Could you spoiler box the reason for me? Me and my wife were curious of that back-story, but didn’t watch TD.
Looked like HG Wells.
I, for one, was hoping the big reveal would be that Abe’s whole group was full of crap and not all that clever. Like he’s never been in the army and Eugene is his only surviving (idiot) relative and this over the top con was the best way he could think of to stay safe.
They sure do like to tell us that Eugene is smart. Not a genius, but smarter than the “average” people that make up the bulk of the cast. He must be, because he comes right out and says so. During the talk show afterword, everybody took great pains to tell us how he’s smart. Characteristically for the show, there’s lots of telling, but no showing.
What do they show us about Eugene?
He’s a walking pile of character flaws: a coward, a liar, a mooch, a voyeur, physically inept, and socially hopeless. His one redeeming characteristic is his supposed intelligence, which is demonstrated through “smart” lines that are word salad which could easily come from any 12 year old who likes crappy sci fi movies. He’s a great example of the pernicious pop cultural conflation of intelligence, nerdiness, and defectiveness.
We’re average people, here on the SDMB. If you met this guy as he’s portrayed, wandering around the wilds of post-apocalyptic Georgia, would you think he’s a world-class scientist or a low-achieving loser who worked at the 7-11?
Abe is also a ridiculous movie caricature of a soldier: nobody really goes around spouting gung-ho catchphrases like that. But…he’s an actual sergeant, on a mission he sincerely believes in.
The writers have gotten themselves into the enviable position of having it both ways. The character writing strays so frequently into hackneyed cliches that the viewer is never sure if they’re ineptly playing it straight or giving us clues.
I don’t understand your disconnect. In the threads for this show–beyond this one episode–I believe there has been the general rule of treating it like the comics don’t exist. People in this thread started to refer to specifics from the comics–starting in post #19. It is immaterial if what they talked about it were comics spoilers or not, we just do not talk about the comics in the show threads.
It is absolutely no different than the GOT threads. What is your problem?
Am I wrong on this? Is comic stuff fair game now, because I don’t remember this being an issue in other threads this season.
No, you’re not wrong. We’ve gone around on this issue every fucking year so far, and I (optimistically, as it turns out) thought that we had finally got it hashed out years ago.
I don’t read the comics. If I did, I can’t see myself posting such a remark.
But at the same time: that remark doesn’t spoil anything about the show. It’s been well-established that the show departs from the comics in many ways–some of them major. Show-Michonne could have been “a good guy” or “a bad guy” or anything in between. The SDMB post had no relevance to what was going to happen in the show. It spoiled no surprises.
I know how doctrinaire some can be on the topic of source material versus show, but, again: stating that the source material exists (or that a character exists in the source material–or even that the character is “good” there) does not give away any upcoming information about the show.
I do agree that when it comes to source material that is being adhered to fairly faithfully (if in compressed fashion)–as with Game of Thrones–to type out the actual fate of a character in the source material definitely IS a spoiler and is tacky and wrong. But here, too: to type “the HBO show is based on books written by George R. R. Martin” is NOT a spoiler. Yet typing that exact sentence will result in scolding by mini-mods. That’s unintelligent and deeply silly.
(That said: ‘know one’s audience’ is a useful principle. An intelligent discussion of GoT would, of course, include analysis of the adaptation. But such a discussion could take place here ONLY in a thread labelled as such.)
Heh. Clever little stinkers, aren’t they? 
But seriously: it’s painful to compare the success of this show (into which the writers obviously put little effort) with the lesser success of shows in which the writers carefully crafted satisfying, fresh, cliché-free entertainment.
I’m thinking of Breaking Bad, for example. Outside of the finale, it never got even half the viewers that TWD gets.*
TANJ.
*TWD seems to average around 13 million viewers per episode, while BB got around 6 million.
First of all, I didn’t mean to post that, it’s still sitting in my preview box in another window, I was going to go back and find the post, but I haven’t done that yet. I must have hit submit instead of preview at one point when I was checking for updates to the thread. :smack:.
Second, yes, it is a spoiler. There’s no two ways about that. If you say “[brand new character that was introduced in the last 5 seconds of the show, as a cliffhanger] is a good guy” and then they turn out to be a good guy, you’ve ruined the tension for me. If you were wrong and they did go in a different direction then I’ve been looking at this person in the wrong light the whole time. Why not just keep your mouth shut? Why not just say nothing? Give me a reason why you should type anything at all?
Honestly, if you’re going to see a movie, is it all right for me to say “Hey, I read that book. I bet it gets really tense in the middle when she escapes from the basement when he goes to the bathroom, I wonder how they’ll handle the end part when her daughter dies”?* I mean, it’s not a spoiler, right? They might have changed it for the movie.
*made up book/movie
Here’s my suggestion since we have to go though this constantly. Each week when someone starts the thread (assuming the thread starter feels this way), they should end their post with “Please, no discussion of the comics in this thread” and then let people report it to the mods as it happens.
Mods can deal with that as it happens and, if need be, delete (or at least spoiler) posts that ruin things for the rest of us.
I didn’t post any defense of revealing specific actions.
That just makes the family’s reaction to him make even less sense! 
Fine, whatever, if I said “Oh, you’re going to see that movie, I can’t wait to hear how the deal with revealing to the audience that the kidnapper is actually the good guy”. Would that be okay? I mean, it’s not actually a spoiler since it’s from the book and they might have changed it.
This is becoming tiresome.
:rolleyes:
post #29
There seems to be some concern about spoilers and I’d like to skirt that issue.
However, Abe’s history is already outta the bag. According to the Talking Dead, it was mentioned that Abe had been scavenging for a group consisting of his neighbors and friends. When he returned, he had discovered that his wife had been raped.
It wasn’t clear who had raped his wife (one person, some of them, all of them) or if Abe had decided to also punish the people who hadn’t protected his family/stopped the rape. It’s possible that Abe just went Abe-shit and beat everyone who tried to stop him from beating the rapist(s).
That last scenario, an outta-control killing-machine, could explain why Abe’s wife and children were now afraid of him instead of being relieved that the rapist(s) had been punished???
I was really hoping the reveal was going to be that that woman and kids had no connection to Abe at all before the supermarket incident. He’s just a guy who needs to be in charge or protecting someone–anyone. He wants to be a “hero.”
From what we saw in the show, it looked like Abe just had a disagreement over canned goods. I didn’t even think that was his wife at first, just some random woman with kids he was trying to help, who didn’t want his help.
It’s up to the fans of any TV show to determine how they want to discuss the show – one thread per season vs. one thread per episode, etc.
For shows based on a book or other non-TV source, you also have to decide how you want to handle that. The most acrimonious discussions take place around Game of Thrones, but y’all are giving them a run for their money here.
The staff doesn’t care what you want to do – putting things from the graphic novels that haven’t been addressed on the show yet into spoiler boxes will probably suffice – but we will be happy to enforce the rule once you’ve decided what it is. Okay, no, we won’t be happy to enforce it because y’all tend to act like toddlers who haven’t had their naps – there’s always a group that’s pissed off about the decision and acts up about it – but we will enforce it.
Discussion of how you want the policy to work should take place in a separate thread, though, rather than continuing to derail the discussion of this episode with it. For now, I’m declaring the meta discussion of how to handle spoilers to be off topic in this thread.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
If the filmmakers reveal to the audience that the kidnapper is actually the good guy, that would constitute a specific action, and thus I don’t defend a post of the kind you describe.
Yeah. On the one hand, it kind of naturally came up because of the Abraham Mystery (why did his wife and kids run away from him, etc.). Revelations of what had been explained about the situation in either the comics or in the Talking Dead after-show seemed to some to be fair game. (I had no problem with those revelations, personally.)
On the other hand: yeah, tiresome. One can go round and round and get nowhere with astonishing predictability.
In lieu of continuing the topic here, I’m thinking of making a poll in the About This Message Board subfolder; something like this:
As a service to the moderators, who might well be able to make use of a list that categorized users along these lines, the poll would be Public.
Entirely fair. Please note that while my post appeared after yours, I had no chance to read your post before hitting the Submit button (as I was still writing mine).
I think you’re correct in pointing out that the showrunners completely failed to make plain who those people were. (Though of course Abraham’s emotional devastation–and subsequent embracing of the Eugene Mission–would be explained better by them being his family. Still, audiences shouldn’t have to reason backward that way!)