What was that old Facebook meme? Or was it a photoshopped poster from Cracked.com?
Showed one of the first season ads for WD, but with the title altered to “LOTS OF PEOPLE ARGUING and sometimes zombies show up.”
I do agree that skipping ahead nine days wasn’t the best move. We did that already with WD, and Rick’s month long coma. The whole point of this was to show what happens in the beginning of a zombie apocalypse, and they introduce a time skip only a few episodes in.
I wonder: what, they couldn’t think of anything interesting to show during that nine day period? Or do we feel we need to give our survivors time to stew a bit before the military turns rapey?
A topic of conversation in my house has been “How long does an apocalypse need to go on before Joe Accountant and Bob Constructionworker begin shooting the neighbors, eating dog, and waxing their hair into multicolored mohawks?”
Confusion, paranoia, attempts to figure out what is going on.
I wanted to see society fall because no one knows what to do or what is going on, I wanted to see families and authorities try to restrain and isolate zombies because they think they can be cured and don’t know they are dead. PSAs on TV that if you encounter a violent infected person call 911 immediately, do not attempt to contain them yourself.
I wanted to see the OMG realization that these infected have no pulse, they are dead and can’t be cured. But only after attempts at this made the outbreak worse.
I wanted to see med camps set up for bite victims try desperately to pump them full of antibiotics to treat the infection, confusion and paranoia about what is even causing the turn to zombies. And see this fail eventually and make it worse.
I wanted to see people hiding bites, I wanted to see runs on stores, see something like the real footage from inside the walmart in NO after Katrina.
I wanted to see things like everyone paranoid about getting infected, is it spread by a sneeze? By touch? WHAT?! Wanted to see confused news reports, CNN going 24/7 about the rabies disease spreading. Paranoid neighbors sharing info, my cousin emailed me a story on a website that says you need to wipe everything down with a bleach solution.
And only after the military had seen the failures of treating the dead, treating bite victims with limited resources, had seen all these fail spectacularly then they take a hard line approach but even they don’t know the mechanics of this and fuck up and piss off the civilians with their hard line approach.
Then someone dies of natural causes totally isolated and also turns, the characters ask how? So it is the flu!
We got none of this Fear.
I think the show runners wanted to see what it would be like for a regular family during the ZA, and they wouldn’t be witness to most of that stuff except through news and second hand accounts. They don’t want to make a show about people watching TV and talking about what they read on the Internet. They could at least have had one news report and maybe showed them unable to get service soon after the blackouts.
I think they have been looking at this as telling a story that happens during the opening days of the zombie apocalypse, rather than depicting the beginning of the ZA. At this point they are more interested in apocalypse than zombie. It could just as easily be The Day After. Nukes are certainly a lot simpler. Just a couple of explosions and you are done, no need for crowds of extras in makeup.
And it would have been easy to do in the context of a family by more intelligently assigning jobs to the characters, make the mom a doctor or nurse or EMT. So we see the very start from her perspective.
Travis could go to grab supplies at a grocery or walmart, lines are spreading to the back of the store. The power flickers or the POS system crashes and customers riot and just push carts out, cops are too busy responding to violent infected calls.
The daughter is old enough to have a job that gives her an insight into this.
Have the TV on in the background in the house scenes, show them talking to their neighbors, hell have a radio playing in the car.
I would have preferred a slower burn to get to “they’re shooting everyone” because they don’t know who is infected or who will turn or even how they turn. Rick’s group found out late that everyone turns on death, these characters could find out earlier through a terminally ill neighbor but still be confused because she could have had that flu.
Was that the io9 review? I read that yesterday. Terribly written review, by a writer who clearly hasn’t paid attention to the show he reviewing. The comments section is a pile-on of people ripping him to shreds.
My only real complaint about the episode has already been voiced. The “Army turns into evil death squad, after everything falls apart” trope is tired. I hope they turn that on it’s head and surprise us with the soldiers actually trying to save everyone; even if they fail miserably.
Has it been stated, for sure, that the folks inside the safe zone can’t leave at all? Are they caged in completely, or is that fence just pointed at LA, to keep the Zs from heading that direction?
Water pumps usually have batteries or generators, but they fail 24-48 hours after the power fails so no water pressure no water when you turn on a tap.
LA has been a week without power, its 99% zombies at this point due to dehydration assuming everyone had the disaster smarts of our main characters.
No clue about the origin or veracity of this but supposedly a show runner said the people they took are those in danger of dying, Nick due to relapse and fatal OD, Abuelita because her foot is inevitably going to kill her unless amputated, Beardy Guy due to suicide risk, and terminally ill guy for obvious reasons.
I meant that inevitable point in any zombie apocalypse scenario where the military decides to scrape the poor civilians off their shoes… the point I mentioned earlier where civilized people suddenly decide to take up arms and go all Mad Max. We have already seen a point in the last episode where a soldier, snuggling up with a civilian (instead of being on patrol like he’uz supposed to), made his civilian snugglebunny a bit nervous.
When one crosses the Mad Max threshold, in movies of this sort, the individual in question quits taking no for an answer. But this is merely the literal meaning of “rapey.” In one of George Romero’s later zombie films, we have a scene where a military detachment gone rogue robs our protagonists… but doesn’t kill them or leave them COMPLETELY helpless. In my book this is more interesting than the usual “kill them all” procedure. And note also that this is a detachment of soldiers whose unit has pretty much been slaughtered, if I remember correctly. They’re on their own now.
I’m taking the trope at face value on the basis of the golf scene in this episode. The entire purpose of the scene seemed to be to demonstrate that our CO doesn’t much care about the civilians, that he is a bit of a jerk, and that he is interested ONLY in his orders. This ain’t the guy you want in charge when the word comes down to fire on the crowd. And between the golf scene and Ruben Blades’ line about “happening quickly,” it seems likely that when the Mad Max threshold arrives, “rapey” will be the best we can expect.
You know, grude, you’re really making it difficult to continue giving the writers the benefit of the doubt when you outline such clearly better story ideas.
…hey, I’ve been wrong before. I was sure that in this episode, the daughter would sneak out to her boyfriend’s place and be set upon by him and his zombified parents, and it would be up to her normally boring family to save her… or she becomes the first main cast casualty.
I hated this episode. From the rare ratcheting up of tension from the end of the last episode, we come to this one which squanders everything that has been built up. I’m surprised this show is put on by the same crew as the other - do they really think the audience wants to watch a family drama absent zombies? And there were zero zombies this episode.
Jogging, lounging in the pool, literally painting the walls - that’s totally compelling TV! I find it inconceivable that a large group of people in this scenario there wouldn’t be more unrest.
