The Goat Pen

I was finally able to watch the most recent episode of the Walking Dead.

first of all, let me just say that the writers are really getting full of themselves, just as the Soprano's, in an effort to avoid being repetitive strayed away from what made it so popular, this whole morality issue is a red herring to me. I think Theodore summed it up when he said "we're past ringing doorbells". (Speaking of Soprano's, doesn't Merle have this Russian in the woods feel to it? - How can you introduce a character like that and then just have him go on into the abyss?). This is a common complaint I have - writers of shows feel the need to add depth to the characters and to humanize them by creating struggles that we all face and can relate to. But I call it filler between commercials.

When the show started , Shane was the most morally corrupt that we knew of because he was poking Rick's wife. So I wasn't surprised to see how the episode ended. You knew they weren't going to come back unscathed.

Since they no longer have any reason to believe there is hope out there for a cure and they've killed off a significant number of people from the original "tribe" I'm thinking they might choose to stay with this group for awhile since for whatever reason they have electricity , hot water, bread to make sandwiches and appear to be safe in their rural setting (how does that happen?). That would introduce a new bunch of people allowing them to keep killing off people by zombie attack.

But in my opinion they need to layoff so many "front porch discussions" where the characters continually address whatever conflict they are internally struggling with. Do you think there is a god ? Oh for fucks sake, now? really? it takes the kid getting shot for you to go there?

Creativity points for the zombie taking the arrow in the head by Daryl though.

I like Daryl the best now but I hope they aren't setting up some big conflict where he has to choose Theodore over Merle (who everyone hopes will return , even if it's to watch him die a horrible death).

AMC cut the budget drastically for this season, so you are going to probably see a lot more cheap talking and less expensive action sequences. Its the only one of their hit shows that they own the rights too, so they are micromanaging and penny pinching the shit out of it. The quality so far doesn't seem to be too drastic, so I'll stick with it, but I have a feeling its going to go Hero's season 3 (or season 2 part 2 or whatever the fuck they called it) eventually. So far though, it hasn't had as big of a drop as say from Hero's season 1 to season 2 part 1.

I am pretty certain Merle will be back, no way AMC just allows him to disappear forever.

I think they did a decent job of explaining Shane bedding Rick's wife through flashbacks, making him less of a scumbag for it.

I liked the situation they put Shane in and I would assume everyone who would have thought of that as an option would have taken the same steps he did (trying to write here without a spoiler).

What is going to bother me is how that decision is going to torment him for the next 6 episodes and we'll have 4 or 5 "front porch discussions" where he is moody, confesses, seeks redemption, blah , blah , blah

The world is taken over by zombies - these types of actions don't need to be rationalized! I get the whole "what makes us human" route but that isn't the attraction to watching a zombie series.

to summarize
[spoiler=]more Shane shooting Otis (the red shirt Star Trek ensign of the episode) and less Shane turning into a giant pussy for saving his ass and the kid by giving Otis up as a zombie entree. It's a zombie eat man world out there[/spoiler]

Another Hero's parallel, season 1 had the "no one is safe" thing going for it. Major characters were killed off left and right. Pretty similar to "Walking Dead" season 1. Both have the same issue of settling on a more or less static cast for the following seasons and the unwillingness to bump any of them off. So anytime a new character is introduced everyone with any sense watching goes "that guys a goner".

[spoiler=]kudos to the Otis buffet though. Even though everyone had to know he wasn't coming back with Shane, the way they accomplished that was pretty durn creative. So even though you may have not been shocked that he died, you were shocked the way he died.[/spoiler]

yea I thought the ending was great - you knew something was going to happen but it still surprised you.

Step 1: Create high quality giant spear
Step 2: Get a van/RV from somewhere
Step 3: Drive to nearest zombie herd
Step 4: Get on top of Van/RV
Step 5: Put in hard days work driving spear through zombie heads
Step 6: Drive back home for the day
Step 7: Repeat every day

[spoiler=][/spoiler]

SERIOUSLY

[spoiler=]I accidentally read a spoiler before watching the last episode so I knew what was going to happen between Shane & Otis but what I didnt know was that their struggle would last 45 seconds to a minute, I think thatz fukked up. Even on a gimpy ankle they should have been able to get away from the zombies[/spoiler]

Saw this during the Bengals game and thought it was pretty cool.

[youtube]zuzaxlddWbk[/youtube]

I'm feeling this Homeland show.

Also, I'm glad Dexter isn't taking the easy road with the forgiveness angle. Someone told me that Michael Hall is playing in another Showtime show next year, but I'm not sure if that means Dexter is winding up.

Jungle Rat wrote:Saw this during the Bengals game and thought it was pretty cool.

[youtube]zuzaxlddWbk[/youtube]

yea I thought that was good. While I don't play it, I've already pre-ordered as an Xmas present for the family

This pretty much sums up my feelings for last nights "Walking Dead".

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood ... n-the-well

Fucking AMC penny pinchers.

So, from the preview of next weeks episode and the scene they showed from next weeks episode on Talking Dead... is Merle back or is that just a hallucination by Daryl?

If there is a situation where 2 characters are alone talking, I just fast forward thru it. I can watch The Walking Dead now in about 20 minutes.

Stupid & Idiotic :

1. Using Glenn as Zombie bait when it was completely unnecessary

2. The "Hey, you believe in God, right? What? You're not sure? Why? Is it the whole zombie apocalypse thing" conversations

3. sneaking past the encampment with a knife to take a pregnancy test when you could just use a bathroom

???????

one less minor gripe was the boot knockin at the hardware store, there's plenty of area at the camp to get some, they just make dumb decisions

At least with Heros the drop off in quality was a combo of a desire to keep a fairly static cast and perhaps just a derth of ideas (which is a piss poor excuse considering the decades of comic book material they could have continued to mine), for Walking Dead, the drop off is due to AMC reducing the budget and forcing the writers to insert ever more unnecessary chatting to save money (it doesn't help that the one place they did spend fx money in last nights ep (fishing a zombie out of a well) was uber contrived and retarded.

I wonder if AMC's ad rate is significantly lower than other networks.

Don't know, but mostly its greed. They tried to pull the same shit on Mad Men and Breaking Bad but they didn't own those shows, so ultimately the creators more or less won the budget struggles because they could take their show to another network if AMC got too shitty with them (though the negotiations pissed off both creators and both shortly came up with timelines of when they would be ending their series'.) AMC owns walking dead AND its their biggest ratings hit, so they have decided to milk it of every penny possible, to the point that they runnoft the original show with their demands for lower budgets and longer seasons. The writer of the comics is still a producer, but once he quits, you know the show is going right into the shit tank.