CletusMusashi

Carl's Hat thinks all this talk about watches is silly.

Last week was pretty boring. I tuned in this week to give it one more chance, but honestly had no expectations. This time I enjoyed it enough to actually look forward to next week's hour.

Xander should have taken some construction equipment, smashed the school, and buried the Hellmouth opening. That would have given them more than enough time to seal the portal up magically. Buffy's plan, on the other hand, was kind of like sending a random handful of poorly equipped ground troops into Hiroshima, just to see if they could shoot a few people and run away before the atomic bomb dropped.

They were saving Eugene for Friday. Mullets are seafood.

I like the basic idea that he was some kind of lab flunkie. He certainly wasn't a janitor or security guard, though. Those positions require actual skills.

Carol: Knock, knock Rick: Who's there? Carol: Guerilla Daryl: Guerilla who? Carol: Guerilla your dreams, baby.

If he wanted to, say, blow up the entire town on their way out, I'd understand. But going back for an extended gun battle, probably against superior numbers, is just stupid. I mean, at least wait until Judith can hold a gun! The world is a big, empty place right now. Just head for D.C. Even if you did go back to Terminus, and kill everybody there, you wouldn't know how many weren't there. You wouldn't know how many Termites were spread out far into the woods looking for you, while you were looking for them. In other words, whether Rick had gone back or not, there would still be no guarantee that the next group of people they see on the road isn't a Terminus crew looking for vengeance. Who besides Gareth would they actually recognize? Objectively speaking, the biggest thing they have to gain by continuing the war is higher casualties.Well, that and vengeance. But vengeance is an expensive luxury in the zombie apocalypse. If your goal is to rebuild Terminus, become a farmer again, and see what exciting mutant strain of swine flu you can create this time, that's one thing. But if you just plan on leaving anyway, then the way to survive is by hit and run tactics. Run when you can, kill when you have to, and run again when running makes more sense. The world has other bad guys in it, so don't kid yourself that a war in one city is going to make the next one down the road any safer for you.

Atkins diet.

Rick is trying to be more like Carol, but he's not smart enough. "Terminus bad! Rick smash now!" Um, you do know that many of them are no longer there? And the ones that are may well be spaced out on building tops with gas grenades? And the people at ground level? Might be innocent escapees? Or clueless Woodbury-style redshirts? Or Woodbury-style objecters, like Tyreese was? Maybe you should have finished the job after Woodbury by killing Tyreese?I don't know. Ask Judith. I do know one thing. Any surviving leaders of Terminus are not standing in the middle of the street waiting to give Rick Grimes a fair fight. They're a little busy right now. Look on the bright side, though, Ricky. If they do need to die, your babysitter will be happy to sneak back and take care of it for you.

Couldn't you,maybe... stop broadcasting? And, if you don't have time to take all the signs down, Just add some ominous graffiti over the nearest ones. I mean, come on. Even Rick thought of that. Weirdest question, of course, is: what the hell was Gareth hoarding all those teddy bears for? I guess maybe too many manwiches right before bedtime can give you nightmares.

How to spot a bad person: he honestly likes Carl's hat.

This entire episode has been approved by The Georgia 'Tatorial Committee to Elect Carol Peletier.

I guess the big question that's on all of our minds is: Will Carl continue his tradition of having a huge growth spurt before every season? Because I would love the premier to start out with Gareth looking into the car, doing a double take, and asking "Weren't you a foot shorter yesterday?"

Awesome post, and that depth of character interaction is why this year's AMC marathons have convinced me that 2 is the greatest season. Pisses most people off big time when I say that. "Oh, but all they do is hang out on a farm!" No, they do all kinds of stuff. They just happen to be using a farm as their center of operations. So what? Are prisons and random spots in the woods all that much more exciting than farms? Shane was a way more layered villain than anyone since. And, honestly, the earlier, less friendly Herschel was more layered than the Martyr-Sue Herschel of later seasons. Lori was horrible, but at least she was horrible with an interesting story arc. And wasn't a stupid ghost. Daryl was still struggling with his savage roots. And Glenn and Maggie were still forming a great relationship, instead of just using it as a plot McGuffin. On rewatch, there is a lot to Maggie's speech to Glenn about how he's a great leader who just doesn't know it yet. And of course there's also a bit of black humor to Andrea insisting "My feet work just fine!" Much of Season 1 is just as good as S2, but a much of it isn't. And I am way, way too bored with the Governor to sit still all the way through S3 again. That makes me sad, because the first time around I loved 3 as much as 2. S3 was more about surprise than detailed interaction, though. Season 2, even with it's absence of some excellent later characters, is as good the show gets.

So... a criminal organization that actively recruits the disfigured? Large numbers of them collecting in Florida? Villainous leaders with goofy faux-German accents? Gratuitous David Bowie references? This is obviously meant to take place in the Venture Brothers universe.

When I first heard about powdered alcohol, the most obvious advantage of it was ease of transport. But since I don't live a thousand miles from the nearest beer store, and since any cheapness of mass commercial transport cost will be offset anyway by the state artificially jacking up the minimum legal retail price, all I could really think was: "It'd be easy to carry in your bag during a zombie apocalypse!"

Best character: The biker kid with the permanent Vulcan hands. Best weapon: His razor. Fingers are too long to properly close around a stabbing-knife handle? But long enough to give a serious quick-draw advantage? Razor ambush is a perfect fit for him. Although I still think that cop was pathetically incompetent, just standing there assuming that people he thought were violent criminal scum need not be guarded against. I also love the dirty old German lady. And the twins. I don't even have trouble telling them apart. Left wing wants art and sex and freedom, right wing wants left wing to settle down and keep her panties on. Don't know WTF the deal is with The Clown with The Tear-Away Face. Seems like he was a lot grouchier back then, though, before he made friends with Jack Skellington.

Before the ZA, Rick was a deputy, and we saw him and Shane at work. They did not wear big stupid hats. Strangely, one of the first things he did after the ZA was dress up as a sheriff. Carol Peletier promises never to indulge latent bipolar delusions of authority by running around in a great big stupid hat! This post has been approved by The Georgia 'Tatorial Committee to Elect Carol Peletier.

Trusted Shane too long? I understand, and could have respected it as a painful learning experience. Trusting Brillip to agree to a territorial division? Strike 2. Trusting Brillip about the Michonne deal, so much so that when council doesn't encourage him, he sneaks to Merle and arranges it? Strike 3. Then, he trusts Terminus enough to go into town, which is understandable enough. I mean, societies do have laws, and are going to want to search you and so forth. I'll give him a free pass on that. But then, when he has evidence that they are bad guys, he thinks simply yelling about it is going to make them.. apologize or something? Worst police work ever. Strike 4, again, just on that one central flaw. He makes the same terrifying mistake at least once a season. Fighting my way through a herd, or surviving a few days on the road with one person, or simply going on a supply run, I'd like to have Rick around. In an immediate kill or die situation, he's a huge asset. But as far as politics go, he's Charlie Brown, humiliatingly trying to kick that same football over and over and over again.

Thanks for mentioning this deleted scene. I'd never seen it before, so I looked it up online. I think if they'd included this in Season 3, Carol's character would have felt more consistent to people. But, of course, they wanted the big Karvid reveal to be as shocking and out of the blue as possible...

About Sophia: Carol wasn't skilled enough yet to be an asset in searching Walker-infested woods. Going out alone, she'd have gotten killed herself and, quite possibly, slowed down Sophia as well, getting her killed. Accompanied by someone else, she'd only be a distraction, slowing down Rick or Daryl or whoever ended up having to babysit her. So she did what people in societies have always done.Division of labor. Someone had to look for Sophia, so the best people for the job did it. Meanwhile, someone had to prepare food, ensure that clean water was available, and, laugh all you want, do laundry. These people get blood and guts all over their clothing on a very regular basis. The fact that somebody does clean their clothes is why every little scratch does not become gangrenous. I'm sure Carol wanted to drop all of her useful contributions and rush out there searching day and night, but she made what was, for the cohesiveness and ultimate survival of the group, the objectively correct decision. This doesn't make me think "irresponsible." Quite the contrary. It makes me think she'd be very hard to control by taking hostages. About the watch thief: Rick played his hand boldly and immediately, which works great in a hit and run battle. However, in Terminus, more subtlety was called for. Tell the others what you're thinking, start looking at ways to sneak out. As it was, they could have been gunned down on the spot even more easily than they were herded into a boxcar. Because saying "Hey, look, he's a bad guy!" is not a "do it and it's done" action. Not when you're surrounded by other bad guys. What did he expect? "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids?" This post has been approved by The Georgia 'Tatorial Committee to Elect Carol Peletier.

Oh, I'm vastly in favor of more than one person being in charge. It just doesn't tend to work out that way. A council is great for deciding how much electricity should go toward which thing, or which exercise yard they should use for growing rutabagas. But on big, immediate decisions there has to be one top person. Call it a Governor, a President, a Prime MInister, or a 'Tator, when the shit hits the fan all democracies have one government official who is more equal than the others. Rick is good at small, immediate decisions. Dodging around the house to avoid Joe's gang. Leaving them a new zombie as a surprise gift. Biting Joe to death. Chopping off Herschel's leg. Things that, once you do them, they're done. This makes him excel in short-term small group survival situations, because fortune favors the bold. Things that there's time to think about, like "Should we kill Randall, invite him into the group, or just screw with his head every five seconds until there is no way in hell we would ever be able to trust him?" are a problem. Or things that look, to the sufficiently desperate, like they fall into the "do it and it's done," category, but actually are more complicated than that. "Well, we could just move out of this prison that has zombies pushing down the fence every day. But that would involve a lot of thinking about where to go next. Listen, can't we just let bygones be bygones? You played a little prank on my friends where you kidnapped and tortured them, threw Glenn to a zombie, threatened to rape Maggie, and killed Andrea. But MIchonne did kill your favorite zombie and she did injure you when you were trying to kill her, so let's just say mistakes were made all around. Let's be roomies!" Yeah, that couldn't possibly end badly. Right, Martinez? Martinez? Weird. For some reason Martinez is not answering me. Carol knows that even friends lie to each other. If she were talking to the Governor, she'd have signaled the snipers to blow off that stupid tank gunner's head the second he decided to open the hatch and stand there like an idiot. After that, the Gov is an easy second shot for anybody. Of course, so is Carol, but in that case maybe either the Prison Gang still win the battle, free the hostages, and elect a new 'tator, or the surviving members of Woodbury 2.0 retreat a little, but probably have no desire to randomly decapitate hostages, so either way, we'd probably have ended with Herschel as 'tator. Even though I can't technically vote for him now because he's dead, we all know who we really want. What has Carol actually done? Shit, haven't you ever wondered what the hell Judith was eating all that time with Tyreese? There's no fresh infant formula lying around in the woods... or on railroad tracks! And they sure as hell weren't doing runs into town, with Lizzie calling out for every zombie around to come and get its hair brushed! Carol was obviously racing around like a super-ninja Batmantaclaus, running formula to Tyreese, injecting antibiotics into comatose Rick, washing zombie guts out of Michonne's hair, checking Abraham for breast cancer, and stabbing the 800 zombies that would otherwise have devoured Daryl and Beth's drunken asses wandering around in the middle of the night... I ask you, if that is not dedication to the group, then what is? This post has been approved by The Georgia 'Tatorial Committee to Elect Carol Peletier. By the way, am I the only one who had no idea at all what her last name was?

Rick actually wavered all over the place about whether to hand over Michonne or not. Which was where he jumped the shark for me. Morality of "Individual versus group" aside, everyone knew better than to trust the Governor. Except Rick. Ultimately, he set it up for Merle, of all people, to make the decision. And then? He thought inviting the Governor to move in with them was a feasible idea. Rick's mood swings have a tendency to make him desperate. Which makes him naive. Which makes him dangerous.

How about precisely Timed Biological Processes? You know what I'm talking about. "This poison will kill him in exactly 28 minutes and 6.359 seconds! Unless he gets the antidote at 28 minutes and 6.358 seconds! In which case, he's immediately cured." Especially weird since the assassin is always carrying the antidote in his pocket. How does that make you better at killing people?