Jump to content

Type keyword(s) to search

BasilSeal

Member
  • Posts

    444
  • Joined

Everything posted by BasilSeal

  1. i thought on a discourse level the writing was very good and i agree that it was good to see the specific issues of Michonne leaving her kids behind being addressed. i assume Danai is writing the dialogue but working to the show runners' designated plot points, so maybe i'll let her off some of the plot holes and overly convenient happenstance that mar this episode. Other's have mentioned the collapsing building that conveniently stops collapsing so sexy times can take place. then there's the conveniently placed car fueled up, just ready to go. how long ago did this high tech community collapse? because if it was more than six months ago, how come the car's battery still has charge to fire it straight up? the high tech enclave itself is an example of an oft used TWD trope, the untold story. we see evidence of events that have happened off screen, other lives, other stories that are only shown in the periphery, (for example the painted mural Daryl finds in the subway in the last season of TWD original). Now i guess the purpose of these details are to imply there is a wider world beyond what we see, but i wonder what we're supposed to infer from the high tech enclave shown here? what's the message? it's no good having a robot vacuum cleaner and then forgetting to grow food? Are we supposed to think that technology is bad and not the answer? or does it mean nothing beyond the show runners thinking it was some cool but ultimately throw away idea for background to facilitate the action? there is supposedly only two more episodes of this and still we know nothing of how the CRM works, how it came into being, or why we should care if it all goes to shit. I'm assuming that this will be the end of the story one way or another for rick and Michonne mainly because Andrew Lincoln probably has better things to do, and Danai certainly does, and this is about giving closure to the characters, (though not so much closure for Judith and RJ if their parents both disappear and they never find out what happened to them) Never mind only two weeks at most until we find out what the CRM's big secret is, the one that will make you get onboard with the whole genocidal fascist thing once you know what it is. I'm sure it won't be a big let down that doesn't make sense and hasn't been properly thought through, i mean, they wouldn't do that to us? right?
  2. Oh, good call on Station Eleven, that's exactly what the caravan did remind me of now they mention it. Things didn't work out quite so well for them though, but that's TWD for you. Am i correct in thinking that this is a limited series with only the 6 episodes? So effectively each planned film from the trilogy they originally intended to make has become two episodes of the season. so the first two episodes where we find out what rick is doing in the CRM and how Michonne finds him there are essentially what the first film was going to be about. So when we get to episode 6, that will be the final conclusion of Rick and Michonne's story. Rick losing his hand is obviously echoing events in the comic. This is going to end like the comic for rick, isn't it? only with the CRM standing in for The Commonwealth. My Guess:
  3. yeah, the only thing worse that world beyond was the last season of fear, now that really did suck, but i digress. I think the show runners have made a mistake by tying this show to the lame duck that was TWB. the premise of that show was very poorly thought out, as above, Jadis is one of the most annoying characters in the whole franchise, (and boy, that's a high bar when your show has SHUTUPCARL in it) and yet they've managed to devise the new flagship star vehicle with her in a pivotal role while linking it to some ill thought out YA drivel that in an ideal world we'd all just agree to never mention again and pretend never happened. In fairness, so far it's not too bad, the standalone writing is quite well done by TWD standards and there's some subtle stuff in there. all that tine to find each other and they are lying to each other, rick hasn't told her they can't escape, and Michonne hasn't told rick he has a son. One more detail i've recalled from TWB, IIRC there was a civilian govt to the Civic Republic but the military had seized control and had the colony under martial law, but this was supposed to last for only 10 years, which has now passed, so there's the potential for a power struggle with the civilian leaders and the military, i'm wondering iof this is where the plot will go.
  4. this was one of many major plot faults in World Beyond. The theory was that the CRM had done some computer modelling and found out that the settlements at Omaha and the campus colony were likely to collapse for, er, some reason. Jadis gave this reason during an episode of World Beyond, and i've looked back at my old posts and found that i wrote this about her reasoning at the time. It was kindness to commit genocide because we did some modelling and it turns out in a couple of years time we might be a bit short of food because although we have the resources to run fleets of helicopters and hummers and the logistical capabilities to supply an entire army, we couldn't grow enough food to feed 100K people with the landmass of the entire continental united states to go at. yes, that sounds plausible. Essentially the CRM kill 100k people because they are worried that a possible shortage of food 10 or 15 years in the fuute might cause unrest in a community of people who have no idea where the CRM's settlement actually is, so if this did indeed happen, how would it be the CRM's problem? This is the page with the main discussion of this issue on you may as well read it there rather than repeat it all her but basically this particular plot point, and it's a really important one for that show and likely this one as well, makes absolutely no sense. Yes there are obvious problems in feeding a population of 100k holed up in a closed city, but if you have the resources to run a mechanised army, with the manufacturing capacity and logistics needed to just keep the CRM working, are we seriously saying that this problem couldn't be overcome? One interesting point in this episode is the details about the bombing of the cities at the start of the outbreak, in a futile attempt to control the spread. One thing touched on in the first season of Fear was that the army were killing some people in order to concentrate on saving others. (an concept dealt with in more detail in The Last of Us) What is implied with rick's conversation with General Beal, who is mentioned but never seen in TWB, is that the CRM has been formed from a rouge element of the military who refused to go along with the federal plan of euthanising population centers, and somehow coordinate with the guy tasked with bombing the city they are protecting and get him to bomb the marine base tasked with wiping out the survivors of the planned bombing of their city instead. So we have this irony where the CRM is born from a military force disobeying orders to save a population who were supposed to be wiped out because their survival was deemed hopeless, and now they are wiping out settlements themselves because their survival has been deemed hopeless by a computer model.
  5. this is a guy who's prepared to cut off his own hand with an axe in order to escape and get back to his family, when even this doesn't work, contemplating suicide is a reflection of the despair he feels at accepting that escape is impossible. In TWD, there are a lot of times when characters behave in ways that are psychologically unrealistic, or inconsistent with how they have been previously portrayed, in all fairness to them though, this isn't one of them.
  6. Yeah, there's also the bit where the plumber guy he's known since getting to the CRM says 'hey, why not just play along with the whole being a soldier thing and then take the chance to run off when you're out on a mission or something' and you can literally see the cogs in ricks mind working like this is some sort of great revelation.
  7. It could go either way couldn't it? They've show what they're capable of with the Daryl spin off, dead city was also watchable and well made although the logic underpinning the narrative was a bit shaky and didn't stand up to close scrutiny. This will have a decent budget and they'll have drafted in some decent writers, the trailers certainly look slick and visually impressive but that won't be enough. The world building of the 'wider TWD universe' aspect of this will need to work otherwise it will just be world beyond with a bigger budget. In the past they've proved themselves to be not so good at the world building stuff, in WB the CRM are just pantomime villains who commit genocide for reasons that make no logical sense, whenever the CRM has cropped up in the other shows it's always seemed to me that they were just throwing in random details to confuse us, like they hadn't actually thought of any overarching plan that put all these details together into something that makes up a bigger coherent picture. Even when the CRM appears as a major plot point of WB, we're still no wiser. apparently they're some sort of residual US govt that incorporates aspect of the former US military, but even that is a guess. The CRM has to have a believable backstory and logical motivations. They can do this, but more often than not they don't manage to. they'll pull out all the stops for this as the main star vehicle, I'm going to watch it and hope for the best, but i wouldn't want to bet real money on the outcome.
  8. Congrats to you and Mr Nashville on your anniversary, and a merry Christmas to all the rest of the primetimer apocalypse enjoyers out there.
  9. Yep, that sums it up succinctly. this bit struck a particular cord with me It ended up unrecognisable from the show it started out as. I thought the early seasons benefited from a greater degree of realism than the original show, it ends up far more cartoonish and nonsensical. such a waste of a good premise.
  10. Oh Come on, who amongst us hasn't been impaled on a branch, had it yanked out by a mad woman with a variable lung condition and then dug a grave? It's absurd that an injury this severe wouldn't cause troy to pass out from loss of blood and / or go into shock but but here he just walks it off. It's the epitome of the 'will this do' writing that's plagued this show for the last three seasons Well indeed, they supposedly have access to PADRE's extensive inventory of post apocalyptic survival gear, it there really no construction equipment or materials? Then again non of this makes any sense, this is just one aspect of the many things that cause one to say 'but why don't they...?'. there's so much wrong with this show it's pointless trying to list it all so i'll just go for a few of the highlights that stood out. there's a basic lack of narrative progression, we move from one scene to another and stuff has just happened for some reason and we're expected to just suck it up. How did this character find the other character? how did they get from here to there? what reason do they have for doing / saying this when last week they said the exact opposite? and so on. How does Madison get from the garage to the island in time to draw off the walkers? How is it that half a dozen people inside the garage take down 40 or 50 walkers no problem but the entire population of PADRE, who were trained for years to fight walkers, couldn't manage the 300 or so that were on the boat? Everyone on the island is dead, oh no, they're all alive and Madison saved them and they're all so grateful they will dedicate the rest of their lives to helping people because that was what Madison believed today although she'd probably have changed her mind by tomorrow again and hang on wasn't this all Madison's fault anyway for killing Troy because if he was alive he could have simply told his guys to stand down? and despite the fact that everyone's so grateful and all they're not going to bother digging her out of the rubble, yes, best leave that job to an eight year old, hang on how did Tracy get to the island? oh never mind more to the point how does she manage to dig Madison out from under the rubble from an explosion big enough destroy the entire PARDE complex and kill 300 walkers? but never mind about that now because Alicia has turned up because she heard a legend about a woman called Madison who saved everybody because word has spread far and wide about this miraculous event that happened <checks notes> yesterday. And that's just a five minute segment of the show, you could pretty much do the same for the entire hour and a half. That sums up the narrative style pretty well. it's such a sad and unsatisfactory end to a series that started out with so much more potential than this, and IMO in it's earlier seasons actually did rather better than the original at expressing it's themes and ideas. I always though that much of the problems with TWD stems from the source material being a comic, the nature of the comic book means that many of the original characters were stylised and cartoonish which works well in the visual medium of the graphic novel but doesn't always transfer to the screen as live action as well. the advantage Fear had was starting from scratch with no baggage. I remember someone on youtube making the observation that TWD was about superheroes, but Fear was about ordinary human beings. i think this was correct and the show was all the better for it. I'm repeating myself but the main theme of fear was always the morality of survival, IIRC the original tag line was 'you can't save everyone' and much of the early show is about how the characters come to terms with the stuff they have to do in order to survive. You can't save everyone turns out to be what the soldiers protecting the Clarkes' neighbourhood have decided, they have created a safe zone in the local area, but outside to cordon sanitaire they kill everyone, living and dead. it's a cynical realisation that the govt can only save a few and anyone else is just a potential vector for spreading the 'infection' and needs to be killed, (an idea covered in more detail in The Last of Us). This idea isn't just limited to the military though, when they discover that the soldiers don't intend to try and hold their position but will withdraw and 'euthanise ' the civilians, they escape but drop everyone else in the shit in the process. Strand takes them along with him on his escape plan, not because he's a good person but because he's calculated correctly he needs other people to help him execute his plan. Once they're on the Abigale and in a strong position, there are lots of desperate people who need their help but if they help them they weaken their own position, and there's always the chance that if you did help others they'd be desperate enough to kill you and take what you have because it's the only way they can survive. Ultimately, everyone who survives does so at the expense of others, much of the ensuing story is about how they try to come to terms with the guilt inherent in this realisation by helping others, with varying degrees of success, and the conflict this brings with people who think people shouldn't be helped, for, er, some reason Strand and Daniel are such important characters is because they had already compromised their morality by doing bad things in order to survive in the old world Their final conversation is pivotal because when Daniel speaks to Victor in German he is addressing Strand's new persona, Anton, he's acknowledging that Strand has changed and become someone better. the big theme at the end is can people change, can good come from bad and the answer seems to be: up to a point. People do change, murderers can repent and spend the rest of their lives doing good works but more often than not they don't. It's hard to see how someone like Troy could change. though one should be wary about diagnosing mental conditions over the telly, if troy isn't a sociopath he sure did a convincing impression of one. After all when we first meet him he's a neo Nazi, killing people for shits and giggles to see how long it takes for them to turn so he can write it down in his biog book of nature along with all the stuff about torturing squirrels as a kid. Daniel and Victor aren't sociopaths, they are people who were capable of doing bad things when the need arose, but they can also do good. Everyone in the story is compromised morally in some way and the end is about all of them finding peace with this. this might have worked but is ultimately unsatisfactory because the characters have been so badly served by the writing of late so it's hard to care or take seriously their current state of mind as no one has gone thorough a convincing mental journey to reach this point, they've just arbitrarily flip flopped between opposing ideas for no good reason. "We must trust everyone" "No one can be trusted we must kill everyone" "helping people gives life meaning" "no it gets everyone killed" "We must risk everyone's safety to save this awful person who did terrible things" "It's vitally important that we murder this child" No one cares if they've found inner peace because they'll all have changed their minds tomorrow and anyway if there's one thing we've learned from this show its that driving round the apocalypse in a big truck full of stuff helping people turns to shit real quickly.
  11. If you remember, and let's face it, why would you? Troy killed everyone at the prepper scout camp back in the day by leading a herd to the Ranch. I assume he is using the walkers as a weapon, he's led them to place where, apparently there's an entirely different climate so they'll get caught up in the frozen ground and stay there until he needs them. (presumably to attack PADRE in the near future.) OK, my bad there. looks like my powers of prediction didn't work this time which is embarrassing because this show is nothing if not predictable. In my defence it's clear that the theme here is building a better future for one's children, and there needs to be some sort of continuation for Maddison, which is kind of difficult when both her kids are dead so a lost grandchild seemed like the obvious get out clause. looks like they're going with the Bootleg Alicias tribute band instead though. I think the time jump was as much to bring this show's timeline in parity with the main show's so that they can use any characters they need for the spin offs, though i suspect everyone with the possible exception of morgan will be seeking new employment after the season finale, i can't think that the show runners of any of the spin offs will want to call back to this shit show. Well i should have been unreasonable, but by the standards of this show...... Mo was 8 going on 15, but this is the apocalypse, so maybe she just had a really hard paper round you know. you're not expecting continuity are you? we've managed ok with just hand waiving this stuff up till now. If you start demanding to know how they got the MRAP back, next thing you know they'l be having to explain where they get the ammo for it or how they've still got functioning car batteries to start it with after 10 years or where they get spare parts and filters to keep it running or what they do if they get a puncture. Or come to think of it, just how the fuck did they manage not to shoot Troy at the gas station? I mean there were at least 50 armed guys with guns trained on him, many of them in cover with all his guys out in the open, and if the shooting started, you'd make sure you shot him first wouldn't you? You see, it's much better not to ask these things, the writers obviously don't, and they're clearly much happier for it
  12. Nah, watching the actual show is masochistic enough for me.
  13. Yeah, i know what you mean. i tend to tune out for that bit, it has all the charm of a toddler proudly displaying the contents of its potty to their parents' dinner party guests.
  14. I terms of being a stand alone episode it was one of the better ones of this series, (low bar, but, you know...) decent production values, a bit of action, some of the more able actors leading, but as you say what is it actually for at this point in the story? I think it boils down to the somewhat leaden theme of something good coming from something bad, the morality of survival has always been one of the key themes for FTWD, how this world forces people to do terrible things and make impossible choices, and how this in turn causes some to embrace to bad stuff and either go mad, become evil, or to seek redemption as a coping strategy. Quite a lot of this show has been about the characters' abortive attempts to help people in order to atone for what they've been forced to do in the past. this is partly why we have characters like Daniel and Strand who had already made the choice to do bad things in our world before the apocalypse, the writers present us with these flawed characters and make them the 'good guys', or at least the people we're rooting for. which is actually quite a clever and nuanced way to explore this idea. I thought in the early seasons this made for an interesting show, but when it didn't generate the kind of viewing figures they thought it should they started to mess with it in a a sort of 'throw as much shit at the wall as you can in the hope some will stick' manner and we've ended up with the mess the show currently is. Daniel appears to have recovered spontaneously from dementia, Strand spent a year cosplaying as Idi Amin and murdering people by throwing them from the top of a tall building but now it appears that someone has pushed his factory reset button and he's back to being normal Victor again. This is just indicative of the poor writing which just flails about; trying different ideas and not paying too much heed to continuity or previous story lines. Here many of the supporting characters have been hand waived away, even ones who were previously quite important like Sarah and Wendel, (or skidmark). The purpose of this episode is to illustrate this theme of coming to terms with what one has done to survive. Dwight and Sherry defy geography to go back to where they made difficult choices in the past, confront those choices, and conclude that their lives do mean something and they can go forward and try to build a better future. This superficially makes sense but it's all rather contrived, June can't perform surgery, for some reason, Dwight spent years looking for Sherry but just walks away from her for. er. reasons, and look here's a guy who's an insulin dependent diabetic 12 years into the apocalypse because, erm because....., I know! there was a magic guy who made insulin, that's it. no you can't meet him, he went to a different school. and he's dead. All of those things are possible but it's the writers' job to make them believable and they fail, instead we get inconsistent characterisation, contrived plotting and flexible geography. The showrunners and writers have destroyed what started as a very promising show, the whole thing is just a mess, so many poorly realised, inconsistent characters, dead end story lines, unresolved plot points and disappearing characters. Even PADRE is simply a massive Deus ex machina, a post apocalyptic survival community that's set up by the govt for them to find when the series grinds to a halt. I'm going to watch to the finish because i'm, a completist and it's likely there'll be some stuff relevant to the other on going shows in there at the end, but this show has turned, it turned about three seasons ago and it's been chained up in the barn ever since being fed the occasional live chicken to keep it going while the writing team ring their hands over what to do about it. There is no cure, just shoot it already.
  15. Exactly. They've kind of painted themselves into a corner here narrative wise. The message seems to be that children, family, represent the future, Morgan has Mo, Daniel Luciana, strand his German stepson, so who will Madison have? and if the answer it no one, what exactly is the point in bringing her back at this late stage? The introduction of canned Nick is to remind us of her family, so i think this will end with her getting closure by laying Nick and Alicia to rest, with Alicia's child signifying continuation and hope for the future. Although Madison seems to be making a determined effort to die herself as yet again she's wandered off on her own apparently forgetting that she's entirely dependent on oxygen for survival and there's no way she's going to find any oxygen cylinders lying around in the apocalypse.
  16. This is my reckon where this particular plot point is going, i may well be wide of the mark but look away now if you don't want to read what might happen etc. when we last saw Alicia she was still alive, just, and was going back to the tower because she thought there might be some people there that she could help, or something. I think Alicia goes back and meets up with Troy's group. In line with the show's current theme of giving people second chances she decides to help Junior Doctor Mengele, even though she knows troy is very probably a sociopath, and very actually a mass murderer. I think troy is lying when he says he killed Alicia, i think he just says this to hurt Madison, i think Alicia is actually the mother of his child. I do think Alicia will really be dead, not least of all because i doubt ADC will want to come back and be associated with this shit show. the fact they they've dug up nick, for some reason and have his ashes suggests that they intend to have some sort of closure for Madison, both her kids are dead but look, she has a magic grandchild, who represents hope for the future and continuance, Just hope she doesn't take after her dad. There will be some contrivance to how Alicia died that means Troy blames Madison for her death, not entirely sure what that could be but non of this shit makes any sense at this stage so it could be anything. anyway, that's my theory, i'll also suggest that the magic grandkid is what brings the disparate groups together to fight whatever ultimate threat they face in the series finale. I think this is a way to tease us with Alicia and make the show's most popular character, played by the biggest name, part of the last season without having to actually persuade ADC to turn up, or to have to pay her. all in all i think this is a pretty dismal end to what was at the outset a promising series, there are quite a few people here deriding the 'awful acting' but Fear actually has a very strong cast of experienced actors Rubén Blades, Colman Domingo, Danay Garcia even Kim dickens are all accomplished actors as are many others in the extensive ensemble cast, (like the criminally underused Peter Jacobson). it's not the actors' fault that the script is dogshit. for the Nth time we had armed groups supposedly at loggerheads just standing around not doing anything, in the hotel they get the drop on Troy but just stand there and don't kill him, then troy gets the drop on them outside the hotel and returns the favour. troy is a neo nazi mass murdering psychopath who literally killed people for shits and giggles and when he got thrown out of Prepper scout camp because even the white supremacist preppers found him a bit too killy. he took his revenge by leading a horde of walkers to the Ranch and killing everyone there, but Madison doesn't think to point this out to his new friends even though she couldn't wait to grass up Strand for using a different name. fair enough Troy's new mates might not have listened but i bet the audience could have done with a recap on who the fuck Troy was. I really liked the early seasons of this show and i thought it was a better show than the original. I thought it was more grounded in reality with more realistic characters and it made a better job of articulating the key themes of the morality of survival, Now it's lost it's focus and has just become a confused badly written mess, just think of all the interesting supporting characters like Sarah, Wendel, the Rabbi, those kids they rescued, none of whom have had any sort of resolution to their stories, they've just sort of wandered off like the writers became bored and forgot about them, this is indicative of poor writing and their apparent writing strategy of just throwing as much shit at the wall as possible to see what sticks. In short this show has jumped the shark, Strand is an interesting character but last season he was cos playing as Idi Amin and throwing people of the roof of his tower, now we're supposed to accept he's back to being reasonable Stand again? how does that work exactly? I'll watch till the end because i want to see what happens but this show is dismal, a waste of a good premise and some good acting talent, and as we've seen with Dead City and That Daryl Show; it doesn't have to be like this.
  17. TBF i prefer the world building aspects myself, the problem is, and i think the rest of your post bears this out, is that TWD in the past haven't been very good at the world building stuff. They weren't very good at making their villains motivations make sense, invariably TWD villains are bad guys who do bad things because they're bad. characterisations are often vague, and individual characters often behave in ways that contradict their earlier actions, just to drive the plot The world building aspects don't always make sense and are vague on detail but invariably none of this matters because all of it gets destroyed due to reasons and bad choices and it's back to square one for more rinse an repeat misery porn. I think the standard of writing for TWD over the years has been mixed and this is in part down to the origins as a comic book. Kirkman's main theme was how the characters reacted to the impossibly grim situations and choices presented to them by the apocalypse, everything else is just secondary. now that may be ok for a comic book but in the TV series, especially as the show runners expand the universe to a long running franchise, you need a bit more than just this, and the writing has always struggled to achieve this. In the early seasons of Fear i think they made a better shot of having more coherent narratives and themes, but after season 3/4 they bottle it and reboot as a show that is more cartoonish like the main show, Fear has gone downhill since, rapidly, the final season is dire. My point was that what they've always been good at, even when the other stuff has been wanting, is the visual rendering of the apocalypse and the set piece zombie action. Daryl twatting zombies with a mace in the castle moat o r wrestling with super walkers in the arena is what they've always done best. I do think though that they've upped their game a bit with the other aspects of story telling in both this series and Dead City. there's a very good supporting ensemble cast in this show and all the main characters are both believable, interesting and consistent. Watching TWD for the world building has been something of a triumph o hope over experience over the years, i do think though that our patience may finally be about to pay off.
  18. the post credit scene is on this facebook page https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=949506765942468 Nb you'll see my summary above was slightly miss remembered, the guy who shoots the doctor who has returned to the lab does not take the laptop or the data she has downloaded of Jenner's communications, he just kills her as retribution for presumably being involved in whatever stated the ZA in the first place.
  19. Daryl spent a long time in the wilderness looking for rick, i suspect if it was rick who had returned then Carole would have mentioned it sooner in the conversation, my guess would be Morgan. My guess here is that the radio conversation sets things up for Carol to appear in a parallel story line in season two, which will presumably be made with the full number of episodes so will have more air time to fill. As i understand it Melissa McBride dropped out of the spin off because she didn't want to spend long periods filming in Europe. there's now the option of having her involved in A US based storyline where she tries to find out what has happened to Daryl. She has an idea where Daryl was and what he was doing from their conversation, when he ails to show up after a week as promised, she may decide to go looking for him, she knows roughly where he was and what he was doing and she also has the resources of what is essentially a small state at her disposal. I think the key here is the post credits scene from World Beyond where we see a scientist in a derelict French lab looking recordings of video calls made between the lab and Jenner at the CDC at the time of the outbreak, in the call the differing types of zombies are discussed. someone comes in and kills the scientist and takes the data. Presumably this guy was working for genet. this is how they know they need to go to the US for whatever it is they need from US zombies. It also suggests some sort of tie in with the CRM. IIRC during the recorded convo with Jenner it's mentioned that some of the scientists who were working at the french lab were at a conference near the location of The Commonwealth at the time of the outbreak, so if they're alive they're stranded in the US within spitting distance of Carole. I think the next season could be interesting if they get some decent writers on board to pull all these disperate threads together.
  20. another Strong Episode i thought. wonder if LeCarl still thinks cutting the boat loose was such a good idea.
  21. The early seasons focussed on the individual characters trying to survive the apocalypse, initially just to get from day to day, then to try and build some sort of community. There was very much a repetitive theme to it all as they build a community then the big bad guy comes along and tries to destroy that community because, well, erm, because they are the bad guy, and that's what bad guys do, yes, that's it. That's always been a flaw in TWD's narrative, maybe, bad guys doing bad guy shit for some reason worked ok in a comic but in a more realistic medium we perhaps expect more complex and nuanced motivations to drive the action and plot. Kirkman's main trope was to continually place his characters in horrible situations and force them to make horrible choices, the rest was always secondary, having disparate groups fighting over resources was just the simplest way to achieve this in the long run, even when it would have made more sense to cooperate, though the writers frequently got around this point simply by making the bad guys batshit crazy. they'll keep your head in a jar or wear your skin as an overcoat because that's just how they role in the apocalypse. They've squeezed 12 years worth of shows out of this rinse and repeat cycle but finally they concluded it by having the characters build a lasting community which is big enough not to fail. What we're seeing now is arguably different. People who've got this far have found their niche, they've found a way to survive that works for them. the fight now isn't about day to day survival, it's about how civilisation is rebuilt. In the US they have the Commonwealth which is now a benign democracy, and the CRM as a fascist dictatorship. there's a similar set up in France with the Union of Hope versus Genet's Pouvour (power to the living) movement. I think to be fair to the writers if they want to give the show life beyond the initial concluded story line then they have to go for this bigger theme. whether it ties in with the CRM and events in the rick and Michonne spin off remains to be seen, personally i think it probably should but we'll see. You can argue that it's more of the same, disparate members of Team Rick fighting the big bad, and you'd have a point but i would argue that it's no longer quite the same thing. they're fighting for something different, and at least this time there is some reasoning behind what the big bad guy, (of in this case gal) is doing. Baby steps, and all that.
  22. It's not really clear if Laurent is actually special, or whether he's merely symbolic of hope for the rebuilding of civilisation. Laurent is born after his mother has been bitten in the first days of the apocalypse, he's apparently delivered by C section after his mother has died so his survival is both miraculous in itself and also symbolic of the triumph of life over death. It remains to be seen whether being born to someone infected will give him some sort of immunity to zombie bites or make him part of a possible cure. This could be the case but given that it's pretty much the plot of The Last of Us, i think it likely that they won't go down this road even if it was their initial intention. The two groups in Paris represent the struggle between fascism and liberal democracy. Laurent says that one day the Eiffel Tower will be rebuilt because he believes that civilisation can be restored. La Negan just wants to exploit the situation to gain power, to use the survivors as tools to serve her and her power base, it's important for her to remove Laurent because he gives people hope that there is something better than just existing. I don't think there's any way she could know of the circumstances of Laurent's birth so i can't see how she could want him for any mad scientist cure research. There's clearly something more to her motivations though, her pursuit of Daryl doesn't make sense if it's just for revenge / punishment (not that this has ever stopped TWD before), but Daryl has somehow messed up her plans WRT the ship that brought him from the US, they appear to have brought specimens for research, presumably a cure, whether US walkers, or people to be turned into walkers isn't clear, nor is it clear whether Daryl was part of a pressganged crew, or a potential victim. It could be that as US walkers are different, they are somehow vital to La Negan's research, if an American specimen is vital this could be why Daryl is so important if his escape deprived her of the ships cargo of zombified yanks. i actually thought this was a refreshing change to TWD standard operating practice, where the redshirts sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the plot armoured characters. i think it fits with the message of hope when their leader says 'we go in as one and we come out as one', and they do.
  23. "The Iron Lady" Guest appearance by a zombie Margaret Thatcher perhaps?
  24. I don't know. It all depends how these aspects are developed. I would suspect that the Daryl story isn't intended to stand alone it will presumably fit in with the wider story ark, so far hinted at in the world Beyond and latter TWD original seasons, but likely to be central to the Rick and Michonne spin off. Presumably when Daryl says he went out looking for something, he actually means Rick. I suspect the 'bigger picture' plot here relates to the CRM and their obsession with experimenting to find a cure, this was set up in The World Beyond spin off. and we've already seen experiments on walkers in this series. There's a clear theme emerging of 'A new World Order', an attempt to bring order to the chaos of the broken world. this is an extra theme that is separate to the comic and seems to be intended to perpetuate the story beyond the point at which the comics stopped. this wider theme has the potential to be interesting, the idea of an attempt to rebuild civilisation, and the moral compromises needed to achieve this. Clearly Daryl's journey, hoe he got to France and the reasoning behind it are critical, the question is will they be revealed in this series or are they intended to be part of another part of the franchise? to conclude i don't mid the more complex plots as long as they are competently executed, traditionally TWD has not done complex plots well, but in the case of That Daryl Show, it's so far so good. They can get it right and up to now they have, so i'm going to cut them some slack and hope they can keep up the good work.
  25. Late to the party here but so far That Daryl Show is shaping up well. both this and Dead City have been a marked improvement on some of the dross that late period TWD churned out. This is visually effective and as with DC they've remembered what people actually watch the show for, the set piece zombie action sequences like Daryl in the moat of zombies. So, on to the episode itself. Having had this decade's bath in the last episode, then got nearly everyone in this newly found functioning post apocalyptic community killed in time honoured TWD fashion, Daryl and the nuns on the run set off cross country with The Special Child™, who it turns out is not only annoyingly precocious but was also born after his mother had been bitten, so, maybe that's why he's special? eh? They're heading for their leader who will help the special one achieve their destiny but first must traverse the broken post apocalyptic wasteland ... Hang on, isn't this the plot of The Last of Us? Blatant rip off aside, another decent episode, the flash back to pre Fall Paris was particularly effective, especially the scene with the subway train, (but again this imagery is ripped off from other zombie films). Then, at last, they finally meet a group of survivors who are pleased to see them and aren't batshit crazy. The school children have a healthy functioning community, no dead parents locked in the basement, no weird cultist beliefs for some reason, they don't want to kill Daryl and eat him, just decent people trying their best to survive and making a decent fist of it, it's only taken 12 years to find them. Daryl did kill another horse in the process but this is TWD, so that's kinda standard by now. some interesting ideas that weren't fully explored like the American who'd been stuck in france since the apocalypse started and didn't know what was happening at home but over all, solid stuff. Nun on the run's stringy haired boyfriend looks like a resourceful chap, i'm expecting him to turn up again, and i'm going out on limb here but i suspect he won't be pleased to see them.
×
×
  • Create New...