Walking Dead S4 Discussion (Spoilers)

What??? No Walking Dead discussion? You guys are slacking off!

I didn't watch it last night but I recorded it, so I'll catch it tonight. For those that did see it, what's the general consensus for the new season?

Just when I thought I was about to finally start Game of Thrones!

I just finished it. Meh. Coming to this off of Breaking Bad is just so....

I liked it. They aren't ignoring the shakeup from the end of last season and Michonne had more character in the episode than most of last season.

They're getting comfortable and working together and doing everything right, but now that sick kid dying and running is going to show them they can never afford to grow complacent.

Spoilers from last night's "Talking Dead".


1. Abraham and Eugine (readers of the comic know who they are) are going to join the cast.

2. They showed the first scene of next week's episode, and some mysterious someone fed a fence zombie a rat. Which must be why so many are at the fence. So, there's a traitor in their midst to boot.

So why's the kid sick? Cholera? I bet it's cholera as I just watched the Hell on Wheels episode, "Cholera," where everyone got sick due to Cholera.

It was a great episode. Chief O'Brien killed a US Senator. Smashing stuff.

It has something to do with the water supply; they emphasized water heavily. Can't Botulism also affect a water supply?

The sick pig was the big clue. What can infect both pigs and people?

I vote for swine flu.

Do we know if these guys lock themselves in their cells at night? It would seem to be a good security precaution.

There's 1000 dead bodies just outside the gates. How safe can that be?

I thought it was a good start. Michone is getting closer to Earth. The kids need to be watched. I hope Carl can straighten them out.

I actually LIKE that Carol was faking the "story time" to teach them practical skills.

Oh yay, storylines that will keep them in the prison. A prison being turned into a farm.

Folks, we're back to season two.

There weren't many dead bodies apart from the walkers, they must be collecting and disposing of bodies.

Except this time they're doing things right, and they are still inevitably going to get fucked over.

The problem was never the farm, or the prison, it was that the characters stupidly treated those places as safe and they were portrayed as so for story reasons. The farm was handwaved as being a relatively safe place because of the swamp when it was a death trap waiting to spring on them.

Episode upon episode where nothing really happened except the characters waiting for plots to come along and influence them. It's interesting to see them properly trying to rebuild, because we as the audience know the present situation is ultimately doomed, and when that comes it won't be the characters faults.

Not bad as season premieres go....but most of the store scene strained credibility.

Wine glass collapses shelf causing entire shelf structure to topple. Anyone who has ever looked at an commercial shelf knows that isn't going to happen. Actually just watched that scene again and the physics of that don't even remotely work...if anything Newton says the shelf would have fell the other way.

Helicopter sits on roof for over a year with wandering zombies...suddenly the roof decides to collapse when it's bad for our heroes.

Having worked retail, and having shed blood building and dismantling the fucking things, I agree.

You could use the fucking things for tank armor.
It would take a DECADE of water damage to get them to crumble, and maybe not even then.

Very promising beginning to the season, I thought.

I really enjoyed the "zombies dropping in" bit. First one, then another...before you know it, it's raining walkers and they're all around.

The shelf collapsing is a minor point. As for the roof zombies, maybe they were dormant until our heroes showed up.

I hope it doesn't turn into Farmville Part Two, but I'll wait for that to happen before I complain about it.

Anyway, I saw little to dislike about the episode. Good start.

The boom box they mentioned earlier in the episode would have made them move more than the collapsing shelf. Considering the boom box was left on for over a day, most of the roof zombies would have climbed over the chest high wall fallen off the roof.

Good episode. Nice set-up for the coming season. It's nice to not see crazy Rick at this point, and it's also good to see how far the characters have come over the past three seasons. They have all changed by their experiences, become harder and more callous towards the deaths of others. Still, there's humanity with Daryl and Carol being playful with one another, and it was also good to see Michone smile. I'm sorry the one young guy bought it, I liked his character and would have liked to have seen more of him.

Awesome anecdote I've heard is that Norman Reedus actually makes lots of people on set call him Pookie, so that line was put in for him.

yea, ok one. still missing some movement. our heros seem to be in limbo somehow - determined to secure the prison as a home and not actually making it one. reminds me of a new flat where you still live out of boxes months after moving in. however, far more concerned about the story itself. where does it go? farmville, again? please no. but without an external enemy and no hope for a better place to go to, this could become quite static.

what this show needs is some spes ex machina. hope to hold on to and move after. i know they are following the comic's story and i haven't read it, so... will there be something that gets 'em moving again?

The new producer promised that things are going go very badly very quickly, and keep getting worse.

Oh yippee....we can get more BSG...episode after episode of unrelenting misery.

I posted this elsewhere...

THIS SHOW NEEDS A GOAL

In Season 1 it was to get to the CDC. Since then the goal has been "just surviving". That is starting to wear a little thin. I mean we've had most of the problems you can have in a collapse of civilization scenario. We've had supply issues. We've had people go to dark places and come back. We've had people go to dark places and not come back. We've had children forced to grow up too fast. We've had romance. We've had tough decisions. We've had a villain.

What I would personally like is for them to hear about a place where humans are holding out. They make the decision to travel there and leave the prison. You can get at least one...maybe 2 seasons out of the trip. They get there and it's real...and it's not hiding some dark secret (like The Governor). We could possibly discover the origin of the zombie virus and a possible cure created. From there you could begin retaking the country...sorta like things happened in the book version of World War Z. Maybe end the series with a flash forward showing society being slowly rebuilt.

Now I know I made bunch of people hyperventilate and they are furiously planning their "OMG IT'S NOT ABOUT A CURE OR CAUSE, IT'S ABOUT THE PEOPLE!!!11111" posts. The thing is, "just surviving" isn't going to carry them forever. "Just surviving" gave us a wine bottle toppling a shelf and a helicopter falling through a roof not designed to hold the weight of a helicopter at all.



The last bit is just for the pseudo-intellectuals and comic zealots.

In a zombie apocalypse, your options are limited.

"Normal life", ain't coming back, so it can't be a fucking sitcom.
It's boring Smurf village shit, or misery.
The former is miserable television, so misery it is.

My objection to BSG wasn't the misery so much as the flat unlikable unsympathetic characters.
WD has characters I like, so that problem is solved.

I'll give the same reply I gave to people who wanted constant misery in BSG.

There are degrees between suicide inducing misery and dancing clowns.

This show is like BSG in that if something good happens you can bet the farm that something horrible will happen by the end of the episode.

Isn't Herschel a veterinarian? Why the fuck isn't HE checking out the pig? FAIL!!!!

Dang!! Too much nitpicking here. Its a fictional TV show, people.

How do you know he wasn't?

Isn't Herschel dead? I mean, when is the last time we've seen him talk to anyone besides Rick?