During this scene I thought to myself - oh so that’s how so much stuff got trashed. Not people rummaging for usable supplies but people just being malicious childish jerks. See also the looters in episode 2 (I think it was episode 2).
You could be generous and see it as character development, the kids are now realizing none of it matters that family is never coming back to that house and it is a new world where none of the old shit matters anymore.
It is possible that the government knew the poop had hit the fan, but I am skeptical of their ability and willingness to order National Guard troops to simply “murder everyone in this zip code.” And I am skeptical of the ability and willingness of National Guard troops to do that. You’d have a mutiny, or at least a hell of a lot of deserters.
A line of dialogue would have been nice. “Well, everyone in this zip code is infected whether they know it or not, so we have to killum before they turn into homicidal monsters.” That’s all it would have taken. It doesn’t even have to be the truth; the implication would be that Tha Govvamint is trying to cut down on would be zombies, and we’re lying to the troops to avoid mutiny or worse.
For that matter, someone telling us all this would have been nice, no matter WHICH way it came out. I’d like to think we’ll get some sort of explanation or something in the finale. In the first season of TWD, we had two episodes in the CDC facility in Atlanta that was largely expository… but durned if it didn’t answer a hell of a lot of questions. It satisfied, and gave me the urge to see what came next.
As to looting… well, I’m sure there would be some. And certainly people breakin’ stuff. But when I compare the kids’ rather tame rampage to Woody Harrelson’s gleeful interlude of destruction in the gift shop in Zombieland, well… THAT was a scene that was not only entertaining, but it had a POINT. I’m still scratching my head about the stepkids. Boy could be bent out of shape because his old man is being a twit… Girl is looking for something to distract her from her certainly-dead boyfriend… so is this a bonding moment with them, or what? Otherwise, I can’t understand why this scene was in there, except to fill space.
…although now that I think about it, if we’re shooting civilians to cut down on zombies, why the hell are we locking up thousands of zombies in a convention center and then just walking away and leaving them to beat on the doors? They’re going to break those chains eventually…
[QUOTE=Master Wang-Ka]
Black Guy and Junkie Kid
[/QUOTE]
Prediction that this will be the next super hero franchise.
I liked this episode better than the previous few. It still is frustrating that it isn’t showing how things reached this point, but at least it explained better what the military is doing and why. I liked the new character (Strand) and think he’ll be around for a while - they wouldn’t go to the trouble of showing how good he is at manipulating people only to kill him off immediately.
A squad getting trapped in a library makes no sense (why would they be there in the first place?), but they needed some kind of battle to set up the lieutenant’s fragging. I think the grunts will be in open revolt against orders next week and most will simply bug out without trying to kill the survivors. The finale will be the survivors battling their way past mostly skin bags. Wishful thinking, probably.
Cattle bolt. But agreed. I’m sticking with Anton Chigurh when the apocalypse hits.
I’m wondering if next season will be NtJ’s redemption arc. The new black character certainly seems like Satan - testing, manipulating, will sell anything except insurance.
I’m having a hard time keeping all the players separate. Too much uniformity and the lighting is so dark. I have a hard time in general keeping track of TV characters, because I have a very bad memory for faces. If people aren’t different ethnicities, different hair colors and styles, they all look alike to me.
StG
I would agree, except that black folks DO not LAST on Walking Dead franchises. Except Morgan. And the season ain’t started yet.
I thought the National Guard was just screwing with Travis, they knew he wasn’t going to do shit. I knew he wasn’t going to shoot. Reality is a lot slower to set in for some people than others, and he is for sure in the first group.
Nick and Black Guy will make it for sure. Reality has set in for both of them, and they are both survivors.
I dunno. Nick seems to have no real interest in cowboying up or dealing with the facts.
On the other hand, they’ve gone to a hell of a lot of effort to make him a character; he’s got more airtime and exposure than they gave his sister. They’ve got to have SOME durn thing in mind for him… maybe we WILL have the adventures of Black Not Insurance Salesman and Junkie Boy…
…which could make for a real interesting season two arc…
If it happens, we won’t see it. We’re more likely to see Travis and his wife sipping tea at home while that happens downtown.
Rumor is there’s an English series underway that’s set in the Walking Dead-verse. Has anybody else heard this? I can’t find anything online except passing mentions.
ETA: Perhaps that should be “Rumour is”.
:smack: Learn something new every day. Thanks. I’ll be a hit at the next cocktail party.
Yes it is captive bolt pistol, not cattle bolt. There are different varieties as said at wiki, some.
This episode revealed the doctor KNOWS the mechanics, so presumably the military does too.
They need to do a fucking draft or something like it, the zombies go down with regular caliber guns the military must have access to an armory.
This kind of gets us back to “In a zombie apocalypse, how fast WOULD things fall apart?”
Plainly, in this scenario, the government had time to mobilize the National Guard, but after that, things got squishy and slippery pretty quickly. They do seem to be holding a pretty firm grip on this one suburb, but the entire rest of the area seems to have been wiped out, either by zombies or by military action of some sort.
We also know that power is being provided for a time each day, presumably by military personnel holding the power plant and distribution centers. We also see that the military personnel are getting overwhelmed, finishing with “this unit will bug out as of 0900 tomorrow.”
While we don’t know how much time passed between “Cobalt” and “Not Fade Away,” it can’t have been much more than two weeks since the beginning of the pilot episode. So… LA is officially toast, two weeks in. This would seem a lot more reasonable if we’d seen more zombie hordes, or even heard more radio chatter like the group getting eaten alive in the library last night…
Really?
So far, he’s been the quickest to react.
He was the first person we saw to point out that the dead are indeed dead, that there was a real problem, he didn’t waste a single second in getting his ass out of the church and away from his brain snacking girlfriend, he was smart enough to talk the nurse into doing something with his restraints and he ended up making a break for it, he not only gets away from gun-toting Calvin but he ends up killing him AND saving his mother and step-father’s life shortly afterwards because of his quick thinking, fast reaction and lack of denial about the situation; i.e no Calvin, are you sick? b.s.
I was iffy on the pilot but I have enjoyed each subsequent episode a little more than the one before it. The Sales guy felt a little Hammy to me. Every line was I AM ACTING but I am interested in his character at least. Curious to see where this goes in next week’s finale.
My prediction: HardNosed second wife dies (I am terrible with names, she is the Junkie’s Mom) leaving bleeding heart husband stuck learning to survive in a hard edged world by himself with both their children.
I’d like to see what it looks like for an infantry platoon to actually be wiped out by unintelligent monsters with no ranged weapons. Original-recipe TWD got around that by starting mid-apocalypse, and I guess FTWD won’t be bothering either. So, my usual complaint remains intact - the zombies just aren’t a serious enough threat to bring civilization to its knees.
And this is exactly why Strand wants him aboard when he makes his move…