If Breaking Bad had existed as a comic book series before it was made into a TV series, would you still think it was the best show since Alf? Or would you constantly think it falls short because they can't (or choose not to) follow the literal story of the comic book.
The only part of TWD that i'm currently interested in is the one with any sort of plot -Glen's story line and his new found friends.
They actually have a reason for moving forward. To get the scientist to where he needs to be. That's a reason for us viewers to care about their characters and look forward to seeing the challenges on their journey. They actually have a real goal and it doesn't seem like any of the other character storylines have this.
Just to survive isn't going to hold many viewers' attention for long.
Which is evident by the comments in this thread.
Same ... I turned to my wife last night during the show and I asked, "You know what this show needs?"
"What?", she replies.
"A point."
Glen's storyline is the only one with any sort of path forward that I care about right now. Everyone else is just ambling through the world, having random adventures.
I think people who think the show needs a point are actually just missing the point all-together. The show is about humans, and how they react to the conditions. Not their physical actions, their mental reaction, and how they relate to each-other and find humanity is a mostly post-human world.
Just because it has zombies in it doesn't mean it has to be brainless. (PUN!)
Seriously, the best stories focus on their characters. Plot is a device to push the characters forward. When its the opposite way, when characters are used to push the plot forward instead, you tend to get your typical action-oriented shit. Mindless drivel like pacific rim, transformers, battleship.
"But Pacific rim was fun!"
Eh. Okay. To certain people it was. But it was also 1.5 hours long. It was a 1.5 hour plot and action explosion that nobody gave a second thought to the moment they left the theater. It may have been fun but it was forgettable, inconsequential fun.
While there is nothing wrong with it, I guarantee you that if Pacific Rim was a show that needed to fill 12 hours every year almost everyone would have stopped watching after the third or fourth episode. TV doesn't have the luxury of standing on plot alone, or even replying on it too heavily. People have always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always reacted and been more absorbed by characters than by plot.
But people don't know what they want. If the show suddenly reverted to following Glen, the Mini-skirt, the Mustache and the Mullet around trying to save the world, the show would be dead by next season, and the people crying for more action would abandon it.
So the show uses it's plot (attack on the compound) to push the characters forward, to split them off into more intimate pairings. I am vastly, vastly more interested hearing about Daryls backstory and how it created him to be such a good survivor.
Otherwise, if the characters push the plot, instead of character we get captain America and Private Stripper Hernandez dragging Glen and genius Kenny Powers off to save the world. One is intimate character work, the other is action vomit.
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I think if you take almost any universally successful IP, you're going to have complex characters at the center, and not plot (counting out gameplay). Game of thrones is successful because it's about complex people, not cardboard cutouts. The last of us is maybe the only large game to have done it successfully in recent memory. Anything by OSCard,Vonnegut, Asimov. Gravity. 12 years a slave, True Detective, Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Mad men, Firefly, battlestar Galactica, Lost.
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It's why traditional on-rails games suffer, and why the stories and in general, the players themselves, are seen as immature. Because you go forward as a character-less being acting out plot. And since plot without character can bring very little/boderline nothing to the table, it gets filled with tropes as standby, shit to try to keep gamers interested long enough to finish. If the game doesn't have anything unique or fun to the gameplay, the reward is usually nothing more than CG tits, since the companies know their demographic well.
I watched some of YMS, I could barely stand it. It gave me one of those "is this what people like now?" moments. Makes me feel old but it also makes me feel better about my tastes.
I don't buy the whole "we need to get this scientist to washington ASAP!11" plot. He's quite obviously leading that ex-army thug & posse on.
I feel like that'd be a really lame way to go plot wise. But then again I also thought him shooting the zeds and hitting the truck was lame, so you never know. At least it is something new though.
am i the only one who hates everything about the scientist so far?
-the mullet
-he feels too much like a replacement for the gov's right hand man
-the mullet
-the cliche of his nerdy awkward walk
-the mullet
as for the rest of them, think they would be more calm and patient around walkers and be able to take them out without panicking and resorting to their guns so often, they've been at this for how long now?!
and for glen, when he was leaving the prison with whats-her name... was it not him who covered himself in zombie guts and walked through the busy city streets?! why the hell didnt he do that again and play it safe
As for glen and the guts, I feel like they actively try to ignore a lot of the stuff that went on the first two seasons, and going back to those zombies that need to be tricked vs the less aggressive versions we have now would change the shows structure. The passive zombies let the humans take center stage, so the enemies are people like the governor, and the men who showed up while Rick was sleeping at the house.
If you don't remember, the original zombies could open doors by turning the knob. They also ran sometimes. In the second episode, when Rick and glen and company were trapped in the department store, the zombies were using bricks to try to smash the glass. They were a much different type of smart zombie.
Beth driving off was pretty weird and unexpected. Didn't really care for the episode overall.
I like character development more than action, but the whole pace of the show has been slower than molasses since the start of mid-season.
I'm pretty sure Beth wasn't driving. My two guesses are:
1)bad people grabbed her and took off
2)good people found her and took off with the explanation "your friend didn't make it, we have to get out of here!"
My bet is on bad people. The episode softened you up with the idea that there are still good people left in the world and then Darrel meets the same bandits that Rick escaped from.
I think I saw a big white cross painted on the back window of the car Beth escaped/was kidnapped in, that's a bit weird. Could it be going a little more literal with "The Saviors"?
I'm pretty sure Beth wasn't driving. My two guesses are
yeah after I gave it a moments thought, that's probably what happened. There was quite a bit of foreshadowing at that house too, with the food left out. Probably some weirdo cult.
<spoiler> He's a scientist, but things go from bad to worse when they discover he's really just after the last case of Coors light :icon60:
Damnit! Now you've spoiled everything!
I definitely felt like that house was a trap. Just enough food to keep people there, and immaculately clean. The sudden flood of zombies felt like someone sent them in (and the dog was trained to get attention, then run).
Beth driving off was pretty weird and unexpected. Didn't really care for the episode overall.
I like character development more than action, but the whole pace of the show has been slower than molasses since the start of mid-season.
I though this scene was pretty straight forward. Daryl looks on the ground where he finds her backpack. We see the car driving off. 2+2= Beth is being taken by force.
I definitely felt like that house was a trap. Just enough food to keep people there, and immaculately clean. The sudden flood of zombies felt like someone sent them in (and the dog was trained to get attention, then run).
I definitely felt like that house was a trap. Just enough food to keep people there, and immaculately clean. The sudden flood of zombies felt like someone sent them in (and the dog was trained to get attention, then run).
Same here, it felt kind of like a trap or whoever took Beth was using it as a funeral parlor for their group.
I think Justin might be right, there was a white cross...
I think Daryl will revert back to his old ways when he was kicking around with Meryl but he will do it only for survival, he's changed. They'll test him and see through him and it will be tense but he'll get out, they'll probably jack him up somehow.
Sadly I think his character is ripe for a limb removal...
WARNING!!!!!!!!! Some comic speculation taking place below. WARNING!!!!!!!!!
True and I have a sneaking suspicion that Terminus is Hilltop and it spawns Sanctuary after the group gets back together and spends some time there.
I bet the people out there leaving maps/markers and placing signs "Sanctuary those who arrive, survive..." will spit off and form Sanctuary or something like it.
I bet the gang gets back together and Maggie learns about Beth, which pulls a lot of them back onto the road to go find her, meanwhile Terminus suffers Hilltops fate.
Anyone think Lizzie's weird fatalism and sympathy with the walkers could be setting her up for a Ben-type situation? She'll kill her sister because everyone comes back anyway and Carl ends up shooting in secret after the group can't figure out how to handle a psychopath kid.
I was pretty close
queue up all the haters that still watch it every week for some reason.
Better episode than most. Not sure why said person had to die though; could have just let them go.
What other options did they have?
1) They didn't think they could rehabilitate her, I'm not even sure if society was intact and there where mental health facilities still around, that they could treat her. That's just how she was hardwired. It's not that her moral compass was broken it's that hers formed differently than everyone else.
In the end she still didn't get it, she thought Carol was mad because she pointed a gun at Carol. Lizzie didn't care that her sister was dead at all. To Lizzie, her sister wouldn't be gone, just changed. To Lizzie the only way to kill her is to bash her head in. They could keep her, take care of her, feed her mice...
2) If they left her there on her own, she wouldn't survive long, she wasn't ready to be on her own. She didn't want to kill anything that was already dead so she would probably try to keep any walkers that wondered by, kind of like Hersals barn. But she didn't have any interest in reversing it or finding a cure, she just wanted to keep them around and not "kill them".
3) If she was found by another group, that could be a lot worse than starving, depending on who it was. Or if they aren't horrible people and they look at her as a poor defenseless little kid and take her in, she would probably do them all in, while they slept.
She embodied quite a few plot twists from the comic story line that took place in the prison. They are wrapping up almost all of it.
On a side note:
I think if Carol had confessed when they where out, Tyrees might have tried to kill her right there.
And I agree with Mark on the Carol/Tyrese thing. I was waiting for her to confess would would have resulted in her death, but at the table, Tyrese had changed just a little bit more after the Flowers scene.
I had woken up at 3:30am yesterday so to say the least I was pretty tired while watching the episode, but soon as the "twist" happened I was much more awake.
It was a good episode, better than most of the ones that's been showing up this season and probably has been the best character dev episode this season too.
I'll have to watch Season 1 again, I recall it being half good half absolute stinkers - gang members taking care of puppies and grannies and the CDC being the worse offenders. Glenn was dressed as short-round with a rising sun belt buckle! I like Frank Darabont's work but I don't worship the guy.
I don't have kids but I did lose my dad so a lot of the Herschel stuff hit me hard. Especially the scene in Season 3 where they were waiting to see if he lived or died from the amputation.
I thought this episode was pretty powerful, even though it ended up unfolding similar to what I had said, but didn't see Mika getting killed by Lizzie.. but to only have 2 more episodes until late October, I'm not really sure what can happen in only 84 minutes.
Do you think they can they make it all the way to Terminus and reunite in two episodes?
So, can't recall if it was a dream or if I heard it from here.. so the main bad guy that Daryl is hooked up with now. Wouldn't it be lame if he was one of the leaders at Terminus?
I see a cliffhanger with maybe 1 group reuniting before the season ending. I don't think Maggie and Glenn will reunite, but that could be the cliffhanger. There are what, 6 separate groups to all unify sometime in the next 2 episodes?
Team Rickers
Glenn + Abraham = protect mullet "scientist"
Magaggie's group
The Original Odd Couple, Carol, Tyrese, and Lil Kickass
Loner Daryl
Missing Beth
I'm even starting to doubt they fully get to terminus by the end of the season. Though I think all groups have found the tracks and the directions to terminus, so who knows? The next 2 episodes have incredible potential, so I'm hoping they don't fall flat.
Whoever wrote and directed that episode should write the rest of the series... that was the only episode I had felt emotion (since season one). In all honesty till now this show has just been "meh" to me but this episode gives me hope this show can turn it around....hopefully.
Daryl could be the one to go, but I hope not. :poly005:
My bet's on Beth. She shared the same 'people are good' personality that Mika had. And as far as themes go, she seems like the next in line for the axe.
...Which might send Daryl over the line to becoming what he once was?...whatever that may be, but i have a feeling it'd tie in nicely with that new gang.
2) If they left her there on her own, she wouldn't survive long, she wasn't ready to be on her own. She didn't want to kill anything that was already dead so she would probably try to keep any walkers that wondered by, kind of like Hersals barn. But she didn't have any interest in reversing it or finding a cure, she just wanted to keep them around and not "kill them".
But she practically said she wanted to 'change' anyway. Why not let her? One extra zombie probably wouldn't make a difference. Plus, keeping zombies around worked for Michhone. Maybe she would've figured something like that out. Or maybe not. But I do agree that her hurting another group / fate worse than death scenarios are reasons not to have let her go. I'd still lean towards giving her a chance rather than a bullet to the back of the head though.
I think Beth is going to go, she's getting a lot more screen time than what she used to, like before when they were on the farm I never knew who she even was. I know she survived and all but I have a feeling that she is just getting this development so she can have an emotional death and they can kill off a character... Daryl will probably go off. I honestly wouldn't mind if Daryl died though, they made him "too bad ass" and it's kind of corny... like seriously wouldn't these arrow tips wear down by now? He's been using the same bow and arrows since he showed on screen. That may be a little too critical but come on.
Replies
"What?", she replies.
"A point."
Glen's storyline is the only one with any sort of path forward that I care about right now. Everyone else is just ambling through the world, having random adventures.
Just because it has zombies in it doesn't mean it has to be brainless. (PUN!)
Seriously, the best stories focus on their characters. Plot is a device to push the characters forward. When its the opposite way, when characters are used to push the plot forward instead, you tend to get your typical action-oriented shit. Mindless drivel like pacific rim, transformers, battleship.
"But Pacific rim was fun!"
Eh. Okay. To certain people it was. But it was also 1.5 hours long. It was a 1.5 hour plot and action explosion that nobody gave a second thought to the moment they left the theater. It may have been fun but it was forgettable, inconsequential fun.
While there is nothing wrong with it, I guarantee you that if Pacific Rim was a show that needed to fill 12 hours every year almost everyone would have stopped watching after the third or fourth episode. TV doesn't have the luxury of standing on plot alone, or even replying on it too heavily. People have always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always reacted and been more absorbed by characters than by plot.
But people don't know what they want. If the show suddenly reverted to following Glen, the Mini-skirt, the Mustache and the Mullet around trying to save the world, the show would be dead by next season, and the people crying for more action would abandon it.
So the show uses it's plot (attack on the compound) to push the characters forward, to split them off into more intimate pairings. I am vastly, vastly more interested hearing about Daryls backstory and how it created him to be such a good survivor.
Otherwise, if the characters push the plot, instead of character we get captain America and Private Stripper Hernandez dragging Glen and genius Kenny Powers off to save the world. One is intimate character work, the other is action vomit.
_______________________________
I think if you take almost any universally successful IP, you're going to have complex characters at the center, and not plot (counting out gameplay). Game of thrones is successful because it's about complex people, not cardboard cutouts. The last of us is maybe the only large game to have done it successfully in recent memory. Anything by OSCard,Vonnegut, Asimov. Gravity. 12 years a slave, True Detective, Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Mad men, Firefly, battlestar Galactica, Lost.
_______________________________
It's why traditional on-rails games suffer, and why the stories and in general, the players themselves, are seen as immature. Because you go forward as a character-less being acting out plot. And since plot without character can bring very little/boderline nothing to the table, it gets filled with tropes as standby, shit to try to keep gamers interested long enough to finish. If the game doesn't have anything unique or fun to the gameplay, the reward is usually nothing more than CG tits, since the companies know their demographic well.
Sorry for the rant.
[ame="
-the mullet
-he feels too much like a replacement for the gov's right hand man
-the mullet
-the cliche of his nerdy awkward walk
-the mullet
as for the rest of them, think they would be more calm and patient around walkers and be able to take them out without panicking and resorting to their guns so often, they've been at this for how long now?!
and for glen, when he was leaving the prison with whats-her name... was it not him who covered himself in zombie guts and walked through the busy city streets?! why the hell didnt he do that again and play it safe
If you don't remember, the original zombies could open doors by turning the knob. They also ran sometimes. In the second episode, when Rick and glen and company were trapped in the department store, the zombies were using bricks to try to smash the glass. They were a much different type of smart zombie.
It's an ode to the comics. He looks very much like the comic book version. More about his appearance, will make sense later too.
I like character development more than action, but the whole pace of the show has been slower than molasses since the start of mid-season.
<spoiler> He's a scientist, but things go from bad to worse when they discover he's really just after the last case of Coors light :icon60:
I'm pretty sure Beth wasn't driving. My two guesses are:
1)bad people grabbed her and took off
2)good people found her and took off with the explanation "your friend didn't make it, we have to get out of here!"
My bet is on bad people. The episode softened you up with the idea that there are still good people left in the world and then Darrel meets the same bandits that Rick escaped from.
I think I saw a big white cross painted on the back window of the car Beth escaped/was kidnapped in, that's a bit weird. Could it be going a little more literal with "The Saviors"?
yeah after I gave it a moments thought, that's probably what happened. There was quite a bit of foreshadowing at that house too, with the food left out. Probably some weirdo cult.
Damnit! Now you've spoiled everything!
I definitely felt like that house was a trap. Just enough food to keep people there, and immaculately clean. The sudden flood of zombies felt like someone sent them in (and the dog was trained to get attention, then run).
I though this scene was pretty straight forward. Daryl looks on the ground where he finds her backpack. We see the car driving off. 2+2= Beth is being taken by force.
huh. that does kind of make sense.
Same here, it felt kind of like a trap or whoever took Beth was using it as a funeral parlor for their group.
I think Justin might be right, there was a white cross...
I think Daryl will revert back to his old ways when he was kicking around with Meryl but he will do it only for survival, he's changed. They'll test him and see through him and it will be tense but he'll get out, they'll probably jack him up somehow.
Sadly I think his character is ripe for a limb removal...
Yeah, thats what I was thinking they were, e.g with the Terminus the place as well.
True and I have a sneaking suspicion that Terminus is Hilltop and it spawns Sanctuary after the group gets back together and spends some time there.
I bet the people out there leaving maps/markers and placing signs "Sanctuary those who arrive, survive..." will spit off and form Sanctuary or something like it.
I bet the gang gets back together and Maggie learns about Beth, which pulls a lot of them back onto the road to go find her, meanwhile Terminus suffers Hilltops fate.
I was pretty close
queue up all the haters that still watch it every week for some reason.
1) They didn't think they could rehabilitate her, I'm not even sure if society was intact and there where mental health facilities still around, that they could treat her. That's just how she was hardwired. It's not that her moral compass was broken it's that hers formed differently than everyone else.
In the end she still didn't get it, she thought Carol was mad because she pointed a gun at Carol. Lizzie didn't care that her sister was dead at all. To Lizzie, her sister wouldn't be gone, just changed. To Lizzie the only way to kill her is to bash her head in. They could keep her, take care of her, feed her mice...
2) If they left her there on her own, she wouldn't survive long, she wasn't ready to be on her own. She didn't want to kill anything that was already dead so she would probably try to keep any walkers that wondered by, kind of like Hersals barn. But she didn't have any interest in reversing it or finding a cure, she just wanted to keep them around and not "kill them".
3) If she was found by another group, that could be a lot worse than starving, depending on who it was. Or if they aren't horrible people and they look at her as a poor defenseless little kid and take her in, she would probably do them all in, while they slept.
She embodied quite a few plot twists from the comic story line that took place in the prison. They are wrapping up almost all of it.
On a side note:
I think if Carol had confessed when they where out, Tyrees might have tried to kill her right there.
I saw it as a mercy killing. A quick death versus her letting a walker bite her and go through all of that pain.
And I agree with Mark on the Carol/Tyrese thing. I was waiting for her to confess would would have resulted in her death, but at the table, Tyrese had changed just a little bit more after the Flowers scene.
Great episode.
It was a good episode, better than most of the ones that's been showing up this season and probably has been the best character dev episode this season too.
I don't have kids but I did lose my dad so a lot of the Herschel stuff hit me hard. Especially the scene in Season 3 where they were waiting to see if he lived or died from the amputation.
Do you think they can they make it all the way to Terminus and reunite in two episodes?
So, can't recall if it was a dream or if I heard it from here.. so the main bad guy that Daryl is hooked up with now. Wouldn't it be lame if he was one of the leaders at Terminus?
Team Rickers
Glenn + Abraham = protect mullet "scientist"
Magaggie's group
The Original Odd Couple, Carol, Tyrese, and Lil Kickass
Loner Daryl
Missing Beth
I'm even starting to doubt they fully get to terminus by the end of the season. Though I think all groups have found the tracks and the directions to terminus, so who knows? The next 2 episodes have incredible potential, so I'm hoping they don't fall flat.
I have to say that the Carol development from who she was when this thing started to where she is now is pretty compelling.
Also wasn't this Season supposed to kill of a major character?
My bet's on Beth. She shared the same 'people are good' personality that Mika had. And as far as themes go, she seems like the next in line for the axe.
...Which might send Daryl over the line to becoming what he once was?...whatever that may be, but i have a feeling it'd tie in nicely with that new gang.
But she practically said she wanted to 'change' anyway. Why not let her? One extra zombie probably wouldn't make a difference. Plus, keeping zombies around worked for Michhone. Maybe she would've figured something like that out. Or maybe not. But I do agree that her hurting another group / fate worse than death scenarios are reasons not to have let her go. I'd still lean towards giving her a chance rather than a bullet to the back of the head though.
...He also made some bolts while on Hershels farm.