Yeah, the add-on characters are just poorly written. They are unadorned evil. Nobody is like that in real life. Even people with vile aspects to their personalities tend to have some redeeming qualities.
Shane is a good example of a more complex (and therefore more realistic) character.
Nope, the guys are free to never shave again either. There’s gotta be SOME upside to the zombie apocalypse (no getting up early to go to your slave-wage job, no Christmas commercials, and no one has to shave any more).
As much as I’m enjoying the show, I have to agree regarding the cardboard evil characters. Merle could turn out to have some depth - the opening scene was really well done, and Michael Rooker is great - but the brother and the wife beater are just boring and insulting to our intelligence.
I will slightly forgive the wife beater, because he presented an opportunity for Shane to do something interesting. I really liked the growing emotional storm between him and Lori. First she thinks Rick’s a zombie, then she’s relieved/scared/guilty/sad/grateful. Then the guilt turns into anger and blaming behavior. That gets unloaded on Shane, and then someone picks the absolute worst time to set him off and give him an excuse for letting out all his anger and turmoil on someone’s face. And at first when he intervenes, he’s a rescuer. But as he nearly beats the guy to death, the women who he was rescuing start to get scared. All this is real stuff - how human being behave. Racist redneck idiots who refer to pop culture from a decade before they were born, not so much.
As for the Merle hand issue - assuming sawing metal wasn’t an option, why wouldn’t he cut off his thumb or break his hand?
He was handcuffed to a rusty piece of 1/4"-20 all-thread. You can hack saw through that stuff with the most worn out blade in about 30 seconds, 20 if you are in a hurry. The writers need to step it up a notch.
I take the point of enjoying the show and not looking for ways to pick holes in it, but I have to agree with this. I have only a passing acquaintance with hacksaws and sawing metal, and I could see that that pipe would have been a matter of minutes to saw through. We’re watching the show; we’re more than willing to go along with things, but it’s a two-way street; you can’t just throw anything out there and hope your audience has their brains turned completely off.
I should say, I’m answering a criticism from earlier in the thread, not criticizing you, UncleRojelio.
I hear ya, Cat Whisperer. It’s a valid complaint, but I’ll again point out that we didn’t get shown the scene, so we don’t yet know what happened. I don’t think we will be shown though.
Yeah, true enough. Okay, I put my irritation on hold until next Sunday. 
(Which isn’t accurate - my irritation is already long past.)
On the other hand, it completely plausible for any particular character in the show to have his brains turned completely off, especially someone who is a stupid, high, panicked, and hallucinating.
Any idea what Merle was rambling about when he was sitting there out of his head? It was interesting to see the sudden onset of fear when he came back to his senses and realized his predicament. Especially since the geeks hadn’t started howling at the door yet.
I have not re-watched it but it seemed to be a story about him striking a senior officer when in the military that landed him in the brig. He ends it with a comment that it was all worth it. I’ll be re-watching sometime tonight or tomorrow and see if I can pick up more detail.
I loved it and it gave me and my husband the opportunity to promise each other that if there’s a zombie apocalypse and one thinks the other is dead and sleeps with someone that it should be the second thing after I love you that you tell the person after reuniting, and all will be forgiven.
But Baby! The streets were dead and everything was so quiet that I thought it was the Zombie Apolcalypse! Honest! I swear!
I did like after they beat the deer eating zombie, Mr. Crossbow Redneck was derisive about how they didn’t know to kill the brain. :rolleyes:
This show really keeps me on the edge of my seat. There’s something about the zombie movie format that keeps telling me “They’re not wary and they’re relaxed, and someone’s going to get the startling music and a zombie jumping at their face. I just know it!” When Rick was splashing in the quarry pond I was hoping one wouldn’t come staggering out of the water, or grab him from below. There’s lots of moments like that for me, it keeps it intense.
We saw Mr. Wife-Beater showing his true colors in the previous episode. He’s obviously a class A bully who enjoys pushing the weak around. When he butted heads with Rick about the fire (which sounded like a tired argument they’ve had many times) he told his wife to dig the wood out of the fire. She looked like a scared chihuahua. I was glad Rick beat the shit out of him. He really needed a wakeup call that society isn’t going to let him get away with his bullshit any more.
I’ve never read the comics, so I’m not worried about what was in them and what wasn’t. I think as long as they keep with the spirit of what’s going on so far it’ll do well.
Chimera, I lol’d.
That was Shane. Rick’s the main character.
I’d like to believe you this time.
My first thought was “Just tell him! Thought you were dead, zombie apocalypse and all, different rules.”
I may be proven wrong of course, but I don’t think Shane is an asshole. I think he had no reason to believe that Rick would survive, and every reason to believe that going in for him (and trying to drag his comatose ass out) would be suicide. I think he told her he was dead because it was the only way to get her moving towards safety.
Oh, we came up with the arbitrary amount of time elapsed from thinking your spouse is dead and having sex with someone else should be no less than 5 days.
Did nobody else notice?
When Glenn was introduced I remember thinking he was a dead ringer for an older Short Round from the Indiana Jones flick Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Young asian guy, baseball cap, adept sidekick.
In Tell it to the Frogs, when they pull up back into Atlanta, Glenn announces: “We walk from here” which was a memorable quote from Temple of Doom.
I got a smile from that.
I’m not sure why you’re assuming that the wife-beating was a result of the apocalypse. Her reactions to things are textbook “victim of long-term domestic abuse.”
Regardless, I agree with what you’re saying about the stereotype characters. There’s nothing wrong with using some stock characters. Sometimes that’s necessary to keep the story moving along, but this is getting ridiculous.
Exactly.
The fact that we’re still pondering the timeline of how long Rick was in a coma and how long he was without care demonstrates that this show, in spite of it’s cool elements, has been really sloppy in its storytelling. We should have been given some explanation of how that all worked. It wouldn’t have even had to have been a GOOD explanation. Just enough that we could say “oh, okay” and move on.
This show held great promise. It’s fading fast.
Oh. And Shane is totally hot. There. I said it. He can sneak up on me in the woods any time.
Our limit is at least a year.
At least.