The Walking Dead (2 Viewers)

[Ronoh]

It's more the violation of the audience's trust to depict the death of a character with a full symphonic tribute during his death and to then bring him back several episodes later for no purpose other than to force us to reckon with his pedo-stache for another dozen or so episodes.

Reasoning was given during Talking Dead. In a nutshell, in this world the other characters have no way of knowing if someone who went outside the gates is alive or dead and they wanted to give the feel to the audience.

Done well or not I understand the reasoning, have accepted it and moved on. Per the rest of it I really don't see them taking many more liberties with survivors abilities/decisions than is found in the vast majority of zombie movies.

 

[Ronoh]

Woah woah woah! Some folks ain't seen it yet!

Yeeeeeeeeah, if you open The Walking Dead thread on/after Sunday night before watching the episode I'd have to say its on you

 

[detroitdad]

Yeeeeeeeeah, if you open The Walking Dead thread on/after Sunday night before watching the episode I'd have to say its on you

absolutely. We usually don't watch it until MON. I don't open the thread until TUE. Common sense imo.

I can suspend belief in a show. Especially a Zombie show. I just don't care for how this was handled. Kill him, or don't kill him. I don't really care. The pretend shit is jus annoying. If my wife wasn't a fan of the show I'd probably be done with it (getting bored anyways). I mentioned it to her that we could stop watching. He statement was "I watch enough of your shit, you can watch WD". Fair enough.

 

[Chippy McChiperson]

Reasoning was given during Talking Dead. In a nutshell, in this world the other characters have no way of knowing if someone who went outside the gates is alive or dead and they wanted to give the feel to the audience.

Done well or not I understand the reasoning, have accepted it and moved on. Per the rest of it I really don't see them taking many more liberties with survivors abilities/decisions than is found in the vast majority of zombie movies.

Wait so you're telling me all this skinny people with the flaky skin are zombies? WTF?!?

 

[jbutler]

Reasoning was given during Talking Dead. In a nutshell, in this world the other characters have no way of knowing if someone who went outside the gates is alive or dead and they wanted to give the feel to the audience.

Done well or not I understand the reasoning, have accepted it and moved on. Per the rest of it I really don't see them taking many more liberties with survivors abilities/decisions than is found in the vast majority of zombie movies.

I'm certainly the first to acknowledge that it is SOP for the show and so anyone who watches at this point has lost the right to be taken seriously when they complain about impracticalities of certain plot mechanisms. You can eat as much McDonald's as you like, but if you start complaining it's made you fat you should and will be treated as a moron.

So I have no real quarrel with him crawling under the dumpster no matter how dumb it is from a writing perspective. But the structure of Glenn's "death" and "resurrection" - tracking him through the point of obvious death and then reframing it as nothing more than another fight against the walkers - was just manipulative plain and simple. If the writers wanted to construct some kind of mysterious tension then show him walking out the gate and then nothing for a few episodes.

Perhaps they all looked like television geniuses on Talking Dead, but despite my obvious low television standards (I'm still watching this show after all), I cannot sit through anything involving Chris Hardwick in any capacity.

 

[Ronoh]

If the writers wanted to construct some kind of mysterious tension then show him walking out the gate and then nothing for a few episodes.

Meh, they've done this repeatedly for a few seasons now... I've never once thought "I wonder if so and so is dead" when they've been absent for a few episodes. What are they going to do, just never show them again? No tension there.

 

[jbutler]

Meh, they've done this repeatedly for a few seasons now... I've never once thought "I wonder if so and so is dead" when they've been absent for a few episodes. What are they going to do, just never show them again? No tension there.

Fair enough. Then they didn't achieve the goal they claim to have set for themselves either of creating tension in the audience as to whether someone who left the gates is alive or dead.

 

[Ronoh]

Fair enough. Then they didn't achieve the goal they claim to have set for themselves either of creating tension in the audience as to whether someone who left the gates is alive or dead.

I'm not understanding how it would make sense for someone leaving the gates to possibly be considered dead by us watching the show. I mean, how would it play out?

1- Glenn leaves on a run and we never see him again. Is this satisfying to anyone?

2- Carl leaves to find Enid. Four episodes later Rick has to put down Walker Carl who he stumbles across. a) it's a one trick pony and b) you guys would bash the show at the unlikelyness of Walker Carl randomly being found by Rick. I believe that already happened with Sophia.

3- go with a minor character. Enid leaves town and we don't see her for awhile. Wait, that just happened... how much tension did it create?

 

[manamongkids]

Speaking of Carl, isnt he like 15 now? Dude, time to lose that stupid ass sheriff hat, you look like an idiot. I chuckle everytime I see that oversized hat on his stupid head

 

[Ronoh]

I chuckle everytime I see that oversized hat on his stupid head

I chuckled when I read this

 

[Anthony Martino]

Speaking of Carl, isnt he like 15 now? Dude, time to lose that stupid ass sheriff hat, you look like an idiot. I chuckle everytime I see that oversized hat on his stupid head

I dunno, the priest wearing the same pristine outfit day in and out ranks higher on the ridiculous factor for me.

 

[72o]

Carl just needs to go...but I'm afraid of the mental place that Rick would end up in.

 

[Wils]

Yeeeeeeeeah, if you open The Walking Dead thread on/after Sunday night before watching the episode I'd have to say its on you

You mention Sunday night. I'm in the UK. How the hell do we know when you guys see a new episode?

Ah yes - see the thread and read all about it )

 

[jbutler]

I'm not understanding how it would make sense for someone leaving the gates to possibly be considered dead by us watching the show. I mean, how would it play out?

1- Glenn leaves on a run and we never see him again. Is this satisfying to anyone?

2- Carl leaves to find Enid. Four episodes later Rick has to put down Walker Carl who he stumbles across. a) it's a one trick pony and b) you guys would bash the show at the unlikelyness of Walker Carl randomly being found by Rick. I believe that already happened with Sophia.

3- go with a minor character. Enid leaves town and we don't see her for awhile. Wait, that just happened... how much tension did it create?

Sure, maybe not much tension there either. The post you quoted was directed at the writers' claim that they were attempting to establish tension and your post:

Meh, they've done this repeatedly for a few seasons now... I've never once thought "I wonder if so and so is dead" when they've been absent for a few episodes. What are they going to do, just never show them again? No tension there.

My point being that they didn't accomplish their goal by their method either. And it would seem pretty obvious that they wouldn't since even people who still love the show have learned that they can't trust the writers.

 

[Ronoh]

My point being that they didn't accomplish their goal by their method either.

They didn't? It became a discussion on a poker chip forum where we don't discuss specifics of any (many) tv shows in detail. The discussion has been everywhere over the last month.

And it would seem pretty obvious that they wouldn't since even people who still love the show have learned that they can't trust the writers.

I don't get it. I still thoroughly enjoy the show and I don't have a trust issue.

Maybe I'm just not understanding where your statement is coming from... are you saying they broke your (whoevers) trust because they showed Glenn die but he wasn't dead? They obviously didn't. In my opinion they didn't take it far enough, mainly due to Talking Dead so it's really not their fault. While I noticed the strange angle and lack of blood coming from his mouth when it was happening, I was absolutely positive Glenn was alive following TD. They started the show with "is Glenn dead" which was a bit of a "uhhhh... he might not be?" in the moment and lack of Glenns death during the "in memorandum" segment removed all doubt.

It took discussions like the one here that made me entertain the possibility that he may in fact be dead.

 

[jbutler]

They didn't? It became a discussion on a poker chip forum where we don't discuss specifics of any (many) tv shows in detail. The discussion has been everywhere over the last month.

I don't get it. I still thoroughly enjoy the show and I don't have a trust issue.

Maybe I'm just not understanding where your statement is coming from... are you saying they broke your (whoevers) trust because they showed Glenn die but he wasn't dead? They obviously didn't. In my opinion they didn't take it far enough, mainly due to Talking Dead so it's really not their fault. While I noticed the strange angle and lack of blood coming from his mouth when it was happening, I was absolutely positive Glenn was alive following TD. They started the show with "is Glenn dead" which was a bit of a "uhhhh... he might not be?" in the moment and lack of Glenns death during the "in memorandum" segment removed all doubt.

It took discussions like the one here that made me entertain the possibility that he may in fact be dead.

All of the following is IMO obv, but Glenn's non-death is just the latest instance of the showrunners manipulating the audience in cheap and unrewarding ways. Apart from the first season, they have had much less interest in character development or story arch than simply pulling the audience along from one episode/season to the next. They make narrative choices to get cliffhangers without any regard for whether it benefits the story and always with an eye toward ensuring someone clicks "watch next" or feels compelled to tune back in next week. I'm not saying they're ineffective; it's just that they're the television version of a James Patterson novel: shallowly designed to flick the dopamine receptors when you answer the last cliffhanger and move immediately onto the next one.

Another sort of sister rule to that Pixar "rule" I referenced above might be that convenience or implausibility for the sake of moving the plot is totally acceptable. If a long range gun shot is written as doable in one scene or not doable in the other or if you have to skip over how certain characters got to certain places with certain items in order to conserve time to move the plot, that's cool with me. If those coincidences or conveniences are used to draw out emotion that could otherwise be drawn out with more careful plot or character development, I think that's cheap and unfortunate.

Frankly I don't have the patience to go back and cite specific instances, so it's totally fair to disregard my opinion since I don't have any supporting examples. And I don't have anything against the show per se nor do I have trouble understanding people thinking it is genuinely good. I love plenty of TV and movies that other people dismiss as shallow and manipulatively superficial, so if it just works for someone because it works for them, I'm all for it. I just don't care for it and perceive the flaws to be those I describe above.

 

[SixSpeedFury]

Last night's episode was meh.

Spoiler

At least we got Negan at the end!

 

[Anthony Martino]

Last night's episode was meh.

Spoiler

At least we got Negan at the end!

Spoiler

That whole Negan thing at the end was even lamer than I could've imagined it would be. Eight guys just park their bikes blocking a road in the hopes that someone will come by they can waylay? So many problems with this:

1. A large vehicle could just gun it and plow through them

2. It's the fucking zombie apocalypse, traffic ain't exactly heavy and they could sit there for weeks with no people to waylay passing by easily!

The show continues to get its dumb all over the viewers. Keep the deaths coming, these survivors aren't worthy of that title

 

[manamongkids]

I keep forgetting to set my DVR to capture 15 mins into whatever shitty show is on after TWD to see the trailer for next season. Savvy move by AMC to make the trailer fall into the next show.

This past episode, meh

 

[SixSpeedFury]

Spoiler

That whole Negan thing at the end was even lamer than I could've imagined it would be. Eight guys just park their bikes blocking a road in the hopes that someone will come by they can waylay? So many problems with this:

1. A large vehicle could just gun it and plow through them

2. It's the fucking zombie apocalypse, traffic ain't exactly heavy and they could sit there for weeks with no people to waylay passing by easily!

The show continues to get its dumb all over the viewers. Keep the deaths coming, these survivors aren't worthy of that title

That's what I thought as well. But we all know it's done for suspense lol

 

[Anthony Martino]

I keep forgetting to set my DVR to capture 15 mins into whatever shitty show is on after TWD to see the trailer for next season. Savvy move by AMC to make the trailer fall into the next show.

This past episode, meh

Here's the video direct from AMC for next time

 

[jbutler]

Here's the video direct from AMC for next time

Did not watch the video, but I will presume/hope they are driving a semi carrying all the known characters and they are headed for a 400-foot drop off.

 

[jbutler]

Relevant. POLL: White Dummy Should Have Died in The Walking Dead Midseason Finale?

 

[Anthony Martino]

Relevant. POLL: White Dummy Should Have Died in The Walking Dead Midseason Finale?

Somehow the priest is left off this poll?

 

[jbutler]

Somehow the priest is left off this poll?

As is Rick. And Deanna. Wtf?

 

[Anthony Martino]

As is Rick.

As much as I'd LOVE to see Rick bite it (cause how dumb are all his ideas as LEADER of the group???) that's obviously not gonna happen

 

[Ronoh]

The show continues to get its dumb all over the viewers.

I'm still trying to figure out what that says about their viewers who constantly bash the show but keep on watching

 

[SixSpeedFury]

 

[jbutler]

I'm still trying to figure out what that says about their viewers who constantly bash the show but keep on watching

I look at it like this: have you ever eaten a pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream that didn't have enough fudge chunks or walnuts in it? I'm not about to stop eating it just because it doesn't have as much of the goodies as I want. I mean, the banana ice cream is okay, but I'm really looking for fudge and walnuts. So I continue to dig around and eat the rest in hopes that the bottom will hold a trove of fudge and walnuts I can find at the end. I'm kind of at the point where I know there's no big bunch of fudge and walnuts, but it's hard to just throw out the rest of the ice cream without knowing whether they're in there. So I keep digging and bitching. Like a sucker

 

[SixSpeedFury]