[SPOILERS, UNDOUBTEDLY]
I’ll admit, I was frustrated by much of last night’s episode. It was beginning again to feel like a Frank Darabont episode: More talking, more stalling, more stasis. But unlike “The Walking Dead” under Darabont’s stewardship, last night’s episode — the fourth full one under Glen Mazzarra — didn’t take six episodes to get to the point. It took 45 minutes, and ultimately, the payoff was worth it. “The Walking Dead” lost its first major character in long time, and for once, they managed to build some sympathy for that character before killing him off. Moreover, they managed to do it in surprise fashion. Perhaps the book readers saw that coming, but I had no clue, and it was all the more unsettling because Dale — somewhat forgotten this half season — had been the group’s moral center.
Ultimately, it was not — as I’d initially thought — a stalling episode built entirely around whether to kill Randall. Instead, Mazzara used Randall to further develop several other characters in last night’s episode, not least of which was Carl, who we discovered is a Class A dipsh*t. Randall is also being used to drive the wedge deeper between Rick and Shane, cause Andrea to question her own loyalties, and most importantly, bring Daryl back into the fold. Daryl has grown the most of any other character on the show, and last night’s episode looked to elevate him as the new Dale, the group’s moral center. Not bad for a guy who was once a one-dimensional, redneck racist.
That brings me to today’s discussion question: Has “The Walking Dead,” under the supervision of Mazzara, earned back your trust? Do you feel like the story — and the characters — are finally showing some movement? I’ll even include a poll so we can gauge the temperature of the WG readership as a whole.
Follow up question. Who is the most compelling character right now?
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That episode was terrible. I wish Carl was dead.
And how convenient now that Rick is considering killing the living to protect his people, Dale, the moral compass of the group, wanders out at night and gets himself killed.
Watched on tape, rewound and forward-searched the entire episode. I counted 21 scenes. You had Dale’s demise, Carl’s poke-the-zombie scene… and 19 conversations.
The show is still not perfect, but I’ve enjoyed the past two episodes. That said, I didn’t mind Dale and his morality was needed in this group of assholes so his death sucks. C’mon Daryl, keep being awesome.
Also, Carl sucks.
Should add that I still have no emotional attachment to the characters and if the others died (besides Daryl) I’d just shrug it off and have no cares. But I was really sad for that cow last night.
it was a bad ass episode and damn Carl was doing some stupid shit all episode long, but then at the end when he sees the Zombie who killed Dale and runs to his momma to cry, I think that he’s going to do a lot of growing up from that and realize that his dumbass antics do carry consequences. Next episode he should be more mature or stil grieving and he hopefully won’t be a dumb shit anymore.
it’s all about T-Dog now! He will sit the iron throne by the end of winter!
Hahaha. Well done sir, well done.
+1
this is such a loaded poll, I never lost faith in this show… where is the option for that.
now I know its not perfect, I get that. I’m just saying that I was always happy with the show.
I’m still on the fence but leaning towards the I don’t give a shit about this show anymore side of it.
Characters are still being stupid and irrational, hello Carl, and I don’t buy the reason for that being that they’re all in this terrible situation. Overly cautious I could understand, overly stupid doesn’t make sense.
Outside of Daryl and T-Dog, the latter who doesn’t even get to talk, all the characters are still whiney bitches. “You should control your son because he’s rude and doesn’t believe in heaven”, the world is full of zombies, why should he believe in it.
Why is it that when tension in the scene is unnecessary, the zombies can be heard from miles away but when they need to create tension, the zombies are all ninja like?
it seemed like T-dog came back out of nowhere in last night’s episode, but of course didn’t get to talk (just got to grab a shotgun)
No. No. No. I still watch every week because I so badly want the show to be good, but the characters constantly ignoring the obvious is horrible and infuriating .
For example, during the discussion on what to do with Randall the only two options that a group of a dozen people can come up with are kill him and set him free? Seriously? It takes Carl walking in on Rick about to execute Randall for them to come up with the, “Maybe we should just keep him in custody” idea?
Also, when Carol yells at Rick and Lori about Carl being out of control, why don’t they ask her what he said to her? Wouldn’t that be the very first thing they would ask her? What did he say?
Another? How about Shane freaking out on Randall wanting to know what he said to Carl, and when Randall doesn’t tell him Shane sends Carl away without asking Carl what Randall said? Didn’t Shane just shove a gun in Randall’s face in an effort to find out what he said? But now he suddenly doesn’t care enough to ask Carl who was just the receiver of said information?
And that is just in one episode.
Ugh, it is infuriating to watch. I’m just glad a zombie finally killed someone. Now they can spend an episode soul-searching instead of arguing. FUN!
I thought the same thing – why the hell didn’t Rick & Lori ask Carol what he said?
IRL, when a loved one, or just one in your group, is hysterical because of something someone else said, the last thing you ask them is what was said to them. It implies that they’re nuts and that you’re trying to find a way to make them the bad guy.
Try it next time your wife comes home from the grocery store pissed because of what the checker said to them. Then be sure your reaction is ‘That’s not so bad, you’re nuts’ because that always goes over well.
I agree with mattyj2001…. Also, they did mention keeping him in custody. I believe it was Daryl who responded with “Just another mouth to feed”
@mattyj2001: Really? Anytime someone says basically, “You’ll never believe what so and so said to me!” My first response is always, “What did they say?” Maybe you go ahead and agree with them even if you don’t really, but it just struck me as very odd they didn’t even considering asking Carol what he did to piss her off so much.
@Beerad: Maybe I missed the part where they mentioned keeping him in custody. But shouldn’t it have been the obvious choice rather than either letting him go or killing him? We have never been lead to believe they can’t spare food for one person. Killing him or letting him go both seem sort of extreme when compared to… “let’s keep him locked up”.
No. I was (and still am) a huge fan of the comic books, so I was thrilled when I heard it was being adapted. I found the show meandering and lifeless (dammit, I did not mean to use that pun) and was bored by it.
I watched the first episode of season 2, but I couldn’t have cared less. Ultimately, I dropped the show and haven’t regretted it for a minute
I missed last nights show intentionally and I still read this post because I don’t even care about the spoilers, so I guess that means I’m on the fence. I’ll still watch, but I just don’t understand why every the writers made all the characters on the show such whiny dumbasses. Its just infuriating to me. I thought the show would pick up speed when Terriers dude showed up and got blown away.
It’s the worst show I regularly watch. And I’ve seen every episode of Royal Pains.
And you regularly watch, why?
dale’s death was in no way telegraphed from reading the book. in fact, besides taking his name, age and RV, theres not much else form the book that showed up in dale’s tv show character.
its not a great show but still worth watching to me.
I watch the show relgiously, mostly on fastforward, so I can loosely follow along with the hilarious recap the guy at videogum does every week. It might be the best thing the internet has going aside from lobster dog. So I’m not sure how to answer the poll.
If I tried to take the show seriously I imagine I would be beyond frustrated with the majority of plot points and dialogue- to the extent that I would hate the show too much for an occasional surprise turn or compelling character development to turn my opinion around.
I agree completely.
I watch the show strictly as a reference point for the videogum recaps. They are fantastic.
Honestly, I’ve gotten pretty tired of Dale’s preaching, especially in this episode. I was shocked that he was killed (and I ready the books) but I’m not going to miss the character.
on a sincere note, it must be gratifying for Norman Reedus that his is CLEARLY the most interesting character
Why was the zombie that killed Dale all quiet until the moment he turned around. Then it’s all BLARGRAGRHARGHARGH! But while walking out there and staring at a dismembered steer the zombie either doesn’t notice Dal (not likely) or decides he just wants to wait until the right moment to yell in his face. I still watch every episode just so I can gripe about it online, kinda like SNL. I hope people can detect the sarcasm in that. I would gladly watch this show compared to just about 90% of the stuff on TV these days.
If the zombie was already making noise then Dale would not have walked up to it and died. It’s called plotting.
Perhaps the zombies are learning to leave bait around to attract humans. I half expected Ninja-Zombie to pull out the gun and start shooting.
I agree with you if the zombies start getting smarter from here on out. Otherwise it’s just ridiculous.
The stupid kid pissed me off the whole episode. I really do not know why they insist on women bitching about chores or kids being absolutely annoying in the episodes this season.
Also stealth zombies are stupid as all everything.
I was shocked at Dale’s death, totaly dif from the books. In the books he had almost a F-U moment to those who killed him. In the show it was more of a Im going to shock the audience type of moment. The difference between the books and show is that there were no boundries, main characters either died or were royaly physicaly screwed up, i.e. the gov on rick and Michone on the Gov.
How come theres no button for the cow that was gutted, Ole’ Bessie had the most depth!!
For a minute I was hoping the cow was a zombie and killed him because that would’ve been a true WTF moment.
Dear Lord but Zombie Cow would have been awesome! Would a Zombie Cow turn carnivorous, or would it continue to eat grass and hay, but just be really aggressive about it?
Zombie animals is obviously the direction this show needs to go.
LOL,Mel, you stole my thunder. I was watching it expecting for the cow to get Dale. I never saw the ninja walker.
I don’t know if it’s the makers & ginger ale I just drank, or the oxy I took on top of it, but zombie cow has me laughing my ass off. If that cow had let out some zombified MOOOOOO and lunged at Dale, I’d probably have pooped my drawers.
What if they took the point of view from the horse in one episode then the cow in the next, and at the end of each ep. we get “Damn humans!!!”
That kid can not die any sooner.
Amen. I haven’t hated a TV kid this much since Meego.
If viewers are complaing now bout the farm, imagine the prison and the lack of enjoyment that will come out of that.
I don’t know who I like less, Lori or Carl. Which makes me wonder why I like Rick at all. Daryl is the best, always has been.
Good riddance. That leaves the older woman, Lori, the kid and the blonde left as characters that need to die tomorrow.
Daryl and Glenn are the only characters that are interesting in any way. Glenn has more realistic reactions to the situations and Daryl needs his own spinoff called “Bad Ass With A Crossbow.”
Not at all. Gave up on it, ain’t going back to it.
More T-Dog please. Why is he even on the show anymore?
Carl throws rocks like a bitch!
LMAO that’s the first thing I thought when I saw him throw the first stone. Someone needs to get that kid onto a ball field and practice.
Yeah. When I was watching the episode I was going to Tweet “Carl throws like a girl!” Then I started wondering about hashtags and apathy won out in the end.
They need to bring in Michonne or Tyresse (and I’m sorry, but T-Dog is a very poor substitute for Tyreese).
if they fucking let T-Dog do something other than stand there he could be a sub for Tyreese. But this show NEEDS Michionne so effing bad. I also have a feeling they’re going to skip the entire prison arc and go right to the Governor.
I don’t know why, but the thing that irritated me the most last night was Dale’s argument to not kill Randall because that would mean that they would have to admit that they were no longer “civilized.” So according to that logic, there has never been a “civilization” that condoned or authorized the killing of humans? Utter bullshit premise for an argument.
i like how T-dog is the second compelling character according to the poll hahaha
I’m fairly certain that the majority of devoted fans to this show give it a pass because it’s the only show on TV about zombies, it’s prettily shot and not terrible. Add to this the liberal use of gore, and it seems like plenty of people are willing to put up with some of the most asinine characters on TV.
And you know they are asenine because you watch every episode from start to finish, right?
I did until the mid-season hiatus, when I realized my enjoyment of the show was almost completely reliant upon the work of KNB. Nothing I’ve read since the return has convinced me otherwise.
Dale is thankfully dead but I still feel like I need some closure. DID HE EVER FIND A RADIATOR HOSE FOR HIS RV!!!
I second the sentiments made in this comment.
I think I’d like a more middling response to that poll, like how I’m talked down from the ledge, but the window is still open for a swift change of mind.
Sort of Dean Stockwell’s end on Battlestar Galactica.
Solid episode. Happy to see Dale go. He annoyed the crap outta me. His death scene, and the reaction of the others was very well done. Now the only character I’m waiting to die off is Lori.
I understand and don’t understand all the hate Carl is getting. The kid is like nine. Of course he’s gonna throw rocks at a zombie that he thinks can’t reach him. Of course he’s going to be a bit screwed up and violent because of the zombie apocalypse and ya’know, being shot and almost dying. Carl made stupid calls, but they were calls that a nine-year old that doesn’t know any better would make. I think the bigger question this episode should raise is: WHY IN GOD’S NAME DOES LORI LET CARL WANDER OFF BY HIMSELF?! I mean really. She’s supposedly so damn protective apparently she doesn’t seem to notice when he wanders into the woods by himself for an extended period of time.
I agree, and not only that, but when he’s there to see Dale die, probably thinking “I’ve made a huge mistake” as he recognize ninja-zombie, I thought, that kid is really badly raised. I get that if everyone in the house ran to see the show, he’s going to follow them, or even to have to follow them.
So, following that logic, why isn’t she dead already ?
worst episode aside from the CDC shit.
45 minutes of people arguing about a whether to kill a character that no one has any reason to give a shit about.
5 minutes of AGAIN teasing Carl to be some cold-blooded badass only to flip him right back to a little wuss.
and 5 minutes of Dale dying which was great because he was fucking obnoxious.
agreed.
Best episode aside from the pilot and some others episodes that were great or kinda good but I don’t remember.
45 minutes of people reinvesting their characters and driving a point home by deciding whether or not they should kill a guy that no one has any reason to give a shit about.
and 5 minutes of Dale dying which was great because he was fucking obnoxious, thus eliminating the only character susceptible to keep them from becoming unredeemable human beings (too late for Lori, that dumb bitch needs to die)
“45 minutes of people arguing about a whether to kill a character that no one has any reason to give a shit about.”
The whole episode was about morality you tit. Is it wrong to kill another living person because that person MIGHT retaliate? Is it ok to murder someone because they are a stranger? Should morality even exist in a lawless society?
I know they took 45 minutes to hammer the point home (which apparently you missed) but that because it’s a major point of the show.
anybody else catch in the preview for next week, T-Dog goes to the door an says “The Governor called, you’re off the hook.”?
Woah, woah, T-Dog *says* something?!
believe it or not… in the preview, he had like 3 lines.
I will miss Dale saying T-dog.
All I know is that if Daryl ends up in a situation where he has to go to the saddlebag pistol and dies cause it is gone, the voo doo lady I have putting bad joo joo on the showrunner of The Killing will be adding some more names to her list. Not sure who yet, but someone will pay.
It cracked me up to see that we were 14% to think T-Dog is the most compelling character!
Also, this show needs more incest and dragons.
I agree with everything you just said, except instead of dragons, I think this show could use some zombies.
No, its too obvious, could consider writing in some zombie robots though…
Does anyone else think of Carl as Jack Marston?? Completely incapable of doing anything right and he will never live up to what his dad is?
Oh and the fact that everyone thinks he is completely out of his league??
At least Carl sounds like his voice might not end up being all whiny and annoying. Jack Marston’s voice was hard to deal with when compared with his dad’s super awesome gravelly badass voice.
(Knowing what goes on in the comics, I won’t speak on Carl’s present and potential future behavior.)
you’re missing an option. i would like to vote “never lost my trust”
I agree with this guy. I’ve enjoyed all of Season 2 and I appreciated that the pace slowed down a bit in the first half of the season. If they tried to keep up all the momentum the first season had, it would completely ruin the show.
Dissident, Amen! Me either. I love this show. As always the readers of the book/comic always hate it when their favorite is made into a movie or tv show. I have never read the comics but I think this show is fantastic. It isn’t a zombie series, it is a drama. For those folks that complain about how slow it is, if it ends with this season then I will agree with you. But, I think they are setting up an even better third season by doing a butt load of character developement this season.
Best line of the season, and funniest, was T Dog’s, “Good thing we didn’t shoot it”.
I’ve never read the comics, still find the show stupid/boring, don’t know how reading the comics should factor into that when they’re apparently completely different.
Also, what does “it isn’t a zombie series, it’s a drama” mean exactly? Are those mutually exclusive? You know, like a DRAMA WITH ZOMBIES? I don’t understand what great character development you people are seeing here, there is none. Save for Darryl these people are pretty much the same they were at the beginning and all this “characterization” is just them having the same arguments over and over and over again based on what characters they are. That’s not a development, that’s just filler dialogue.
I mean, what are you saying? That we needed all this so that by Season 3 we REALLY know that Grimes is a man of conviction and morals, like that wasn’t obvious from Season 1? Are you really saying that all these endless talks somehow broadened the characters for you in a way that will cause the ball to get rolling next season?
Well, Rapax, we are all free to see at as we see it and comment it on as we wish!
Nice to know I got to live rent free in your brain for a little while.
Dale never got to say one of the best lines of the comic series, which is of course “TAINTED MEAT!” I thought killing him off in this manner totally sucked. It came completely out of nowhere; like the writers ran out of things for him to say so he needed to die. He never got to come into his own and be a badass. And T-Dog? Did he even *say* anything that entire episode? He’s so underdeveloped as a character, I think the writers forgot about him.
My God this show is ridiculous. So this “Ninja Zombie” is smart enough to create a diversion with an eviscerated cow…hide in the grass and strike a grown man from behind the proceed to out muscle him to the point where he rips Dale’s chest wide open….YET is too weak to get his legs out of some mud and then hold on to that 60 pound douehebag kid? UGH.
i didn’t take that as some plan by the zombie, i think it just happened to kill the cow and still be in the area when dale walked up
Aaaaaand yet you are still clearly watching the show. Or at least reading about it at watching clips so you can find a reason to whine about it.
How ’bout you watch something else and stay the fuck out of our conversations?
Oh Matt, everyone’s free to watch the show for their own personal reasons, you’re not the comment police, stop being so thin-skinned.
Yeah, I didn’t think the zombie was plotting either. He was just still ambling around aimlessly when Dale happened by. And that’s why you don’t wander off to pout when you don’t get your own way during the zombiepocalypse.
Had it been me, the second I saw that eviscerated cow mooing like that I’d have been running straight back to camp screaming “Zombie cow! Zombie cow!”.
Very rarely has a show frustrated me this much. My brother reads the comics and so I know enough about what happens but God dammit this show is dragging. Shane does nothing but act like a dick to egg on Rick and Lori single-handedly rolls feminism back 30 years. But we know Rick isn’t going to kill Randall, we’ve already determined this from the prior episode. Its a silly conflict that only serves to pad out an otherwise non-existent storyline. What else is going on in this show? NOTHING! We had 1 zombie kill this episode and Carl acted like a complete dumbass. Now that Dale is gone its just going to be everyone acting like douchebags until someone dies. Dale was the nice guy but now its just gonna be everyone acting obnoxious. It doesn’t nothing to advance the plot and the debate was pointless because at this point there’s nowhere for these guys to progress. It wont get interesting until season 3 because all the really really fucked up stuff happens once the governor is introduced.
So you have a comic book, fantastically written and drawn, where a young boy kill a guy in the first issue, but otherwise is safeguarded by some damn good parenting, and a rather cool old guy slowly but surely hooks up with a hot student and later on dies eaten alive by cannibals after having been infected by zombies so fuck you cannibals!
And you have a show where that same character is annoying the shit out of everybody, not fucking the girl (who’s now a obnoxious grown woman) and ends up being eviscerated at the supposedly feeble hands of a ninja-zombie. And the now 9 y-o boy is wandering around, trows rocks at a zombie like a myopathic girl, manages to lose a gun and to be indirectly responsible for the said evisceration.
So yeah, good job writers.
I hope Randall escapes, bring the governor and his henchmen back to the farm where they proceed to gang-rape the whole group. Except for Daryl, who’s out somewhere making an arrow out of Dale’s tibia, T-Bone, who was in fact a spy from the start, and Carl, because, his parents obviously don’t give two fuck about him, and he was out in the woods searching for Darryl’s gun.
Back at the farm, he watches as the Governor’s men kill his mom, Glen, Andrea, Carole and Hershel, whose daughters are now enslaved, as they piss on his delusional father and shoot him in the head, shoot Shane in the back while he’s trying to escape, as they rape and bukkake Lori’s corpse. He loses his shit, kill the Governor (cameo by Morrissey) and becomes the new leader of the outfit, T-Bone as a second in command. The show then focuses on one hand on Carl’s camp, whose daily routine is to be frequently attacked by zombies, or raided by cannibals, or going on rampages. On the other hand on Daryl, who eventually meet Michonne, and then it writes itself : racist redneck meet black girl, guy falls for girl, redneck shows love with ears necklaces, girl falls for redneck.
It lasts for a while, until Daryl and Michonne wage war on The Cunt, which is Carl surname (he never learned how to spell properly, he believes it stands for Count), Daryl enters the camp by night, kill everyone in the camp Rambo-style but is defeated by Carl, who’s spelling deficiencies are surpassed by his psychosis fits, and his cunning abilities (he used hot Hershel’s sister *gratuitous rape scene*) to get the best of Daryl, who is now forced to kill zombies in arenas for Carl’s amusement.
SPOILER
The 2hourfinale is all about Michonne’s mission to rescue Daryl. She gets killed by Carl, but not before she could let her lover free, kiss him goodbye as blood spurts of her mouth. Then it’s 45 minutes of torture on Carl. The final scene is Daryl getting back his nazi gun, saying: “You always was a bitch Carl” and spitting on him as he lets zombies devour The Cunt.
I forgot about T-Bone, go figure.
It’s T-DOG, motherfucker. T fucking Dog.
This should be like that scene in Annie Hall where Alvy Singer pulls Marshall McLuhan out of a movie line to shoot down some smartmouth, only instead of Marshall McLuhan saying, “I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing! ” we get T-Dog shrugging his shoulders and leaning on something.
The kid who plays Carl is the worst. He can’t do anything convincingly. Kid is such a terrible actor that it completely distracts me.
Most people who are complaining about the show seem to have mistaken it for some sort of Zombie Shoot ‘em up…. Which it never was, or promised to be….. Those people should stick to the Resident Evil movies…. I hear they are AWESOME!
I think most people have mistaken it for an interesting show set during a zombie apocalypse. I don’t understand why the main defense of this show is supposed to be “IT’S NOT ABOUT ZOMBIES!!!” when…you know, it’s about Zombies.
The point isn’t that we need to see Zombies get killed all the time but there is literally no sense of danger or threat or urgency here. All the time they’re at the farm they’re just casually strolling around and having the same arguments over and over again and when stuff needs to happen, they make up some reason to leave the farm to find another plot point that the writers get to milk for several episodes, see: kill the guy or let him live. That doesn’t make for exciting viewing, it’s an exercise in killing time without moving the plot anywhere at all. And now they killed Dale because…well I guess someone had to die.
So this episode included pretty much everything I find frustrating about this show, which boils down to one constant: manufactured drama. Dale getting gutted because Carl was an idiot was the first thing to happen this season that actually was a result of someone’s actions and not just completely manufactured.
As far as Randall goes, they could have avoided all of this pointless banter if they had just kept the guy blindfolded the whole time he was at the farm, and the episode previous was completely unnecessary–you could have removed it from the season and it wouldn’t matter at all.
Also, why do they always take the easy way out? They should have killed Randall–What’s more compelling drama to have to deal with as a character, “man i can’t deal with how we didn’t end up taking that human life” or “man i can’t believe we all let rick kill that guy”?
Also, I hate that Rick’s range of emotion is boiled down to what face he’s making when he delivers his lines. And Daryl has always been one of the only interesting characters on the show, but I still can’t understand why he was fine with it after the blonde chick shot him in the head.
I wish Carl had died from the beginning. The actor is awful, and the character is shit. I mean, he’s just a really shitty character.
Also, is anything ever going to happen with the black dude and his kid who saved Rick in the first season?
Thats a whole story line in itself.
Why did they even create the T-Dog character? It’s like they wanted a black guy, but they didn’t REALLY want a black guy.
Because he was supposed to say after every kill “Welcome to Earff!!!”