Ah, the aftermath of last week’s bloodbath.
Just watched last week’s episode again (missed the first half last week) - looking forward to bloodbath aftermath now! 
Still no Merle.
Do they put something incredibly stupid in every episode just to yank my chain? That’s a hell of a regular microscope he’s got there - can see the DNA strands inside the viruses with it, eh? Other than suspending my disbelief over the Grand Canyon, good episode. Be interesting to see what the CDC guy can tell them (and us). I also noticed a lot of guns lying around - should have lots of firepower now.
A decent overall episode, a bit slower paced to make up for the frenetic ending of Vatos, the director seems to be good at pulling off fakeouts in this series, I fully expected one of the other survivors, Daryl, for example, to have to take out ZombieAmy as she reanimated
I fully expected Andrea to be overwhelmed with guilt/sadness over her sister’s death to be able to do the right thing and put down her newly-undead sister, fully expected her to be Purina AmyZombie Chow, but she did the right thing, eventually, took her too sodding long to do it though
I could be wrong but during the initial stages of Amy’s reanimation it almost seemed like a vestige of Amy was trapped inside her reanimating corpse and was struggling for control, but quickly lost to the reanimating agent (which based on the CDC footage appears to be viral in nature)
I still think leaving Jim behind to reanimate and join the ranks of the Walkers is tactically unsound, sure, one more Walker among the millions may be insignificant, numbers-wise, but tactically, they’ve just left a ticking time-bomb by the roadside ready to ambush any other survivors that happen by, they should have put him down, or at the very least, give him a revolver with one cartridge so he can put himself down… OTOH, would losing a valuable weapon just to put down someone destined to reanimate be worth the loss of the weapon?
The CDC ending was beyond predictable though, I just knew CDC-Man would open the security shutters at the last minute
I was considering giving this episode a “Meh” until the CDC stuff. I’m a little uneasy over how long it took those bodies to revive. Is eight to twelve hours until resurrection normal, or was she just an outlier? 
I know all zombie movies play with the time to suit the plot, but that seems like giving the characters way too long to take precautions with the corpse.
I should’ve gotten The Andromeda Strain reference sooner. :smack: At least now we have an idea of timeline. I watching the encore now, but I’m pretty sure CDC guy was implying that the government was aware of this phenomenon for about 4 months prior to the start of the pandemic (193-63= 130).
Anybody else catch how uncomfortable Daryl started looking when Carol kept crushing Ed’s skull over and over again way more times than she needed to? 
At this point, Teh Stoopid is in full force.
They’ve pretty much just making shit up now.
The CDC stuff will be the usual mix of bad science - I can see a mix of The Stand meets Andromeda Strain. Wildfire indeed.
The bench science was horrid - that isn’t how a BL-4 LAN works. You don’t hazard an entire sample that way, you don’t prepare slides that way. And indeed, electron microscopy is a bit harder than that to do, and that was a remarkably miniaturized scope.
And it looks like the CDC guy is doing a log, just like the dude from I am Legend.
Isn’t it time for splatter/bite gear? And maybe some suppressors for the weapons?
The Amy/Andrea scene was potent, but suicidally stupid.
CDC Guy seemed very Desmond-y to me but I liked the episode over all.
Last week I mentioned the lack of a Government Scientist Character. Now it looks like we have one.
I don’t think there was any part of Amy in that zombie. It was an animal just waking up. As soon as it could, it tried to feed.
I agree with you about bite/splatter gear. However, where do you think they are going to find a suppressor? Furthermore, the barrel of the gun needs to be threaded to accept a suppressor.
The science always kills me. First- out of date light microscope. I just got rid of exactly those models. Second- he was using it backwards!!! The arm faces away from you Third- you can’t see viruses with a light scope. Fourth- DNA doesn’t look like that even under an electron scope.
Argh. The right science is not so hard; why botch it???
Agreed about leaving Jim to re-animate; sorry about killing someone who’s still “alive,” but when you’re a few living people versus billions of hungry zombies, sometimes you gotta bend your scruples a little. First infected bite=quick bullet to the head.
Jesus, it’s like none of the people involved with this project watched Zombieland. 
(I was getting a very I Am Legend vibe, too.)
Besides which, a gun with a suppressor is still very very loud. I’m not sure it would make much of a difference for zombie-fighting purposes.
For those who are annoyed by the bad science here - I take your point, and understand that it’s frustrating to see lab equipment working very differently from it would in the real world. Zombies can follow made-up rules, but we want real-world objects to behave like real-world objects.
That being said - real science is slow, painstaking stuff. If you want to convey information quickly and efficiently to the audience, you just can’t show that - you need to take big liberties.
Agreed - don’t give us details to nitpick (especially if you’re not going to bother getting them right); just give us a broad outline and let us fill in stuff on our own.
Yeah, the whole “optical microscope that can magically see DNA” was annoying, putting infected test tissue in a petri dish right next to the reagents was quite stupid, if he was so concerned about keeping his sample safe, perhaps he should have taken some samples and returned the rest of the tissue to refrigeration
I have a similar optical microscope, but it only goes to 400X, but even at that mag level, it’s rather dim, it’s only really useful at 40X and 100X mag, I use it to check the sharpness of my knife edges, at 10X I can see the primary and secondary bevels, at 40X, the actual grain structure of the steel and the level of polish on the actual edge itself, the 400X mag is unusable as the objective touches the knife itself
No, it’s not the same as a medical microscope, but the micro the CDC guy was using was closer to my simple Meade optical micro than an electron micro, which is what he should have been using
Also, having a solvent/reagent that can eat through two layers of protective gear is not the thing to be clumsy with, especially when dealing with infected tissue, would have been better to prepare the tissue sample in one of those boxes with the robotic arms
Heh, the scene in question is playing right now, and the stupid is even worse than I thought…
not only is the microscope a stereo-view Meade style microscope, but the microscope lens turret HAS NO OBJECTIVE LENSES FITTED!!!, the microscope, as equipped, would be useless, and definitely not capable of “DNA-Level” resolution
I think his perspective could be very interesting. I also hope the previews are misleading and he doesn’t go the whole “evil scientist” route and try to infect them for research “for the greater good”. As for Amy; I don’t think there was a spark of her struggling for control. The zombie was just confused & disoriented as it was “waking up”.
My preference for zombie fiction is for the cause of the outbreak to be kept vauge and all theories basically left unconfirmed like in Romero’s films (World War Z being an exception). What I’d really like to see is a facility set up for doing research on the zombies themselves. Especially behavioral research. Like a better organized version of the facility in Day of the Dead or what’s implied to have gone on in WWZ. Of course that wouldn’t be feasible for a lone surviving scientist to operate; you’d need at least something on the level of a full military base.
I’m also going to assume BL-4 labs don’t have a self-destruct feature like that (or at least one triggered automatically instead of manually by staff). Can’t wait for the finale.
This CDC thing is bad. The comics haven’t done this as far as I’ve read. As I stated in the other thread. This level of science is simply not possible under these conditions.
I loved the Amy reanimation scene. I did not remember that from the comics. It was very good.
Yeah, Amy’s re-animation was really powerful. They can do things so great like that scene, then completely ham-hand the lab scene - that’s what frustrates me with this show.
Despite the microscope silliness (seriously people, it was two seconds out of the entire episode, get over it), this was a great episode. I loved Amy’s reanimation. It seems very rarely that you see some straight up getting reanimated in zombie movies. It’s always someone gets bit, dies, camera cuts away somehow, then they’re a zombie. Or the change from dead to zombie in less than a second.
I also liked the real reaction to someone getting bit. In every single zombie thread ever, people always says “Once they’re bit, they’re getting shot in the head.” All I can think is “No they aren’t.” Regardless of what you all say, I doubt anyone here would ever actually pull the trigger. It would be even harder in a group situation.
This bit seems somewhat plausible to me because of the science guy’s mental state - spending months at a time alone in a locked-down bunker “never seeing the sun”, on the verge of suicide. In such a condition, I can see him getting careless, forgetful, and sloppy about proper procedures - especially with no one else around to check out his work.
The whole episode I felt was a bit “meh.” I really want to like this show, but I just don’t feel like the storyline is going anywhere. Nor have the characters shown any real development. They are just stock “apocalypse survivor” characters for the most part. I can’t feel too much empathy for them, or interest in their fates. I guess I’ll tune in next week, since it’s the last episode for this season, but I don’t imagine missing it, or waiting for it to return next year.
I do think they need a little more plot; maybe next season they’ll have one.