Somebody returns with reports of horrific stuff outside of town, and a bunch of other stuff happens, with the usual wonky science, I assume.
Still with me?
I’m still here. I’m not expecting Shakespeare. I still find it enjoyable to watch. I probably will catch it on the DVR in a few days.
Tonight’s episode was Shakespeare, compared to what we’ve seen so far.
Did adding James Remarr and giving Mary the night off make the difference? (Funny how Jake knew that and Eric didn’t.)
The only nitpick I have relates to Mayor Dad’s illness. Can you become “septic” from too many antibiotics?
This week was okay…next week looks FINALLY kick ass. At least we found out for sure that the nukes were planted…and that Hawkins knew the targets. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been surprised that NY survived.
Good point.
And stumbling through the other episodes was almost made worthwhile:
“Go. Go now.”
Also, remember that drum Hawkins was walling up in his basement?
Betcha it was the nuke destined for Topeka.
Good point. I had forgotten that.
I agree, they were in danger of making a good show this week. I too was skeptical about the sepsis diagnosis, but from a brief web perusal it seems sepsis is just a severe reaction to bacterial infection. So if the flu became pneumonia or something, I guess that might be feasible.
I liked the conversation between Hawkins and his wife. And I always like James Remar.
However, I thought it was amusing that for the first few minutes of the show (at least until the opening credit), there was absolutely no indication that anything was wrong. It looked like a regular Halloween in a regular small town, not late October on the prairie after a massive nuclear attack.
I did too, but I was surprised the daughter revealed that mom had a boyfriend. Hawkins gave the wrong answer to “Why did you come back for me?” Shoulda been “Because I love you”, not “Because you’re my wife.” I don’t sense any affection there.
I was also surprised that they have moonshine at Mary’s bar already. Doesn’t it take a long time to make it? But at least they acknowledged that supplies are running out.
Mayor Dad regaining conciousness at the last moment was both predictable and a cop-out, if the writers really wanted to make this a good drama and not just a post-apocolyptic soap opera (which it is rapidly becoming) they shouldn’t telegraph all the plot points so obviously, they should have had Mayor Dad succumb to his illness and reanimate as a Radioacive Zombie, have Mayor Mom and Mayor Son hide him in the basement and feed him the brains of the less intelligent population (Emily and Snotty Teenage Bratty Girl)…
You know that Jake was going to get his car back (WOO!! Plymouth RoadRunner rises again, nothin’ like good ol’ Mopar Muscle to get you through the end of the world), that Emily was going to talk with whasisname, the criminal guy, and get them the needed supplies at the last minute, almost every “plot twist” was tepid and predictable
As has been the case all along, the only reason to watch is the Hawkins plotline, now we know that the bombs were ground-based devices, a few problems though…
First, a ground based device will create a lot more fallout than an airburst, so there should have been SOME radioactivity that made it from Denver in “Fallout”
Second, the mushroom cloud seen in the premiere certainly did not look like a 20 KILOton explosion, if distances between Denver and Jericho are accurate as stated, a 20K mushroom cloud would not be as visible as it was in the premiere, the cloud seen in that episode looked more like one produced by a device in the MEGAton range…
Third, using pumpkins as jack-o-lanterns seems very wasteful after the country has SUFFERED NUCLEAR ATTACKS and the town is dealing with a limited supply of resources, the pumpkins should be used as a food source, not decorations, at least Mayor Mom addressed this fact at the end of the show in her house "we use all parts of the pumpkin)
Fourth, the “criminals in charge of the warehouse” angle allows the writers a large amount of latitude in resolving any supplies related problems, as they can simply have “Con*Mart” (for lack of a better term) rush them out the supplies they need (at “Post-Apocolyptic Low Prices, Always…”)
“Oh No, Mayor Dad’s become a Radioactive Zombie, quick Jake, run over to Con*Mart and trade this pile of corn for some “Acme Zombie-B-Gon” meds, quickly please, your father’s moaning for BRAAAIIINNNS, and all we have to feed him right now is Emily, a rather unsatisfying meal…”
After the silly “town comes to save the cornfield” ending last week, I crossed this show off. I watched about 30 minutes of last night’s show and realized I made the right decision. This is a standard soap opera set in a post-apocalypse American small town. In fact, I’ll wager that was the one sentence pitch to the CBS suits. Nothing new or imaginative to see here. Move along. Buy more cereal.
How does it come to pass that? It blows a hole in the ground and throws more material into the atmosphere?
I don’t think we can concretely conclude this. It would be surprising to anyone to learn that a lot of major cities went nuked, but not NY.
On the plus side, it seems like they’re getting EMP right, +/-. That’s probably the first technical accuracy.
I really don’t like the “cruel superficial bitch actually has a heart of gold” predictable cliche. You know, sometimes people who are cruel to others and obsessed with stupid shit aren’t secretly good, decent people. They’re usually bad. I don’t like the mandatory redemption cliche.
It was… pretty alright. The Bad Guy’s Band Of Criminals are the sort of thing that should be a large factor in post-apocalyptic fiction - certainly roving bands of hostile people are going to be a common threat. But I suspect they might just turn into peaceful get-stuff-when-we-need-it gophers.
The acting mayor son dude made a bad decision in regards to the initial deal between the town and the Bad Dude. Just because a guy has a criminal history doesn’t mean he doesn’t value his word. They should’ve tried to make the deal - with some experienced hunters with rifles overlooking the meeting place in case it’s some sort of ambush. Giving up a prisoner is a trivial thing to do for all that food - and it could’ve created good will between the groups. Being indignantly stubborn is a recipe for failure - there’s no chance for the deal to succeed, and you set up hostility.
Yep, basically a groundburst throws a lot more crap into the air and irradiates it, an airburst detonates above ground level, so you get the fireball of the explosion, the “cap” of the mushroom cloud, the “stem” develops as stuff is pulled up off the ground into the fireball, it generally pulls up less detritus than a groundburst
Pretty much, yes. The particles are primarily what carry the radiation. Fewer kicked up particles, less fallout.
Which reminds me - the way they inserted the nukes seems like a terrorist-based plan, or at least a plan from a nation that lacks ICBMs. What, then, caused the EMP? Such a group or nation wouldn’t have the capability to launch nukes into orbits.
Is another country, opportunistically, striking at the US? I’m not sure how that would fly with the rest of the world. Did other countries perhaps disagree with who the US launched retaliatory nukes at, and therefore launched against them?
I’m not sure if septic is the correct term to use, but people can probably build up some sort of toxic levels with them. My dad used to get allergic reactions to almost all antibiotics and even to Alzheimer’s meds after a while.
Maybe someone else with a bit more medical knowledge can comment on the “septic” issue.