Driver Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Yeah, Greg Nicotero has upped his game considerably. He's the head of KNB who do the zombie effects and became such an integral part of the show they made him an EP-- and after a couple years he started directing and has helmed the best episodes to date. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justus Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 I think this season's big deaths have generated more honest tears from fans than any other in WD history--including the death of Hershel. Five seasons in and the writers have pushed development enough to top previous emotional investment with two, arguably "B" characters when killed off. Good sign for drama moving forward. ...but the way Tyreese was caught off guard still blows. Thankfully, his fever,ed hallucinations, then the "drive to heaven" pushed the episode to a new level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas1138 Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 "We've worked Tyrese and Beth into cool, developed characters. Let's kill them in totally stupid ways that will make the audience of a show about the zombie apocalypse roll their eyes because of how unbelievable and contrived they are." A conversation that presumably happened between mostly intelligent people. I'm shocked these morons haven't killed Carol yet. I'm out. I really can't take it anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 That's the nature of the show though-- getting attached to characters and having them fall is the point. It;s not to jack the audience around or because they don't know what else to do-- it's supposed to hurt and be depressing. They want you to feel the utter bleakness the characters do. That's what makes it work. That can't be a huge shocker given that at this point, Rick, Carl, Glen, Darryl and Carol are the only ones left from the original group. I still maintain that the show should be a little nice with giving the audience a reward for hanging through the darkness though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas1138 Posted February 11, 2015 Author Share Posted February 11, 2015 Except they rarely do well enough building characters over the long term to make you feel attached to anyone who gets popped. You've got plot protected people like Rick, Carl, Daryl, Glenn, and Carol. It's only a facade that they face any real danger as long as they're surrounded by randoms who pop in from time to time, get an episode to tell their story, and then they're gone too. That's how the show shows that the "group" is in danger; even though the group is never in any real danger. Maybe I'm expecting too much nuance from 42 minutes every week with a pretty large cast of principles. Even Beth, I liked her a lot, but that was more about Emily Kinney than her character. The episodes with her and Daryl last year were still more about Daryl than her. She didn't get much until her little stint at the hospital - where they immediately undid everything interesting they had done with her by making her react like exactly no human being with two brain cells to rub together would in that situation and get her brains blown out. It's a gag at this point. Everyone knew Tyrese was going to get his in the first 30 seconds of the episode last night, right? (Well really, we knew it was coming when not only did we get Gabriel show up, but Noah too... two more black people, we'll have to increase our quota or kill one off). As soon as someone starts getting randomly fleshed out in a 60 second scene than they have in 'x' preceding episodes, you know it's their time to go. It's too formulaic. Predictability isn't a good thing. Even beyond all that, which I could probably suffer through on its own, what I really can't stand is the absolutely asinine way in which some of these people die. My dislike for the Beth scene is well documented, and no amount of explanation will convince me otherwise. Then you've got Tyrese who sees a walker in another room but gets hung up on a picture and is so absorbed in it he doesn't hear the zombie approach him. The brainless zombies who are apparently experts at not making noises until the main characters make eye contact with them. I hurt myself rolling my eyes so hard every time a zombie(s) sneaks up on one of the cast members. THAT SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE! ...he said about something in a show about the zombie apocalypse. These aren't new complaints. I can't come up with other instances off the top of my head but these aren't alone. I've also hated how nothing manages to happen in a fair number of episodes - which only becomes more frustrating by some of the really great episodes that follow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Don't know if you watch Falling Skies, but in that thread we've been talking about the differences between these two shows because while very similar, they use a ton of the same tropes. Plot moves like crazy on that show, and you're right, hardly at all here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justus Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Except they rarely do well enough building characters over the long term to make you feel attached to anyone who gets popped. You've got plot protected people like Rick, Carl, Daryl, Glenn, and Carol. It's only a facade that they face any real danger as long as they're surrounded by randoms who pop in from time to time, get an episode to tell their story, and then they're gone too. That's how the show shows that the "group" is in danger; even though the group is never in any real danger. Maybe I'm expecting too much nuance from 42 minutes every week with a pretty large cast of principles. Even Beth, I liked her a lot, but that was more about Emily Kinney than her character. The episodes with her and Daryl last year were still more about Daryl than her. She didn't get much until her little stint at the hospital - where they immediately undid everything interesting they had done with her by making her react like exactly no human being with two brain cells to rub together would in that situation and get her brains blown out. It's a gag at this point. Everyone knew Tyrese was going to get his in the first 30 seconds of the episode last night, right? (Well really, we knew it was coming when not only did we get Gabriel show up, but Noah too... two more black people, we'll have to increase our quota or kill one off). As soon as someone starts getting randomly fleshed out in a 60 second scene than they have in 'x' preceding episodes, you know it's their time to go. It's too formulaic. Predictability isn't a good thing. Even beyond all that, which I could probably suffer through on its own, what I really can't stand is the absolutely asinine way in which some of these people die. My dislike for the Beth scene is well documented, and no amount of explanation will convince me otherwise. Then you've got Tyrese who sees a walker in another room but gets hung up on a picture and is so absorbed in it he doesn't hear the zombie approach him. The brainless zombies who are apparently experts at not making noises until the main characters make eye contact with them. I hurt myself rolling my eyes so hard every time a zombie(s) sneaks up on one of the cast members. THAT SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE! ...he said about something in a show about the zombie apocalypse. These aren't new complaints. I can't come up with other instances off the top of my head but these aren't alone. I've also hated how nothing manages to happen in a fair number of episodes - which only becomes more frustrating by some of the really great episodes that follow.A couple of points: I too complained about the nonsensical deaths of Beth & Tyreese, but like Dale before them (another WTF? cause of death), its less about how they arrived at that point, and more about rocketing the audience through an emotional minefield. No amount of "believable" death set ups would add or subtract from the specific mission of "hurting" viewers through loss--particularly if the character was painted as innocent / hopeful compared to the rest. Season 4's Beth / Daryl arc focused enough on Beth to finally provide her a worldview beyond being the moral daughter of Hershel. Her life of unexplored experiences, relentless mission to restore faith in Daryl and finally, her cryptic thought about her own mortality added more layers than anything seen in the character since her S2 introduction (including the suicide subplot). As for the S1 stars being plot protected, I would not count on that. Daryl--for example--might be the "it factor" of TWD at the moment, but I would not be surprised if he met his end in S6 just to blow the series wide open, keeping the audience from just the kind of belief you have about "safe" characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas1138 Posted February 11, 2015 Author Share Posted February 11, 2015 Good post (and yours as well above, Driver). I would hate to lose any of those long settled "stars" of the show, but I'd really hate to lose them for a silly reason. I suppose that's what I'm most concerned about. I don't want to continue to devote time to this if someone I actually really do care about gets it because they were caught up looking at a photograph. Hershel is a fine example, he was a great character (even if you didn't like the role that character played... he was at least pretty developed), that death happened in a way that at least made some sense to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 I think Rick and Carl are the only ones protected. If they got rid of Darryl though they'd lose a ton of people I think-- and I think they know it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest El Chalupacabra Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 I don't know, I think even Carl could go if needed for the plot, and Rick could go in the final season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShadowDog Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Carl going would really make MG happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 So would a kitten video and bong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Kurgan Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 I think of it like this: Rick and Daryl are Kirk and Spock here. Everyone else is a red shirt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeygirl Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Has Carl been stabbed in the head yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest El Chalupacabra Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 I think of it like this: Rick and Daryl are Kirk and Spock here. Everyone else is a red shirt.But even they died! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil_Muzza Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 I'd be most annoyed if Rick, Carol or Darryl were killed off as they have the most interesting and well rounded characters. Abraham provides a bit of levity that this show NEEDS every now and then so I'd be sad to see him go now too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pong Messiah Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 i liked the last episode Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas1138 Posted February 15, 2015 Author Share Posted February 15, 2015 ur wrong Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacen123 Posted February 15, 2015 Share Posted February 15, 2015 i liked the last episodeI liked it, too. It was definitely a different style than all of the other episodes, but I think it worked well with what it was trying to do, and that the style actually played into why Tyreese was able to be taken by surprise like he was. The seemingly random shots throughout the episode, in my opinion, speak to the fact that Tyreese wasn't exactly in a fully coherent mindset throughout the time covered in the episode. This group of people haven't exactly been having the easiest of times lately, wandering from disaster to disaster and having seemingly positive events turn bad in the blink of an eye. That's not even counting what Tyreese's group was going through prior to finding the prison, which we, of course, didn't see. He, especially, has been dealing with some clear morality issues, as shown throughout the last season or so. Then he finds himself in the house of one of their own people, which doesn't exactly happen often on this show, and gets caught off guard by the photos of their friend as a kid with his brother. I don't think it's a coincidence that they had this happen with the guy who had been carrying Judith along for awhile and dealing with what happened with the two girls. In his unstable frame of mind, he let himself get distracted and taken in by the pictures and stopped paying attention to what was going on around him. Besides being jarring for us as viewers in the initial watching, the bizarre style of the episode was playing up how bad of a state of mind Tyreese was in even prior to dying to make it believable that he could be caught off guard and taken out by an easily disposed-of threat. Without that mindset, this would be just as horrible as how they took out Dale. However, I don't think it is anywhere near the same situation. At least that's what I think they were going for. Or this is the remnants of those literature reviews we had to do way back in high school English class. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pong Messiah Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 keep looking for the pun or the punchline in your post, but can't find one. Still a good read and good observation, though. To be honest, was kind of expecting Tyreese to die (and in a similar manner) ever since his exchange with creepy cannibal cabin hick guy. It seemed like they've been playing up his "good guy not meant for this world" or perhaps "strong, but not strong in the right way for this world" angle with his character a lot lately, which can only mean one thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacen123 Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 aliens? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NumberSix Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 They're gonna reveal Tyreese actually went to the Other Side, and that alternate Earth's Tyreese is gonna come over here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil_Muzza Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 Well that episode just sucked. I get that some episodes are going to be slower but, that was boring as hell. Miracle tornado to the rescue reeks of bad writing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas1138 Posted February 17, 2015 Author Share Posted February 17, 2015 Everything I feel compelled to hate on this week: - This week on The Walking Dead: EVERYONE SCOWLS!- Everyone is being a dick for no real reason. So you're malnourished. Boo-hoo. Sasha is a crazy lady making bad decisions that endanger the group. Maggie is being a brat to Gabriel because... reasons.- Why did they not just eat the frogs from the riverbed?- Why are they walking on the baking asphalt? Why don't they, I dunno, walk along the treeline in the shade!?- I appreciate how Maggie all forlorn about Beth when she didn't even say so much as mention her name during the entire time they were separated.- So they'll eat the dogs, but not the frogs. Because I said so that's why. Got it.- Why don't they make their way to an actual highway? Much better chance of finding vehicles along there, which would also provide places to sleep at night (other abandoned cars) that would provide some shelter from impromptu zombie attacks and the elements.- Emo-Daryl burns himself with a cigarette because this life sucks and he can feel nothing anymore.- Oh wtf. Just a random horde of zombies approaching the barn and heading straight for the only entrance.- Deux ex tornado to the rescue! w/e The Good:- Rick's WW2 grandfather story was cliche but it mostly worked and it gave us the "We're the walking dead" line. That's good.- OH MY GOSH SOMETHING HAPPENED! GUY APPEARED AT THE END. Questions: How is he so well supplied? How does he know Rick's name? How is he staying ahead of the group but still on their same path? Is he related the the severed body parts with a 'W' carved into them from the Tyrese episode? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Driver Posted February 18, 2015 Share Posted February 18, 2015 Yeah-- just when I thought they were doing awesome-- total filler episode, which there is no excuse for when you do 12 episodes a year separated by a 2 month break. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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