CletusMusashi

It's a psychology article, so I'm fine with suspending disbelief about why, say, destroying the heart and lungs doesn't bother them. But what does bother me is that, while it acknowledges how bad they are at recognizing people, empathizing with people, or social cues... they still seem to have this solid idea in their head that anybody who acts like they do must be a zombie friend. WTF?

It might not even have been human, as long as it was fresh. A cute puppy looks like it might become more popular than the Governor? Zombie food. A chicken is discovered not to have a framed picture of the Governor in its coop? Zombie food. There's even movement stimulus involved, since she'd see the food being carried to her. Herschel's family had to use live food because it's easier to just drop in and still have it be palatable. But they were dealing with an entire barn full of (mostly) adult Walkers. Doing it up close and personal like the Gov would have resulted in immediate disaster.

Maybe he heated her food up for her a little bit. Or, maybe it was freshly cut from somebody who he thought was was plotting against him. We don't really know how many secret dungeons the Gov actually had.

Okay, I'm gonna take the walnutqueen challenge and try to find something nice to post. And fortunately, for Christmas this year, I got something to help. A Ouija Board! Because if there's thing I know about metaphysics, it's that objects made by Parker Brothers have the power to summon spirits. So, I gave it a shot, and I ended speaking to three ghosts. One of them, who only identified himself as The Ghost of Music Past (although I believe he used to be some sort of King,) had the following message to convey to Emily Kinney: I have the blues, Miss Beth, without you I thought it blew, Miss Beth, how you got screwed Saw no brains but saw red after Dawn shot you dead Walking Dead's lame, dear, if you can't sing to me And with those new characters failing That's why my spoons just will not stop mailing You're winning so far with your great song "Rockstar" And also with "Blue, Blue, Blue Toothbrush" You've been winning so far with your awesome song "Rockstar" But "Walking Dead?" Blue, blue, blue big mess.

The blue toothbrush song isn't really doing it for me. Let me know if she writes anything about green lollipops.

I think they should make Rick and Michonne Chia Pets.

Abraham.

I agree. People do flock together into societies. And those societies tend to kick the asses of smaller hunter-gatherer bands. So why has nobody yet managed to assemble a group that can survive conflict with Rick Grimes, a guy who still has not figured out that "Lori was not the world's only source of clean underwear?" CDB, if they're going to be the show's official group of field adventurers, should be the "losers," the outcasts, the ones who are more worried about where their next meal is coming from or where their next place of rest will be, There should be Woodburies and Gradies and Termini all over the place, each perhaps with reasons that CDB do not want to live under such a government, but still with enough societal inertia that surviving a battle against them should be a huge deal. Seeing these different large groups hang around for a while, and have trade and alliances and betrayals and wars with each other, while also seeing how the "outlaw" types, which is what they' probably consider our heroes, deal with this constantly shifting political landscape, would be a lot more interesting, to me, than "Posture, Battle, Repeat."

If you don't care how it started, write a movie. If you expect the viewers to keep caring about your world year after year, though, you'd better try giving a fuck.

Well, for one thing, if Lori had ended up with The Governor, his daughter would have gotten lost long before Michonne ever had a chance to kill her.

I am reasonably hopeful. In my opinion, the biggest weakness of the last few seasons was pacing. Story arcs that would have worked in a full-length season were sometimes just shoehorned into a shorter one. So Season 5 had problems like "Um... when exactly did Troy and Britta have these relationship problems again?" Then when Harmon came back in Season 5, they again had a show-runner who wasn't used to the short season, so the comedy to drama ratio was sometimes a bit off. That shouldn't be an issue this time. Also, in the S5 commentary, Harmon makes it clear that he recognizes a lot of his mistakes and knows what he would do differently. I never missed Pierce as much as I expected to. Plus, he has such a history of faking his death that I'm sure he's perfectly happy bragging to Gilbert about Eartha Kitt. Shirley was always the most under-utilized of the Core 7, so, no offense to Yvette, I do think the show can still be great without her. Seems like whenever they let her out of Church-Lady mode all it ever ended with was character assassination followed by a reset button. Troy and Abed were the funniest duo on the show, but Abed with anyone is great. Meanwhile, Jeff and especially Britta have shed their early season straight-man personae and because satisfactorily zany (case in point; their "Knock! Knock!" "Floor!" argument in "Geothermal Escapism,") Change is still Chang, and Annie continues to hit everything they give her right out of the park. My biggest concern, honestly, is that I'd really come to enjoy Buzz Hickey, as a character as well as for his (usually) mature influence on the others. And with Dean Pelton not even pretending to be an authority figure any more, I worry about how the group will stay grounded while still remaining themselves.

Funniest costume ever: probably the women's Uncle Sam costume, because of his constant attempts to downplay it as his sister's... because that would somehow make it completely normal. Scariest costume: without doubt the black and white 1950s housewife.

I think that, originally, there was only one ACB, but he probably graduated after his last spree. This time around, there is an epidemic of copycats.

You mean we'e not supposed to?

And a thousand slash fictions were born...

Mika was the only person immune to the virus. She could have saved the world if she'd been with them when they visited the CDC.

It's very important to eat your Greenes.

I suppose there's one thing to be said about trading Beth for Noah. He does know how to do laundry. Perhaps he can teach the others. Or at least maybe he'll wash Carl's damned hat. Hey, for a thread title, how about "Noah and His Arc?"

Maybe Beth was adopted, and it just never came up in conversation on the show. That means she could still have an identical twin out there, who just happens to have survived the ZA in the ten square miles that Rick perpetually circles around in. But who was she raised by? Who did she grow into? The leader of a group of escaped convicts? A former police officer with a bigger hat than Carl? A Beastmaster? Little known fact: Ferrets are the natural enemy of zombies. So many possibilities. Fuck it. Where's that stupid petition. I'm signing. What's the downside exactly? They might not have time for a Eugene flashback?

I like the actor. But I'm not sure how far I trust the character. One moment he's ready to go in guns blazing with Rick. Then, when the hostage schtick is in play, he's insisting that "oh, these are all good cops!" You know, until one of them smashes Sasha unconscious while she's trying to be nice to him, and then Rick kills him. Which Noah is still fine with. We saw no surprise, no grief, just... "well, fuck him then. I'm still alive." Noah's a good guy to have on your side when he's on your side. But I'm just sure how dependable that is. If the doctor was killing other doctors because they might get more records to listen to than him, I shudder to imagine what Noah may have done to skilled laundry workers if he thought they might get him bumped down to cleaning up guinea pig turds. The best living-with-Noah survival strategy, in my opinion, is to dye your hair blonde and start singing.

You could be right. But the farm was mostly, I believe, considered boring because it didn't feature zombie fights every week. At the time, people were still excited about zombies. Now, they just aren't that scary. People suddenly become uncharacteristically afraid of them when the plot requires them to abandon the church or to General Lee an ambulance off a precipice, but the rest of the time it's pretty obvious that Judith was protecting Tyreese by swinging a baby rattle. People who are still watching, for the most part, don't want zombie after zombie. They want story. After a certain amount of time, any work of fantasy or scifi that does not really care about the details of its own fictional world is going to lose people. And, yes, there are zillions of continuity and/or plausibility flaws in Buffy, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Babylon 5, Xena, Being Human, Alien Nation, Max Headroom, Wolf Lake, et cetera ad infinitum. But at least they cared enough to try. TWD, I fear, relies heavily on the "Dude, it's a show about fuckin' zombies! It doesn't have to make sense!" card. And... sorry. Yes it does. I can forgive the zombies not making sense. But why don't the people?

Maybe the show itself will just openly embrace batshit-crazy fanfic. The same way "Adventure Time" does with its "Fiona and Cake" stories. Who would be writing it, though? Probably Eugene.

I don't remember seeing Daryl making his own ammo, but I'm glad they covered it. One less question to worry about.

If they want to have eternal gasoline... that's bad science. But once I suspend my disbelief, let's assume gasoline does last forever. In that case, why not use cars and trucks as electrical generators? I started out by focusing my wrath on the alleged Builder societies. But even with Scavenger and Hoarder societies, the standard should be higher than it is. Grady, for example, was ruled by one dominatrix, half a dozen cops, one doctor, and then all the peasants seemed to be pretty much interchangeable. So do they or do they not have somebody who maintains the EKG machine? Do the plumbers have to fold laundry? There's all kinds of answers they could give to these questions, good and bad. In the long run, I'm actually more forgiving of bad writing than I am of no writing.

Maybe she'll come back as a ghost. Or a chupacabra.