The Walking Dead Season 3 - Page 11

I can see why shooting Merle would be harder than a walker. Merle, while not exactly a good person, is a human being. Walkers are just dead things that want to eat you.

She's done the "Micchone you're being ridiculous gaaaah" thing like three times, and every time she does it I cringe.  It's like she's a 16 year old teen in a Friday the 13th movie. 

Andrea's actually been growing on me, but they're doing her character a disservice by giving her such awful judgement. It'd be one thing if we didn't know that the governor was up to no good, but as it is she's just coming off as a moron who ditched a friend she can trust in favor of an asshole. 

It’s not really a surprise. I like this show but even I have to admit that the writers are largely incapable of writing women well at all.

Hey, at least they're staying true to the source material.

To be fair, they also have trouble writing men.

Unintentionally Funny Andrew Lincoln Expression of the Week: when he's overcome with emotion while holding the baby and he looks up at the sky like an angel just whispered something to him

     Quote:

Coleman was great on The Wire, so I think he'll bring a nice humanity to his character on TWD.

"Cutty from the cut!"

 

And then you guys say the writer don't know women?!  <rimshot>

 

Can I get a high-five?  No?

 

At least the consistency of their zombie writing has been stellar!

I find it remarkably consistent. Andrea's main character trait has been overconfidence. After about 5 minutes of gun training, she nearly got killed hanging around to show off her skills. She nearly killed Daryl when she was so excited to display her marksmanship that she didn't verify she was shooting at a zombie.

 

She seems -exactly- like the kind of person that could be seduced by someone that makes them feel important and in control. The Governor repeatedly pretends to defer to her and places an extremely high value on her for someone who has shown no real value to his community so far.

 

 

This is one of those "I think you've given far more thought to the show than the people responsible for it have" kinda posts. 

Shows like this have a bible. I don't think it's giving them that much credit to say one page reads:

 

ANDREA:

Big ego

Has sister

No one's saying it's inconsistent, but Andrea's taste in men is practically a joke now. That's why I wrote she's "coming off" as a moron, because she keep siding with the antagonist which makes her tenacity seem like stupidity. Not the best way to create a likable character.

Bringing Tyreese in at this point just seems weird. IronE Singleton must be wondering who he pissed off to get eaten and replaced.

I think they just needed people to die on their zombie show, and they picked the two least popular characters.  It's either A) fix the characters through time and effort, or B) not kill any one or kill a beloved character. 

Agreed. Especially if they are just gonna kill him off in eight or nine hours anyway.

 

I was thinking of this the other day, but do we need all the characters to be likable?  Could Andrea just be a moron with questionable taste in men? I know she's supposed to be one of the "good guys", but maybe she's supposed to be a flaky character? On a show with a fairly big cast, do all of the heroes need to be heroic?

Not heroic, but interesting. Especially if they're going to make her the secondary lead (which she essentially has been this season).

 

Season 2 pretty much locked them in to this storyline, so I'm giving them a break. I just hope that once the two groups meet/clash, that Andrea's role will bear fruit or her screen time will shrink (or both). 

 

Well-written would be nice, though.

A new black character? Aww hell naw!

So... Dr. Mengele is just creeping me out. Only child, parents dead, telecommuted to work, working with memory of the reanimated...

Yeah, this episode didn't do much for me, other than make the Governor look like a pyscho. And I fear we will never figure out how he got in charge. So the 75 people or so who were saved apparently endorse him.  They either don't know how crazy he is (because with only 75 people, no one would ever find out about his creepy tendencies) or they are all Stockholm syndrome victims.

#TeamPrison

Great Carpenter sounding music during the final moments of tonight's episode. Loved that. Next week's episode should be a great end to this first half of the season.

 

 

I too loved the randomness of the hermit showing up, and it did seem like he didn't even know about the zombie apocalypse. That's a little hard to believe, but eh, it led to a bit of crazy hilarity for the brief moments they were there in his shack.

the stand out moment for me from this episode was when the group was trapped in the cabin and threw out the "bait" to distract the walkers....then the close ups of walkers chowing down....blood smeared hands and faces...followed by a cut to a "sponsored by KFC" promo ad.

: )

Finger lickin' good.

 

I don't think it's that hard to figure. He -is- charismatic, and in a world gone to hell, I imagine people would easily follow anyone who could deliver safety.

 

Also, he hasn't exactly built Rome. His reign has been less than a year so far, and in all likelihood isn't making it to two.

 

Well, obviously it's not making it to two years - the dipshit has MERLE as his second! That's like guarding your life's savings with an attack dog that has been run over by a car. Head first.

 

 

Heh, I was thinking that it's either supremely ballsy or ignorant to smash your food ad right up against any commercial break of this show.

 

On a more substantive note, this episode proved my theory true: the show can be (and is) better with other characters as the leads. Glenn and Maggie easily carried the bulk of the story

I think it had to have been done tongue-in-cheek.

I didn't like how quickly Michonne and crew got on. Plotting a caper so soon after meeting, given her established suspicious nature, just seemed lazy and rushed. The stuff with Glen and Maggie was good. I still expect Glen to lose something at some point. I am of the opinion that he should be the next major character to die.

I have trouble seeing where to go after the prison arc. Could Woodbury stand-in for Alexandria?

So I gather the Governor actually does assault one of the female characters in the comics. Weird that they'd tip-toe right up to that and then not go all the way... trying to keep the Guv'nah at least passingly likable, maybe?

 

This could be the all time worst/best promo placement ever: (Warning, Battlestar Galactica spoilers for those who haven't seen Season 4 and want to)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zcum6lPrRo

They need to have Merle join Team Prison rather than going down the tired old "Daryl agonizes over which side he falls on" route. At this stage I wouldn't buy Daryl looking twice at the Governor's set-up, but you know they're going to have him tempted by his brother.

A question I was wondering about, could it have been from a creative standpoint better to have not shown the scene with the National Guard and instead just have the Governor and his men set out and then return with all of those trucks, thereby leaving some ambiguity (well, for the non comic readers anyway) for a while longer about what the Governor is really like and how those bullet holes ended up in the trucks (so there's grounds for suspicion but not absolutely so to the viewer) for starters.

 

All in all, I guess maybe it's possible to have left it at least a bit ambiguous as to whether the Governor was doing what he was doing because he was extremely paranoid from his point of view in terms of protecting his community as opposed to out and out evil.

 

(You'd have to lose the scene with the room full of heads until later too for this to work, I suppose).

Well if Glen as a badass hadn't been previously established, Glen how now been officially been recognized as badass of the year.

 

Also, R.I.P. crazy RIP VAN WINKLE hermit dude. I would have loved to have known your backstory.

 

Yep. The writers have gone to such great lengths to cement Daryl as one of the good guys (with great success, I should add); any wavering on this front so soon is going to be weird and awkward and kind of nonsensical.  In some alternate universe, there's a better version of the show where a less-crazy more-conflicted Merle is the one caught in the middle.

 

But whatever, I liked this episode.  This season is just flying.  

THUD REVIEW: THE WALKING DEAD -- "WHEN THE DEAD COME KNOCKING" (S3E7)

 

I must have rewritten the first two paragraphs to this six times. I certainly don't want to justify some of the things we see the Governor doing, specifically the rapey stuff from last night. But it seems like the show is going out of its way to present two sides to the character, and all it's doing is muddling his motivations. And it hasn't helped that some of his most evil actions (killing the helicopter pilot, ordering Merle to find and kill Michonne) have occurred off-screen. It's almost to the point where I'd wish they'd drop the pretensions of making this a complex villain and just go full-on crazy with him. Anyone agree with me here? Am I getting that point across in the review?

 

I'm glad they didn't. This might sound funny considering the number of decapitations and overall violence we see every episode, but I think having the Governor rape Maggie would have taken the show in an ugly direction.

 

They must have interesting conversations in the writers' room because I agree that a full-on rape is probably too heavy and ugly for the show ... and yet at the same time the whole "trying to keep the Governor passably likable thing" just isn't working for me. That's why I think they've got that character in such an odd spot.

I'm not seeing the balancing act you're seeing. Like, at all. They've made it clear he is one insane, unpleasant weirdo.

 

I'm glad there was at least the threat of rape. Because I'll agree, the Governor hasn't seemed quite so...heinous in the previous two or three episodes. At least not as heinous as Merle, and seeing as how Merle is ultimately afraid of the Governor, I think that's a problem. We definitely saw the Governor at his most vile last night, but I'd still like to see a scene where he completely loses his shit. Just something more to show why a tough guy like Merle would take orders from him.

The Governor is almost cartoonishly evil.  

 

Well, unpleasant for sure. I'm with you there. Insane? The zombie heads seem to indicate so. But everything else I feel like the show is awkwardly trying to justify, though.

He killed an entire troop of National Guardsmen unprovoked, murdered the helicopter pilot and added his head to his Zombie Aquarium, ordered the murder of Michonne, and is keeping his undead daughter as a pet and trying to comb her hair. He has to have some veneer of respectability - he's trying to run a community - but they've done plenty to signpost that he's serious unhinged.
 

The Guardsman -- rationalized as protecting the town and stocking up on supplies

 

Murdered the pilot -- off-screen

 

Zombie aquarium -- admittedly fucked

 

Ordered the murder of Michonne -- off-screen

 

Keeping his undead daughter as a pet -- rationalized, and he's even sponsoring zombie Milton's zombie experiements in an effort to determine if any of his daughter is still in there

 

No doubt the guy is a bad dude. But I still think the show has been very awkward in showing us how bad and why.

Off-screen doesn't equal rationalized, though. And if the Guardsmen murders were at all justifiable - if HE believed they were justifiable - he wouldn't have lied about them so extensively. AND him wanting to cure his zombie daughter also isn't a rationalization, it's just another sign of his mental problems.
 

 

Really?  That's what he told his goons, but I'm assuming he ultimately sees an organized military unit as a threat to his total power.  These guys probably wouldn't follow his crazy ass orders, and he wanted to give the guns and ammo to the wackos that would.  There's a reason he has a lunatic like Merle as his #2.  To me, there's no moral grey area here.

 

The thing is The Governor is so charming and affable when he wants to be.  Its easy to see how the Woodbury folks were won over.  We, the audience, know more than they do though.  

 

Or you could assume he ultimately sees an organized military unit as a threat to the bitchin' community he's put together that runs all nice and smooth like.

 

Look, even if I admit the only way to see the Governor is as a full-on psycho -- which you guys are doing a good job of convincing me of, by the way -- I'd still argue the show has gone about presenting that information in a not entirely effective fashion. (All the off-screen stuff, for example.)

Edited by zak chase - 11/26/12 at 8:52am