"The Walking Dead" on AMC HD - Page 120

What I assumed with the tower guy, was that it was a different section of the prison. There was a fence in the foreground I believe, the section where everyone was taking cover. Then a big open space, then the tower, and possibly a fence by the tower. I'll have to watch the show again.

Zombie heads are like magnets for bullets. Human heads, except Axel, are the opposite polarity.

Like all fantasies, The Walking Dead is rife with preposterous situations. So what though? There was so much great stuff in this week's episode, I had no trouble overlooking the silly stuff. I loved Rick and the gang's big fight with, first, the Governor and his henchmen and then the zombies after the Gov's girl henchman drove the van through the prison's gate and let a bunch of zombies lose inside. That was great stuff, hugely cinematic.

It makes me feel a little guilty to say so, but The Walking Dead, despite its frequent stupidity, is a lot of fun..

Anyone know where they are getting these brand new vehicles from? First the 2013 Hyundai Tuscon and now Glenn with a brand new GMC pick up? looks like a sloppy job of product placement there. At least the grass grew over the past few episodes/"3 days" of show time.

I hope they dont drop the ball here with Tyreese's group. It would have been perfect of them to come save the day along with Daryl and Merle. Also if they were let out of the prison how did they get passed the locked gates to leave?

Great episode..the last 10 minutes made up for any slow moments.

I love the show.

I had overlooked all these little nitpicks everyone is up in arms over. The only thing I was really annoyed with, as I was watching, was the ability to NOT land a single bullet in a person during the attack, either side. The governors team, if they were competent, they should have wiped out the entire prison group in a minute. But they showed they are inept.

Darryl coming back was completely predictable.

Leave it to AVS to make you aware of all the things wrong with whatever you like to watch, be it a TV or a TV Show.

I have to disagree. Besides the guy in the tower, the Governor's group were a pretty compact target, they didn't spread out that much. So, initially, they were firing at a single "group" target within the prison compound, but when Rick started firing, they were taking it from multiple sides.

During the time that Axel was killed and all the prison group was just standing around. They all should have been killed.

Unless their goal was to just kill Axel, wait for them to shoot back, let guy (who had the best opportunity to kill everyone) on tower die, then just shoot bullets in their general vicinity until the zombie taxi showed up. I say they accomplished it then.

To be fair, anyone who actually knows anything has signed a non-disclosure agreement, and can talk only about episodes that have already aired.

See, I think I see the problem in our different reactions. I don't think of WD as a guilty pleasure at all. I definately don't think its ever been stupid...At its best the show rivals Breaking Bad, at least for me, as a character study of decent ordinary people facing pure Hell.Its been absolutely brilliant at times, and, again for me at least, has the potential of being one of the greatest shows ever on tv. Heck, its already a classic and was on a heck of a run for most this season. Don't take me wrong-I hesitate even posting this because I highly respect you from all your posts I've read, and will freely agree your perceptions are probably better than mine. I guess what I'm saying is I'm setting the bar higher than you for this show. And this one, for me, veered dangerously close to being just another tv show. Although extremely well done, the shootout finale was highly predictable, from who got killed to the inevitable rescue by Daryl and Merle. Not that it was in any sense bad. It just wasn't up to what I've come to expect...Again, I mean no offense, just trying to explain where I'm coming from.

And there was at least one moment that showed how great this show can be: The look on Rick's face peering through the fence at the end, the way Andrew Lincoln portrayed all the different emotions going through him. He has gone through a transformation that rivals Walter White's, and it looks like he has gone to another level now,

Some good, some bad.

Bad:

1. Rick's mental state is getting old fast, I groan every time he thinks he sees someone.
2. Maggie's sudden yelling at Glen to get out seemed really out of place and was stupid.
3. They are killing to many people to fast. At first it had a shock value and a "Oh my god I can't beleive they did that" to we better not care to much about anyone or get invested because they will just kill them off eventually anyway.
4. How did the guy in the tower get to the tower? The tower is inside the fence, behind a tall, locked fence with barb wire.
5. The inability to hit anything, even with assault rifles with scopes, lame, but zombies, are ALWAYS head shots even with pistols.

Good.

1. Carol using that dude's body as cover.
2. Daryl coming to the rescue of Rick, wicked cool.
3. Daryl going all commando on the bridge zombies, awesome.
4. Michome using her sword and carving a path of death through the zombies, wicked awesome.
5. The whole final battle was excellent.

"5. The inability to hit anything, even with assault rifles with scopes, lame, but zombies, are ALWAYS head shots even with pistols."

Pretty easy shooting at a target that is not shooting back and is moving slowly. Also, hard to make a shot when keeping your head down or on the run.

The recap and analysis of this week's The Walking Dead episode was put on the Grantland site yesterday. Its central thesis is just what we have been talking about lately: the "plot" is so silly it defies rational thought but the show is so exciting and so much fun, why worry about it? Andy Greenwald wrote all the earlier Walking Dead recaps but decided he could no longer stand the show's silliness and has now bowed out. The guy who took over, David Jacoby, did a great job in relief, though. Here is the money quote from Jacoby's piece
All I can add to that is, Amen, brother!

IMO, Sunday's episode should rank in the top 5 of the entire series so far ..

On the marksmanship .. I don't think it was that big a stretch that accuracy was lacking .. being under fire in a surprise attack tends to shake you up and effect your ability to stay calm and concentrate .. no real excuse for the Gov's crew though .. unless they are just poor shots ..

I kinda thought that the prisoner .. Axel .. and his developing relationship with Carol .. was a good new twist and now he's gone .. the waterpistol drug store story made him a sympathetic character just before his head exploded .. nice touch, writers ..

They packed a lot into this episode and left me really, really anticipating this Sunday ..

As gwat said earlier .. if I may quote .. "Like all fantasies, The Walking Dead is rife with preposterous situations. So what though? There was so much great stuff in this week's episode, I had no trouble overlooking the silly stuff. I loved Rick and the gang's big fight with, first, the Governor and his henchmen and then the zombies after the Gov's girl henchman drove the van through the prison's gate and let a bunch of zombies lose inside. That was great stuff, hugely cinematic.

It makes me feel a little guilty to say so, but The Walking Dead, despite its frequent stupidity, is a lot of fun.."

That pretty well sums up my way of thinking ..

Instead of thinking of the episode as being full of stupid writing, what if it was only half-full and most of the events were carefully planned?

The guy in the tower used the same route to get in as the zombies they were complaining about at the beginning of the episode. The area between the prison buildings and the outer fence is broken up by fencing and Rick's group simply haven't managed to do a full external circumnavigation of the site just yet. They have had a lot of other distractions.

Remember that several episodes ago, the Governor talked about getting Merle into the prison as an inside informant. He knew that they all had reasons to hate Merl. The attack provided a perfect way for Merle to "prove" he could be an asset. The Gov really wasn't interested in killing them all, just scaring them enough to let him take over eventually.

It wasn't the Gov's fault that the guy in the tower was stupid enough to stand up where he could get shot, but adrenaline can make you do lots of stupid things. That would explain some of the other idiotic things the attackers were doing, too.

I'm sure somebody can come up with rationalizations for some of the other stupidities, too

This is a very good observation. I think your theory that this was all a ploy to get Merle into the prison. I guess we'll see how it pans out. Either way, I think Daryl will put Merle down at some point this season.

I agree with gswat regarding this show: yes, it can be considered one of the best shows on television like lonwolf said, but in the end this show is about a fun and highly entertaining ride. In that regard it keeps on giving and giving, and then some.

My analysis of Maggie's attitude is she does not want him to go out and do something stupid and get himself killed. So her gut reaction if he is going to do that is to provoke fights to essentially end the relationship and protect her emotional involvement from further hurt. People do variations of that all the time!

Glenn is pissed because he was totally helpless and wants to strike out his anger.

Other complaints of the episode I can get!

Except for one minor little issue:

The Gov was all set up to let Merle and Daryl fight to the death. The only thing that got them out of it was Rick's crew attacking and giving them a chance to escape. How exactly was the governor planning to get Merle into the prison if that didn't happen? Are you telling me he knew Rick's crew was coming and was willing to let them attack?

Now, perhaps Merle really had a plan to only pretend to kill Daryl and Rick's crew interrupted that, but that's a heck of a gamble. Why not just pretend to "banish" Merle and have him go back with Daryl? Then the Governor could do his little attack to allow Merle the chance to redeem himself.

Further, if the plan was to get Merle on the "good side", he nearly screwed it up when he was being a jerk with the people on the bridge. I would expect he would have been under orders to stay on Daryl's good side no matter what.

It just feels a bit too sloppy to be planned for Merle to be a sleeper agent. I'd be more inclined to believe Merle is working for Merle and nobody else.

The whole firefight was beyond stupid for all the reasons mentioned in the Grantland article, but I am curious who the incredibly nuts person in the bread van is. He/she is right up there with Michonne in the ballsy category.

Hey, I never said my rationalizations were perfect!

I still think it was Andrea in the van. The Governor seemed pleasantly surprised to see the van coming, like he didn't know it was coming. Also, unless it was Andrea not wanting anyone to recognize her, why would the attacker wear a mask? I think Andrea is trying to get on the Governor's good side and prove "where her loyalties lie" so she can be the "inside agent" and help out the people at the prison. She knew that Michone and Rick could handle the Walkers.

Also, glad the Maggie incident has been resolved. Turns out he didn't rape her, but she never came out and told Glen that until this past episode. Seems kind of selfish (even though she was the victim) to let him think that for so long. Almost Lori-esque.

Maybe to prevent getting bitten while bailing out of the truck after releasing them? The person was wearing what resembled riot gear. If the goal was not to be recognized, a simple ski mask would have been enough. What the driver was wearing looked to be protection, not a disguise.

I liked this quote better:

"I don’t watch this show because it makes sense, I watch this show because people get shot in the face mid-sentence and zombie heads get pulverized by hatchbacks. I understand how Greenwald could get frustrated by the show’s lack of realism and direction, and I sympathize with him not wanting to do the recaps, because I don’t want to do the recaps either. The only difference is that he doesn’t want to do the recaps because he is overthinking the show, and I don’t want to do the recaps because I don’t want to think … ever."

I dunno maybe so they don't get there face eaten off.

The problem is, that's not what we were sold on with the show. For almost the first two seasons, there was a lot of realism/grittiness to the show. In fact, that's how I ended up getting a lot of people interested. "This is not just some action horror flick, this is what it would really be like to be in this scenario. Real situations, real motivations, real outcomes".

It's not that any more.

I love mindless action. I've defended the Transformers movies countless times on avsforum because mindless action was all it was ever supposed to be and its good at that. The Walking Dead was more than that, though.

I'm just glad Mazzarra is gone. It seems most people were disappointed with that, but this nonsense really went to a new level when he took over. Prior to that they did a pretty good job of making the accuracy realistic. The barn scene in the middle of S2 was a good example of that. All they needed to do in that scene was slay a bunch of zombies, but they didn't just show 35 consecutive headshots even though everyone was standing 10 feet away in a shooting stance, they showed a good mix of body shots and bullets hitting the barn in the background. Now, when they need stuff dead it's just 50 straight ridiculous headshots and when they need people not dead it's 500 straight missed shots.

The show runners needed a national guard squad dead, so the Governor's team could take them out like an elite team of Navy Seals. But then they needed Rick's squad not dead, so that same Governor's team can't hit the broad side of a barn.

The show runners need a bunch of zombies dead so Rick's team can hit pistol headshots from 50 yards away. But we need the governor's team not dead so now those same people can't hit a body shot with an assault rifle at mid range (even Rick missed a wide open and distracted Ramirez before Ramirez ever saw him in this episode).

I do enjoy reading the contradictory excuses people come up with, though. Like saying that it's much harder to hit something when you're moving when in the S2 finale Glenn was riding around popping off pistol headshots in a car moving 30mph.

It's action cheese. They're not even trying to disguise it. All this talk about "I think they're just trying to show that xxxxx weren't prepared for..." is bunk. It's just action cheese to get the outcome they need, which is 100% fine in an action movie. But TWD captivated most of us on its semi-realistic drama and not on Rambo going into bullet-time and taking out a bunch of horrific shooting storm troopers.

For the record, I don't think that was Andrea in the Zomb-Van.


Djoel

Love that quote. I dont analize anything in this show, and i hate that its so character driven. All i watch this for is for gore, gore, and more gore!!!!

I'm with you .. in fact, I'd put money on it not being her ..

I'm sure he knew who ever was in the van was coming .. that was not a smile, it was a smirk ..

For some reason, I distinctly remember Maggie telling someone in a previous episode when asked that she was not raped .. may have not been Glenn ..

There's no doubt Glen didn't know whether she was raped or not until the conversation between the two in the last episode. It would have made him asking her redundant.

As far as who was in the van, that's just fun speculation. I have no idea who it was. Honestly, the only reason I said Andrea was because the way she moved reminded me a lot of that ridiculous scene from season 2 when her and Shane took on all the zombies in that neighborhood. And I think it would be funny because Andrea's character has been ridiculous from the beginning of the series..

My thought was why not drive the van out of the yard - would seem that it save possibly being eaten or shot, or shot then eaten. As a bonus, you get to keep the vehicle.

Anyone else getting a Jericho vibe from the Woodbury town and Governor? I keep thinking back to the warring towns from that series.