CletusMusashi

Exercise Bike is lonely. And cold. It was happier with Dawn. But it is still happier than it was before Dawn... when it lived in Gordon's room.

I liked him when he was an actual character. But these long tags at the end of the show where we're supposed to be all excited "Oh look! There's Morgan?" It's getting old. If they can't tell the stories right now that they're supposed to be telling right now, why should I be so excited that they won't botch his? Just work the actual narrative, and when it's time for him to become relevant again, bring him back then.

And the same story could have been told, but better, if they even thought about what "wards" might be useful for. Like with Beth, she suddenly had medical training from her online ZA degree, but Noah? A guy who folds laundry well isn't worth an extensive manhunt. Couldn't they have made him, say, the tech guy, who keeps the hospital machinery repaired? Or an electrician? Or a plumber? Or even an air conditioning repairman?

Guinea pig treadmills. If they don't run fast enough, they get too fat and the doctor eats them.

Kind of hard to consider the Gareth execution a complete win, though, since Bob still dies. Oh, not because of their plan. Not even just because of Gareth- he'd have died anyway, from when everyone was so stupid they wanted to go swimming with zombies. But still, he was their friend and you don't have a friend die and then walk away feeling all happy and victorious. Unless you're a Joss Whedon character. This time around, the only thing Rick could decisively have done differently was keeping Noah a secret from Dawn. But that would mean going in with nobody who knows their way around first hand, and with one less gun, and without a potential co-negotiator who actually knows all the people involved. I assume Rick pushed for a better location, but the opposition would not budge on the indoor setting. Nobody likes to criticize Rick more than I do, but he did as much right as he could have. It wasn't his fault that Dawn and Beth were idiots. And he certainly couldn't have predicted that Beth, of all people, was going to amp things up by starting a knife fight in the middle of it all.

I took it to be directed at Beth. And, yes, I have wondered if there was any (one-sided) sexual subtext between her and Beth. But even if there was, Beth didn't (try to) kill her for being attracted to her. She killed her for being a murderer, a kidnapper, a slaver, a torturer, a rape apologist, an annoying lying manipulative hypocrite, and an all around badly written character.

I'd say the last dark main character they killed was Merle. In any case, I agree with a lot of Misty's post. Count me as someone who also liked Andrea, and was honestly starting to like Beth. I also liked Dale, another much-hated "weak" character. Lori... not so much, but my hat's off to anyone brave enough to admit here that they did. Weaker does not have to equal less interesting. However, I'm not sure what the hell they're doing with the balance now. Maybe the show is getting a little top-heavy with badasses, and so they need to "fix" that? Beth is dead, Carol can limp around and be injured for as long as they want to give someone else the action spotlight. Maggie can spend the next four episodes crying about her sister who she never gave up on, if Tyreese gets any lamer he'll be sitting in a wheelchair on cinder blocks, and the new breakout star who gets scene after scene after scene is Father fucking Gabriel? Please. I'd rather still be watching Eugene. There is an entire range of emotion and human behavior between "tearing out throats with your teeth" and "being an annoying crybaby with way too much screen time." Seems like the only time the writers remember this is when they're doing a filler episode, though.

When Rick invited anybody who wanted out to follow him, I was watching for a guinea pig. ETA: Knives (as in like daggers or Marine kabars) can go through Kevlar if stabbed hard enough because of concentration of impact, Bullets are blunt, so it bends under them but doesn't rip. Arrows will also work against it much better than bullets, for the same reason. I doubt Beth was smart enough to think abut targeting a weak spot in the armor but not to just, say, go for the neck. But I can easily see her falling for the old "little bit of knowledge" trap. Hey, I've certainly never run around trying to stab anybody in Kevlar. So let's say everything I "know" about this is wrong. Beth could still have heard the same factoids that I have.

One thing about Beth's weapon... it is possible to stab through kevlar, with a good knife. This may well be a fact that Daryl's mentioned to her. So combine that little bit of incomplete knowledge, add some hope and desperation, and bear in mind that her only knife-fighting experience has consisted of stabbing cardboard-skulled zombies, and she may well have thought that a tiny crappy scissor blade like that would penetrate the vest, and body underneath, as easily and fatally as it would a zombie skull. This doesn't stop it from being wrong or stupid, nor does it excuse her from only being a script-writer away from inciting a two-way massacre, but it does make her belief that she could kill Dawn in one stab understandable. About the Rick-rolling of Roadrunner Bob... I seem to be in the minority on this one, but I agree with the decision to kill him and be done with it. I don't think offering the bad guys a crippled henchman would be worth much as a bargaining tool. In fact, if they don't want the responsibility of taking care of him they might be even more likely to treat Rick as a dangerous loose cannon who can't be trusted. If he got killed by zombies, well that's actually a thing. I've never actually heard of a dog eating somebody's homework, but zombies eat henchmen like every two episodes in the ZA.

Excellant post, Constantine, but... must... fight urge... to make "fingerbang" joke...

Honestly, they could just go back to Terminus. Or the prison. Or Woodbury. And fix the place up. The fire engine can serve as a temporary barrier while you're putting fences back up. Sure, you might have to run from somebody again. But if for a year or so you've got a safe home, take it. It's not like life on the road is any safer.

Interesting that Rick chose this week to clean up his appearance a little bit. His beard is very neatly lined, for example. Maybe it was before, but he always had so much dirt and gore on himself that you couldn't tell. At the very least, that indicates he washed his neck before this episode. Also, the beard hair itself is less Mansonesque. He appears to have spent some time with a brush. I would like to know: why the change? 1. He plans to return as a triumphant hero and then bang Michonne until her hair stands on end. 2. He's actually been deeply, secretly in love with Beth for quite some time, and tidied up in order to impress her. 3. One of the hostages gave him a makeover. Or, more likely, demanded that Noah do it. 4. Tyreese's masculinity is receding even faster than we realized, and he gave Rick a makeover. 5. Rick is still pining for Lori, and heard that he was about to meet a wishy-washy but self-centered brunette with a horrible personality, well-toned ass, obsession with laundry duty, and history of associating with homicidal unstable rapists. 6. Somebody intelligent in the group, perhaps Sasha, convinced him that the hostage exchange might go better if he didn't go in there looking like a barbarian on crack. This is actually, in my opinion, the most likely hypothesis. I'd like to have seen that part of the episode, though. And don't tell me there wasn't room, because they have all the time in world for the Adventures of Father Pee Pants or the Tyreese Sucks Now Hour.

Please no more eyeball stabs. I don't want to sit through Pirate Dawn and her long phony redemption arc.

Please stop giving Emily Kinney helium before her interviews.

All I'm saying is that body armor is heavy. If you're only expecting head shots anyway, you might opt for less weight to carry over the extra "just in case" protection. I'd probably still opt for it myself. But, for characters who didn't, that's the best fanwank I can offer.

Yeah, if every cop that you know thinks that driving into people to see if they live or die is a great way to introduce yourself, why the hell would you think somebody who looks like Rick would be less dangerous? They didn't eat much of Bob because they found out he was tainted. Not sure if body armor would as useful in the ZA as it is now. I'd think everybody pretty much just goes for head shots. After all, you don't want somebody you just "killed" getting back up again in mid-battle.

I would say describing it as a reflexive shooting would be more accurate than calling it an accidental shooting. If you're holding a gun and have your finger on the trigger, and somebody attacks you, odds are you're going to shoot them. But there's a certain level of responsibility inherent in pointing that gun at them in the first place. If I'm robbing a bank, and my gun goes off "accidentally," the cops aren't going to see it that way. Dawn had already made a deal, and finished it. The reason she was still pointing the gun so aggressively was that, in spite of her claims that it was the other cops who were the bad ones, she was determined to reinforce the hospital's forced labor system. When you do that to Beth, it's kidnapping. Noah had proven himself a useful addition to Rick's group, but Dawn was still demanding him. Basically, on the grounds that she'd already kidnapped him before, so it was.. okay somehow? When Noah robbed Daryl and Carol, I don't think he intended to shoot them. But if he had, it would have been a shooting that happened during the commission of an armed robbery. People do that all the time, and are generally referred to as murderers. Dawn was (attemptedly) stabbed by a friend of somebody she was trying to kidnap. Therefore, she gets even less sympathy from me than Beth does... for bringing a shiv to a gunfight. Really, Beth? Couldn't you at least make sure the others got away and then played hero?

They'd probably have noticed if her clothes suddenly got cleaner, and charged her for it. Of course, there's two problems with this. One is that it is, at least somewhat, still a hospital. I would think burning the ward's clothes would make more sense then leaving them around all dirty and lice-infested. Either that, or make the cleaning mandatory, and charge for it. And the other problem is: who really cares what you owe them? Nobody is ever allowed to leave, but as long as you're useful they don't want you to die, either. So whether you owe them two days of labor or two centuries, it does not actually make any real difference.

You know, I hate sewing as much as anybody. I spend ten times as much time putting the thread back into the needle as I spend (badly) stitching anything. That's why my Halloween costumes tend to be held together on the inside with safety pins. Or duct tape. or sometimes stapled. But the more I think about it, these lollicops are way, way too into their laundry-slave industry. Is it really worth wasting time, gas, and, sometimes, ammunition, cruising around looking for people to drive into, just so that a small percentage of them will survive and be useful enough to push around and scream at for not sewing up a hole in your shirt? I can't help thinking that just learning how to sew would be less work. I mean, I understand wanting slaves if you're a big evil overlord who's building a gigantic anti-zombie wall or something, but... patching clothes up? Seriously?

I suppose you could squeeze Michonne in on a technicality, but, yeah. Pretty much.

I wish they'd been a little bit slower getting to the hospital. Then Carol could have kicked everyone's asses for them.

Yeah, doesn't that suck? When you accidentally shoot your potential new Aryan BFF? Poor Dawn. All she wanted to do was point a gun at people until they gave her the slave that she was demanding. Is it her fault that some people are just naturally better at doing laundry than others? Good thing Glenn wasn't there. She'd have wanted him big-time.

Well, the good news is that the bad cops are all gone now. All we have left are good cops. Good cops who happen to be okay with running people down in their cars in order to enslave them, but, hey, nobody's perfect.

Couldn't one person have reminded Dawn about the Emancipation Proclamation? Maybe it wouldn'thave changed her mind, but, seriously, when somebody is honestly standing there saying "Okay, we're done talking about regular people. Now give me back that black guy that I own..." you'd think a few people might have responses to that.

I guess I should stop getting so worried about Carol every time I hear there's a sad twist. I often forget, Bob's death was also supposed to be tragic. I was actually starting to like Beth, but when she did get shot, all I could think was "Oh, that's all? I can live with that." I mean, I liked Axel, too, but the show marches on. Or, plods on, as the case may be.