S08.E05: More Time Than You Know

[Mr. Sparkle]

The heroes fight the clock and PADRE's forces.

Streaming early on AMC+ and premiering on AMC June 11, 9:00 PM EDT.

Proceed at your own risk for spoilers before the AMC airdate.

[Starchild]

OMG who is writing this crapfest? Was this episode supposed to be one big fever dream from Grace's perspective? The scenes were not connected in any logical storytelling sense. Was it written by a bargain-basement AI trained on rejected scripts?

And Grace took F-O-R-E-V-E-R to die! The only thing that would have justified that was her actually biting Mo afterwards. I never cared about either of them and that scene had no emotional heft for me at all. I was scrolling my phone as she breathed her last words, when I wasn't rolling my eyes.

Why exactly was Kim Dickens so excited about returning for this season? She's been offscreen forever, and when she's onscreen the writing is so bad it's almost offensive.

I can't find any more words to formulate my disgust, but trust me, there's more.

Ugh.

[nodorothyparker]

I love that the Forbes review of this dreck is literally The Stupidity Intensifies. The reviewer seems genuinely offended at the show's continued existence spewing nonsense week after week.

Because yeah. I get what the show was going for, here Morgan just finally finally! got around to laying his ghosts to rest and then immediately lost his replacement family as well. But Grace has never been developed well enough as a character to care about her beyond love interest for Morgan. I mean, really do we know anything about her after four? seasons except that she mistook a pregnancy for cancer and then got saddled with a replacement baby that they seemingly handed over to this kiddie snatching cult with very little pushback? And despite all the apparent teleporting that was happening last episode and then this one at various points it took for. eve. r. to get her to the train car and then to finally die but all of about 30 seconds to turn.

But sure. We were supposed to buy the 8-year-old played by a teenager giving radiation treatments via instructions over the walkie talkie and see any sort of suspense in would it or would it not work. Even knowing that if it did it would upend the entire premise of the franchise. About the only thing in the entire episode that made any sense was Daniel at least understanding what a farfetched long shot this was and refusing to commit people to die for it in a "deal" with Bad Haircut.

 

[Mr. Sparkle]

32 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

We were supposed to buy the 8-year-old played by a teenager giving radiation treatments via instructions over the walkie talkie and see any sort of suspense in would it or would it not work. Even knowing that if it did it would upend the entire premise of the franchise.

I'm almost glad it didn't work for this very reason. How are they going to have all these spin-offs if they solve their zombie problem? 

Mild spoiler for Tales of the Walking Dead. I can't imagine anyone cares, but still. 

Spoiler

The episode with Anthony Edwards is set about 30 years in the future IIRC. Obviously they did NOT solve their zombie problem. 

 

32 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

And despite all the apparent teleporting that was happening last episode and then this one at various points it took for. eve. r. to get her to the train car

I actually rewound twice to see what I missed. Like when did they get on that truck? 

[Mr. Sparkle]

42 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

I love that the Forbes review of this dreck is literally The Stupidity Intensifies.

Holy shit, that article was dead on. There's no need for me to list the ridiculousness because they covered it all. 

I can watch next week, but the last 6 are going to be a chore. I realized that PADRE is going to be the weak-villain endgame here, and that's just sad. 

[Starchild]

I'm holding out faint hope that PADRE is somehow dispensed with next week, so they have a chance of something better for the series finale. 

But yeah, I realize it's a pipe dream.

[iMonrey]

Anyone else take a gander at the map they showed, with the train track routes? From what I could tell, they are either on the gulf coast of Texas, or on the Atlantic side of Florida. The right hand side seemed to be all ocean. But the geography didn't look like either. I think they are most likely in Fictionland.

When the episode started Grace was half unconscious, half delirious. Then midway through she was awake, sitting up and speaking. What a strange progression for this infection.

Also, I'm used to the fact that dead people turn now in about 30 seconds, as opposed to the several hours it used to take, because it's more convenient to the plot. But why would Grace's teeth be all blacked out and rotted in just 30 seconds? It would be one thing if the infection slowly started rotting the body while the victim was still alive, but to go from having perfectly normal teeth to blacked out teeth in 30 seconds makes no sense - even within the tenuous grasp on logic this show has.

I still don't get why Shrike and her brother released all those Walkers near the storage containers. I thought they did that because Daniel's "army" {cough-cough} was on their way and they wanted to screw them over. Now they want them to clear them? Huh? Then why did they release them to begin with?

This whole PADRE thing is so stupid and makes zero sense.

[KeithJ]

Did Shrike pick up a new accent during her conversation with Morgan at the end?

I really don’t understand the emotional attachment Mo has to Grace and Morgan?  Didn’t she just find out like three episodes ago that they are her parents?  Although we know it, they may not even be telling the truth.  

This is turning out to be one of the worst final seasons in TV history.  “I don’t die!  Everyone else does but I don’t”.  Who is writing this crap fest?  Just put a bullet in his head and get it over with instead of locking him in the train where everyone knows he will get out.

Also, did I miss an announcement somewhere that Danay Garcia and Colman Domingo weren’t coming back?  They are both still MIA.  Although I did notice that Colman is listed as a producer on the show.  How long has that been going on?

[MrPissyPuppy]

8 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Also, I'm used to the fact that dead people turn now in about 30 seconds, as opposed to the several hours it used to take, because it's more convenient to the plot. But why would Grace's teeth be all blacked out and rotted in just 30 seconds? It would be one thing if the infection slowly started rotting the body while the victim was still alive, but to go from having perfectly normal teeth to blacked out teeth in 30 seconds makes no sense - even within the tenuous grasp on logic this show has.

That has always bugged me about this particular zombie universe.  

I. Don't. Care. About. The. Kids.   There - I said it.   I want to know what the original characters are up to.   And if you're going to insist on making kids the main characters, then at least age them up enough so that their actions & dialogue make sense.   Yeah, an 8 year old is totally going to be able to do radiation therapy & convince adults to do stuff.  Right.   (I do think the actress playing Mo is doing a decent job.)  

[Madding crowd]

This show has just become relentlessly grim. It has always been dark but there just is nothing but pain and suffering now. PADRE’s goals do not make sense. Take babies and kids away from their parents and raise them institution style with no love and this is somehow better than having them be upset if their parents die at some point.  The whole radiation cure is ridiculous, you could survive a bite only to die of radiation poisoning.

[Mr. Sparkle]

1 hour ago, KeithJ said:

Did Shrike pick up a new accent during her conversation with Morgan at the end?

The actress is Israeli, and I noticed her American accent goes in and out. I know I've mentioned this before, but since we saw her a few weeks ago in braids as a scared teen, I can't take the character seriously. 

[Starchild]

1 hour ago, KeithJ said:

Who is writing this crap fest?

Ha if you're going to directly quote me please credit LOL

 

1 hour ago, KeithJ said:

Although I did notice that Colman is listed as a producer on the show.  How long has that been going on?

Since last season I think?

 

39 minutes ago, MrPissyPuppy said:

I. Don't. Care. About. The. Kids.   There - I said it.   I want to know what the original characters are up to.   And if you're going to insist on making kids the main characters, then at least age them up enough so that their actions & dialogue make sense.   Yeah, an 8 year old is totally going to be able to do radiation therapy & convince adults to do stuff.  Right.   (I do think the actress playing Mo is doing a decent job.)  

Clearly they want to put some of these actors into other shows. Otherwise they would have done the logical thing and made it 14-15 years later, instead of 7.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Starchild

[heisenberg]

11 hours ago, Starchild said:

I'm holding out faint hope that PADRE is somehow dispensed with next week, so they have a chance of something better for the series finale. 

But yeah, I realize it's a pipe dream.

I thought about having a laugh about it all the way thru the serie, but it is going to be almost impossible.  I don't even have anything to say this week, it was too lame to follow.

[nodorothyparker]

12 hours ago, MrPissyPuppy said:

I. Don't. Care. About. The. Kids.   There - I said it.   I want to know what the original characters are up to.   And if you're going to insist on making kids the main characters, then at least age them up enough so that their actions & dialogue make sense.   Yeah, an 8 year old is totally going to be able to do radiation therapy & convince adults to do stuff.  Right.   (I do think the actress playing Mo is doing a decent job.)  

I don't know if it would make any difference if the kids were both played by actors at least within the ballpark of the characters' ages or not. But it's yet another bit of distracting evidence of how little the showrunners seem to think any of this through that they've got what are supposed to be 7- and 8-year-olds played by obvious teenagers. You can get away with that when casting older teen or adult characters but here it's just absurd. By the show's timeline, Dwight and Sherry's kid can't be any more than 7, but his actor is 15. A young looking 15, but still 15.

Which is a problem if they want us to care whether Finch has any chance at survival with June's "treatment." There's a possibility here to explore something I thought the mother show was maybe toying with a couple of times with Judith: Namely, what if kids born after the zombie virus had infected all the existing humans had some kind of immunity through natural evolution? Which would have been so much more interesting if that's what PADRE was doing with all these random kids. But as with The Last of Us, how do they even scientifically explore that and capitalize on it in a world gone to ruin? Then I remember which show I'm watching.

[iMonrey]

16 hours ago, KeithJ said:

Didn’t she just find out like three episodes ago that they are her parents?  Although we know it, they may not even be telling the truth.  

And they aren't even her actual parents. Her actual parents were some random characters that showed up for one episode and died. I can't even remember the circumstances.

14 hours ago, Superclam said:

I've mentioned this before, but since we saw her a few weeks ago in braids as a scared teen, I can't take the character seriously. 

Why does this show have to make their annual villains such cartoon characters? First we had Ginny and her stupid cowboy hat, then Strand and his absurd military garb, and now this chick with her bug eyes and weird hair. Is it that the show wants them to look as comic-booky as possible? Or is it that if they don't make them look and act like cartoon villains, we won't know who to side with, because the "heroes" are such idiots?

[Iguessnot]

On 6/12/2023 at 11:14 AM, iMonrey said:

 

I still don't get why Shrike and her brother released all those Walkers near the storage containers. I thought they did that because Daniel's "army" {cough-cough} was on their way and they wanted to screw them over. Now they want them to clear them? Huh? Then why did they release them to begin with?

This whole PADRE thing is so stupid and makes zero sense.

I don't think they released them. I think those are the ones that killed her dad and the crew. They've just been locked with the containers this whole time. When Shrike asked Morgan to kill the carrion, I thought that was a good idea and I got interested for a second. However the rest of the episode was garbage. There was a preview with Shrike saying to release the carrion, but I think that's after the trouble that coming later.

I got the joke about Mo not knowing what a telephone was, but before that I expected her to ask Grace what cancer was.

I really wanted Grace to chomp the hell out of Mo. She's always bucking up, acting like she's a leader with a skill set, but she NEVER gets the job done. 

[Iguessnot]

On 6/12/2023 at 9:30 AM, Superclam said:

Holy shit, that article was dead on. There's no need for me to list the ridiculousness because they covered it all. 

I can watch next week, but the last 6 are going to be a chore. I realized that PADRE is going to be the weak-villain endgame here, and that's just sad. 

The article was good. I played the audio while reading along and realized there was some botched AI transcription. RIP Grace was verbalized as rip Grace. In the second to last sentence, the phrase "...episode I enjoyed" was verbalized as "...episode one enjoyed"

[Crashcourse]

19 hours ago, Iguessnot said:

I really wanted Grace to chomp the hell out of Mo.

I wanted Grace to chomp her, too.  Since that didn't happen, Grace could have at least chomped that annoying strand off her head. 

[One4Sorrow2TooBad]

Why hasn't someone just taken out Shrike and be done with her sorry ass?  So many opportunities ,yet nobody does anything. Same issue with all of the past asshole leaders running things.