S05.E05: Self Help

[NoWillToResist]

Thanks to everyone for clearing up what the fuck happened in Abraham's flashbacks. It was only when he went to kill himself that I figured it must have been his wife and kids. Otherwise, I honestly wasn't even sure what relationship they had. At first, I swear to God, I thought she was just the fucking cashier at the store. Seemed like he always called her "Ellen". I don't remember any endearments which might have tipped me off to their relationship.

 

I think TPTB could have made the events more clear without SHOWING anything. I also have trouble with the timing of the events. I really wish it had gone down that the wife, fresh from her trauma and not thinking clearly, ran out with her kids WHILE Abraham was hammering some manners into his ex-buddies, and they got snacked on. I do NOT understand how they hung out in the store for the rest of the day, went to sleep and she then slipped out with the kids in the night. I would not have thought the 'fight or flight' instinct would assert itself hours and hours after the traumatic event. Also, how did Abraham not hear their screams as they were ripped apart? Surely they didn't die quietly?

 

Eugene made me laugh during his final speech. Considering how hard his head cracked into the truck, followed by a nose-first dive onto concrete, I think he should be dead. Also, his eyes were partly open. Isn't the trend that closed eyes = unconscious, open eyes = dead?

 

Could have done without Abraham referring to sexy times with Rosita as "getting some ass"; could have done without the focus on their sexy time; could have done without Eugene watching them; could definitely have done without Ros and Abe KNOWING they were being watched and carrying on anyway. Ugh.

 

Somehow I found Eugene and Tara to be the only ones I gave a shit about in this group, with a minor flicker of feeling for Rosita. How the hell did that happen?

Edited November 11, 2014 by NoWillToResist

[MDKNIGHT]

Thanks for editing my previous posts.

[GreyBunny]

I actually liked Eugene's faceplant, but because it looked believable.  So often a knocked out character falls oh-so-perfectly and avoids further injury, but in real life, someone who is passing out can fall in ways that break their noses, crack their heads, and cause other injuries. 

[TexasChic]

Just an aside, but I was amused to see that the book Eugene was reading was "The Shape of Things to Come" by H.G. Wells.

I could have sworn it said The Time Machine.

 

E.T.A. I just rewatched, and apparently I created that in my head! I saw H. G. Wells and my brain interpreted The Time Machine.

Edited November 11, 2014 by TexasChic

[lawless]

Poor Eugene didn't even need the lie (though maybe he did to keep Abraham from killing himself in that moment).  He does know how to do stuff and figure things out.  He figured out the firehose (though the truck needed to be running to get water pressure) and he used some wire and a battery to start the fire in the library.  He might not have walker killing skills but he knows a lot of nerdy little science class tricks that can be helpful and make life easier in other ways.  He did have value, he just didn't know it.

I know what you mean.  I guess that in the beginning, they were all completely shocked and out of their element.  Remember how much they relied on guns to kill walkers in season 1?  That it was a revelation by Rick to Shane that they needed to start relying more on knives and stabbing instruments?  Remember how terrified they were just to run into a few walkers at a time in the early days?  Eugene was not able to survive on his own, and probably still isn't, really.  He told the lie in desperation.  But yet, he isn't useless.  Interestingly, the actor said on the Talking Dead that he saw Abraham with his dead family and saw him put the gun in his mouth just before Abraham saved him -- so he made up the lie in part specifically to try to keep Abraham from offing himself.  Once he told it, and Abraham took to it like a duck to water, but obsessively, I guess Eugene was stuck.  If Abraham hadn't needed the lie so badly, Eugene might have come clean earlier.  Or if he'd been part of a group with Rick et al., he might have found ways to be helpful and contribute even if he was terrified of walkers and not physically gifted.  Rick and the gang would have undoubtedly tutored him in the ways of walker killing, but even if he remained weak, they would have kept him around as long as he was willing to do some things.  Geez, Tyrese is acting babysitter now that Judith is gone, and Michonne is "a weapon with a weapon."  Finally, they aren't stuck on gender roles.  At the beginning of season 2, even Carol, Lori, and Beth were part of a well oiled machine, even if they were not frontline soldier types.  Eugene's oddness and physical weakness and fear would have been something of an issue, but Rick's group would have accepted him and probably find some of his McGuyver-type skills useful.

[AngelaHunter]

Wah! Just watched and cannot go through all 354 posts (at least not all of them tonight), so:

 

Nice that everyone else finally found out what we've known all along. Eugene is a fraud.

 

I wanted to punch Carrot Top when he referred to Rosita as "some ass", and I don't even care about her.  AND he got his rocks off knowing weirdo Eugene was watching. Creepshow all around.

 

The others seemed more taken aback to find out Abraham is crazy than that Eugene is a liar.

 

Perspective is everything. This episode seemed like Emmy material compared to last week. But even without the comparison I thought it was pretty good and overall, I enjoyed it.

 

I've come to quite like Tara.

 

I wish the makeup people could get Eugene some extensions that are the same colour as his real hair, and not black. Geeze.

 

 

[Boofish]

I assumed it was Abraham's family when Opie peeked his head out and Abraham called him "A. J."

[TexasChic]

I don't understand what the CDC has to do with them going to D.C. A few people have expressed what I was thinking; the guy at the CDC lost communication, but that doesn't mean everyone on earth died or stopped working on it. Am I missing something?

 

Also, for the people talking about when Abraham and Glen were having their conversation in front of the window, there were walkers milling around outside. Could you guys not see them at all? My TV wasn't good enough to show me the horde, but it seems to be doing better with the dark scenes than some of you out there.

 

E.T.A. Ha, for some reason I had 'winder' instead of 'window'. Guess I'm trying to match Eugene's supposed Houston accent. (Count me in as one who has never heard the term, 'Tennessee top hat').

Edited November 11, 2014 by TexasChic

[editorgrrl]

I don't understand what the CDC has to do with them going to D.C. A few people have expressed what I was thinking; the guy at the CDC lost communication, but that doesn't mean everyone on earth died or stopped working on it. Am I missing something?

At the CDC, Jenner told Rick that everyone is infected. Eugene's "cure" should have sounded suspicious to anyone with that knowledge.

[Nashville]

Only a guess, but I think it might have indeed been a cattle stockyard, which earlier in the apocalypse probably would have attracted walkers. I'm not sure why the walkers would have stayed there once all of the cattle were gone, though. After all, if the walkers were able to find a way into the stockyard, they should have been able to find the way back out.

 

Not necessarily.  Cattle chutes are designed for easy entrance, no exit.  :)

[TexasChic]

At the CDC, Jenner told Rick that everyone is infected. Eugene's "cure" should have sounded suspicious to anyone with that knowledge.

But he explained that the 'cure' would take out the walkers and give the world back to the living. But even if it was a way to cure the infected (which is everyone), why couldn't it be that? I'm not trying to be smart aleck or anything, it's just that several people commented on this and I'm trying to figure it out.

Not necessarily.  Cattle chutes are designed for easy entrance, no exit.  :)

Well if that's the case, then maybe Abraham was right and they could walk right through them! See, everyone said he was crazy.

[editorgrrl]

Eugene's "cure" sounded like it just killed walkers. Meaning that people would continue to die, turn, and attack others.

[TexasChic]

Okay, I think I'm FINALLY getting what you're saying. It would only be a 'cure' if everyone wasn't infected, because otherwise it just keeps starting over again. Gotcha. I guess I just figured getting rid of the existing walkers would be a huge improvement, even if everyone would eventually turn into one.

[BrokenRemote]

Yeah, I don't see that happening. Even if Eugene thinks he's "smart". There's no indication that he really has a background pathology or anything related to medicine. So no I don't him being able to "MacGyver" up a cure.

That's exactly where I imagine him working.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Eugene is well read and is a walking encyclopedia. It's just that all his knowledge comes from books and very little real world experience.

I assumed he was talking about using a missile or a bomb as some sort of delivery system as bio-weapon against walkers. If Eugene's a gamer, it kind of makes sense that he would incorporate some kind of weapon into his plan.

A few did lose limbs and I believe one was actually split down the middle.

How can you forget crazy Lizzie?

Oh, dang, you're right. I guess the bottom line is that it's not just the strong of body who survive; you'd better not need any meds or therapy in the apocalypse. And yet... Rick can come back from his phone calls to nowhere, and Abe seems to be overcoming some kind of PTSD. I don't know now if there is a bottom line. I guess it depends on if you're a major character whether you can overcome your mental health issues single-handedly of not.

I still hold that while Eugene isn't a scientist that they still might go to DC. No, he can't create a cure and I don't think our heroes would think he could create a cure. But they might think his idea to go to DC is still a smart one. If there is anyone left who could fix things he or she would be there. And now they've tasted hope, it would be doubly hard to go back to knowing there is nothing to hope for.

[GreyBunny]

Okay, I think I'm FINALLY getting what you're saying. It would only be a 'cure' if everyone wasn't infected, because otherwise it just keeps starting over again. Gotcha. I guess I just figured getting rid of the existing walkers would be a huge improvement, even if everyone would eventually turn into one.

 

Or it would kill everyone.  If the alleged pathogen attacked the "walker virus" and killed the host, then it would wipe out everybody, living and undead, since everyone is infected.

Edited November 11, 2014 by GreyBunny

[TexasChic]

Or it would kill everyone.  If the alleged pathogen attacked the "walker virus" and killed the host, then it would wipe out everybody, living and undead, since everyone is infected.

Not to mention all it would take is one, "Oops!" and everyone is dead. It would be crazy in the best of times to let some random guy mess with a biological weapon, but even worse when all the electrical security fail safes would be down.

[Cheetosandchoc]

So do you think Eugene is the bad guy for lying to save himself, or Abraham for getting others to follow blindly?

[Nashville]

So do you think Eugene is the bad guy for lying to save himself, or Abraham for getting others to follow blindly?

 

Between those two, definitely have to go with Eugene; he was willing to let people die in service of his lie, for his own self-preservation at their expense.

 

At worst, Abraham is guilty of adhering too strongly to the "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" credo.  Pushy though he may be, Abraham genuinely believed he was justified in pushing his agenda because everybody would benefit in the end.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Nashville

[morgankobi]

I also wished they had made the scene where Eugene comes up with his lie to get Abraham to help him a bit more dire. Ginger Spice was walking away but, so what? There were no Walkers around at the moment, there was no evidence that Eugene hadn't been on his own during some of the ZA, the threat just wasn't immediate enough to me to explain his big lie at that moment.

[Yolapukka]

 

I'm going back to my initial impression the structure was a slaughterhouse. In which case they may have been smelling hundreds of rotting animal carcasses, not the walkers.

 

All he had to say was,"They won't touch any of you again," and I think that would have given enough of a clue to Abraham's motivation to make the scene work.

 

I think it was a huge stockyard complex and the noise of the cattle had attracted a walker mega-herd that had trapped itself within the fences and remained there for who knows how long. There were definitely human forms in the fenced areas, I have HD and a good-sized tv so  I could make it out, but just barely. I also had to turn off all the lights to see the night-time conversations in the bookstore and I really had to concentrate to catch the dialogue. I also nearly missed the black-eye and other signs of trauma on Ellen because the colour was washed out in the flashbacks and they were so brief. What they did show was enough for me to piece together a coherent narrative, just not a completely accurate one according to Talking Dead. If TWD wanted to make the rape of his family members the trigger that caused Abraham to destroy the men in the store they needed to signal that better than they did. In what aired, it's not there, it's hidden backstory. It's something we guess at, someone else could see the same thing and mistakenly guess that Abraham slaps  his family around if a clue to why she was so freaked out after seeing him beat people to death was bruising on his wife's face. That is, if you even caught that injury. It's maybe not a great idea to have telling details that are very nearly obscured by style choices like extreme darkness or partially washing the color out of a scene. We only know definitively from other sources. All we know from what we saw is that *something* had made Abraham go Rambo on people who were a threat to his family and afterwards, his family were as frightened of him as they had been of the other men and ran from him as soon as he was asleep.  

 

Also, trauma or not, Ellen was a thoughtless pea-brained idiot, even fan-wanking that she'd been sheltered from how awful things were outside of the grocery store, she still knew there was a damn zombie apocalypse going on and that she and her children were low-hanging fruit for predatory humans. 

Edited November 11, 2014 by yuggapukka

[Nashville]

I think it was a huge stockyard complex and the noise of the cattle had attracted a walker mega-herd that had trapped itself within the fences and remained there for who knows how long. There were definitely human forms in the fenced areas, I have HD and a good-sized tv so  I could make it out, but just barely. I also had to turn off all the lights to see the night-time conversations in the bookstore and I really had to concentrate to catch the dialogue. I also nearly missed the black-eye and other signs of trauma on Ellen because the colour was washed out in the flashbacks and they were so brief. What they did show was enough for me to piece together a coherent narrative, just not a completely accurate one according Talking Dead. If TWD wanted to make the rape of his family members the trigger that caused Abraham to destroy the men in the store they needed to signal that better than they did. In what aired, it's not there, it's hidden backstory. It's something we guess at, someone else could see the same thing and mistakenly guess that Abraham slaps  his family around if a clue to why she was so freaked out after seeing him beat people to death was bruising on his wife's face. That is, if you even caught that injury. It's maybe not a great idea to have telling details that are very nearly obscured by style choices like extreme darkness or partially washing the color out of a scene. We only know definitively from other sources. All we know from what we saw is that *something* had made Abraham go Rambo on people who were a threat to his family and afterwards, his family were as frightened of him as they had been of the other men and ran from him as soon as he was asleep.  

 

Also, trauma or not, Ellen was a thoughtless pea-brained idiot, even fan-wanking that she'd been sheltered from how awful things were outside of the grocery store, she still knew there was a damn zombie apocalypse going on and that she and her children were low-hanging fruit for predatory humans.

Five stars on all the above.

[Trek]

1. There is no reason to assume that killing whatever agent is causing the reanimation would kill a still living host and nothing Jenner said at the CDC indicate otherwise. (It would, however, knock out the walkers because they are already dead.) We take medicine to purge bad stuff from our bodies without killing ourselves all the time. If a Merck or a Pfizer were to, say, announce they had found a medication to kill HIV, the natural assumption would be that using it would not kill the patient along with it, otherwise it’s not different from Merck announcing that a cure to HIV is a bullet to the head. The reason we would start with the opposite assumption in this case, is because we already doubt the veracity of Eugene for other reasons. This is a circular argument.

 

2. A “solution” that can only “cure” the currently living (irrespective of what it can nor cannot do to walkers) that cannot be mass dispersed in a way that only a weapons delivery system can achieve is of extremely little value at this stage of the ZA. Suppose some brilliant professor hiding away at Harvard Medical School comes up with it (Something Jenner would have no clue of whatsoever).  What’s he going to do? Send out a couple of interns on bikes with backpacks full of syringes? Assuming the intern(s) aren’t killed by the wall to wall walkers, the first human they encounter is 99.9% of the time going to be (a) some random dude who will promptly wander off and get eaten after getting cured, (b) another dude refusing point blank to be injected with substances unkown from a complete stranger, © going to result in them being “claimed” as someone’s bitch, or (d) be their demise, perhaps as a steak on some campfire or their head in an aquarium with all the syringes wasted on a futile attempt to bring back “Penny.”  Mass killing the walkers OTOH, will immediately start rectifying society. All the indentured slaves would leave the lollipop hospital, dictators get overthrown, cannibals finding they can now grow crops and/or raise cattle safely would no longer have an incentive to be cannibals etc.

 

Edit: Hmm can't make a "c" with paren' w/o it being autochanged to a ©

 

ETA2: PS. Yes we all know that Eugene was lying and I was among the first to say that his scheme sounded ridiculus the moment he started talking about it in the train car with Sasha. However, I am compelled to play devil's advocate here mainly in defense of Glenn and other characters of CDB that didn't give him the 3rd degree.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Trek

[Nashville]

Edited November 11, 2014 by Nashville

[GreyBunny]

So do you think Eugene is the bad guy for lying to save himself, or Abraham for getting others to follow blindly?

 

Eugene because some of his sabotages could have injured and killed people (the glass in the fuel line).  Abraham himself was following blindly, though he should have listened to those who said to take a day or two to rest, gather supplies, dry clothes, etc.  That said, I put the onus on Eugene.  

What Abraham tells Ellen:

"You're safe now. I stopped them.  You don't have to be scared now." (looks at his bloody own hands)  "It's okay."

I think that's supposed to be the clue the men he killed were doing bad things to his wife and kids.

 

Edited November 11, 2014 by GreyBunny

[Nashville]

Edit: Hmm can't make a "c" with paren' w/o it being autochanged to a ©

Sticking a space between the 'c' and the parentheses like so ( c ) usually works for me.

[suomi]

I think it was a big ol' feedlot. There's a huge one in Dahlhart TX that we smelled long before we rolled up on it.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot

 

[Nashville]

I think it was a big ol' feedlot. There's a huge one in Dahlhart TX that we smelled long before we rolled up on it.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot

 

 

It's a possibility - but I slo-mo'ed through it with my DVR on HD, and I'm not sure there are any animal enclosures - just lots of tin-roofed pavilion-looking structures, with lots of open ground between them.  Some thoughts:

1. Farmer's market
2. Tobacco or other produce auction site (usually indoors in warehouses, though)
3. County fairgrounds
4. Hay baling storage yard

 

My best guess would be #4 - it's right adjacent to a farm, and the pavilions could be to keep rain off the hay during harvest season, to prevent mildew.

 

One thing's for sure - there are literally thousands of walkers teeming under/around the structures on either side of the road.  Not too many in the road proper, though.

 

 

ETA: Ain't yall lucky I'm off work this week?  Lotsa free time on my hands, especially when the insomnia's kicking.  :)

Edited November 11, 2014 by Nashville

[Trek]

So Jenner's conclusions from 12 months back regarding the virus meant that no other scientist in the world was also doing research on the virus at the same time or after Jenner's passing? 

 

In addition, Jenner never said that there was no cure for the virus.  In fact, he specifcally stated that the French was closest to finding a cure before communication was lost.  The fact that Glenn was at the CDC makes it more likely for me that he bought Eugene's BS because he was aware that there existed scientists who were working on a possible cure. 

Jenner even goes further than that. He practically affirms that a cure is possible (only by others rather than him because he was a “nobody”) when he says that if the roles had been reversed between him and TS-19, his wife, “she could have done something about this.”

[pasdetrois]

That mess tacked onto the back of Eugene's head is one of the worst TV wigs I've ever seen. The thing is its own walking dead.

 

The Abraham-family backstory was badly done because of the jumpy editing; all I got was that they were scared, Abraham killed a bunch of people, and his family got eaten.

[NurseGiGi]

I know I'm beating this dead horse but I think, for such a pivotal event in Abe's life, they should have made the reason much clearer.  I don't mean they needed to show the actual rapes because there will never be a time I want to see that.  Carl's close call made me uncomfortable enough.  No, as someone said earlier, can't remember who, a simple sentence would have sufficed.

 

I'm with others who couldn't make out the giant herd and I have a large HD TV.  It looks like they digitally added them and did so very badly.  And in some of the night scenes all I got was a black screen.  I didn't see Eugene watching the dynamic duo until they mentioned it.

 

As far as the "cure" goes, I thought Glen was going to question him more closely when Eugene was talking about missiles (or whatever he was explaining) on the bus but no.  I'll never understand why someone didn't point out that there is no longer a way to manufacture and disperse such a thing on a large scale.

 

I guess it all goes back to comic book plots that don't translate well to a television show.  Kirkman!! (thanks for the Neuman reference)

 

I won't give up on the show and will watch to the bitter end since I just love the Rickettes.  But they sure do test me at times.

[TheGourmez]

 

 

The zombies move so slowly, and are so easy to kill, I don't understand:

1) How they were able to over-run human society, the world over;

2) Why the humans can't defeat them now.

Any insights?

 

You have asked the two questions that people have asked of zombie films since the dawn of time. There is no answer. And that is the true horror.

[tv echo]

I've never read the comics.  When I saw Abraham's flashback, I didn't think 'rape'.  I thought Abraham was an abusive husband and that his violence in killing those men was no surprise to his wife and children.  That's why they ran.  Abusive husbands can take on this attitude that everything they do is to protect their families.  That abusive personality would've been consistent with the way he bullies or attempts to bully those around him now, like the way he manhandles those physically weaker than him (like Glenn and Eugene).  Even men who kill their entire families rationalize that they're saving them (example: John List).  I don't think you should have to watch TTD in order to understand what's really going on.

 

I don't fault Eugene for the initial lie because he was desperate and alone, and Abraham was the only port in his storm. I do fault him for continuing the lie when they became part of a larger group and a lot of people started dying to protect him because of his lie, and also for his cowardly sabotages.

 

I agree with whoever said that part of the problem is that Abraham and Eugene look like fake cartoon characters.  It's a distracting contrast to how natural the rest of the cast looks.

[nachomama]

Poor Eugene didn't even need the lie (though maybe he did to keep Abraham from killing himself in that moment).  He does know how to do stuff and figure things out.  He figured out the firehose (though the truck needed to be running to get water pressure) and he used some wire and a battery to start the fire in the library.  He might not have walker killing skills but he knows a lot of nerdy little science class tricks that can be helpful and make life easier in other ways.  He did have value, he just didn't know it.

He's the cowardly lion with the scarecrows brains! We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of DC.

[kikismom]

I also wished they had made the scene where Eugene comes up with his lie to get Abraham to help him a bit more dire. Ginger Spice was walking away but, so what? There were no Walkers around at the moment, there was no evidence that Eugene hadn't been on his own during some of the ZA, the threat just wasn't immediate enough to me to explain his big lie at that moment.

I did not like how the show went immediately from the shot of the woman dead with her face eaten off and her abdomen eaten, one partially eaten child, a severed child's hand lying nearby, the father putting a gun in his mouth to commit suicide---and a goofball running "funny" squealing he'p me he'p me! said Chicken Little to Foghorn Leghorn.

  Perhaps a few seconds of time allotted to Abraham walking away to commit suicide; or a shot of the bodies, cut to Abe covering a makeshift grave then taking out his gun...then Eugene approaching. I just think the sudden go-for-a-laugh-here! was clunky and tacky.

 

 

But he explained that the 'cure' would take out the walkers and give the world back to the living. But even if it was a way to cure the infected (which is everyone), why couldn't it be that? I'm not trying to be smart aleck or anything, it's just that several people commented on this and I'm trying to figure it out.

I see many intelligent people are suggesting intelligent explanations. From here in Stupidville, I'll just offer that it was my feeling, that if Jenner thought there was hope, if his fellow scientists the world's most brilliant epidemiologists and virologist's had any hope, they would not have committed suicide.

If Jenner said his wife was so valuable in her field she could have cured this...and he thought there might be another specialist as smart as she was (in the US, France, or anywhere else) who could solve it like she could, he would not have killed himself.

I remember on 9/11 one of the women on the sidewalk called to a NY cop "Should we be running?" and he yelled "Lady if I'M running you oughta be!!"

[NoWillToResist]

 

What Abraham tells Ellen:

"You're safe now. I stopped them.  You don't have to be scared now." (looks at his bloody own hands)  "It's okay."

I think that's supposed to be the clue the men he killed were doing bad things to his wife and kids.

 

And see, to me, "I stopped them" tells me that nothing had happened YET. But apparently, the damage had already been done. I think "You're safe now. They won't touch either of you again" would have been clearer since it would clarify that bad shit had already happened and to more than one person.

 

Frankly, I'm still a little puzzled by the apparent events anyway. I mean, these men were his buddies/fellow survivors yet they just...up and raped their buddy's little girl and their buddy's wife? What the fuck? Who does that out of the blue?

 

I could have wrapped my brain around it if they'd been like the Claimers who busted in on their refuge and took advantage of a woman a her kids left alone, but these guys were part of their group? Whaaaat?

[ghoulina]

Poor Eugene didn't even need the lie (though maybe he did to keep Abraham from killing himself in that moment).  He does know how to do stuff and figure things out.  He figured out the firehose (though the truck needed to be running to get water pressure) and he used some wire and a battery to start the fire in the library.  He might not have walker killing skills but he knows a lot of nerdy little science class tricks that can be helpful and make life easier in other ways.  He did have value, he just didn't know it.

 

This is very true. But Eugene didn't start out having a group who would notice and appreciate these skills. He was on his own, and he didn't look like he'd survive much longer without some help. He needed something big, something that would work fast. Abraham was about to kill himself, he wouldn't have been swayed by, "Hey, let's team up, You're strong and I have a bunch of life hacks up my sleeve". I'm not saying that what Eugene did was right, but I can see how in a desperate situation he came up with something that would really really make people want to help him. 

 

I also have trouble with the timing of the events. I really wish it had gone down that the wife, fresh from her trauma and not thinking clearly, ran out with her kids WHILE Abraham was hammering some manners into his ex-buddies, and they got snacked on. I do NOT understand how they hung out in the store for the rest of the day, went to sleep and she then slipped out with the kids in the night. I would not have thought the 'fight or flight' instinct would assert itself hours and hours after the traumatic event. Also, how did Abraham not hear their screams as they were ripped apart? Surely they didn't die quietly?

 

Also, how did he not hear them get up and leave? Who sleeps that soundly in the ZA??? But yea, I didn't get her laying down next to this man, if she was that repulsed by him, and then deciding in the middle of the night that nah, this aint gonna work out. It's not you, it's me. And then kids just went willingly? No protestations of staying with daddy? 

[JackONeill]

I know I don't pay as close attention as most of you, but was it ever explained how Abraham and crew got to Atlanta from Houston on their way to DC?  Looking at a map, I see that it's possible, but not essential to come into Atlanta.

[nachomama]

He screamed when they stopped them from going through the cattle herd of walkers that they had detoured and detoured on their journey from Houston to Atlanta so I'm sure was a very happenstance route.

[Boofish]

 

The zombies move so slowly, and are so easy to kill, I don't understand:

1) How they were able to over-run human society, the world over;

2) Why the humans can't defeat them now.

Any insights?

 

You have asked the two questions that people have asked of zombie films since the dawn of time. There is no answer. And that is the true horror.

I think this question was best answered in The Planet of The Apes "lights, water, technology etc - they don't need any of those things. That is what makes them more dangerous and powerful" The problem is no one was able to stop the outbreak before the resources had been depleted. Yes, humans have lived without certain comforts before but we now live a world where we don't have to and not that many people really know how to. Zombies may be slowing down and easier to kill but they far outnumber people and like Morgan said in the pilot "one or two may not seem like a big deal. But a pack of them all riled up .... "

[AngelaHunter]

know I'm beating this dead horse but I think, for such a pivotal event in Abe's life, they should have made the reason much clearer.

 

I'm glad to see so  many mentioned this. I thought I was alone in not knowing what the hell was going on.

[Bruinsfan]

I actually liked Eugene's faceplant, but because it looked believable.  So often a knocked out character falls oh-so-perfectly and avoids further injury, but in real life, someone who is passing out can fall in ways that break their noses, crack their heads, and cause other injuries. 

One of the things I loved about Majel Barrett's Christine Chapel on Star Trek was that she fell like a sack of potatoes when knocked unconscious; whereas guest actresses on that show would daintily waft down to the floor. (She also just reached out a hand to steady herself against a cave wall during an earthquake instead of clutching Kirk for support.)

 

That mess tacked onto the back of Eugene's head is one of the worst TV wigs I've ever seen. The thing is its own walking dead.

Watch Corey Stoll on The Strain sometime. I'm surprised his wig doesn't jump off his head like a rat deserting a sinking ship when he heads into danger.

[patchwork]

For an episode focused on characters I have zero interest in it could have been a lot worse. Abraham's backstory wasn't very clear I wasn't sure how he was related to the woman and the kids, for a while I even wondered if they weren't related to him at all and that he'd gone mad and latched onto them.

 

I hope we weren't supposed to be surprised by Eugene's confession, I just shouted Finally! at my screen and enjoyed the fallout that I'd been waiting for since they characters were introduced.

 

Does the show want us to forget that Beth and Maggie are sisters? Because that scene in the book shop was the perfect opportunity for Maggie to bring her up but instead we got generalised guilt about leaving their former group and not feeling as unhappy about it as she thought she should be.  

[Zahdii]

I had to fanwank to no end to figure out how Abraham's wife thought that leaving the safety of the store to take her kids out into the walker-infested night was a good decision.  How did the family end up there with five other guys, and why did the other guys think it was OK to rape a woman and child/ren when Abraham was gone?  Did they think they could take over or did they think for some reason he wasn't coming back?  Either way, big mistake on their part.

 

Since I've never gone through a ZA, I don't have enough information to figure out what happened that day and night, but if it's an integral part of the story, the viewers should have been given more information.  I think that creating the backstory for Abraham could have been better done, and if last season the viewers were allowed to see a man throw Carl to the ground and see him unzip his pants was allowed, why didn't we see a quick scene of the men gathering around Ellen and kids while grinning maniacally and unzipping their pants?  We can figure out the rest.  A quick shot of Abraham coming back, seeing his crying family huddled together with torn clothes and bruises, then an overhead shot of the rapists lying dead while Abraham approaches his family to tell then they were safe now would have done it.

 

So Abraham comes back and kills the rapists, and although his wife has seen walkers wandering around for enough time that they have to go out to get supplies, and she sees how scared of the walkers the men are, but she still decides to flee in the night with the kids.  I can only think she's gone insane at that point, but you'd think she'd grab the kids and try to run right away if that were the case.  Instead, she waits for him to fall asleep and takes herself and her kids out to die.  Why did Abraham not hear the screams?  Did she drug him?  I hope she drugged the kids too, because death by walker isn't pretty.  Where did the wife think she'd go?  Did she think there was a safe place out there? 

 

It's sloppy writing.  Whenever a character acts completely out of what the viewers would consider in the normal range of behavior, we'd like to know why.  Otherwise we spend too much time trying to figure out why that totally wierd scene just happened and lose track of the main story.

 

I never did fanwank a good story to explain all the crap that happened in the store, but I'm not a professional writer.  I expect professional writers to be able to do better than that, and not rely on a second program after the first where the actors who portrayed the characters try to fill in the gaps.

[AngelaHunter]

One of the things I loved about Majel Barrett's Christine Chapel on Star Trek was that she fell like a sack of potatoes when knocked unconscious; whereas guest actresses on that show would daintily waft down to the floor.

 

Yes! They would always land with their knees together in graceful poses and faces turned so as not to mark them up.

 

However, I would have expected a little more damage to Eugene's face, having landed nose-first on the pavement but maybe I'm wrong about that having never fallen that way myself.

 

 

[Gentian root]

Now that the "cure" gibberish is over, all we're left with of Eugene's plan is that he seriously thought Washington DC, of all places, would be the safest. WTF?

Maybe it's nicer than when I lived there in the 80's.

[NoWillToResist]

 

So Abraham comes back and kills the rapists

 

How did he manage to kill all of them? Did not a single one of them have a shred of self-preservation? After he'd beaten the first one unconscious (and then dead), why were the other guys still hanging around? Hell, I don't even understand why they stuck around after raping his wife and daughter. Did they think Abraham was going to be ok with what they did? Did they think he'd agree to share or something? Ugh.

 

And on a completely different note, why were the streets of the 'almost untouched' town utterly covered in cardboard?

 

I get how the fire hose knocked down the walkers. I can even get behind it blasting holes in their rotten torsos, but how exactly did it smash their skulls enough to damage the brain and actually kill them? I was expecting Abe et al to wander among the felled walkers and stab each one in the head but they just...assumed they were dead? What?

 

I admit I laughed during Eugene's confession. The way he added in how he'd lied about that CDC guy (or whatever) liking his mullet was hysterical. As if that's worth mentioning! Something like "I also do not know x personally and he never said anything about my hair. I read a book of his once and he seemed like the kind of guy who'd like it"? Hee! Oh, Eugene. I actually think I'll miss you if you're dead...

[Raven1707]

 

If Jenner said his wife was so valuable in her field she could have cured this...and he thought there might be another specialist as smart as she was (in the US, France, or anywhere else) who could solve it like she could, he would not have killed himself.

 

Except that Jenner was flat out of time. That clock on the wall was counting down to the destruction of the CDC. And Rick had more or less confirmed that the situation outside was bordering on hopeless, that "it was only a matter of time" before everyone was dead. Opting out wasn't an irrational decision, given the circumstances.

[JackONeill]

Raven1707 - You reminded me of something -- the self-destruct.  I wonder how many other facilities had that, and are no longer there because of it.  Another thing Glenn (or the writers!!!) didn't think to ask.  (Yes, I know, not every government facility is run by the CDC, but you'd think that if you were nearly blown up in a building, you might want to know if Eugene was even aware of such self-destruct mechanisms anywhere.  But, I know, it's moot because Eugene was fibbing.)

Edited November 11, 2014 by JackONeill

[AngelaHunter]

I want to know how that bus crashed the way it did, flew into the air and landed on its side and no one had so much as a broken finger. Abe's flat top wasn't even mildly mussed.

Edited November 11, 2014 by AngelaHunter

[Nashville]

This is very true. But Eugene didn't start out having a group who would notice and appreciate these skills. He was on his own, and he didn't look like he'd survive much longer without some help. He needed something big, something that would work fast. Abraham was about to kill himself, he wouldn't have been swayed by, "Hey, let's team up, You're strong and I have a bunch of life hacks up my sleeve". I'm not saying that what Eugene did was right, but I can see how in a desperate situation he came up with something that would really really make people want to help him.

 

 

In most group dynamics, people are valued either for who they are (positive personality) or what they do (positive contribution).  The vibe I get off Eugene is, he felt - not just post-ZA, but throughout his entire life - he would only ever be accepted on the latter basis, and never the former. 

 

In the post-ZA world, where acceptance in a group has advanced beyond a social issue to one of survival, Eugene needed (or felt he needed) a situation where he could provide a positive contribution - so he created one.

 

Also, how did he not hear them get up and leave? Who sleeps that soundly in the ZA??? But yea, I didn't get her laying down next to this man, if she was that repulsed by him, and then deciding in the middle of the night that nah, this aint gonna work out. It's not you, it's me. And then kids just went willingly? No protestations of staying with daddy?

 

"Be quiet, children, and don't wake Daddy; he's tired and needs to sleep right now.  I'll explain later."