Yes, this right here! At the end of S3, none of it meant anything. No lessons were learned by the group. No advancement in character development. Honestly, with what was just posted about The Governor returning in S4 it seems a fair conclusion that there was also no advancement of the plot line. We will be right back to Rick vs. The Governor next season.
Ah well, at least Darryl kicked some ass this season and the show didn’t kill him off.
I thought the grizzled, road-tested nature of our group was going to be a central theme in resolving this season’s plot. Or rather, I think it’s obvious it should’ve been - to say that I thought it would be suggests that I give the writers a tiny bit of credit when really they’ve always been a complete thematic mess.
Our group was on the road, moving from place to place, becoming cold, efficient killers, strung out by living on the edge for so long. In contrast, woodbury was a little remnant of civilization with backyard bbq parties in the summer (the bloodthirsty staged fights by night again was a total thematic blunder in this regard) with only a small cadre of hardened vets to do their dirty work.
So did that ultimately play much of a role in the resolution of the conflict this season? Was it even meant to be showcased thematically? No, not really.
I’m actually often somewhat oblivious to subtext and themes and all the literature stuff, so if something strikes me as transparent or meaningless or aimless like that, that means it must have no depth whatsoever.
It’s just… such a wasted opportunity. The production values and practical effects are great for TV. The subject matter is great. This could be a great show. Instead it’s awful writing, awful dialogue, mixed acting, and a total waste of the premise.
Well, looking forward to changing showrunners again.
So why didn’t he say that? You guys are excusing Carl’s action because you think the other kid looked like he wasn’t about to surrender. Carl didn’t mention any of that, so that wasn’t what he was thinking.
What does this have to do with anything?
No one is “excusing” his actions. They could’ve shown Carl shooting an unarmed man if they wanted the audience and the other characters to react as if he actually did that. Instead they showed him a situation that was, at best, ambiguous, but most likely he shot a guy who was thinking over trying to shoot him.
Carl was actually right in both regards - he was right to shoot the guy, and he was right that mercy at the wrong time had given them nothing but trouble. Because he decided to make one point there doesn’t necesarily mean that he didn’t have thoughts on the other.
This is going to be like Shane all over again, isn’t it? Where he’s actually right, but the show has decided that being an indecisive dipshit or making the wrong decisions is the “right” thing, and the token character who actually has his shit together is going to be viewed as evil or crazy.
I was yelling, “do it Carl” at that point. To me the scene was obviously meant to show just how pragmatic, not sociopathic, Carl had become and I couldn’t have been more surprised and disappointed when both Hershel and Rick had to bust his chops about it. Either there is something wrong with Hershel or the director of the show got his cuts mixed up.
This show is so close to being great. I’ve forgiven so much but how much longer can I go on?
God, I was SO HAPPY to see Andrea die. I wish it would have been a bit less pointless, but at least she’s dead. Overall I think it was a pretty good episode but I have to agree I was pissed that there was no ultimate showdown with the Governor. It was so anticlimactic. But one thing that really annoyed the hell out of me. Was after the Governor had gunned down all those people, Martinez and the black guy who’s name I can’t remember, just stood there. I was yelling at them to just SHOOT him. And then they get into the car with him? Wtf. It makes no sense.
After he lost his temper, the Governor is walking around shooting bodies, and the woman lying underneath a body goes unnoticed. Was the Governor making sure that they were dead, or that they would not become walkers?
That he wanted to get his revenge on - more than anything - he was angry/mad, he wanted to shoot stuff and show he could protect from the living as well as the dead.
The Governer as a series reg next year ? bored now - moving on.
I don’t think we can trust any character dialog to represent what the character was thinking (or more accurately, what the writer thinks the character was thinking). We’ve just been fed too many moments where manufactured drama is dependent on a character not relating useful information. Heck, we’ve been mocking the Michonne character for being tight-lipped, even when a brain-damaged sea-slug could tell that a bit of explanation is strongly in the character’s self-interest. So Carl didn’t say the right thing at the right time? Big deal. It’s like the fiftieth such occurrence on this show.
By the way, I support Carl’s decision 100%. To me, it was the only satisfying moment of the entire episode (and in fact a moment like this for Carl has been overdue for at least 1.5 seasons). Everything else was just… stupid.
This show has demonstrated quite clearly a willingness to have characters become inexplicably mute in order to facilitate dramatic tension instead of sharing relevant information in any way that makes sense.
Michonne could have undone lots of the drama this season by talking directly to Andrea and giving her information that would have changed Andrea’s opinion of Woodbury and the Governor.
The same with the rest of the group and Andrea, and vice versa.
Also, other characters discussion of the sexual assault incident.
It’s totally in the shows history for Carl to not make clear some key facts that would reduce the tension and concern that Rick has.
It’s just lazy/bad writing.
Who was the guy Carl shot anyway? I mean, where did he come from?
MacGuffinville.
As much as I think the writing on the show sucks and that it tends toward stagnation and circularity, I have to disagree. I thought they did a pretty good job overall exploring the ideas around the importance of developing community groups and the related tensions between enhancing the safety of one’s social group versus the potential threat of strangers.
He was a random peep.
With this show, it’s another season, another showrunner, so there might actually be some improvement. At the very least, the new guy (Scott Gimple) actually uses Michonne, he wrote both episodes in which she was allowed to converse like a human being (“Clear” and “This Sorrowful Life”).
I don’t know that I’d call it a bad season so much as a bad half-season, in the same way that season 2 picked up toward the end, season 3 fell apart toward the end. In between was some sustained decency.
It’s this stuff, the (apparent) total ignorance of the fundamentals of writing by these professional writers that drives me up a wall. I don’t know if it speaks of meddling by producers or AMC suits, or just a laziness that comes from high ratings, or what. Even Kurt freakin’ Sutter can handle a simple setup and payoff; TWD has setups that go nowhere or are ignored, little that happens is connected to anything that came before it, and everything seems preordained to wrap up in the most cliched, rote manner possible.
I feel the need to dust off a Simpsons quote:
As viewers, we have to go on what we see. It’s the show’s job to make sure that what we are told matches up with what we see; if it doesn’t, and that’s the point, then this should be made clear.
I gather one of the lessons about developing a community group is don’t gun down your community group.
I guess he wanted in on the battle so badly that he ran all the way there? Maybe he fell off one of the trucks and the governor didn’t feel the need to stop and pick him up?
It’s not so much that Rick was a moron about it, but that Herschel was. Rather, he interpreted the killing as unambiguously wrong when, in fact, there’s a good argument to be made that Carl was right.
When I was watching it, I thought that the Woodburian might well be trying to get the jump on Carl. He kept inching forward when Carl had a gun aimed right at him, and he kept his hand on his gun. To me it looked like he was trying to get close enough to knock the gun out of Carl’s hand. Had he truly intended to surrender, he’d have laid his gun down. I was HOPING Carl would see through his tactic.
Or conversely, keep an eye out (yes, I went there) for signs that someone in the group is Senor Psychopath.
Even if the message is that you cannot survive without others, there still has to be a Mendoza line below which you still send people down to the minors.