S01.E05: Cobalt

[Omar G.]

I've always liked Rueben Blades and was hoping he wouldn't be wasted.  Now he's the only one I can stomach.  I liked Grizelda's speech and what it hinted at.  I wish Ophelia could have heard it.  How cool to find out your sweet, housewifey mom was a badass freedom fighter.  I wish they hadn't gotten rid of her. They desperately need another person who is wlling and able to do what has to be done.

 

I didn't get "badass freedom fighter" as much as, "Woman whose husband and maybe herself participated in atrocities and is now atoning after decades of guilt and remorse, or at least ready to face that darkness." They did what they had to to survive, but I think they did so by going along with it, not by fighting the government.  (which echoes what the soldiers are going through in the current timeline)

Edited September 30, 2015 by Omar G.

[Janimo]

I've seen five episodes so far.....and for the most part it's been a snoozefest for me....However, whenever Colman Domingo (Strand) was onscreen in this episode I wasn't snoozing. Heck, I wasn't even bored. Strand held my interest.  I've only seen Mr. Domingo before in comedy, on television several years ago in "The Big Gay Sketch Show." I had no idea he had such acting chops. Now I'm hoping he survives through season two....and I'd definitely continue watching FTWD. Heck, I wouldn't mind Nick surviving if he winds up being obligated to Strand and they work together......

Kinda hoping Liza survives, too. I think I'd be okay with Chris and Alicia, and Doc Exner, but I think she's gonna be toast....As for the rest.....BORING! But that's just my opinion.

 

PS I'd like to see Tobias again in season two. :)

[Beast Saver]

Agreed. It would be very costly to film hordes of Zombies on the streets of LA. The TWD only filmed a few scenes in downtown Atlanta. I did not enjoy the scenes of Daniel torturing Ophelia's BF soldier. That makes no sense. He would probably have told Daniel them where Griselda was. There was no upside for Daniel. Even if he found out where she was, he would have to escape the safe zone, & wander into a well protected military hospital to find her. How would he carry her back to the safe zone? Wouldn't Ophelia's BF punish Daniel if he was allowed to live?

 

The Cobalt plan doesn't make sense. I can understand the military retreating to bases & leaving healthy civilians unprotected. Killing everyone in the safe zone makes no sense.

 

The show has been disappointing so far.

 

Cobalt isn't about killing citizens in the safe zone. They are merely being abandoned. They plan to "humanely kill" the people at the medical center.

[Iguessnot]

Nick's damp filthy urine and sweat soaked pants will haunt my dreams. Are the pants in the credits?

 

Why was Strand locked up and why was the soldier enticed by some diamond cufflinks? The watch might be a nice trinket but the cufflinks were stupid.

 

As the camera stayed on Madison's face while she listened to Daniel speak of torture, my main thought was that slacked jaw really only works in comedies. Yet episode after episode we have to watch her stupid slacked jaw face.

[nobody30]

Cobalt isn't about killing citizens in the safe zone. They are merely being abandoned. They plan to "humanely kill" the people at the medical center.

 

Maybe. But if it is the plan is to abandon the people in the safe zones and evacuate themselves without any civilians, there is no point in trying to clear every building there is from walkers anymore (like in this episode), and losing dozens of men every day in doing so. It's just nonsense.

 

The best course of action would be to defend a safe zone, in which you can sustain food, water and medical supply (and your soldiers can rest), or abandon the city and set camp elsewhere (in which case it doesn't matter if you kill any more walkers OR civilians).

[tessa]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/09/28/5-big-problems-with-fear-the-walking-dead/

 

This article says everything I've been thinking about the show.

[Arnella]

 

I didn't get "badass freedom fighter" as much as, "Woman whose husband and maybe herself participated in atrocities and is now atoning after decades of guilt and remorse, or at least ready to face that darkness." They did what they had to to survive, but I think they did so by going along with it, not by fighting the government.  (which echoes what the soldiers are going through in the current timeline)

Still made her more interesting at her end than 99% of the rest of the cast for the whole series run.

[NurseGiGi]

So, I guess I'm just wondering what the purpose is of this show.  All they have done so far is tell us (well, not even that!) about the fall of civilization and not show us, as promised.  If they weren't going to approve a decent budget to show us then why bother.

 

And after 5 episodes I should care about the cast.  I find them so annoying that I want to tune in just to see how many will become zombie chow.  Maybe that was their plan all along.

[NurseGiGi]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/09/28/5-big-problems-with-fear-the-walking-dead/

 

This article says everything I've been thinking about the show.

I agree about this article.  It brings to mind the story of the AMC exec wondering if we couldn't just hear the zombies instead of showing them.  You know, cuz budget. It appears they have managed to do just that in Fear.

[JemiW]

I guess the assumption is that all the people are "potential zombies" and therefore need to be eliminated.  I think the flaw in this plan is that the soldiers should be more worried about the genocide of their families than anything else.  Hence the dude rolling to San Diego right away.  I can't imagine the briefing:

 

Moyer:  OK guys, and 09:30 hours were are going to wipe out all human beings and run to a really cool fort.

Soldier:  What about our families that live right here?  My girlfriend, mom, little brother?

Moyer:  Nope.  Dead, dead, dead.

Soldier: Will there be any girls in the new world?

Moyer:  We don't seem to have any whatsoever in our outfit, so I suggest you start playing golf...

Solider:  This is gonna suck.

Why aren't you writing this show? Now that's EXACTLY the sort of scene I'd have LOVED to watch—a Zombie Catch-22. BTW: I liked Moyer. He was a potentially fun A-hole sent too soon to his reward—a shade of Jimmy McGill...with a battalion...in the apocalypse. At the very least his death should have been something special. But NOPE. All the cool stuff happened off camera, again.

[ChipBach]

I agree about this article.  It brings to mind the story of the AMC exec wondering if we couldn't just hear the zombies instead of showing them.  You know, cuz budget. It appears they have managed to do just that in Fear.

I wonder why budget is a problem?  TWD is a homerun, I would assume asking for money for this show shouldn't have been too hard.

[NurseGiGi]

I wonder why budget is a problem?  TWD is a homerun, I would assume asking for money for this show shouldn't have been too hard.

The AMC exec who said this was talking about TWD, after their hugely successful first season.  So, yeah, cheap ass bastards.  As I've said before, Fear is nothing but a cash grab and they wanted to make as much money as possible and to hell with the story.

[editorgrrl]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/09/28/5-big-problems-with-fear-the-walking-dead/

This article says everything I've been thinking about the show.

Taking this to the media thread: http://forums.previously.tv/topic/24381-ftwd-in-the-media/page-2#entry1554419

[Giselle]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/09/28/5-big-problems-with-fear-the-walking-dead/

 

This article says everything I've been thinking about the show.

 

Yes it does.

 

Next Sunday will more than likely be it for me.  AMC gave me too little with FTWD and left me starving for character development, plot, action, and suspense. A telenovina has more depth than this show.

Too bad they wasted the Daniel Salazar and Strand characters on this show and not on TWD, they would have been interesting to watch.

[magemaud]

I'll watch the season finale, but after that, I'm out, too! I'm majorly disappointed in this show and hope Cobalt is a resounding success and gets all these stupid people off my screen. Except maybe Tobias--I would LOVE to see that he was savvy enough to "get out of Dodge", somehow make it cross-country and eventually show up on TWD. 

[Dobian]

The show actually got somewhat better the last two episodes, but that's not saying much. They laid such a piss-poor foundation that it's hard to recover and do a decent portrayal of the fall of civilization.  Bad timeline, huge storytelling gaps, people behaving and reacting stupidly and illogically, enormous lack of information conveyed to both characters and viewers.  It's like they were all sent to some purgatory while L.A. just disappeared all around them in a matter of days.  I do like Old Spice guy though, I'll root for him if I decide to punish myself by watching next season.

[Omar G.]

Still made her more interesting at her end than 99% of the rest of the cast for the whole series run.

 

That's really not saying a whole lot. How strange that we all latched on to characters such at Tobias and Strand, even Moyers, who've had so little screen time, over the main ones we're supposed to care about.

[Yolapukka]

That's really not saying a whole lot. How strange that we all latched on to characters such at Tobias and Strand, even Moyers, who've had so little screen time, over the main ones we're supposed to care about.

 

 

My guess would be because those small time characters aren't around long enough to bore us or annoy just by showing their faces. I initially liked all the main cast, but that rapidly dwindled. If the show is going to try to make the characters "complex" by showing us their warts, they might also want to do a better job of making us invest in them by showing more of them being strong and less of them being stupid. We all have different takes on what actions and decisions are or aren't stupid, but I think most could agree that there has been too much that is stupid and definitely too much that is dull. For the record, all three of those named characters irritated me as much or more than they intrigued me.

Edited October 1, 2015 by yuggapukka

[Ohwell]

I'm done after this last episode.  Furthermore, I see no reason for a second season.

[Giselle]

I'll watch the season finale, but after that, I'm out, too! I'm majorly disappointed in this show and hope Cobalt is a resounding success and gets all these stupid people off my screen. Except maybe Tobias--I would LOVE to see that he was savvy enough to "get out of Dodge", somehow make it cross-country and eventually show up on TWD. 

 

It would be nice to see Tobias, Salazar and strand on TWD but that would be too much of a coincidence.

[Starchild]

Unless they've been traveling together.

[ACW]

Cobalt isn't about killing citizens in the safe zone. They are merely being abandoned. They plan to "humanely kill" the people at the medical center.

 

  This is almost certainly true (see below); however, since 90% of all commentators and reviewers, including our own Omar, seem to have interpreted it as "kill all the civilians" I have to at this point blame the show for being unclear.

 

  What was actually said (which you can see at http://www.amc.com/shows/fear-the-walking-dead/video-extras/season-01/episode-05/talked-about-scene-episode-105-fear-the-walking-dead-cobalt)doesn't support the kill-em-all interpretation:

 

  Madison:  "Our people.  Tell him.  Tell him what happens to them."

  Soldier: "Cobalt includes procedures for the humane termination of..." (trails off, looks away)

  Travis: "When?"

  Soldier: "0900 tomorrow."

Madison is talking about "our people" and "them" (not "us").  And the mood in the room is more "they're going to kill our loved ones" than it is "they're going to kill us."

 

Also, for what it's worth, the "Road to the Apocalypse" checklist at http://www.amc.com/shows/fear-the-walking-dead/episodes/season-1/cobalt/story-sync/says "Planned euthanization of the quarantined," which is almost certainly referring to those in the hospital, not the safe zones.

  Then again, the military also certainly knows that pulling out of the safe zones will result in most of the people there dying fairly soon; presumably, they don't think they can prevent that for long in any case.  From a utilitarian point of view, it *would* make sense for the military to kill everyone in the safe zones, since otherwise most of them will literally "become the enemy."  But it seems that we haven't crossed that moral event horizon yet, or at least not on such a large scale.  Though I'm sure the firebombs will come...

 

 Speaking of interpretations:  It really, really seemed like we were supposed to think that Daniel had killed the soldier, so it seemed like a cheat when he was later shown alive and (but for his arm) unharmed.  I wonder if there was a script change and a re-shoot?

  All of the above being said: While I don't hate the show, I have to agree with those who are upset at the bait-and-switch of the premise.  We were led to expect that we'd see what the first weeks of the apocalypse were like, in a major city.  Instead, the show has conspicuously avoided showing us anything that's too /e/x/p/e/n/s/I/v/e/ interesting or informative, and skipped over most of the first two weeks completely.

  It's also a problem that the scenario we are allowed to see, as presented, makes no sense.  There should be literally hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of zombies in the LA basin (depending on how many people got out in time, and how many got eaten too thoroughly to come back); and yet the fairly small number of troops we see and hear about have been able to keep the area within six miles of this safe zone (one of only 12) mostly clear for several days?  When we were just told that a really impressive armored-vehicle-zombie-kill-count was 83?  Sure, there's 2000 zombies locked up in a building somewhere, but that should be just a drop in the bucket.  Where are the rest of the zombies, Disneyland?

 

  There's also the question "Why, if the military has known they're bugging out tomorrow morning since before Ophelia's boyfriend was captured, are they still going out on dangerous missions"?  But I can fanwank that by saying

  1: That the order actually came later that day, and the soldier heard it on the radio that Daniel was listening to;

  2: The (unsuccessful) mission we saw was to rescue other soldiers, who may have gotten trapped before the Cobalt order went out.

Edited October 1, 2015 by ACW

[JBody]

Bah.  The whole thing is el stupido.  COBALT was supposedly the "crossover event" with TWD, a.k.a. the firebombing of Atlanta (as witnessed by Shane & Lori) --that whole thing was COBALT in the Atlanta metro area.

 

I, along with everyone else, have determined that the point of this show is money.  I can't help but think that TPTB (AMC, Kirkman, Erickson, and EPs Alpert, GAH, Nicotero) are having an almighty jest at our expense.  Yanking our chains.  The question: can we possibly make a show that disappoints ALL expectations (Kirkman especially gets a perverse satisfaction in disappointing fans, so I have read many times) as cheaply as possible and yet rake in record numbers of viewers?  Answer: yes.  I fell for it.....  because honestly, the premise WAS cool.  What a colossal bummer.

[Brooke0707]

The cufflink/diamond watch thing was weird - it is the end of the world and the military is aware of this and has a plan to kill everyone, yet a soldier is enticed by items that have no value in zombie world? Okay...

Edited October 1, 2015 by Brooke0707

[FierceCritter]

I'm kinda hoping the show makes it and improves just enough to keep PTV viewers around, because the discussion is so much more entertaining than the show itself. :D

[ACW]

The cufflink/diamond watch thing was weird - it is the end of the world and the military is aware of this and has a plan to kill everyone, yet a soldier is enticed by items that have no value in zombie world? Okay...

Not "everyone," as previously discussed.

Anyway, the soldier is probably figuring that wherever he's being evaced to will include some barter opportunities.

Edited October 1, 2015 by ACW

[HighMaintenance]

I'm kinda hoping the show makes it and improves just enough to keep PTV viewers around, because the discussion is so much more entertaining than the show itself. :D

Well, there's always TWD discussions. Those are much more interesting anyway.

[Margherita Erdman]

Damn Daniel, that was waaaay to close a shave for those pesky arm hairs. Then again, it's a better job than Sweeney Todd.

Daniel as Sweeney Todd was *everything*, from his intimate, sensual relationship with his straight razors to his obsession with the chairs being just right. For a moment I thought perhaps the showrunners had just decided fuck it, let's do a bottle episode in which we stage The Demon Barber of Boyle Heights, a reinterpretation of Sweeney Todd in which the resentment/revenge story is fed by hatred of American imperialism, fear of discovery as a former death squad member, and disgust that his pure daughter is being courted by an American soldier... I half expected Ruben Blades to begin singing "Mis Amigos" as he laid out his tools of torture. That would have been awesome.

Remember guys, not to discuss any Walking Dead spoilers in the Fear episode threads. Some people haven't caught up on TWD yet. However, if something about the zombies was learned in the previous 5 episodes of Fear, that is okay to discuss, since it occured on Fear itself...

 

If you want to discuss the zombies, etc, you can go to Clarks vs Camp Dinner Bell: Compariing FTWD and TWD 

or for some more detailed Zombie info, the Walkin Dead has this thread that focuses on the Walkers: Zombie Talk: Gruesome Gory and Grabby.

I don't want to be a party-pooper or a scold, but can I ask again that this be respected? I haven't started watching TWD original recipe yet, thought I would start with this instead, and these episode threads are FULL of allusions to the firebombing of Atlanta, characters who are named as dead or killed or having specific plot arcs, etc. etc.

Please be aware that even that something said in passing that seems like a generic reference to TWD universe is a spoiler for those of us that would like to go to the other series without knowing major plot points or who dies or when or hooks up with whom etc. I don't think I'm the only one. Thanks!

[Nashville]

  It's also a problem that the scenario we are allowed to see, as presented, makes no sense.  There should be literally hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of zombies in the LA basin (depending on how many people got out in time, and how many got eaten too thoroughly to come back); and yet the fairly small number of troops we see and hear about have been able to keep the area within six miles of this safe zone (one of only 12) mostly clear for several days?  When we were just told that a really impressive armored-vehicle-zombie-kill-count was 83?  Sure, there's 2000 zombies locked up in a building somewhere, but that should be just a drop in the bucket.  Where are the rest of the zombies, Disneyland?

 

The single biggest logical FAIL of the entire series to date. 

Any way you slice it, you're going to end up with a million-plus zombies - OR a million-plus refugees - OR some combo platter of the two.

All those bodies, warm or otherwise, have to be SOMEWHERE.

So - where are they?

[BetyBee]

The cufflink/diamond watch thing was weird - it is the end of the world and the military is aware of this and has a plan to kill everyone, yet a soldier is enticed by items that have no value in zombie world? Okay...

I wonder if Strand palmed the key during one of these exchanges?  It really makes no sense for him to possess the key to his freedom (if that is what it is), yet to remain locked up.  

[Haleth]

Where are the rest of the zombies, Disneyland?

 

Oh, man, a zombie Donald Duck (or any character) would be awesome.

[HighMaintenance]

Strand notices that the military guarding them are thinning out/leaving.  He wants the guards to be out of the area before he opens the lock, lest they toss him and greasy wonderbread junkie back in the chokie.

Edited October 2, 2015 by HighMaintenance

[ACW]

The single biggest logical FAIL of the entire series to date. 

Any way you slice it, you're going to end up with a million-plus zombies - OR a million-plus refugees - OR some combo platter of the two.

All those bodies, warm or otherwise, have to be SOMEWHERE.

So - where are they?

 

"The Desert."

Actually, that may be partly true.  Probably a whole lot of people *did* flee to the desert, and most of them are likely zombies by now.  Or cannibals.  Or leftovers.

 

Oh, man, a zombie Donald Duck (or any character) would be awesome.

 

How could you tell the difference?  If someone in one of those costumes went zombie, they'd shuffle around trying to "hug" people, but be completely unable to bite them, and you might not even notice they were trying.

Edited October 2, 2015 by ACW

[peach]

The single biggest logical FAIL of the entire series to date. 

Any way you slice it, you're going to end up with a million-plus zombies - OR a million-plus refugees - OR some combo platter of the two.

All those bodies, warm or otherwise, have to be SOMEWHERE.

So - where are they?

They all migrated to one county in Georgia.

[Nashville]

Oh, man, a zombie Donald Duck (or any character) would be awesome.

  

Yet another example of how y'all are my people.

"The Desert."

Actually, that may be partly true.  Probably a whole lot of people *did* flee to the desert, and most of them are likely zombies by now.  Or cannibals.  Or leftovers.

 

Desert, ocean, a weekend down at Napa - direction doesn't matter.

What does matter, contextually speaking, is this: in terms of simple logistics, there's simply no way to get rid or hid of that many bodies this quick. Even if a general evacuation was ordered the moment the riot started, the city fathers would be doing dern good to get 75% of the population cleared in the ensuing week-and-a-half - which would leave approximately 1/2 million in various stages of life/death/in-between rattling around within the city limits. And that's a LOT. Consider:

• Think 2,000 moaning, groaning shambling ramblers locked up in the Staples Center is a bunch? That's not even a half-percent.
• Total guesstimate here for the purposes of illustration - but of that 1/2 million, say it's split halfway between living/dead, and the dead are similarly split between corpses/walkers. Where are the approximately 125,000 corpses? If moved, what manpower put them there? And considering how unreliable the power grid has become - and its implications for refrigeration or the lack thereof - how has L.A. not turned into Plague Central from its few remaining inhabitants sitting in the middle of roughly TWENTY MILLION POUNDS of dead meat rotting in the SoCal climate??? The smell alone would kill them. And that's not even counting pre-evac dead.
• Continuing the thought stream of #2 - who's killing 125,000 walkers? If our ASS's local version of the cavalry is any indication, they're nowhere NEAR one shot/one kill, unless it's a chick in the local donut shop - every firefight they're in, they're emptying magazines left and right. How could they gave even gotten the volume of ammo for the job the show implies they did? You can't just ship a few million rounds of NATO ammo via FedEx.
• And what of the still-living? Even if 90% of the remainder was dead or turned, that's still 50K of so-far survivors trying to get the hell outta Dodge. How would we NOT see at least a steady trickle of refugees going past the fences of the compound where our ASS is parked?

I'm sure when Production first pitched FTWD to the money men, their spiel went something along the lines of, "TWD spends most of its time in the Georgia woods - but imagine how things would go down in the BIG CITY!!!" - and I'm sure it sounded cool as heck. But by now I'm also sure when they picked one of the biggest cities in the U.S. as their backdrop, they gave short shrift to the realistic implications of that choice.

 

How could you tell the difference?  If someone in one of those costumes went zombie, they'd shuffle around trying to "hug" people, but be completely unable to bite them, and you might not even notice they were trying.

By that same token, the actors in the costumes would also be far less likely to be bitten. But what a wonderful visual that would be.... :>

[Janimo]

Thanks, Nashville. You made my day with your comments above. :)

 

[gaPeach]

As many have pointed out there would be millions of zombie roaming around even near the safe zone.  So as I have said before I just don't understand how the military cleared the area around the safe zone outside the fence without any one in the fence not seeing them take down zombies?  At this point, since the show jumped 9 days everyone should know people are coming back to life and want to eat you.  Did the military do all this at night while the good citizens were sleeping?  There is no way zombies were not coming up to the fence to check out potential dinners.  So the total lack of anyone knowing what is going on at this point is total bullshit.

 

I will still watch because I am a sucker for zombie shows but I watch it with very little expectation.

[HalcyonDays]

Everyone. There is a pinned note at the top of each page that asks you all NOT TO POST Walking Dead spoilers in here. I also put a note in a couple pages ago, asking for no Walking Dead spoilers, yet there have been a ton of posts recently with just that.

 

           //// - --> *** DO NOT POST ANY SPOILERS ABOUT THE WALKING DEAD. *** <---\\\\

 

References to The Walking Dead that are okay - It's filmed in Atlanta, it's about Zombies, they have a larger budget, the shows have the same writers, producers whatever, Talking Dead mentioned the show, TWD has better ratings, it airs Sunday, I like the show better, yadda yadda.

 

References to The Walking Dead that are NOT okay - Everything Else!!

 

I've removed some posts that clearly contained Walking Dead spoilers, and spoiler tagged others. If you want to talk about the Walking Dead, go on over to the actual threads! If you want to discuss both, we actually have a thread for that - the link is in my note at the top. Go there! But just like over there where we are very allergic to spoilers, the same applies here. Please respect this. Thank you.

[oakville]

Maybe. But if it is the plan is to abandon the people in the safe zones and evacuate themselves without any civilians, there is no point in trying to clear every building there is from walkers anymore (like in this episode), and losing dozens of men every day in doing so. It's just nonsense.

 

The best course of action would be to defend a safe zone, in which you can sustain food, water and medical supply (and your soldiers can rest), or abandon the city and set camp elsewhere (in which case it doesn't matter if you kill any more walkers OR civilians).

Agreed. I thought it was dumb of Moyers & a few others to go into one building & try & kill walkers. Why not draw them out with loud noise?

The show hasn't done a good job of explaining why LA has so few troops protecting it. Why not mention mass desertions or troops getting sick ?

[editorgrrl]

If it is the plan is to abandon the people in the safe zones and evacuate themselves without any civilians, there is no point in trying to clear every building there is from walkers anymore (like in this episode), and losing dozens of men every day in doing so. It's just nonsense.

Moyers admitted it's nothing but busy work:

I don't like doing knock-knock raids on civilians—it's bad for morale. But look at these guys: these guys are not warriors. These are kids.

These are little kids who want to go home to momma, okay? Or what's left of her.

Dark thoughts, Travis, that's my enemy here, okay? So the best thing I can do is keep these kids out in the field kicking ass and shooting holes in skinbags.

"Dark thoughts" is also how Moyers justified extracting Doug. (This episode, Travis said a total of 11 people have been taken.) One soldier got hit in the face for defending Ofelia. Saying "These are our people, okay? She just wants her mom" is apparently a "lack of patriotism."

[Raven1707]

I watched all five episodes On Demand last night, and the show works a bit better that way, at least for me. Although I have to admit, Madison's stone face is harder to take as the hours go by...

[SyncMaster]

I totally agree on the military so quickly becoming the evil Schutzstaffel and shooting regular citizens AND taking ten minutes out of their race downtown to shoot a donut shop waitress who was trapped in the store. And then bullying a citizen to shoot her.

 

I liked him introducing Travis to the cold reality of the dead walking among the living, letting Travis have a glimpse of the ugly choices Moyers made to that point.

 

I thought that whole scene was ridiculous.  Travis certainly is living in a world of denial but I thought that for Moyers to insist that an untrained civilian fire a heavy-duty weapon showed how trifling Moyers was.  He could have taken out the walker while Travis watched to make the point that, yup, the dead are walking amongst the living.  What I did like about the scene was the other serviceman telling Travis to open his mouth when he shot the weapon to prevent the back pressure from injuring him.  At least someone was passing along useful, timely information.

 

Oh right, the entire communications structure of the first world fell in a day.  Surely there's a ham radio operator out there but we'll never see it.

 

Yeah, for them to have problems connecting with one another using telephones, landline or cellular, and for there to be problems with the power grid made no sense at all and those outages definitely should have had decent explanations.

 

I would love to see some amateur radio operators passing information back and forth but I'm sure the show's writers would have them hollering, "Breaker, uh, breaker 1-9?"

 

Agreed. It would be very costly to film hordes of Zombies on the streets of LA. The TWD only filmed a few scenes in downtown Atlanta.

 

The show had decent riot scenes.  Even if thousands of people have reanimated they certainly wouldn't all be in the exact same spot and I think the same number of people used in the riot scenes could have made a reasonable showing of shambling, rambling walkers.

 

I'm a new to zombie genre.   I began seeing differences between different movies, shows and books so my boyfriend explained it to me like this. Who ever writes or directs the book, movie or show gets to make the "rules" of that universe. So you can have zombies that will act differently from book to book, movie to movie and so on.

 

Yes, and that's the same with any fictional writing.  Author A and Author B don't and won't have to share anything between their universes when writing about the same topic.  I've read a large number of books about the strolling dead and fortunately none of those authors lumbered down Weenie Rd. by not making a pass at explaining the reason for human reanimation.

 

Since basically everyone who dies is subject to zombification, it seems a reasonable approach to remove anyone who is a disproportionate risk to either die or kill someone else, or for that matter, stir up trouble. Otherwise, your safe zone is not so much a safe zone as a zombie Golden Corral.

 

As a junkie, Nick is disproportionately likely to die of an overdose or do something stupid that will result in his death or someone else's death. Griselda was sick enough to die and then become a zombie, so she needed to be taken and put down. Depressed guy, one could argue, was a great risk for suicide. He needs to be taken out.

 

But if any of those people, especially the depressed dude, could be considered at a significant risk for death and reanimation then any old person on the street could be as well.  That dude right there and that one way over there could be dealing with clogged arteries or could be stroke-prone or may have poorly maintained and overworked hearts.  Without giving everyone a physical almost anyone at anytime should be locked down--which, I suppose, happened anyway.

 

Not surprised that Daniel turned out to be good at torture, but I'm sorry that they felt they needed to make the character so dark.  Just knowing he's been through a dangerous experience in his youth was enough to know he would have the strength and common sense to survive now.

 

His reveal as a torturer clears up one thing for me: after the encounter with the dog-eating,  reanimated neighbor Daniel was too quick in suggesting the burning of the body.  Daniel and the rest of the crew had no immediate and valid information on the state of the city or county governments.  By burning up bodies he could have subjected them all to charges of desecrating corpses, hiding the evidence of murder and/or using inappropriate fuel for a cookout.  But because Daniel was shown to have rough and tough background he just didn't care that much about the results of those actions.

[nobody30]

Moyers admitted it's nothing but busy work:

"Dark thoughts" is also how Moyers justified extracting Doug. (This episode, Travis said a total of 11 people have been taken.) One soldier got hit in the face for defending Ofelia. Saying "These are our people, okay? She just wants her mom" is apparently a "lack of patriotism."

 

Still that doesn't make any sense at all. It's probably not the best way to keep soldiers "occupied" by risking their lives storming in every building full of walkers. That unit would fall apart in no time in reality, because getting everybody killed for no reason at all in an extremly dumb way is not that good for moral too.

 

They know they are going to evacuate soon, but still they go on "suicide missions" that rescue nobody and help to accomplish nothing, I mean why not kill themselves right away once and for all? Dumbest military ever in that show.

[Nashville]

Still that doesn't make any sense at all. It's probably not the best way to keep soldiers "occupied" by risking their lives storming in every building full of walkers. That unit would fall apart in no time in reality, because getting everybody killed for no reason at all in an extremly dumb way is not that good for moral too.

 

They know they are going to evacuate soon, but still they go on "suicide missions" that rescue nobody and help to accomplish nothing, I mean why not kill themselves right away once and for all? Dumbest military ever in that show.

Moyers did not send his squad into the building "for no reason at all"; they went in responding to another squad's call for help. And if you're true military, there's no better reason.

[nobody30]

Moyers did not send his squad into the building "for no reason at all"; they went in responding to another squad's call for help. And if you're true military, there's no better reason.

 

And the other squad went in there for what?

 

Supplies? No, they still had plenty as we know. To rescue somebody? No, they were planning on leaving everybody behind the next day and evacuate without civilians. Obviously they went in for the fun of shooting zombies and getting killed in the process.

 

I was in the military myself, what is shown on that show is a load of crap, or to be more specific the fantasy of teenage minded writers and producers of how stupid and evil the military get's in just a few days into apocalypse, because that's just what the always do.

[Nashville]

And the other squad went in there for what?

 

Supplies? No, they still had plenty as we know. To rescue somebody? No, they were planning on leaving everybody behind the next day and evacuate without civilians. Obviously they went in for the fun of shooting zombies and getting killed in the process.

 

I was in the military myself, what is shown on that show is a load of crap, or to be more specific the fantasy of teenage minded writers and producers of how stupid and evil the military get's in just a few days into apocalypse, because that's just what the always do.

 

In terms of why the original squad went in...?  In true FTWD fashion, we'll never know because the show didn't address their reason(s).  I suspect, however, this might be a situation prime for Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."  We do know the CO kept his squads busy on makework a large chunk of the time to stave off morale issues.  It would not surprise me one bit if the CO sent the original squad out on a bogus assignment to check out what he thought would be an empty building - only the building turned out to be not-so-empty after all.

 

By the way, I strongly agree with your appraisal of FTWD's skewed portrayal of the military - which leads me to pose a question:  given how the show constantly defaults to the "bad soldier" view, did anybody besides me think it was at least strongly implied Moyers got fragged by his own men, either directly or by being deserted and left to fend for himself against a mini-horde of zombies? 

Moyers never struck me as a "lead from the front" kind of officer, so I thought it was highly suspicious all the members of his squad returned except him.  If it had been a straight-up overrun, you'd have expected the Zs to have had to munch through at least one or two enlisteds to get to the officer.

[editorgrrl]

Given how the show constantly defaults to the "bad soldier" view, did anybody besides me think it was at least strongly implied Moyers got fragged by his own men, either directly or by being deserted and left to fend for himself against a mini-horde of zombies?

I was so angry all the action was happening off-screen that this never even crossed my mind. But it's entirely possible.

[Nashville]

I was so angry all the action was happening off-screen that this never even crossed my mind. But it's entirely possible.

Honestly, my first thought when his men returned without him and talking desertion was, "Whoops - guess his name was actually Nedermeyer." ;>

[Bongo Fury]

I was driving home from work yesterday, sitting in traffic, when I noticed the car in front of me was a Chevy Cobalt. Before I knew what was happening I heard myself yelling

"YOU SUCK"

 

... did anybody besides me think it was at least strongly implied Moyers got fragged by his own men, either directly or by being deserted and left to fend for himself against a mini-horde of zombies? ...

 

That is exactly how I took it when I watched. Fuck Moyers, fuck the army, we're out of here.

[JBody]

By the way, I strongly agree with your appraisal of FTWD's skewed portrayal of the military - which leads me to pose a question:  given how the show constantly defaults to the "bad soldier" view, did anybody besides me think it was at least strongly implied Moyers got fragged by his own men, either directly or by being deserted and left to fend for himself against a mini-horde of zombies? 

 

I mentioned Moyers was fragged in my initial post on the ep thread (which is this one I guess...) and a follow up post.  I am crushed, CRUSHED I SAY, you didn't read it.

 

However, because we didn't see him die onscreen (we didn't see a damned thing on screen except for a sweating Travis hyperventilating in the back of the army truck) --and the EPs have mentioned this, I think-- there is every possibility he'll pop up in the unlikeliest place next season (in the galley of Strand's super yacht mixing martinis!  HEY-O!).