rab01

I think Steve Yuen wasn't on for the same reason that they didn't show the light going out of his eyes either in the close-up or the overhead shot - the show doesn't want us to be certain about his death for a while. If they have some plotlines hinging on searching for Glen, it's very different if we all know more than the characters do. (Picture the searching for Sophia scenes if the show had given us a shot of her in the barn.) That said, I'm not going to enjoy a 90-minute diversion into Morgan's backstory with Glen's death hovering over it. I get that the writers like to occasionally withhold fulfillment of plot lines but I really hope that the preview was a smokescreen because this would be a terrible time to give us a backstory that I was otherwise really excited to watch.

1) Little walker girl from opening scene of the pilot 2) Walker Merle 3) Walker girl tied up in the trunk 4) Mrs. Morgan 5) Walker in the well (after he split in half) 6) TS-19 7) Walker who played tag with Lizzie 8) Governor's daughter 9) Chained walkers in the Woodbury Arena 10) tie - Walkers weighted down at the bottom of the river and the governor's walker aquarium

Seconded. I fenced for a couple years on my college team and Kripke's instructions were on point.

This was the first time I watched TD. Was Hardwick having an off night or is he always like that on this show? (I guess I was irked by his joke about the audience member asking the actress who plays Enid to the prom.) On the plus side, I was surprised by how much I liked Kevin Smith. Beyond being a devoted fan, I thought he was very gracious in the way he complimented the girl on how well she handled her solo turn that opened the episode. His comment also reminded me of when Chandler Riggs did a similar turn in his pudding episode and, to be honest, I think she did a better job of it.

Did that list have Pamela Reed on it or is she no longer famous (enough)? She had/has the best southern accent I've ever heard, well actually the best at accents period. She played Schwarzenegger's partner in Kindergarten Cop and I saw her do a bit on an interview show after someone asked her how hard was it to imitate Arnie ... she slipped into his accent and then did state by state accents for like a half dozen U.S. states that the interviewer threw at her.

There would be 295 million or so walkers in the US and for most people it takes more than one try to get the headshots the CDB crew pull off so easily ;) But, really, how much ammo did they have stocked at the ASZ? 'Cause the CDB crew were probably shot near dry by now. The ASZ didn't have a military base, a sheriff's department or any hardcore preppers on-site so it's a question of how much ammo have they scavenged and whether they've used up more than they've found in the course of that scavenging ...

Obviously it's not the yacht but if it were, the most entertaining mindfuck would be if the only three people on it are Tobias, Dr. Exner and one of the airplane passengers and you are left trying to figure out how THAT happened for the entire run of FTWD.

When you have a functioning unit, absolutely, When trying to first integrate CDB into your town? Maybe not. Give their leader the highest sounding post you can find because co-opting him is priority one or nothing else works. Getting the rest of his group integrated as seconds to AZshats, is the next highest priority, so Abraham was second to Tobin; Glenn was second to her son; Maggie and Rick were second to Deanna ... Rick was never gonna take orders from her son so he can't be the guy who goes on runs. it all makes sense until the rubber hits the pavement and the CDB people are all astronomically more qualified than their nominal superiors. That said, she totally screwed up by not briefing Rick beforehand on trouble spots in her community before sending him on patrol but that leads to the question of how much information you give to someone you don't totally trust. In the end, if she'd been omniscient she probably would have put Rick under Reg on the job of strengthening the defenses.

I don't think she believed FPP; he was just saying what she wanted to hear. At that point, the new guys had been involved in getting her son killed and Rick was clearly challenging her authority and possibly trying to take the town from her. (That said, I don't think she's actually good at poker or she never would have said she was good at poker. She is, however, a politician so she's pretty good at figuring out what people need/want to hear and saying that.) Honestly, I think she's a pretty good mayor of that town. For example, look at the jobs she assigned to CDB -- Rick is a buttinski with cop experience so make him sheriff (because he'd be acting dangerously self-righteous anyway); separate Glenn and Maggie so that one is hostage for the other; put Abe on construction and Daryl with Aaron - it all makes sense (except for allowing Carol to pretend that she's just a happy homemaker but no one's perfect.) I'd say her biggest mistake was sending Jesse to cut Rick's hair but that's not exactly on the same level as some of the mistakes our CDB crew have made.

There are a lot of interesting alternative ideas in this thread for ways to deal with the walkers in the quarry and a bunch of counterarguments to all of them so I'm going to give the characters the benefit of the doubt that alternative plans were shot down for reasons not all shown on-screen (since they did show some of the pluses and minuses discussion and a time lapse, it's reasonable to guess there was more of it). In the end, those alternative possibilities couldn't have helped because the truck fell and the walkers broke containment before Rick's group moved anything. That means that they had tens of thousands of walkers within a brief walking distance of Alexandria regardless of anything that CDB did or didn't do. But if the show is really about the people (which I think it is) boy did they give us a ton of character moments -- FPP trying to volunteer and being immediately shot down; Michonne and Morgan chatting about protein bars while awaiting a huge herd of walkers; Rick being right about saving the kid's life and the lessons the kid still needs to learn and Jesse being right that Rick can't be the guy who says it. Carol pretending to be meek to support Rick in the meeting; Every interaction between Morgan and Rick that did not include the phrase "I know you"; and Daryl may have only had three lines but he put them to good use. I particularly liked the subtext of the RIck/Jesse interaction and the Rick/Daryl interaction. Rick wants to be with Jesse, which means that he thinks he's going to have to replace her kids' dad. He CAN'T do that because he's the one who pulled the trigger on their father. Jesse speaking up to Rick to defend what her son needs and also so as to try to not be the same person who married porchdick in the first place...There's a lot of extra freight on that conversation. As for Rick and Daryl, I think the reason they disagreed is that Rick doesn't think that he's a good man anymore. Rick thinks that he just does what is necessary and that so will anyone else. Everyone who they find is not already bonded to them is thus are either sheep or a threat (cattle or butcher in Terminus parlance). Daryl however knows that there are things that he isn't willing to do to survive and believes that Rick is still fundamentally moral so that they have a chance to find other people like themselves out there. For what it's worth, I agree with Daryl that most of CDB are good people and so are most of the ASZhats and that so is Rick. So, I'm on Daryl's side that other survivors may often be threats but that isn't all that's out there.

Frank Darabont and Norman Reedus would not be part of the lynch mob chasing you: http://www.gq.com/story/norman-reedus

White Truck hopes it won't get seasick parked on Big Ass Boat when Amoral Blended Family tries to sail away from zombie apocalypse.

JBody - I get it and like I said up front, I understand that Kirkman isn't universally loved. Personally, I thought the CDC episodes were pretty weak . But I had hoped that their existence would preclude That said, of course Kirkman wouldn't care for the CDC episodes because As for his involvement in FTWD, of course he is a producer - regardless of his actual level of involvement and the first and last episodes (the ones you say for which he got a partial writing credit) are the two best of the series. But it's not so much that I think he's washed his hands of FTWD - it's that he's deeply invested in the people and world he created in TWD over the course of more than a decade while the FTWD characters are people that he or others dreamed up just a few months ago. I am not disparaging Darabont's work (like everyone else I love The Shawshank Redemption) As for the cinematography, Kirkman can never take credit or blame for that since he ain't a director and I wasted a bunch of pixels complaining about that up-thread. I was just adding here why I think the story on FTWD just isn't tight and why nothing ever feels like the inevitability of greek tragedy, which is a real strength of some great episodes and volumes of TWD. Reading the interviews convinces me that the people making this show aren't trying to make crap but they are suffering from a lot of "hey, that sounds cool; let's try that" thinking rather than "what would these specific characters be trying to do and how would they react if X happens instead." Spoilers to hide brief discussions of TWD episodes varying from the comics.

I made it about halfway through the show and lost steam. I'm glad to hear that the guy with no upper lip is gone; I kept trying to think of which rodent he looked like. Since I couldn't go any longer after all the try-hard talking heads between each quiz show answer, I missed what was the magical part of the first episode of this series - the celebridiots cooking and eating each others' food. Was it as terrible as before?

On top of all the other things mentioned above, I think another big difference for this show is that it's suffering from not being based on Kirkman's comics and not having a ton of his involvement. Now, I know that a lot of people in this forum don't think much of Kirkman but hear me out. [First, some background. I'm not really a horror or comics guy so, when TWD became a huge hit, I figured that's nice but not for me but I ran across the first walking dead graphic novel in the library, read it and I finally got what people were talking about. After that, I burned through the graphic novels and binged the first couple of seasons of the show sort of in tandem.] Kirkman may not write subtle dialogue but there isn't a whole lot of room for that in a black and white comic. He is great at creating interesting protagonists and putting them in situations that are genuinely engaging and sometimes wrenching. The best moments in the show have all come from the comics (albeit sometimes repurposed for different characters). His characters aren't always clever but their actions flow from their characters and the situation instead of just being pawns moved on a chessboard. (His villains, however, are way too comic-booky but the show has helped a bit there by trying to make the antagonists more believable.) Anyway, since there is already a show bible for TWD in the comics, the show can follow the comics' path or improve on it knowing that it all hangs together for many seasons out. FTWD on the other hand has no pre-built and pre-tested characters. It has no pre-tested plot so it is relying totally on the sensibilities of its showrunner and writers' room without any built in structure or safety net. Doing a zombie show where we care about the people in it instead of waiting for the next "cool zombie kill" is really very hard and requires a huge amount of *attention* to the characters and to continuity. Kirkman spent years developing that close attachment to the TWD people. The spin-off doesn't have that built in advantage. Also, Kirkman says often that he really likes the TWD characters that didn't previously exist or have grown into something different from his comics and that he loves how collaborative TV is as a medium so I can see him being very hands-off of FTWD. Has anyone here watched Marco Polo, Low Winter Sun, Sons of Anarchy or Canterbury's Law? Because those are the prior shows that Erickson has helped produce and our expectations for FTWD should be based more on those shows than on TWD,

You'd be right to be confident based on what they said to us on the show but ... this is FTWD. *sigh* The showrunner strongly implies that Cobalt is in the future in his interviews. So, either soldierboy lied after being tortured, they changed their minds, or the showrunner is talking out his ass in his interviews:

I don't think Cobalt has happened yet in FTWD. There is some vaguely spoilery discussion about it with Erickson in this Hollywood Reporter Interview. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/fear-walking-dead-season-two-829585. There is a bunch of other generically spoilery things in there but it also sounds like they haven't actually mapped out the season yet so everything is subject to change.

Not to beat a dead horse about the gate but it's worse than just a storytelling fail of walking back the scene in interviews. The writers and the actor playing Travis have to KNOW whether or not he closed the gate and, if he left it open, KNOW whether he did it on purpose or because he didn't think of the likely consequences for the neighborhood. They have to KNOW that answer because it will/should inform the portrayal of that character going forward. If Travis were a real person, that act would have meaning in the future and his future actions would be consistent with it. This is not a Schrodinger's cat situation; Travis Mawae would know what he had done so Cliff Curtis needs to know it too or else his performance cannot be true to the character. (That an open gate was a plot point for the mothership in the past season and that they had a debate but claimed not to have decided on an answer, sounds to me like Erickson is trolling us or that he never watched last season of TWD.) [anything else I might say should probably go in the TWD comparison thread]

That's right, according to the post-finale interviews, they haven't hit the time when Rick wakes up yet and might not hit it by the end of next season.

But aren't those things in the comic books? The first major changes that I remember were visiting the CDC and dialing down the governor's craziness ... I haven't watched a ton of Kirkman interviews but in the couple I've seen, he seemed honestly interested in the characters' interactions. I'm just not sure it's fair to tag him with all of the spin-off's flaws.

Entertainment Weekly has an interview with Erickson: http://www.ew.com/article/2015/10/05/fear-the-walking-dead-finale-showrunner-dave-erickson-season-2 and I'm not sure what to do with this quote: "As for the neighborhood, we don’t see it on camera, but we went back and forth. There’s actually a version where they just slam through the gate with the truck and knock it over. And the question came up: What about the people in the neighborhood, because they’re basically ringing a dinner bell for the walkers to come in? In my mind, you don’t see it on camera, but because Salazar is able to figure out how to open the gate — we don’t see Travis get out of the truck but he very well could have jumped out and hit that button and closed the gate. I also think it would have been easy enough for a neighbor to have come and pressed the button and closed the gate as well." If it's a discussion that they had, why didn't they decide and then show it? To me, leaving the gate open was (would have been?) the most cold-bloodedly callous thing I've seen a Walking Dead protagonist do. If you want to backtrack on that, show me during the broadcast dammit!

I didn't get a chance to watch this episode until last night so I'm a bit behind everyone else but I stand by my first reaction that this episode was much better than the middle of the series. Yes, our protagonists were assholes who are indirectly responsible for the fall of civilization in their part of LA but ... 1) Honestly, Salazar's actions were awful but totally in character for him. Can you think of a better diversion for getting him into a fortified military compound? If you can, are you sure that his character should have been able to think of it? Yes, I think there was a better way and it would have started the episode before with him enlisting the help of the soldier, rather than torturing him but to someone with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail ... 2) The walkers overrunning the military base was believable - not exactly as staged but believable. OK, we should have seen holes being blown into walker torsos and limbs being shot off with the occasional collpasing walker and all of it doing nothing to slow down the hord. But, it would have been difficult to stage that safely for the extras because it would have involved walkers shambling over the corpses on the ground. As for breaking the fence, the sustained rifle and machine gun fire was probably weakening the fence. It would have been nice if they would have shown the fence shredding but that doesn't make the scene more implausible. 3) Pretty much everything worked out worse than if our "heroes" had done nothing but that's pretty typical for stories in The Walking Dead universe. So, for me they stopped inserting huge plot holes and they gave us a couple of good moments - the soldier walking into the rotor, Strand taking his cufflinks back, the trapped people in the cages, the fight inside the kitchen, some of the LA cityscapes. Also, hats off to Dr. Exner and the actress playing her. I knew she was going to die from the moment we met her but I still fet sorry for her throughout the episode. (Unlike Lisa's death, which was too convenient and pat an emotional moment for me - but that may be because I predicted from the episode title that Traivs would kill someone and be all emo about it.) Unfortunately, I'm still not invested in these characters and I am now less interested in their survival than I was midway through episode 1. The actor playing Strand is very charismatic; he's injectng sexual menace into almost every line reading. But, Strand's resources are a little too convenient. The only reasons I can see him saving Nick (and now his family) is that he needed some potential zombie chum and that he likes having an appreciative audience around. As for the other characters, Salazar was taken too far too fast for me to root for him easily, Maddison is a potential (but not yet) badass played by a stone faced actress, Travis is a moron played by a bit more expressive actor, the two girls have been rendered characterless and Chris needs a lot more work before he stops making me more annoyed than early seasons Carl. --- That's not a lot of entertainment. If I watch next season, I'm going to let the episodes accumulate and avoid the boards in between so that I don't think too deeply about any of it.

Well, I guess we know now how civilization in LA ended - Travis and Maddie were its downfall. They allowed walkers into the safe zone and destroyed the army base. Congratulations, job well done! I want to give this show some credit - everything that the characters did onscreen this episode made emotional sense. If some of it was stupid, rash, hasty or mean, it was at least coming from a consistent place within the characters. People weren't doing idiotic things just to advance the plot. I'm going to assume that I misheard the plan for cobalt last week and the army was just bugging out. If so, at least we avoided mustache twirling evil from the army this week. Even the soldiers in the garage weren't so bad (yeah they couldn't possible really need a car but that's a plot hole, not a character issue) because despite the creepy overtones they didn't actually make any move towards kidnapping Alicia. Also, I think the soldier who got bit and walked into a helicopter blade did it on purpose to avoid turning. As for the soldiers' uselessness at the fence, I think they were just panicked into shooting center mass in the dark, rather than headshots. ETA - I'm trying to look at the silver lining. (Plus, this was a better episode than most in this series - we got action, zombies and relatively few scenes of Maddie talking. As for our crew destroying LA ... Hey, they never promised us that the main characters would be the heroes of the show, rather than the villains.)

There are some things that don't need to be discussed in the FTWD forums, like specific character deaths or what happens to the CDC, but there are other parts of TWD that the showrunners expect most viewers to notice and are playing with those expectations. It's not easy to have a full discussion of FTWD without occasionally mentioning the Governor or saying Rick's name. It's also impossible to intelligently comment on the first two episodes of FTWD without having an opinion about whether the TWD has a problem with killing off African-American men. The weird thing is that - based on listening to EHG - I'd say that Tara/Dave/Sarah are way less sympathetic to spoilerphobes than I am. I'm not angry with people who would like to discuss FTWD without being spoiled on TWD but I think there has to be a better way to handle it than a blanket ban on comparisons in the episode discussions. (As for general pop culture spoilers, I don't need to explain the ending of the Sixth Sense or the reveal in the middle of the Crying Game to make most points so I wouldn't mention them but I wouldn't avoid mentioning some detail of a movie or TV show just to avoid revealing some general plot points about a 20-year old program. If you haven't seen any Star Trek stuff yet, my lame Khaaaaaan joke won't ruin anything for you.)

Fascinating set of questions and the creators have on intentions of answering them (honestly, that's OK; I'd rather the show and comic focus on the people alive than on the "mystery" of how it happened) so let me fanwank some answers (I added some numbers to your post for cross-referencing) : 1) I think that's right and that is why we shouldn't be treated to a scene of an entire cemetery rising up: 2) Maybe the CDC spotted thousands of differences in the bacteria, viruses and fungii populating the healthy and zombie body but hadn't yet figured out which were the cause ... yeah, kind of weak - I'd think they should have at least been able to rule out fungii and bacteria by then... 3) I don't think the virus (if it's a virus) is mutating. I think the easier solution is that it has different effects in different people. The flu bug that makes me sick will kill an elderly person, and so on. Most people who could be killed by its flu symptoms died in the opening rounds of the epidemic and for others, we see differing levels injuries that zombify them. (That said, there's nothing to keep it from mutating in the future. I just don't think we have to assume it has mutated already.) 4) We see a lot of more and less rotted zombies but we don't know for sure that it is related to their eating habits. It can just be the progression of the disease, which can again vary victim by victim - like, all of them rot over time but some rot more slowly than others. 5) Yeah, there isn't enough food to meet their energy expenditure needs so I'm gonna go crazy here and say that the virus/mold/bacteria has a photosynthetic feature and that all the walkers are now actually lichens, rather than pure animals. Eating people is a "desire", not a necessity. 6) As to their numbers -- we don't know how many people survived the initial outbreak. In an area spread over three states, we've met fewer than a thousand initial survivors in five seasons (and some of those took out no walkers before dying themselves). What if there were only a hundred thousand initial survivors in the country? If so, even 52 kills each per year would only have taken out 10 million walkers by now - leaving another 290 million to avoid ... How'd I do ;)