I know what ya mean. I keep thinking, “How can something keep moving with out any energy input?”. You have these human sized things, that keep moving with out somehow ever burning calories. Unless the zombies have been somehow eating people every few days, they should all be starved to nothing by now. They can’t open cans or cook, much less catch any wildlife.
Even a zombie can’t expend energy with out consuming calories. That’s the biggest thing you have to just pretend isn’t happening.
This was a nice episode. I’m OK with only a little action, as I can see they are setting up the chess pieces. My only complaint is that the Away Team was just sooooo sloooooow at collecting stuff. I’d be whipping through there as fast as I could go. And at the first sign of Walkers, get the hell out!!! They always seem to be running in circles.
Also, the show scored an insane 16.1 million viewers for the premiere. It seems poised to break its own record for ratings for a scripted basic cable series.
There sure was a big focus on Daryl slowly licking his fingers before shaking the kid’s hand. The handshake scene seemed off anyway.
I have to say that 4.1 was one of the best, most promising episodes in the last two years. Unless the seeds are allowed to sprout and die uncontrolled, this could be a very good season.
That’s how they get you. This show follows the Lost template of strong premieres, tolerable finales, and a long, dreary, meandering, unsatisfying middle.
It’s quite good at laying pipe: x amount of time has passed, and this is what our band of survivors has become, and here are the problems they’ll be facing. It’s awful at payoffs.
Ferb, I know what we’re gonna do today!
Well, when the driver has slowly led the horde a few miles down the road, he hits the gas and leaves them behind.
Frankly, there are many many simple strategies being overlooked. Heck, every time they find an abandoned vehicle, they should be salvaging as much gasoline or diesel from it as possible to fill and seal lots and lots of jerry-cans. Then they could find a car dealership with hundreds of identical vehicles from one manufacturer (which will make long-term maintenance much easier)…
Any big truck they can find, they should just drive along the outside of the fence, squishing walkers with it until it runs out of fuel, then deflate the tires so it sits on its rims and forms a partial barricade. Do this often enough, and the prison will be surrounded by a solid wall of bumper-to-bumper vehicles instead of a flimsy chain-link fence.
Maybe the line of trucks is about twenty feet from the fence, and between the trucks and the fence is a trench, as earlier suggested, filled with sharpened spikes. Given the resources at hand, the flimsiness of their defenses is downright idiotic. Of course for dramatic purposes they kinda have to be…
As for store raids, I’d organize the effort better rather than waste time searching. “Okay, we’re all sticking together and checking the first row of the store for anything useful, with sentries posted at each end. We’ll move as a group and haul anything useful to the truck until the first row is picked clean. The codeword for “Position being overrun” is “Fireball”. If you hear someone say “fireball”, repeat it out loud and immediately evacuate. If we clear the first row without a fireball, proceed to the second. We’ll do at most two rows before regrouping back at the vehicles to compare notes. I want as little talking and noise in the store as possible.”
Thus the store get systematically checked and emptied (with notes taken for future raids for items that are not immediately useful but may be in future) without people wandering off on their own like zombie-snack-idiots.
This relates to a major flaw with the story the show is trying to tell. The theme of persisting, (or not) in the face of futility, depends on the audience buying into the futility. The show has to write and execute scenes that illustrate the themes: young lovestruck teen gets senselessly killed by zombies, and his girlfriend is sufficiently desensitized to shrug off the death, for example.
But, if the audience doesn’t believe that things are all that bad, then the theme falls flat. I always find myself asking “Why do they keep wearing clothing that can be bitten through?”, and similar questions. Because mindless zombies wouldn’t actually be all that threatening to humans as a species, the show must have the survivors make poor decisions to make them threatening. The end result isn’t horror at a bleak, nihilistic world where everyone has one foot in the grave and there are no ideals beyond surviving another day, it’s irritation that everyone is so stupid and unambitious.
Even in the hands of better writers and producers, this flaw would hamstring the show.
But, 16 million people watch it anyway, so they must be getting something out of it.
An insight which can be applied to almost everything (except comedies of course). Nobody wants to watch a zombie/horror TV show where everything goes well, because it is boring. People want drama, not intelligent or sensible crap that educates and informs.
Well, I stared at the Vudu pricing last night and basically said “Fuck you very much” at $42 for the season in HD - that’s more than a season of Mad Men and both halves of Breaking Bad’s last season, and for a very marginal show, no matter how popular it is.
I don’t much like watching shows in SD (too soft, on a 55-inch screen) but I finally chose the episode in SD at $2 and it was okay. I will keep buying individual eps as long as they’re worth it. If I do the whole season that way it’s only a few percent more than paying for it in one lump.
Or NOT do (live) ! 
I dunno… people watched MacGuyver to see the clever strategies he employed. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we see some anti-zombie cleverness. Heck, there was that black guy who surrounded his place with baited spikes. That was clever, and he seemed to be doing okay (if slowly going insane) until Rick appeared and fucked everything up.
Im hoping for a road trip season, the prison is boring. From previews, it seems they do get chased out eventually, i hope its early in the season.
Oh I agree 100%. I spend half the time while watching thinking of how much better I could deal with things.
For one thing, I would use fire. And lots of it. Them zombies on the fence would be a burning. And there wouldn’t be a tree or shrub for ten miles outside that prison fence. Burn the woods, burn the zombies. Burn em all.
But it’s a TV show, a fantasy, I have to suspend disbelief enough to enjoy it, or else.
Have you watched the first episode? The pilot? You would enjoy it. And also know who “that black guy” is. And understand how emotional that episode was.
Yes, his anti-zombie devices were impressive. Smart man!
Didn’t that episode imply that he had been killing people and taking their weapons, or am I not remembering correctly?
Yeah, I’ve been watching this show from the start. I know who the black guy was, and who his son was, I just don’t remember their names.
I think he had a lot of weapons, like a truly ridiculous amount, but I don’t remember where he got them (the original police station where Rick worked and this guy visited had an armory that could easily be raided). Actually, accumulating firearms wouldn’t be that difficult at all. Gathering a stable group and training them how and when to use their weapons (including when not to use firearms when cutting or blunt objects will do) would be tricky.
Heh, the more I think about it, the more ideas come to mind about how to secure the prison. In addition to layers of passive defenses, put out signs that say “Heavily armed humans within. Pull this chain to ring bell within prison if you are also human.”
And there you find the attraction.