I’ve said before that I think The Walking Dead is mining the same broad themes that Battlestar Galactica did; put humanity in extremis and observe how utterly shitty people can be to each other. Challenge conventional definitions of morality, and think about what “civilization” is ultimately for, or what makes a “civilization” in the first place.
And, in both cases, I’m a bit frustrated that nobody has (at least on-screen) really hashed out exactly what the new rules are or, more importantly, why the new rules make sense. There is an inherent conflict between the needs of the individual or the family group (basic survival and security) v. the needs of humanity as a whole (every individual is a precious resource). Rick is a bit too bound up in the old model of civilization, to the point that his decisions do threaten the security of his family. The Governor (and, for the moment, Carl) is so focused on security (and, frankly, his own megalomania in the Governor’s case) that he has lost sight of the bigger picture, namely the survival of humanity, not just Woodbury.
If humanity is to survive and rebuild some sort of civilization there must be cooperation among groups larger than the family unit. As these little pockets of survivors find each other, there has to be some give on the security front in order to build a larger and more capable community. I’m not saying this is easy or simple, but if the human race is to grow beyond the simple hunter/gatherer model we’ve been seeing, someone’s going to have to start extending a little bit of trust to someone they don’t know.
In S1, I get that our group was on the run and unsettled, so there was a huge focus purely on survival. But it feels like somewhere in S2 or S3 there was just enough breathing room to start to think bigger picture, and we haven’t seen anyone do that yet. I’d like to think that we might start exploring those themes more explicitly in S4, but I’m not holding my breath.
Only on the Dope can one find better writers than the people who actually have the script writing jobs. (I’m not trying to be sarcastic.)
I think I would’ve liked this episode (and others) more if all of you hadn’t pointed out all the ways TWD could be so much better. I generally am not a highly critical viewer and I find your insights of the flaws fascinating.
So why do highly paid, probably talented, script writers mess up so badly? (Prometheus anyone?) Is it the time pressure of producing a script week after week? Or, like someone mentioned above, is it that the writers get pressure from the execs to write something stupid?
And to expand on my above post, there was something else from the previous episode that had already motivated Rick to change and start becoming more civilized. That was Rick meeting the Governor and seeing what an overbearing tyrant he was. After that is when he made his speech about abolishing the ricktatorship and starting over with an absolute dumbocracy, where no idiotic ideas are too stupid to put up for a vote by the moronic members of the group.
First dumb decision - staying at the prison when they were seriously outnumbered and outgunned, with a plan so ludicrous, only an absurd storyline and other equally poorly-written characters could have lost so easily against them.
(Sorry, just had to temper my defense of that single point with my overall dismal view of the show.)
Agreed. Once the zombies stop being a constant, imminent threat and you figure out food and water, the single biggest issue should be, “What are our standards for adding people to the group?” And they could have addressed this in opposition to Carl’s understandable but overly extreme tribalism. But no, instead they oppose it with naive devotion to ideals that work only in much more civilized conditions, seemingly because the writers think the audience would reject anything more pragmatic.
There has to be other Woodburys out there, hopefully ones not run by mainiacs. It would be neat if Rick’s group got hold of a shortwave radio and discovered a network of communities around the world, sharing resources and ideas to rebuild civilization and push back the zombie horde.
What makes this show so bad is that they should be doing exactly that. The zombies aren’t a threat unless pinned down or otherwise surprised, to the point that the writers have been resorting to ninja zombies to try and bring some action. It’s well-known how to kill them, they apparently have skulls with the consistency of an overripe cantaloupe, and you shouldn’t really need guns most of the time. Sure, the people who remain may not all be the ideal pioneering type but they’ve made it this long without getting themselves killed, so they must be doing something right. Why such a descent into the most basic forms of tribalism when you were all part of a functioning society just a few years ago?
I’m not sure how much time is supposed to have elapsed in this show, but it seems like these people should have hair down to their asses by now and should have been able to score some clothing changes along the way.
This season did a very poor job of exploring that conflict, particularly in the latter half of the season. The problem is the Governor. By making him a) only interested in his own power b) secretive c) motivated by revenge and d) comically deranged, he served no thematic purpose. He was just a Bad Guy, nothing more.
Imagine if the Governor is reasonable, but cold-blooded and pragmatic leader. He hides nothing from his citizens, and they back him because he’s orchestrated the walling off of the town, rebulding of infrastructure, and the continued flow of new supplies into town. It’s understood by the townfolk that sometimes the Governor and the warrior caste kill and rob people outside their walls; they don’t like to talk about it, but they’d rather have food on the table than a clear conscience. In this way, the Governor functions as a synecdoche: he is a part that represents the whole of the town, and more broadly an entire worldview: the tribal one.
Woodbury accepts new members only rarely, they are very focused on the bottom line: can you contribute more than you cost? We see no old folks and few children. There’s no room for ideals beyond survival of the group, anyone who threatens that has to go. Andrea and Michonne can still be brought in, both are healthy adult (fertile) women, and Michonne is a natural for the warrior caste.
Contrast this to the prison group. They keep Hershel around even after he loses a leg (have something similar happen in Woodbury, and show us the victim being banished or killed). They let two prisoners join up; have them find a few more stragglers on the road and let them join too. Having clearing the prison cost lives, and let some time pass so they can have planted crops, run irrigation ditches, and such. Have the prison represent an investment of time, toil, and blood, not just a building they happen to be in.
Their conflict should be about security (and the problem of uncertainty), not a deranged madman wanting vengeance. The Governor being unwilling to tolerate an independent, armed camp so close to his beloved town is sensible, the conflict should escalate slowly, not start with kidnapping and attempted murder, and must demonstrate basic philisophical differences between the factions. When the prison prevails, the idea of building toward something bigger, and that the conflict must remain living vs. dead, prevails too. After all, what’s the point of humans surviving if it means humanity must be abandoned to accomplish it?
Or, if the show wants to be bleak, then Woodbury’s way is correct, the prison falls, people die, and all their morals get them is a hellish life on the road (featuring much more dangerous zombies).
The show you’re describing sounds much better than what we’re getting.
I think it’s a combination of factors. One, the revolving door of showrunners make consistency all but impossible. Two, the show feels the need to please many masters: the gorehounds who demand a zombie killing every episode, the comic fans, and the people who want theme and meaning. Three, the high-and-getting-higher ratings make honest self-appraisal easy to avoid: how can the show be bad when so many people watch it? Four, I think the basic writing approach is to imagine “cool” visuals, like someone manacled to a torture chair, or a truckload of walkers being used as a weapon, or someone tied to a chair and a walker being tossed in the room. They write to set up the cool moments, and don’t seem to care and/or be aware of that it’s context and investmentthat make a moment “land”. By neglecting the linking material so badly, they take the impact out of their showcase moments.
If this season was about anything, it was about leadership. The Governor didn’t represent his community, since he lied to them constantly and was only interested in power. So, he stands on his own as a character, representing a self-interested leader / deranged madman. Rick is also an incompetent dictator, but he saw the light and relinquished power, and thus prevailed. Thematic statement: a leader with absolute power may be tempting to maintain security, but in fact rule from consensus is better for it, because security from the leader is as important as security from external threats.
I’m assuming their staying at the prison was a mandate from AMC to keep the budget in line, I’m sure that dressing a factory as a prison strained the budget some. Assuming also that this would have been known all season, it’s unforgivable that the writers were unable to either a) make the prison valuable to the group, by making the outside world more dangerous (every time a character walked from Woodbury to the prison or back with no trouble, it highlighted how little they need a prison to be safe), or by having them invested in it (such as fields of crops), or b) think up a plausible way for the prison to be defended. What they went with was embarassing, frankly.
Your post made me curious to go back and review what I had posted in the previous episode’s thread, where I was speculating and hoping that the newly instituted dumbocracy would vote to leave the prison - doubting that even *they *would be stupid enough to stay. Since it was speculation based on the preview for this episode, I spoiler-boxed it, but now I’ll quote the relevant excerpt out in the open:
And I’m glad I went back to look at that thread, because **coolbyrne **had replied to the points in my post with a books-based spoiler that I didn’t read at the time. And now that I really don’t give a fuck, I read it.
I recommend that anyone as jaded as I am should also read his post. NOTE: They’re fairly major long term, high-level story-arc spoilers, but since there’s not much in the way of specifics, they’re really not that bad, even if you do plan on sticking with the show. Plus, there’s a good chance that the show will deviate greatly from the books (since that’s already happened with the Governor and other stuff, from what I’ve been told) so they’re almost not even spoilers.
All that said, if I didn’t have major gripes about the show and serious doubts about continuing to watch it, I would never want to read any of it. As it is, though, I’m glad I just did.
I tend to root for and defend fellow Kentuckians (which Kirkman is), but that’s pretty indefensible as a writing choice. I want this show to be better; and since the two episodes written by the new showrunner this season both varied from the outline you linked to, maybe things will be shaken out of their present torpor. Third time’s the charm, right?
Until then, there’s Mad Men, then Breaking Bad. Low Winter Sun looks interesting too; Detroit is a fertile setting, I love me some Mark Strong, and they poached one of the few compelling actors from TWD (Lennie James, who plays Morgan).
The kid handing over the shotgun did not comply. He was told to drop his weapon, not inch closer. Carl did the right thing, although I worry that he is becoming as much of a stone killer as the Gov and Shane.
Andrea deserved to die for her ambivalence. She could have offed the Governor when they were in bed. So the 20 odd people that bought it were on her head.
I don’t see why, assuming that only three Woodbury Warriors existed, the Grimes gang didn’t either take Woodbury over, or booby trap it so the Gov and his boys ate it on their return.
I also don’t see why, if they had flash bangs, the WWs were able to shoot the zombies in the tombs. Don’t flashbangs deafen you? We saw what happened to Rick in the APC in Season 1.
Lot of suspension of disbelief in this episode. But …it’s…a…TV…show…
Did anybody watch this week’s The Talking Dead? I’m surprised they lasted this long before they got a psycho-phonebomb (the cryptic dude from Chattanooga).
The biggest surprise is what a good guest and commentator Yvette Nicole Brown (Shirley from Community) is; she offered more interesting insight than Norman Reedus (who came across as a nice but not particularly brilliant- and dude, if you can’t cut the hair then put it in a ponytail or something cause that ain’t working) and Chad Johnson (decent guest but too new to the show and without enough of a major arc yet to offer that much).
Off-topic, Chris Hardwick (the show’s host) is one of my current crushes.
On topic, in their poll of “Did Carl do the right thing?”, their polls usually having a lopsided majority, the responses were 50-50.
Speaking of poll results, I just took a look at those of this thread’s…
There’s a whole lot more “Loved” and “Liked” than I would have expected, based on the general sentiment of most of the posts in the thread. Are us naysayers just nitpicking stuff too much? I want to hear more from you satisfied fans! I promise we won’t yell at you… much.
(Maybe the disparity is just because people like me hardly ever bother to vote in episode thread polls - I didn’t vote in this one, and I don’t think I voted in any previous TWD thread polls.)
Carl knew he was in no danger from the other kid. He didn’t shoot him because he felt threatened. He shot him because he was a potential future threat.
Approve or not, they are two entirely different moral decisions and he knew that and so initially lied about why he did it. I look forward to a couple more seasons when he is a bit older and realizing that re-population is a key part of surviving and then watching viewers defend the resulting rapes as ends-justified means required by a post-apocalyptically brutal world.
In addition to it being stupid that Andrea was unable to simultaneously speak with Milton while trying to get the pliers my big problem is that she was free before he got to her and they’ve so nerfed the zombies over the last two seasons (including her taken out more of them just a couple episodes earlier while more restrained than in that moment) that I do not believe she could have been bitten.