reasons is that it's bold and unapologetic about killing characters, but it's not like I was sitting in the theater cheering. I was emotionally devastated, and still am whenever I rewatch it. You were angry when it ended? I'd go so far as to say that's good and fully the intended effect of the film. I love that art can have such a strong emotional effect, and I don't want that effect to always be positive.

Part of that is that art allows us to safely go places and feel things we can't in real life, ranging from seeing fantastic things that are impossible in real life to violating taboos and addressing those negative thoughts and feelings. I don't think there's anything bad about that, in fact I think it's healthy. And I don't mean like without violent movies we'd all be acting violent (though I'm sure that's true for some people and that's another worthwhile function art serves) but those negative things are a part of our psyches, our society, the history of our civilization. Sometimes we need escape from them but it's important to explore them too. And horror, more than any other genre, is about pushing those boundaries.

But we're also speaking in generalities here. I know there are plenty of times people do cheer on or otherwise enjoy fictional character's deaths, but context matters and varies greatly. A lot of the time it probably falls under the umbrella of a safe, healthy way of experiencing unhealthy thoughts, feelings, urges. Within the confines I fiction, where the stakes aren't real, there's not something inherently wrong with feeling like a deplorable character deserves to die. But hey, maybe sometimes it is creepy on the part of the viewer. And of course a lot of that depends on how well it's handled, just like every character, action, storyline, etc that we ever discuss on these boards.

But in the case of Lori, I think it's almost something else entirely; I think most of the time when you see someone wishing they'd kill her off it's not about pushing boundaries or raising the stakes, it's just an emotional way of saying they dislike the character and want her off the show. If people are saying it more in a way that relates to the show "going there" or being mean or ballsy that speaks to my first two points. Horror is not about being pleasant, it needs to be willing to go to dark places and have a sense of danger. It's not about taking pleasure in that per se, it's just about not being boring.

Nutshell.  

 

No one is getting super hung up on it. When the writing is this blah, you kind of get used to letting everything slide. Like when that zombie snuck up on Dale. Maybe Dale was hard of hearing. And drunk. It's not a huge leap of logic. 

Bernthal is on Letterman tonight. 

They've also expected the zombies to move outward from the cities for some time, in search of meat.

 

BUT THE CHARACTERS ARE SO MUCH MORE CONSISTENT NOW SHUT-UP LOGIC!

I'm really riding the fence on this show.  A few days ago was the first time I seriously considered jumping ship.  It's getting very boring and the characters are walking parodies now with the writing continuing to wallow in mediocrity.  It's gotten better but it's still too inconsistent.  

 

Why didn't Rick hear zombie Shane (who WAS making grunting noises) coming up behind him?  Yes, he'd just killed his best friend and was focused on Carl with the gun, but there were no other noises, it was dead quiet... I let the Dale thing slide because he's an older man, but Rick is fairly young in comparison...this is the type of show that ignores pretty basic logic in favor of clumsy plot contrivances and it's getting irritating.

double post.

 

Apologies if I missed a post talking about this, but if everyone is already infected, how does a non-fatal bite cause a fevered death?  Am I missing something?

I think they're all infected with a passive form of the disease. It only kicks in at time of death. Walker bites carry infection beyond whatever causes the reanimation. Normal human bites are filled with all kinds of bacteria. Imagine what yuck is percolating in the bite of a rotting corpse.

 

 

Not sure if AMC released it, but yes, this image has been floating around the net for the past couple weeks i think. I saw it about a week & a half ago.

 

 

I think it was fairly obvious that Shane was a goner sooner rather than later.  He was taking way too many chances.  

 

Yeah, but if it's just the nastiness of a bite from a corpse rather than an actual transmission of the sickness, then it seems like not everyone would have succumbed, at least not those who had access to disinfectants, antibiotics, and the like.  Obviously it's just fiction, but I'm just saying it seems like they're changing the rules they established early on, when they said that anyone who is bitten gets the illness and dies from it.
 

 

Walking Dead characters, can I have a word with you ?

 

~ Get together another supply run.

You've said you're short on bullets.

But when you are in that hardware store / surplus store / Radio Shack

PICK UP SOME WALKIE TALKIES  for God sake!  Give one to everybody.  Hell, strap 3 onto the kid. 

And pick up some alcohol !  If you can get shifted every now and  then, you'd much better cope and wouldn't be so whiny and bitching on each other.

No one smokes in the group, I notice. Good, keep that up. God forbid anyone die of natural causes up in here.

That's it for now.

If you need me I'll be up under the big tree sharing a blunt with Daryl and T-Dog.

TWD is NOT above criticism. I like this thread (and the AV Club) because it isn't just a "GAWD TWD IS THA AWSUMZ!!" circle jerk. 

 

It's BETTER, but it still has problems. Witness the whole "Greedo shot first" nature of the Rick/Shane showdown. Stupid. IMO if someone is knowingly pointing a loaded gun at you, shooting first doesn't make you any sort of bad guy. But apparently that's too simplistic or logical, so you have this dramatically false confrontation. 

 

So two episodes ago Lori was all, "OMG SHANE MUST BE PUT DOWN," and now she's, "OMG Shane, so sorry, we did so wrong by you!"  Unless she knew Rick was going to kill him, but how did she know they'd end up off alone like that?

That is what I intended to sayL NOT above criticism, not that it is NOW above criticism.  Nothing is above criticism, ever.   It was early, I didn't proof read my post. Sorry!

 

As I said though... think people are expecting too much at this point. They're shitting on a fast food hamburger when it doesn't arrive as a nice juicy steak. We're far enough into this show now to know that it's NOT the next Deadwood, Mad Men, Wire  or Breaking Bad. It's more like Oz - over the top fun with soap opera level melodrama.  I like (not love) it for what it is rather than hating it for what it is not - if that makes any sense.

 

And how much you want to bet the zombies overrun the farm, a good handful of people get killed, and they're saved at the last minute by Randall's group, setting up next season as the farm survivors among essentially a bunch of Shane's.  Hell, that's your road to the Governor.

They're already looking for someone to be cast as The Governor, so that's pretty much set in stone that he'll show up next season.

If I were Randall's group and learned how Randall's final weeks went down, I'd be terrified to show up at that farm.

apparently, this role has already been cast.

 

AMC's 'The Walking Dead' Finds its Governor

 

Hadn't heard about that yet. Don't know who the guy is, but I hope he can bring the crazy like the character did in the comic. I know Savini was actively campaigning for the role. That would have been pretty cool to see him show up.

everyone on this thread is being such "a Dale" about the show....(myself included)

 

don't be a Dale.

 

:)

Well, as we saw, the chances of that happening are pretty slim.

What? Why? Kid fell off a roof, they save him, nurse him back to health, beat him up a bit, and go to set him loose, but then decide to kill him, but then the main guy WON'T kill him, so they plan to set him loose again, until the crazy guy kills him. But then they kill the crazy guy. 

 

 

Basically, they sound like a bunch of indecisive pussies. Randall's group would show up and warm up by raping the men to death before starting on the women. 

It definitely would have been more interesting if Lori setting off Shane was a calculated move rather than inadvertent.

That would have been a terrible, infuriatingly dumb move.  Not because of the direction the character would be taking, but because it makes no sense unless she literally didn't care one way or another which guy lived and which guy died.

At the rate that Daryl's redneck badassery is increasing, the show can only last for a another season or so until he figures out that the cure to becoming a zombie is a precise combination of Keystone Light, Busch, and Wild Turkey.

Just for fun....