S11.E03: Hunted

[raven]

NOTE:  AMC+ will stream each episode a week before airing on AMC.  Enter this topic at your own risk if you haven't watched yet.

AMC+ airdate: 2021.08.29  AMC airdate: 2021.09.05

Be mindful if you participate in the Live Posting Topic - that topic will follow the show as it airs on AMC, so AMC+ viewers will be one episode ahead.  DO NOT SPOIL those who are watching on AMC.

Quote

Magna and Kelly attempt to catch horses; Judith and Gracie cope with their parents leaving.

 

[raven]

A mention of Buttons, may he RIP.  

I actually...kinda...liked this one?  The show is going to contrive to have Maggie and Negan together so I have to deal with it.

I like seeing apocalypse porn (new wastelands, etc) and though I'm never nervous about any of our principals, some of the stalking scenes were tense and well done.    We also had a higher body count than I was expecting. 

I like Gabriel's "God isn't here anymore" oooh.  I like Gabriel with no fucks left to give.

Carol seems like a love her or hate her character and I'm still in the like/love camp.  I would totally want to be going off on my own.  I think MM is a good actress so I did feel for her when she killed the horse.

I'm still sure I would not be running around in a mask during the apocalypse.  Oh and sorry, Alden and other 2 people.  Ouch.

[OoohMaggie]

When those poor saps sign up to join Maggie’s gang I’d love to see the contract they sign, especially the subsection that deals with their life expectancy reducing somewhat rapidly. She’s a dangerous lady to be around 😱

Did anyone else find that episode hard to watch?  I don’t mean story wise, I refer to the crazy camera work, the angle and subject chopping and changing so rapidly my eyes barely had time to focus, it was awful  🤕

I quite like the stalking aspects, yet once again it was spoiled by one of the group getting not only caught up to by the shufflers, but a lump bitten out of her forearm and then being dragged down and eaten, enough with that nonsense already, C’mon 🙄

The Commonwealth, Maggie and Alexandria all feel very disjointed still, like they’re still finishing off the filler episodes, a headcount would be useful as I’ve no idea how many people are supposed to be at Alex.

[heisenberg]

4 hours ago, OoohMaggie said:

Did anyone else find that episode hard to watch?  I don’t mean story wise, I refer to the crazy camera work, the angle and subject chopping and changing so rapidly my eyes barely had time to focus, it was awful  🤕

I would have called this episode "Catch me if you can".  Everybody running around all the time.

I did not hate it but I did not like it either.   Like Raven said,  we are left with fewer people, clean up had to be made.

But I hardly follow the plot.  Looking for food?  It does not make sense to me. 

I can't wait to go back to the stormtroopers.

 

[hacman00]

Gawd couldn't help but sing this during that slo-mo shot...

"Wild, wild horses
Couldn't drag me away"

This week's episode of The Walking Dead brought to you by Anheiser Busch

Edited August 30, 2021 by hacman00

[Mr. Sparkle]

Oh, the animal crowd is going to be pissed about this one! 

Two people against an entire gang, and a gang that defeated Maggie once before? Sure. No problem. 

[BasilSeal]

Well children, on TWD this week our themes are trust and betrayal, do you see?

Actually this was quite a well done episode and though the themes were a little leaden and obvious they didn't hit us over the head with them like they did last week with the Look, Maggie do same as Negan, she bad too' show and tell as Maggie left junior redshirt to die in the train carriage because opening and closing a door they'd only just opened and closed was too risky, for some reason.

The horses were a metaphor for the the trust the first infantry redshirt brigade put in their leaders, the horses run into the corral because they want the safety of human  ownership but Carole then kills and eats one of them, after it's put its complete trust in her. the redshirts put their trust in Maggie but sometimes Maggie just has to do what she has to do, as Aiden spells out, in case you hadn't realised, when she leaves him in the derelict church, Maggie promises expendable big guy that she'll make sure expendable woman gets back home only to let her get ripped to shreds by walkers after she's been bitten because it enables the rest of them to get away. Another victim of symbolic hard choices, always read the terms and conditions when you sign up to be a minor spear carrier character in the apocalypse.

On 8/29/2021 at 8:37 PM, raven said:

I like seeing apocalypse porn (new wastelands, etc) and though I'm never nervous about any of our principals, some of the stalking scenes were tense and well done. 

One of the difficulties in portraying  the apocalypse over ten years after the end of civilisation has to be finding realistic decaying landscapes. TWD are generally very good at this, there was some money spent on this episode and it did look good visually.

Edited September 1, 2021 by BasilSeal

[BasilSeal]

On 8/31/2021 at 1:13 AM, Superclam said:

Oh, the animal crowd is going to be pissed about this one! 

Two people against an entire gang, and a gang that defeated Maggie once before? Sure. No problem. 

four and a half because Daryl will turn up with dog, his personal peril generator, who counts as half a person, and the no longer cowardly vicar will show up at some point too. they'll be unstoppable, or not.

And they did kill another horse but at least they ate it this time, that's progress.

[SailorGirl]

Question, and it may need to be a spoiler response:

How bad is/are the animal murder/kill/death/dying scenes? Even though I know its fake I am a total wuss about it and can't watch it. The humans? Not so much--take 'em out! 😄

If its bad, I'll skip it live and DVR it so I can FF through those parts. 

This animal-lovin' wimp thanks you in advance! 

Edited September 1, 2021 by SailorGirl

[Mr. Sparkle]

47 minutes ago, SailorGirl said:

Question, and it may need to be a spoiler response:

How bad is/are the animal murder/kill/death/dying scenes? Even though I know its fake I am a total wuss about it and can't watch it. The humans? Not so much--take 'em out! 😄

If its bad, I'll skip it live and DVR it so I can FF through those parts. 

This animal-lovin' wimp thanks you in advance! 

I think I don't have to spoiler tag it, because the episode already aired, but I will: 

Spoiler

A horse is slaughtered by having its throat slashed. The animal doesn't appear to suffer much, but it's kind of a moving scene. I'm not one to get too upset over animal deaths because they usually look fake, but this one was touching. 

There's also a scene of horse corpses, but those look pretty fake to me. 

 

2 hours ago, BasilSeal said:

four and a half because Daryl will turn up with dog, his personal peril generator, who counts as half a person, and the no longer cowardly vicar will show up at some point too. they'll be unstoppable, or not.

And they did kill another horse but at least they ate it this time, that's progress.

After I wrote my comment I later remembered Daryl, but I completely forgot about Father PP until you reminded me. Of course, nothing will kill our sturdy main cast. 

I read a comment either here or another site how daring it would be for the last scene of the show to have the main cast shambling along as zombies. Pretty sure that's not happening. 

[BasilSeal]

11 minutes ago, Superclam said:

After I wrote my comment I later remember Daryl, but I completely forgot about Father PP until you reminded me. Of course, nothing will kill our sturdy main cast. 

Yeah, TWD's original USP was how fast they burned through cast members with Major Character Deaths. This owed a lot to the comics but i think they've realised that fan favourite, iconic characters don't grow on trees and they've taken to killing off second tier characters instead, they created some new ones for this season specifically to have expendable characters to be killed off on Maggie's death march. The other survivor of the ambush is the man in the  impractical iron mask. we didn't see him die, he was helping maggie and the also impractically masked baddies lassoed him, perhaps they spared him from the stab and slash party because they thought as a fellow impractical mask enthusiast, he was a kindred spirit.

But we didn't see him die and according to Murphy's first rule of the apocalypse, if you didn't see them die, then they're not dead. So he's going to turn up at some point, probably as part of a plot device to show us the inner workings of the masked baddies camp.

[SailorGirl]

24 minutes ago, Superclam said:

I think I don't have to spoiler tag it, because the episode already aired, but I will: 

  Reveal spoiler

A horse is slaughtered by having its throat slashed. The animal doesn't appear to suffer much, but it's kind of a moving scene. I'm not one to get too upset over animal deaths because they usually look fake, but this one was touching. 

There's also a scene of horse corpses, but those look pretty fake to me. 

 

After I wrote my comment I later remembered Daryl, but I completely forgot about Father PP until you reminded me. Of course, nothing will kill our sturdy main cast. 

I read a comment either here or another site how daring it would be for the last scene of the show to have the main cast shambling along as zombies. Pretty sure that's not happening. 

Thanks. I figured spoilers since it hasn't aired on "regular" AMC, only on plus.

In the words of one Abraham Ford..."'Preciate it Pal!"

[theredhead77]

On 9/1/2021 at 5:03 PM, SailorGirl said:

Question, and it may need to be a spoiler response:

How bad is/are the animal murder/kill/death/dying scenes? Even though I know its fake I am a total wuss about it and can't watch it. The humans? Not so much--take 'em out! 😄

If its bad, I'll skip it live and DVR it so I can FF through those parts. 

This animal-lovin' wimp thanks you in advance! 

I'm like you. It's really bad and really upsetting. I muted the TV and looked up too soon. I'm livid at the writers and am going to have bad dreams. 

 

If someone who watches ahead finds out anything happens to Dog and can drop me a PM I'd appreciate it. I try to stay spoiler free so I haven't gone looking.

 

ETA: I'm not opposed to killing animals for food. It didn't need to be on screen.

Edited September 6, 2021 by theredhead77

[Ms Lark]

Just for fun: Talking Dead just told us Greg Nicotero played the walker that ate Agatha and also operated the "Judas" puppet still in his walker makeup. Guess they were short handed?

Edited September 6, 2021 by Ms Lark

[Nashville]

2 hours ago, Ms Lark said:

Just for fun: Talking Dead just told us Greg Nicotero played the walker that ate Agatha and also operated the "Judas" puppet still in his walker makeup. Guess they were short handed?

Can’t get nobody to work for minimum wage any more….  😁

[BK1978]

I've watched this show since the start and for some reason I am only able to retain the name of characters from the first two seasons.  After that, unless you did something huge, I have no clue who half these people are.   Even Alden, I had no idea what his name was.  He has been on a ton of episodes and I never retained his name until tonight. 

I don't know if that says something about my memory or I just do not give a shit about the newer characters.  Maybe it is a combination of both.

[Bad Example]

Since we're all aired up, I'll mention the horse outside spoiler tags.  I also found it touching.  Carol wasn't unaffected.  And it wasn't kill porn.

I was shocked by something (for once, of late) then realized immediately that I shouldn't have been.  Carol made the hard choice and the right choice.  Priority one:  Feed the kids.

I liked the kids' conversations, too.

[KeithJ]

On 9/1/2021 at 4:38 PM, Superclam said:

I read a comment either here or another site how daring it would be for the last scene of the show to have the main cast shambling along as zombies. Pretty sure that's not happening. 

I've been saying this for a while now as I really don't feel there is any other way to just end the show.  All the walkers will never be killed and there won't be a cure for it at this point.  Get all of our heroes together (except maybe Daryl and Carol since we know they'll survive) and let them go down in a blaze of glory against a horde.  Give everyone their own epic death scene and then end the show with everyone joining the horde and walking off into the sunset.

[iMonrey]

Quote

Even Alden, I had no idea what his name was.  He has been on a ton of episodes and I never retained his name until tonight. 

I knew who Alden was, but the new group they introduced after the time jump are all still a blur to me. There's Magna (I think) and Connie and Kelly and Yumiko and who was the chubby guy, Luke? Is he still around? They have done absolutely nothing to flesh out these characters, they just threw them into the mix and expected us to follow along like we give a shit about them. As for the red shirts Maggie brought back with her, we hardly had a chance to know them before they were all killed off. 

Edited September 6, 2021 by iMonrey

[diebartdie]

I guess by this point TPTB realize how many people have decided the just hate Carol so they really went for it with the horse killing. I think it was the first episode of the season when it was explained Alexandria, dealing with the influx of refugees from both Hilltop (burned down and trampled) and Oceanside (also trampled) plus all of Alexandria's crops were trampled SO the population only had at best one week of food left. Carol made the hard choice, as she always does. She was heartbroken over it but she at least wasn't going to just let everyone, especially children, starve.

We're a long, long time in the ZA. All the Big Spot supercenters have long ago been picked clean, as have all the grocery stores and even all the homes. Food is really hard to come by although it does seem to me they should be fishing all the streams and rivers and lakes and ponds. And even making fish weirs. And trapping birds. Well anyway I do think in episode 1 of this season it would have made so much more sense to kill all the sleepy soldier zombies in that base and clear it out, there were probably enough MRE to last a few weeks but the show wouldn't let them do that. Instead, we have Maggie's stubborn death march and Carol's really sad butchering of a horse named Dinner.

I don't care, I'm ride or die for Carol.

Edited September 6, 2021 by diebartdie
spelling

[nodorothyparker]

I was confused too by Maggie hitting her goto button of saying all of this is somehow Negan's fault. Um, what? I get that you have issues with him, but each of you took turns speechifying and letting him live before you took off to parts unknown and stayed gone for I guess at least six years. The communities rebuilt or didn't in one form or another after the Savior war and then still pretty passively let themselves be burned down by the Whisperer loons and now this bunch. Maggie is the one who belligerently insisted on this mission as it has gone in the face of all questioning or concern and if this latest bunch of whackadoos isn't specifically hunting her they're doing a poor job of not clarifying that. But whatever the show has to do to force a Maggie-Negan partnership of the damned, I guess.

I'll be surprised if Alden hasn't turned and Maggie tearfully has to put him down the next time we see him. Because it's this show and that's how these stories almost always end.

I have no issue with the decision to butcher a horse in the face of the ongoing food shortage. These are the remnants of the same group who ate a pack of dogs on the road, after all, with little more than a brief regretful look at a pile of collars. I do feel like the show cranked up the emotional manipulation of it to make worse than it had to be and then realized too late in scenes like Rosita encouraging her daughter to "pet the pony" before pulling back on that notion that less is more in this kind of storytelling. I sometimes feel like kind of an outlier watching stories like this because I was raised by people who would meet the definition of homesteaders who did a lot of their own meat raising and butchering. I don't personally eat meat because of that upbringing but I also don't get attached to fictional animals or even real ones that don't fall cleanly into the nonfood pet animal category. I mean, in this particular story where it's been heavily implied for seasons as pre ZA food gives out, I assume that everybody we're watching is doing plenty of hunting and butchering even if we're not seeing it. In this case, Carol initially framed the great horse hunt in terms she knew would be easier for the rest of them to accept (No, really guys. We just need them to carry things!) and then as she always does, took the hard part on herself to keep them all fed another day. The mostly wordless reactions of Magna (Magma?) and Aaron nicely underscored that they realized that too.

[RedDelicious]

At least the deceased horses by the creek were obviously plastic. The only thing missing was the slot for quarters.

[meep.meep]

On 9/1/2021 at 12:38 PM, BasilSeal said:

 

One of the difficulties in portraying  the apocalypse over ten years after the end of civilisation has to be finding realistic decaying landscapes. TWD are generally very good at this, there was some money spent on this episode and it did look good visually.

To each their own.  To me, the building that Maggie entered looked exactly like the one where Noah died, and she even jumped over the dumpster-of-miraculous-Glenn-protection.

[Smad]

1 hour ago, diebartdie said:

I guess by this point TPTB realize how many people have decided the just hate Carol so they really went for it with the horse killing.

So when our characters senselessly get horses killed all the time, people say 'poor horse, bad character' and move on immediately. But when a horse is killed for the legitimate reason of 'our children are starving, they need food', that's when it's time to hate on a character? That's just weird.

1 hour ago, diebartdie said:

Food is really hard to come by although it does seem to me they should be fishing all the streams and rivers and lakes and ponds. And even making fish weirs.

Has anyone considered that this might not be an option anymore since they dumped 10k walkers into the river in last Season's Finale?

[raven]

1 hour ago, diebartdie said:

I think it was the first episode of the season when it was explained Alexandria, dealing with the influx of refugees from both Hilltop (burned down and trampled) and Oceanside (also trampled) plus all of Alexandria's crops were trampled SO the population only had at best one week of food left. Carol made the hard choice, as she always does. She was heartbroken over it but she at least wasn't going to just let everyone, especially children, starve.

Yes, they did explain it - it was also mentioned that the horde had decimated the local wildlife.  I am guessing this is why Carol didn't go along with the Maggie/Negan partnership of the damned (copyright @nodorothyparker). 

It is frustrating to see these hard choices framed around a dumb story to make sure M/N HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER FOR THE GREATER GOOD but that's The Walking Dead for you at this point.

 

[SailorGirl]

I don't have issue with them eating the horse, just like I didn't have an issue with them eating the dogs. But with the dogs, it wasn't so graphic -- we saw Sasha take the shots and then heard the whimper. There was no need to show the gory details of slicing the horse's neck (and yes, wimp that I am, I covered my eyes and ears but peeked out too soon and saw the blood gushing into the pan, so that's how I know). 

 

Edited September 6, 2021 by SailorGirl

[rmontro]

Regarding the scenes where they were eating the meat:  Is horse meat really that bad?  I know there are a lot of places in the world where they eat it fairly routinely.  Doesn't mean it's good, I guess.  Horses are muscular animals, maybe it's tough?  I just wonder because it seems like if people are starving, they wouldn't be quite so squeamish about eating it.  Or maybe it's just the idea of it that was bothering them?

I don't quite get Gabriel.  He said God wasn't here anymore.  But just a few scenes earlier he was praying "Lord, you are my refuge and my strength".  He must have been quite the wishy washy leader of his congregation..

[nodorothyparker]

I've thankfully never eaten horse meat, but I read those scenes as them finding the notion of it distasteful but plowing through it anyway so at least the sacrifice wasn't wasted. Carol or somebody at the top of the episode mentioned that they maybe had a week's worth of food left at best, so they're not yet at the level of hunger they were when they ate the dogs on the road or dog food and owls even earlier, but they obviously don't want to get to that point either. Staying alive in this world takes both physical and mental energy and food deprivation will make you slow and mentally sluggish long before you physically starve to death.

I've long since stopped trying to make sense of Gabriel, who at least has finally graduated from fitting his Father Pee Pants nickname. The actor is often much better than the material, but it feels like half the time the show wants him to be a less sweary more sincere version of Jules from Pulp Fiction and half the time they want him to be a more sane Rick.

[Smad]

8 hours ago, rmontro said:

Regarding the scenes where they were eating the meat:  Is horse meat really that bad?  I know there are a lot of places in the world where they eat it fairly routinely.  Doesn't mean it's good, I guess.  Horses are muscular animals, maybe it's tough?  I just wonder because it seems like if people are starving, they wouldn't be quite so squeamish about eating it.  Or maybe it's just the idea of it that was bothering them?

I've had it once while in another country and have no desire to eat it again. Unless of course if I were in their situation, I'd eat to my heart's content rather than starve. The horse meat I had was very stringy, hard to chew and I think it's down to horses usually being so muscular (but I'm not sure there). Just not my cup of tea I guess.

Mad props to Hershel Junior though. Having to eat spiders? That's where I draw the line even if I were starving. Those 8 legged monsters are getting nowhere near my mouth. I rather do a Daryl and dig for worms. I think the kids aversion to eating horse is because they haven't experienced starvation like some of the group. So they probably think of horses more like pets rather than a food source. It's not like they have had horse meat before to have any sort of opinion on it.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Smad

[RedDelicious]

 I liked seeing Judith as a kid among kids instead of a kid among adults.

[rmontro]

9 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

I've long since stopped trying to make sense of Gabriel, who at least has finally graduated from fitting his Father Pee Pants nickname. The actor is often much better than the material,

That seems like a good way of putting it.

 

8 hours ago, RedDelicious said:

 I liked seeing Judith as a kid among kids instead of a kid among adults.

Or as an adult among adults.

[tennisgurl]

This was definitely an improvement on the last few episode at least, even with some pretty stupid bits. I know that Maggie hates Negan (understandably) but why is she wasting her time trying to blame all of this on Negan? Why blame him for things that aren't really his fault when you can blame him for so many things which are? 

The desolate landscape looks really good, it feels sort of post apocalyptic southern gothic, it makes all of the travel scenes seem really eerie without even using Walkers. The stalking in general was very tense, even knowing that none of the main characters would actually end up biting it, there was still some real tension that this show has been missing.

I think this is the first reference to Abraham in awhile, which I was happy about.

We come back to where we started, with horses being eaten. I get that they need food but...can we not do this on screen please? I would almost prefer to listen to another of Negan's speeches about balls and farting. Almost.

Edited September 8, 2021 by tennisgurl

[ctlady]

On 9/7/2021 at 7:44 AM, Smad said:

I think the kids aversion to eating horse is because they haven't experienced starvation like some of the group. So they probably think of horses more like pets rather than a food source. It's not like they have had horse meat before to have any sort of opinion on it.

My thought was - why even tell the kids it was horse meat?  Do what my Italian grandmother did when she tried to get me to eat soffritto for the first time when I was 12 - tell me it was 'soft beef'.  Which it was - and delicious.  Until she spilled the beans that it was cow hearts

[Captain Asshat]

30 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

This was definitely an improvement on the last few episode at least, even with some pretty stupid bits. I know that Maggie hates Negan (understandably) but why is she wasting her time trying to blame all of this on Negan? Why blame him for things that aren't really his fault when you can blame him for so many things which are? 

Here's my guess:

Maggie has an understandable visceral hate for Negan. If Negan was on fire, she wouldn't even piss on him to put him out. I hope that hate never goes away. She is the only one on this show who seems to remember how ruthlessly and needlessly cruel he was. She watched him brutally murder her husband Glenn and Abe to prove a point that wasn't worth making...at least not in that way. If the writers have her let go of that, they will have lost sense of how this kind of emotion and hate work. In this episode, the foraging group is in danger as they go after food stores they need, because the Whisperers burned Alexandria. As a result, it has no food and no crops. Negan was undercover with the Whisperers at the time, so Maggie's bottomless rage at him puts the predicament on him, regardless of the fact that he was actually working for the "good guys."

No, it doesn't make logical sense for Maggie to waste time blaming all of this on him. However, with a hatred this deep, I'm sure she would find a way to blame him for cracking the Liberty Bell.

[Crashcourse]

Well if Maggie hates Negan so much then she should just kill him when she gets the chance.  It's not like she'd go to prison.

[TV Anonymous]

Just saying, horse meat tastes like mutton but a bit tough. Nothing special about it. How do I know? I eat it regularly. Here it is widely sold - legally of course - in grocery stores. I hope that they eat the entirety of that horse, offal and all.

Interesting that the Reapers use ninja tropes to fight. Throwing knives, smoke to escape, wonder how they trained during zombie apocalypse.

[Nashville]

2 hours ago, TV Anonymous said:

Interesting that the Reapers use ninja tropes to fight. Throwing knives, smoke to escape, wonder how they trained during zombie apocalypse.

Like every other American ninja - in their room in the parents’ basement.

ETA: Oh, excuse me - their “apartment” in their parents’ basement.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Nashville

[Captain Asshat]

20 hours ago, Crashcourse said:

Well if Maggie hates Negan so much then she should just kill him when she gets the chance.  It's not like she'd go to prison.

Negan is protected by both plot armor and handwavian logic.

[GustavMahler]

On 9/8/2021 at 5:06 PM, Crashcourse said:

Well if Maggie hates Negan so much then she should just kill him when she gets the chance.  It's not like she'd go to prison.

No, Maggie will go to another god awful Network television series...

[OoohMaggie]

2 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

She would be a no brainer for one of the Star Trek series, she isn't that far off from speaking Klingon now.

What a good idea, I’d have to insist upon an appropriate uniform though, whether futuristic or retro I think she’d fit right in 👽

[xaxat]

Maggie's "plan"