I like to imagine someone showing up while she’s climbing over, “hey, Enid, why don’t you just walk out the front gate like everyone else?”
sorry. this bit bugs.
Funnily enough, that was the most realistic part of the episode. From my experience living in Calgary, that was very much a standard setup for McMansions in Beigeburbia, and I assume across North America.
Yes, it’s completely reasonable for Alexandria, VA.
I obviously like to nitpick about this show, but some people are going overboard here by complaining about these huge houses being right next to each other, which is the norm for many of the close suburbs of DC. It’s also pretty common for older neighborhoods to have the original homes knocked down in favor of larger McMansions that then are very close together because the lot sizes were geared for smaller homes.
It’s easy enough to mow grass with a push mower even during the apocalypse. It makes more sense than some things, particularly in an area where deer and ticks are common.
The grass doesn’t bug me. I can see the residents of Alexandria who stay inside the walls at all times wanting to pretend that it’s all completely normal, just like before the z-pocalypse. Because the houses are so close to each other, and in turn so close to the street, the yards are tiny. I used to live in a townhouse that had maybe 500 square feet of yard. I used a reel type mower. I assume that’s what is implied in Alexandria.
Not saying it’s smart to pretend that all is like it used to be, but I can see that.
The walls, I guess I can overlook those as well. It seems like we know now that they were built that way because of real-life zoning and logistical needs. If I have already been willing to accept the completely impossible (zombies), I can stretch and pretend that the supports aren’t there, or pretend that they don’t matter. I choose, as a viewer, how far I’m willing to let things go. How much I’m willing to accept. The wall supports don’t cross that line for me.
Different point, I get why they never say the word zombie. I’m cool with that, they live in a world where zombie-fiction never happened. Got it. But, I do find it weird that they don’t have a common word (or any word, really, since I don’t recall anyone using one) for the “EVENT” itself.
I mean, I don’t recall anyone saying, in reference to the outbreak, calling it “The Outbreak”, 'The Apocalypse", " The Turning", “The___________”. It seems like groups or society would develop some common phrase to refer to the time period when things went to hell. Individual groups have come up with walkers, roamers, etc for the undead, but nothing for the event itself. I find that odd. Or maybe I’ve just missed it.
We helped take down an aquarium in a million dollar home, and all the houses were twelve feet apart.
I think the builders do that. They can get more houses in a neighborhood, and make more money.
Each group has a different name for it, like the zombies themselves being called, variously, walkers, roamers, biters, deadheads, etc.
So what are those names? I don’t recall any direct references. We can all list off the names for the dead. But I’ve been watching religiously since episode 1 and I can’t recall specific names for the event.
I seen to recall a few references to “before” with the implication that it was to something before the “event” but danged if I remember anyone assigning a name to the event itself.
I prefer “the beforetime.” Surely they’ve seen some apocalypse movies, if not zombie movies.
I recall the fire department in Calgary actually getting involved in the building codes for this - something like, “For the love of God, if you don’t want an entire block going up in smoke if there’s a fire, can you please give them a little separation?!?”
In a few generations it will be the age of wonders, or the fantasy world those few senile old fools left like maybe elderly Carl yammer about.
It still bugs me how the EVENT managed so much dead people in two weeks! If anything it seems like later seasons have more survivors around, not less. I mean me and my four year old play a game where I’m a zombie looking to eat him, and he has gotten damn good at keeping my face away from him using arms, legs, bracing himself.
Seems at the very least people would be smart enough to run from a crazy hissing person, even if the zombie thing hasn’t sunk in yet.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but:
Woodbury tended to use “biters” to refer to the zombies
Our erstwhile group has generally called them “walkers”
Alexandria uses “roamers”
I don’t remember what they were called in Terminus.
Am I mistaken in remembering them using names for different types of zombie behavior in earlier seasons?
Active zombies they called roamers, which could sometimes join up in packs or hordes following some sound or something. Then there were lurkers, which were zombies in a inactive state until disturbed by noise or movement.
“Bad meat”.
Well, no, and yet yes.
I have no disagreement that different communities have come up with names for the, shit, lets just say it, zombies. What I think is oddly missing are specific names for the EVENT that caused the zombies. That’s a different thing than the names they give the zombies.
Other zombie fiction I have read always refer to the event itself. Some I can remember off the top of my head are “the outbreak”, " the changing", or (the obvious one) “the zombie apocalypse”.
I started binge watching Falling Skies and am up to the end of the second season, it is a post apocalyptic show where 99% of people are dead but instead of zombies it is due to alien attack and invasion.
It is shocking how good the sets and background is on this show at showing a broken down and falling apart world, versus TWD where we spent most of our time in forests and fields.
Seriously AMC needs to invest some money in some derelict cars and buildings etc. Come on!
There’s no common name for the event for the same reason there’s no common name for the anthropopagist revenants: the breakdown of modern civilization entails the breakdown of mass communication. If CNN and Fox News and the New York Times and so forth were still operating, there would have been a period in which several names were used, but eventually one name would have been settled on. But those media are all gone at this point, so there’s no such consensus and no real way to reach it.
I will not spoil it, but I became disenchanted with Falling Skies when a certain bad stock sci fi device was used.
The walls having supports on the outer side is significant–regardless of how they may have “had” to build them. The Industry can make them look like anything they want.
If they wanted to show lawns replaced by gardens, or overgrown from lack of care, or like portals into Deep Space, for that matter, the Industry can make them look like that. It is significant to what they are trying to portray about the place, that they show well-manicured lawns.
This is a show that can make the most fantastic of scenes with zombies in unimaginable situations, using real people as the zombies. Walls and lawns are for the junior special effects designers.
30 years ago, they made a boy and an E.T. ride a bike across the moon. The idea that they have to do something some way, or couldn’t do it some way, is very unlikely. They want to do something a certain way, and voila, they do.
I have to agree with the point some are making that while it’s reasonable that the term ‘zombie’ wouldn’t exist, there’s not an equally plausible explanation that a shared (across groups) name for the *event *isn’t used.
When people first started turning into zombies in TWD world, it would have taken some kind of time to spread and be connected and to bring down all communication nation/world-wide. News outlets would adopt a name for what was happening–say even just the Superflu–to talk about it. On TWD, they refer to “when this all came down” and “before everything went to shit,” etc., but never by an established term. Not very realistic.
I disagree. The world went to hell in a matter of weeks. In the real world it took longer than that to settle on the name “9/11”, for example.