Given that they are spending most of this season on the farm, I think that they would gladly spend all of the next in the prison. Lots of time with easy indoor studio sets, rather than difficult, expensive location shoots.
Something that I liked about the comic was the ever present danger. Every time they found a place that looked like it might make a safe settlement, it turned out to be a false hope. The gated community had zombies in the basements, the idyllic farm had THE BARN. They were faced with the reality that to survive they would have to spend the rest of their lives on the move. Then they found the prison, and it looked like a place where they really could live in safety permanently (which they would have, if not for the General).
With the current pace of the show, it would be hard to really get that feeling of diaspora. They are already too comfortable, and rightly so because zombies seem to be an occasional, easily handled nuisance, and not an ever present threat of extinction.
I think they are capturing the ever-present danger same as the comic book did, only the producers seem to be less likely to kill off recurring characters than Kirkland was/is. Remember at the prison, they lived with a horde of zombies outside the gate, and almost didn’t seem to mind (though why those zombies didn’t attack the general before he ran down the fence was, IMO, a gaping plot hole - they were as much a defense for the prison as anything else). The zombies are a threat, but only in groups and when catching the characters unaware. Dale was bitten simply because he was slacking off because they got so used to the zombie threat, he let his awareness down.
You’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, you stop on a highway chocablock with abandoned cars, which experience has taught you often has Zs around…
So what do you do ?
You ALL get out of the van, including the children, though you DO tell them to keep in sight.
Which doesn’t mean very much as the adults are leisurely wandering around chatting, and not exactly keeping a sharp watch out.
Oh I think I’ll just open up this car, oh theres a butterfly !
Those who actually have weapons frequently put them down and rest them against things, and have no idea about looking all of around them as they seem to imagine any Zs will approach them from the direction that they happen to be looking in between chats.
The girls mother should be locked up for serious child neglect, and the rest of them barring the hillbilly and the deputy should die as they don’t deserve to live !
And that goes for the vet/farmer.
And the woman threatening suicide all of the time !
Just bugger off and do it you loser.
Also the "sacraficial "victim at the med centre got what he was asking for, in the long run an idiot like him armed with a weapon would probably end up killing more people then the zombies.
But other then that I have no strong opinions on the programme as I am far too old and mature to take it seriously.
It’s really interesting and also really frustrating to watch the show and wonder what they are going to use from the books and what they are going to change. Now I’m glad that I’ve never read the **Dexter **books, or the Sookie Stackhouse novels, and that I waited until after watching Game of Thrones to read the book.
Heh, in one of the recent episode threads, someone was saying how Andrea would never, ever sleep with Dale. I really had to fight the urge to say, “Well, in the books…”
So in this latest episode Shane catches Carl with the gun. Foreshadowing, maybe? I like how they’ve kept Shane around longer than the books, and I won’t mind if he sticks around for a lot longer because he’s become one of the most interesting characters on the show, but I keep wondering if the show writers (including Kirkman) are willing to go there with TV Carl. Book Carl is becoming a regular little psychopath.
Also, in all the recent discussion about Lori’s pregnancy, some seem to be accusing the TV show of taking an anti-abortion slant, or at least “wussing out” by not having Lori abort the baby. And I’m thinking, “Wow, if you only knew what happens to that baby in the books.”
And that is exactly why I am reading this thread. I thought Dale’s feelings toward Andrea were fatherly but as I read the spoilers, well, I can’t wait to see the next episode, with Sofia the zed coming out of that barn.
I want her own mom to kill her but it appears that Jack will.
Merle doesn’t have the charisma to become the Governor, however I can definitely see him showing up as the Governor’s chief henchman. Assuming they ever actually reach the prison, I can’t see them even getting to the Governor before season 4.
I agree, unless they start to compress the time scale on the show more. I could see them maybe arriving at the prison at the very end of this season (or maybe not). If they did, there would be plenty of opportunities for a tense, dramatic season finale, what with the murders and the walkers and all that.
I don’t see them setting up in the prison at all. I think they can twist the storyline and make the farmhouse a secure location. I think a prison setting would be extremely expensive to pull off.