Yeah, I seem to recall a deranged, unpredictable, violent drug addict in season 1...granted now he's just a somewhat deranged, unpredictable, violent sober guy now!
I need a new episode! :thumbup::thumbup:
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The Walking Dead Season 3 Thread...
- Thread starter Jaxx
- Start date
Yeah, I seem to recall a deranged, unpredictable, violent drug addict in season 1...granted now he's just a somewhat deranged, unpredictable, violent sober guy now!
I need a new episode! :thumbup::thumbup:
)
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I'm going to be in bootcamp when episodes resume =(
Graphic: Stopping the Dead – a statistical look back at the Walking Dead series so far
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/1...-look-back-at-the-walking-dead-series-so-far/
Awesome!
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/1...-look-back-at-the-walking-dead-series-so-far/
Awesome!
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Ah, yes, you can easily find the appearance of Hershel's neverending shotgun in there. Epic moment.
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Interesting dissection LVC.I'm reading "On Killing" by Lt. Grossman about the mindset of killing. Some remarkable studies and discoveries as well. The Lord of Flies is probably more shocking in truth?
Yeah -- I'm sure that Merle, being Merle, sees absolutely nothing wrong with anything he does (or doesn't care, in any case). Taking accountability for the consequences of his actions doesn't seem to be wired into his genetic pattern...
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I hate when you type something extensive, and then when you press post it deletes it all because your token has expired... I'll try to re-type it without the qoute's since it took a long time to set up.
Andrea doesn't have all the information needed to make accurate decisions on what each character is doing. If you take into consideration the blind spots she has with regards to the governor it makes sense why she might still trust him. The heads in the jar doesn't necessarily make him a nut job - his description was reasonable, he used them to numb himself to the horrors of the outside world. Keeping his daughter is just him not being able to put down the greatest love of his life. Fighting michonne makes sense because Andrea has never gotten a full explanation of anything from her, so her actions seem cryptic and at times contradictory or chaotic. Her main fault is that she wants to trust people, and she makes decisions about things without having much leeway for new possibilities. As seen by her response to the girl at the far attempting suicide - "well now everythings hunkey dorey, she'll never do it again! she wants to live!". It makes sense to her because that's what she's experienced and her experience and understanding is what feels correct to her. Also when the doctor/scientist tries to see if there is latent memories in the patient when he first turns, her response is "I'm sorry, scientific method of experimentation? They have no soul. I know because I've seen one once. Scientific method is stupid." It doesn't make her stupid it just means she's stubborn with her opinions once she comes to them, and many of them are reasonable given her experiences.
Maggie's shooting does become sloppy when it's aimed at people but there are good reasons for that. There are two things that are asked/happen when shooting at people that no longer happen to them when shooting at walkers:
1 - "am I making the right choice?" killing a walker is always the right choice. Killing a living person? answers vary.
2 - People shoot back. Walkers do not. You don't have to fear a walker that's 100 feet away if you have enough ammo, you have to be very afraid of a guy with an assault rifle.
I don't think Merle has toned down as much as had to accommodate and deal with being part of a hierarchy. Before he was an outlaw and money still existed. He could rob a liqueur store or sell drugs and make enough money to be completely self sufficient, and anyone who met him needed to be afraid of him, not the other way around. That world doesn't exist any more and it means he has to rely on other people to a degree. If he runs his mouth off and gets kicked out of woodbury he'd be alone in zombie territory where no one cares how big of a badass he is and he has no where to turn for food/shelter. That calls for some filtering. But that doesn't mean he's changed, he's still racist (as seen when interrogating glenn), he's still ultra violent (as seen with glenn, the italian guy, etc etc), and he's still not great towards women. He's still kinda dumb, as seen by him telling the governor Michonne was dead without any evidence, and just hopeing he'd beleive it. Everything he was is still there, his actions just have direct ramifications that he can't ignore anymore.
There are two things that have remained consistent with Merles character as far as his underlying loyalties and MO. He only becomes conciliatory when his life is under threat and he has no options, and he wants to be at his brothers side. In Daryls hallucination when he fell on his own arrow Merle was both degrading and supportive. Even though he made fun of daryl it seems like Merle has pushed Daryl to be a survivor and to be self sufficient throughout his life. In that way I don't know that Merle would ever go against him. Not when it counts.
The thing about the Governor, where Merle is concerned, is that the Governor has some pretty strict rules about who he lets in and who he keeps.
-He doesn't like people who have a group hierarchy that he didn't create - as seen by the destruction of the military group. He wouldn't have been able to break that chain of command that was formed pre-woodbury, they could have taken the town if left outside and could have taken it from the inside out if brought into the fold.
-He doesn't like expertise that's outside his direct control. The group took the prison and that makes them ultimately dangerous since they could take woodbury as well, and the military group had the same problems.
-He doesn't like connections that extend outside his walls. That the military guy had a group on the outside was a threat. They would have come for him, and that would have threatened his control of woodbury. The link between maggy/glenn and the group was the same thing. The link between merle and daryl immediately put's merle into a dangerous category - he might leave to go find him and link an outside group to woodbury, daryl might come to woodbury with an outside group if he know merle was there, merles loyalty might split as he tries to defend his brother, etc. If daryl had never popped up merle would have probably remained at the governors side until he messed it up in another way.
Tyrese's group mirrors Ricks in a lot of ways. His wife approaches communication with outside elements harshly. The father son have reactions similar to shane (overly violent). Tyrese tries to communicate in a level headed pacifying manner with outsiders to secure food, shelter and stability for his group. Tyrese is an ideal addition to any group - he contains negative elements and helps to nullify conflict, he makes bonds readily while also being a strong fighter and leader. The rest of his group really needs to get their communication style and expectations in line with him though, or else their going to end up like Shane did. You try to start fights long enough and eventually ones going to come to you.
Axel.... is a terrifying internal element of this story. I've read enough about the comics to know that he'll probably end up taking the place of a really unpleasant story line on the comics. Everyone has a different criminal past and asking what each prisoners were might not have gotten them a straight answer. Oscar (the one who was shot during the invasion of woodbury) was breaking and entering, a burglar. We don't know what axel's was. He might have been a serial rapist or pedophile. Either way his interaction with the women in the last scenes of the episode put him in a category in my head that needs to have a gun trained on him at all times, at a healthy distance. He presented attitudes and perspectives that are dangerous in their disregard for personal space, social structure, and social moires. Despite a common phrasing that it's the end of the world and morality doesn't have a place - it does. It always does. "Only god can judge me" is the credo of sociopaths.
Andrea doesn't have all the information needed to make accurate decisions on what each character is doing. If you take into consideration the blind spots she has with regards to the governor it makes sense why she might still trust him. The heads in the jar doesn't necessarily make him a nut job - his description was reasonable, he used them to numb himself to the horrors of the outside world. Keeping his daughter is just him not being able to put down the greatest love of his life. Fighting michonne makes sense because Andrea has never gotten a full explanation of anything from her, so her actions seem cryptic and at times contradictory or chaotic. Her main fault is that she wants to trust people, and she makes decisions about things without having much leeway for new possibilities. As seen by her response to the girl at the far attempting suicide - "well now everythings hunkey dorey, she'll never do it again! she wants to live!". It makes sense to her because that's what she's experienced and her experience and understanding is what feels correct to her. Also when the doctor/scientist tries to see if there is latent memories in the patient when he first turns, her response is "I'm sorry, scientific method of experimentation? They have no soul. I know because I've seen one once. Scientific method is stupid." It doesn't make her stupid it just means she's stubborn with her opinions once she comes to them, and many of them are reasonable given her experiences.
Maggie's shooting does become sloppy when it's aimed at people but there are good reasons for that. There are two things that are asked/happen when shooting at people that no longer happen to them when shooting at walkers:
1 - "am I making the right choice?" killing a walker is always the right choice. Killing a living person? answers vary.
2 - People shoot back. Walkers do not. You don't have to fear a walker that's 100 feet away if you have enough ammo, you have to be very afraid of a guy with an assault rifle.
I don't think Merle has toned down as much as had to accommodate and deal with being part of a hierarchy. Before he was an outlaw and money still existed. He could rob a liqueur store or sell drugs and make enough money to be completely self sufficient, and anyone who met him needed to be afraid of him, not the other way around. That world doesn't exist any more and it means he has to rely on other people to a degree. If he runs his mouth off and gets kicked out of woodbury he'd be alone in zombie territory where no one cares how big of a badass he is and he has no where to turn for food/shelter. That calls for some filtering. But that doesn't mean he's changed, he's still racist (as seen when interrogating glenn), he's still ultra violent (as seen with glenn, the italian guy, etc etc), and he's still not great towards women. He's still kinda dumb, as seen by him telling the governor Michonne was dead without any evidence, and just hopeing he'd beleive it. Everything he was is still there, his actions just have direct ramifications that he can't ignore anymore.
There are two things that have remained consistent with Merles character as far as his underlying loyalties and MO. He only becomes conciliatory when his life is under threat and he has no options, and he wants to be at his brothers side. In Daryls hallucination when he fell on his own arrow Merle was both degrading and supportive. Even though he made fun of daryl it seems like Merle has pushed Daryl to be a survivor and to be self sufficient throughout his life. In that way I don't know that Merle would ever go against him. Not when it counts.
The thing about the Governor, where Merle is concerned, is that the Governor has some pretty strict rules about who he lets in and who he keeps.
-He doesn't like people who have a group hierarchy that he didn't create - as seen by the destruction of the military group. He wouldn't have been able to break that chain of command that was formed pre-woodbury, they could have taken the town if left outside and could have taken it from the inside out if brought into the fold.
-He doesn't like expertise that's outside his direct control. The group took the prison and that makes them ultimately dangerous since they could take woodbury as well, and the military group had the same problems.
-He doesn't like connections that extend outside his walls. That the military guy had a group on the outside was a threat. They would have come for him, and that would have threatened his control of woodbury. The link between maggy/glenn and the group was the same thing. The link between merle and daryl immediately put's merle into a dangerous category - he might leave to go find him and link an outside group to woodbury, daryl might come to woodbury with an outside group if he know merle was there, merles loyalty might split as he tries to defend his brother, etc. If daryl had never popped up merle would have probably remained at the governors side until he messed it up in another way.
Tyrese's group mirrors Ricks in a lot of ways. His wife approaches communication with outside elements harshly. The father son have reactions similar to shane (overly violent). Tyrese tries to communicate in a level headed pacifying manner with outsiders to secure food, shelter and stability for his group. Tyrese is an ideal addition to any group - he contains negative elements and helps to nullify conflict, he makes bonds readily while also being a strong fighter and leader. The rest of his group really needs to get their communication style and expectations in line with him though, or else their going to end up like Shane did. You try to start fights long enough and eventually ones going to come to you.
Axel.... is a terrifying internal element of this story. I've read enough about the comics to know that he'll probably end up taking the place of a really unpleasant story line on the comics. Everyone has a different criminal past and asking what each prisoners were might not have gotten them a straight answer. Oscar (the one who was shot during the invasion of woodbury) was breaking and entering, a burglar. We don't know what axel's was. He might have been a serial rapist or pedophile. Either way his interaction with the women in the last scenes of the episode put him in a category in my head that needs to have a gun trained on him at all times, at a healthy distance. He presented attitudes and perspectives that are dangerous in their disregard for personal space, social structure, and social moires. Despite a common phrasing that it's the end of the world and morality doesn't have a place - it does. It always does. "Only god can judge me" is the credo of sociopaths.
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General question: What are your assumptions of writers and directors when you draw all these conclusions and inferences? Do you think they're careful and smart enough to have truly crafted it this way and left so much to the audience to try to "get" themselves, or do you think they can just provide a basic story, even if riddled with inconsistencies, and viewers will still be able to get enough out of it to form theories?
Granted, The Walking Dead isn't anything even remotely close to Dude, Where's My Car?, but there are many times where I read or watch something that seems to put everything up front, only to learn later that there was something much deeper and allusive pretty obscure or esoteric stuff.
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There are times when writing in a story becomes so bad that it stands out as being out of place, like the last 1/4 of the book life of pi (If they ended it at the 3/4 mark it would have been amazing, the end read like a 6th grader was writing it). So far I haven't seen anything like that in the walking dead. The story stands on it's own and the character developement+acting works well together. I'm only going off of what is presented, whether the writers intended it to come across that way or not. If any of the things I've seen so far change and give different indications towards the characters motives or personalities, my assumptions and beliefs about them will change with the new information
With andrea that assumption is based on whats been presented on the show. She hasn't been told the same information we have about Michonne, the Governor or Merle. Or what information she's gathered is in a different context. She doesn't appear to remembered or realized that the top head was that of the general, or two of them were those of Michonnes gaurd walkers. If you were randomly thrown into that situation I'm not sure you'd remember either, sitting in water for a long time changes a face. Her interaction with Merle has been limited and she hasn't seen Glenn at all, let along seen what Merle did to him. She hasn't seen anything that would indicate that walkers have souls and thus an experiment to find out if they do seems pointless, but she also didn't know about the Governors daughter or the mindset of the doctor/scientist going into such an experiment. There are many blind corners for her character based on what she's been able to see during a given situation. Whether the writers intended that or not, it comes across in the editing.
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I just reread your post and realized that I responded to an entirely different question then the one you were actually asking. In the case of the walking dead I think a lot of the motives and character qualities are directly taken from the graphic novel, which is intentionally multi-layered because of it's format (graphic novel). Amc has been producing some stellar shows recently with fantastic writing, so they probably pulled in some great writers for the walking dead. When you add good acting you get things out of the story that you can't get from even the best writing. I try to explain to people why I like the first Twilight movie while they try to explain to me how bad the plot and dialogue was. To me that movie was excellent because of it's concentration on portrait style facial expression interplay. The nuances of the face can tell things about whats going on in a second that would otherwise take 10+ minutes to describe in storytelling. The facial expressions of Andrea, Michonne, and Merle are all great indicators of intent and character, where other characters have more cryptic faces (the Governor) that help play into the cryptic nature of their role in the story.
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Maybe he finds an AALB stuck in the head of a zombie as he's escaping???
Or maybe the group figures out that the only "uninfected" place in the country is Wauseon because the folks there reacted quickly (and quietly) en masse at the beginning of the infection, and had the right tools to do so? He could get another one there, right?
If anyone is interested in reading the comics but is worried about spoilers, I have read about the first 20-30.
The comics and the TV series have deviated quite a bit. I like that because the TV series IMO has taken it to the next level with very clever stories and sub plots.. An example is the comics show karl getting shot thats it. The TV series shows him seeing a beautiful stag and being in wonder of the beauty of nature (before it all comes crashing down and he is shot). This scene for me was beautiful as Karl gets to experience the wonder of being a child and the beauty of nature. This is in opposition to the fact the whole world has turned to .....
Its been mentioned before that daryl and merle are not in the comics. I think the TV series is written very well and they are deliberately only giving you only a small part of the story to keep you excited and hanging...
I like how this show isn't spoon feeding you and always keeps you guessing. I have never had as many OMG moments in a show ever (though sons of anarchy and dexter have been good at this as well)...
The comics and the TV series have deviated quite a bit. I like that because the TV series IMO has taken it to the next level with very clever stories and sub plots.. An example is the comics show karl getting shot thats it. The TV series shows him seeing a beautiful stag and being in wonder of the beauty of nature (before it all comes crashing down and he is shot). This scene for me was beautiful as Karl gets to experience the wonder of being a child and the beauty of nature. This is in opposition to the fact the whole world has turned to .....
Its been mentioned before that daryl and merle are not in the comics. I think the TV series is written very well and they are deliberately only giving you only a small part of the story to keep you excited and hanging...
I like how this show isn't spoon feeding you and always keeps you guessing. I have never had as many OMG moments in a show ever (though sons of anarchy and dexter have been good at this as well)...
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No problem, I got something out of both of your posts. Thanks!
Funny you bring up the acting thing, because I still can't decide what is up with Merle's reaction to the governor calling him out as a traitor. He seemed so nonchalant and unsurprised about it. BlackKnight brought up that he may have been put to work as a spy, and Merle's non-reaction made me start to agree... but I'm not sure if Michael Rooker is a great actor and showed that successfully, or if he just didn't act that part out well. Or he did act it out well, but meant to portray something else entirely.
That's just one example, but that comes up a lot during the show, because I don't know what to assume of or expect from the writers, director, and actors. We didn't need Rick to go around telling everybody how the collapse of civilization changes people, because Shane already showed that well (great acting on Bernthal's part), but Rick saying that confirmed the acting. Because of things like that, though, I am spoiled and pretty lazy when watching shows, and expect a lot of things to be spoonfed to me.
