This advice, frankly, bugs the shit out of me. Would a mystery reader say the same if during the big reveal things happen that were not possible? “The butler did it in the library with a candlestick!”. Wait a sec…wasn’t the butler in Hawaii at the time??? Relax dude…it’s just a story.
If you don’t expect it to happen in, for example, mystery stories…why is it ok in science fiction?
:shrug:
If you want to get worked up about it be my guest. But let’s face facts: there’s no such thing as a believable zombie apocalypse. Fretting about that is like fretting about the science of Dracula, or Frankenstein’s monster.
I dunno if it was just me, but Sophia had a big obvious (to me) wound on her shoulder that certainly looked like something had bitten her and torn a big chunk of skin off at the very least. I assume that she was bitten, got loose, hid in the house and then expired, wandered into the swampy part of the river and was caught by Otis.
Uh, doesn’t that refer to the *actual *walking dead, i.e. the walkers, the zombies?
It’s unfortunate that the writers seem to need to have two characters representing the extreme ends of… I don’t know- humanity? Sense? Reason?
Rick, at the core, is a good person who wants to do what’s right, but some of his decisions are incredibly naive, if not outright dangerous. Five days after a child goes missing in the woods, he risks losing adult fighters by sending them out on what he HAD to know was a lost cause. (Yes, they volunteered, but they look to Rick for direction.)
Shane, at the core, is… well, was a good person, and in his mind, wants to do what’s right, but some of his decisions are incredibly dangerous. He is one step away from killing anyone who he thinks might threaten the lives of the group (which is to say, the lives of himself and Lori). Yet, I think in the light of cold, hard logic, I can side with many of the decisions he’s made. Trying to get Rick to make a decision about Sophia- admitting his choices were endangering the group-was spot on. The group almost lost Darryl because of Rick’s inability to put the group before his fear of failure. And shooting Otis? That was pretty realistic, and something I think any one of them would have (or at least, if they were in that situation, should have) done.
I understand the writers are using Shane as a villain-esque character, but it makes his reasoning hard to side with, and by making Rick too “good”, it makes me roll my eyes at some of his leadership choices.
It’s almost like there’s two meanings.
Again, I have to express my amazement that so many people are willing to excuse Shane’s murder of Otis. It would have been just as easy for Shane to shoot himself in the leg or to run into the zombies.
I like that Shane isn’t a cartoon villain. He genuinely tried to save Rick during the hospital evacuation, he took care of Lori and Carl and he put his neck on the line to save Carl after he was shot.
I read in an interview that the writers of the episode are calling the end sequence “Barnegeddon” I like it.
[QUOTE=Odesio]
Again, I have to express my amazement that so many people are willing to excuse Shane’s murder of Otis. It would have been just as easy for Shane to shoot himself in the leg or to run into the zombies.
[/QUOTE]
Seriously? You are amazed? You really think Shane sacrificing himself was a better choice? Would that be yours? I really doubt it, and that’s no slam.
[ol]
[li]Shane is younger, fitter and stronger, making him MUCH more likely to actually make it back than Otis[/li][li]It was Otis’ fault they were there in the first place[/li][li]Shane wants to go on living.[/li][/ol]
It was a desperate decision made in a split second; the only possibility for success meant someone had to be sacrificed. Sacrificing himself so the out of shape guy who shot the kid in the first place could probably fail anyway would be a really bad decision.
I’m gonna say something about Shane which I didn’t notice until after several episodes, and is now really distracting. Not an actual spoiler, but a courtesy for the easily distracted:
Shane’s earlobes are enormous. I pretty much can’t concentrate on what he says anytime there is closeup of him.
Nope, I saw it too. She could have also fallen down the ravine like Daryl did and one of those walkers bit her, she escaped up the creek and was captured.
I thought they’d painted the picture pretty clearly. After hiding in that house that Daryl found the first night she was lost, Sophia fell off the same cliff that Daryl did and died a relatively quick and painless death, which is why the doll was right there. Then she came back as a zombie and wandered onto the farm, where Otis corraled her into the barn.
This requires the assumption that anyone who dies becomes a zombie, but they pretty well confirmed that in-show when Rick was surprised to find out Lorie was pregnant. That means the CDC guy didn’t tell Rick his wife was pregnant, so the only real cliff-hanger left for him to tell Rick in that whispered exchange is that the whole world is already infected.
Why is everyone going on saying this? We saw a lot of dead bodies in the cars early this season, which fully disproves that theory.
Because if you get too nitpicky about any SF, you will end up with precious little left to enjoy. Zombies as portrayed in popular media are impossible creatures. Their shelf life would be extremely short as all sorts of biological issues took hold. A true, world-wide Z-event would likely only last a few months at most, with some sporadic outbreak clean up for about a year after.
Shane’s haircut doesn’t do him any favors - that, and a scene of him in overalls, and he looks straight out of “Deliverance”.
Carl wearing daddy’s hat looks like The Beaver in “Leave It To Beaver”. Giving him a gun? An old-fashioned cap pistol, to play cowboys and Indians, would be more likely!
Exactly so. 28 Days Later came the closest to having scientifically believable zombie-like creatures, and it only did so by having the creatures not actually be zombies.
(Even 28 Days Later had scientifically incredible aspects, like the 10-second incubation period, for example. Didn’t keep me from enjoying the movie.)
Agree mostly, but I think a lot of people (myself included) get distracted if such a critical point is not addressed and dismissed early on. The writers can make up whatever specific rules/facts/assumptions they want for the movie/tv show/book, and I’ll accept it and go with it. But when they leave in apparent contradictions – i.e., the zombies attack and devour their victims, people become zombies when bitten, but most of the zombies are left relatively intact – it just becomes an unnecessary distraction.
I’m not seeking any dedication to reality in a zombie show, but a lot of this distraction could be avoided if they just let us know the parameters of their zombie world.
(Then I’d only be left with that distraction about Shane. Yeah, I noticed and can’t stop noticing.)
I think that there is a difference between being nitpicky about the biological nature of zombies (which I agree we should just accept) and about whether what happens is realistic once we accept the supernatural nature of zombies ( Which I think is fair game for nitpicking.)
Same goes for any show. It can set up supernatural rules however it likes, but those rules should be consistent and the consequences derived realistically as good as possible.
I never noticed that. Now it’s gonna bug me because it seems like they stole it from Dead Man Walking.
Or yeah, what Dingbang said slightly before me.
Am I the only one that thinks Shane isn’t being the bad guy? The only time he was unambiguously bad was when he got all rapey at the CDC (and even then, not to justify it, but it was a tough emotional situation for him and not just deciding HEY IT’S BITCH RAPIN TIME), and that’s all I can remember. With Otis, he was probably right that one of them had to die or both of them, and Carl, would. Tough call but it probably brought about the greatest good possible out of that situation.
He’s taking matters into his own hand and being angry and righteous, true, but in this thread we’re all talking about how the characters are stupid and passing around the idiot ball and it’s a miracle they’ve survived. Well, Shane is the guy getting fed up and saying “ok, we need to stop being stupid and sentimental and get real about surviving”, and he’s somehow the bad guy for it? It seems like he should be the hero of all the people who think the group is acting stupidly.
He’s right. Indulging a crazy old man into a major security hazard is stupid. I realize the tough balancing act Rick is trying to pull off, and I’m not saying his view of appreciating old real-world values like property is a bad thing necesarily - but I think the group is probably right after exhausting all reasonable possibilities for cooperation to take the land by force. Herschel is trying to choose a sentimental attachment to a bunch of zombies over the chance to help real live human beings, and send them off to their deaths. It might seem honorable to respect his decision, but practically, he very well might be sending them off to their death for no good reason. At that point practical matters should probably trump honorable sentiment, and the group should take charge for the sake of their own survival. Not that they have to kill or harm the farm group in any way - just create a mutually beneficial living situation by force.