S04.E06: Just in Case

[BasilSeal]

On 28 May 2018 at 12:49 AM, slf said:

In the ZA, a gunshot to the head is perfectly survivable and a few artful swipes of walker blood is enough to mask you as you waltz through a herd.

The serious answer is it seemed to hit in the spleen area, maybe the stomach.

I think he'll survive, for the time being anyway, so far there hasn't been any plot based reason for Naomi being a trauma nurse, now john is shot, there is. potentially she has the skills to help John, the question will be whether Alicia allows her to. It's the recurring theme of doing what is right versus doing what is expedient, it's the right and moral thing to forgo revenge against Naomi, (if indeed there's any justification for revenge anyway), and allow her to help John, they don't owe john anything but he' an innocent man caught up in their battle.

In terms of achieving their objective of wiping out the vultures though, they'd be best to just shoot her and have done with before she has chance to betray them again. (this assumes she betrayed them to the vultures in the first place, my money is on there being some more complex reason for all this, i don' think the vultures destroy the stadium community, they may know something is coming, but i wouldn't fit with their metaphorical role in the narrative if they killed their victims themselves, because real vultures don't do that, they wait for things to die by other means.)

Edited June 1, 2018 by BasilSeal

[FishyJoe]

15 hours ago, slf said:

All of this, that last point especially. This franchise has produced many characters that have gone from 'noodled-arm weakling' to 'zombie apocalypse badass' with zero explanation and to a preposterous degree. Alicia isn't one of them. She's not out here fighting people hand to hand, she hasn't learned some special martial arts, she isn't making one head shot after another no matter the distance or visibility. She's a decent enough shot but she mostly sticks to stabbing walkers in the head with a knife once they're in arms reach. She was in good shape before this all went down and she's been fighting since the beginning, not just hiding behind others. Her continued survival isn't surprising to me and is more realistic than plenty of other characters (like her brother who lived about three season too long). 

I think she has the Domino power of luck. It seemed impossible that she could survive the bunker. It's one thing to survive a fight, it's another thing to beat a room full of people in a game of Russian Hypoxia and win the Battle Royale with no brain damage. 

[slf]

6 hours ago, FishyJoe said:

I think she has the Domino power of luck. It seemed impossible that she could survive the bunker. It's one thing to survive a fight, it's another thing to beat a room full of people in a game of Russian Hypoxia and win the Battle Royale with no brain damage. 

Or to survive a dam exploding while you're standing on it. This isn't an Alicia-problem.

[nodorothyparker]

If I didn't already strongly suspect Madison is dead, the extra innings overtime amount of fluffing her Strand was doing this episode would have convinced me of it.  Madison's been pretty much about her and hers (especially the wayward magical junkie) all the way along where she could unblinkingly watch terrible things happen to other people as long as it meant her kids were okay, so this sudden narrative of how she's the bestest ever and she singlehandedly saved everybody (while still not telling us how the hell they met up with Luciana again) isn't quite landing.

Um, Strand was all set to run out on the entire crew about 30 seconds before he called Naomi out for trying to do exactly that.  Everything about Strand's character, save having the backup in the first place, feels weirdly forced this season.  Fine, Naomi's a runner.  How does she know her kid turning turned the entire FEMA center if everybody was dead when she got back?  Sure, she could probably look around and see no signs of a breach into the building and deduce that it came from the inside, but it's still based largely on guesswork.  Still, it gives her the prerequisite sad backstory every character in this franchise eventually gets saddled with.

Not buying that the show would be stupid enough to kill off one of the best characters the franchise has come up with in seasons.  I won't believe it until I see it In Memoriam.  Also not really surprised Naomi hooked up with the too precious for words hipster leader with the crested jacket at some point, but it breaks the bounds of plausibility for her to have been yet another mole all along.  So far, the character is kind of a mess.

[Daltrey]

On ‎2018‎-‎05‎-‎31 at 5:50 PM, slf said:

On ‎2018‎-‎05‎-‎31 at 2:49 PM, jane1978 said:

I don´t understand what special backstory she should have to survive. She´s always been athletic and physically active girl so she just had to learn how to fight and shoot. Not that hard at her age, especially when she had her adoptive father and her brother around, both capable fighters. I agree they could actually SHOW how she learned her current skills but given she had like 100 lines total in the first season and not much more in second we just have to assume it happened why we watched Nick´s and Maddison´s latest drama. Which makes sense because the show made clear from beginning she´s always had to rely on herself and herself only.

All of this, that last point especially. This franchise has produced many characters that have gone from 'noodled-arm weakling' to 'zombie apocalypse badass' with zero explanation and to a preposterous degree. Alicia isn't one of them. She's not out here fighting people hand to hand, she hasn't learned some special martial arts, she isn't making one head shot after another no matter the distance or visibility. She's a decent enough shot but she mostly sticks to stabbing walkers in the head with a knife once they're in arms reach. She was in good shape before this all went down and she's been fighting since the beginning, not just hiding behind others. Her continued survival isn't surprising to me and is more realistic than plenty of other characters (like her brother who lived about three season too long). 

I agree as well. They made a point of the characters discussing how Alicia always had to be fairly self sufficient because Madison had to constantly deal with Nick being a junkie fuck up. It's not as if she's being portrayed as a modern day Xena, a Buffy, or any other female badass you can think of. Besides, however long the time jump is, she certainly could have spent some of that time improving her skills. Personally, I can make that mental leap without having to see it all played out in lieu of plot development. Sure, developing character is important, but not at the expense of moving the story along. There needs to be a balance and so far for me, the new showrunners are not doing the worst job of it, though there's always room for improvement.

[Iguessnot]

3 hours ago, Daltrey said:

I agree as well. They made a point of the characters discussing how Alicia always had to be fairly self sufficient because Madison had to constantly deal with Nick being a junkie fuck up. It's not as if she's being portrayed as a modern day Xena, a Buffy, or any other female badass you can think of. Besides, however long the time jump is, she certainly could have spent some of that time improving her skills. Personally, I can make that mental leap without having to see it all played out in lieu of plot development. Sure, developing character is important, but not at the expense of moving the story along. There needs to be a balance and so far for me, the new showrunners are not doing the worst job of it, though there's always room for improvement.

I can buy her being self sufficient. But to have Alicia and her mother hold the reins over the survivalists was nonsense. Being a self sufficient latchkey kid in an urban or suburban environment does not magically bestow the skills to survive off the land. Alicia kept saying how much she knew about the real world, but that didn't outweigh the skillset the ranchers had in their own place so it made no sense for them to defer to her like they did. 

[CoachWristletJen]

On 5/22/2018 at 8:15 AM, slf said:

Personally, I highly doubt it. They've always allowed Alicia to be an afterthought and I don't think Madison is dead.

It might just be me, but I've always thought that Alicia has 'resting dumb face.'

[slf]

On 6/5/2018 at 10:56 PM, Iguessnot said:

I can buy her being self sufficient. But to have Alicia and her mother hold the reins over the survivalists was nonsense. Being a self sufficient latchkey kid in an urban or suburban environment does not magically bestow the skills to survive off the land. Alicia kept saying how much she knew about the real world, but that didn't outweigh the skillset the ranchers had in their own place so it made no sense for them to defer to her like they did. 

Yeah, that's a problem this franchise has always had. You can have a group survive, isolated, for months or even years but the second this group of CDB shows up they're the ones running things. The writers seems to think because they're the lead characters they have to always be the ones in charge.

3 hours ago, CoachWristletJen said:

It might just be me, but I've always thought that Alicia has 'resting dumb face.'

Never heard of it. I think she has 'really hot face.'

[CoachWristletJen]

55 minutes ago, slf said:

Yeah, that's a problem this franchise has always had. You can have a group survive, isolated, for months or even years but the second this group of CDB shows up they're the ones running things. The writers seems to think because they're the lead characters they have to always be the ones in charge.

Never heard of it. I think she has 'really hot face.'

It is a really hot face, but it has some of the dumbest expressions.

[TV Anonymous]

On 5/21/2018 at 3:54 AM, Daltrey said:

Fuck this Show and fuck Alicia! She used to be the only character who didn`t routinely make me want to pull out my hair but now I want her and all the OC to die. If John is gone, I'm team caravan.

Seriously? The same Alicia who could not maintain discipline, chatted on the radio with a stranger and caused the boat to be raided by pirates?

[Daltrey]

8 hours ago, TV Anonymous said:

She used to be the only character who didn`t routinely make me want to pull out my hair

 

8 hours ago, TV Anonymous said:

Seriously? The same Alicia who could not maintain discipline, chatted on the radio with a stranger and caused the boat to be raided by pirates?

……..I said routinely, I didn't say never, LOL!!!! :D

[DrNowsWeightScale]

On 5/21/2018 at 11:55 PM, william0102 said:

 ....and honestly I still haven't watched the first one or the one with the cowboy and Dharma.

.... I don't like the cowboy (if I wanted to watch that character I'd still be watching the mothership where he's named Rick),

Aw, I love the cowboy character (John Dorie).

Other than being a former cop, his personality is different than Rick Grimes. Rick was one of my favorite characters on TWD until around season 6 of the show, but even before Grimes turned dark and troubled, his personality still differed from Dorie's.

Grimes is more straight-laced and serious, where-as Dorie is kind of quirky and slightly wacky, has more of a sense of humor.

(If anything, I'd say the Madison character on FTWD was more like Rick Grimes than John Dorie - she came across as the female version of Rick Grimes.)

You simply must watch the episode with John Dorie and Naomi (aka Laura / June) episode. She is injured, washes up in Dorie's front yard via a river.

I believe that is the same show where we get to see more of Dorie's backstory.

The guy is very affable. He plays Scrabble alone, eats pop corn, has one of those singing fish that works as his alarm clock in the mornings, has what must be the last working VCR in the United States in the zombie apocalypse...

Also I'm a sucker for men who are gentlemen - he takes in the injured Laura and nurses her back to health. He's one of the few men left in the apocalypse you can go to for help, and he's not going to be apathetic and walk off, or try to rape or kill you.

With Dorie, he doesn't seem to have a wife or kids, so we don't have to endure multiple episodes of him trying to protect a wife and kid or cry over them being eaten by zombies.

Love, love, love the cowboy character. So long as the show writers keep Dorie the same.

If they tinker with his character by having Dorie turning dark, or coming down with PTSD, I will want to throw a rock at my TV set.  

Please give the Dorie character another chance, and watch the "Laura" episode.

[DrNowsWeightScale]

On 5/22/2018 at 6:15 AM, oakville said:

Alicia was a typical teen prior to the ZA. She freaked out when her boyfriend got sick. I think Madison or her husband ended up killing him. She had no clue what was happening. Frankly, they should have made more episodes about the first few months of the ZA. It makes no sense that a city like LA collapsed in 8 days.

I've thought the same thing. I've wondered why FTWD didn't spend more time showing us how Los Angeles fell.

I thought one of the main points of creating FTWD (as claimed by AMC and the show writers, etc) was to do that very thing - they said that the original series, TWD, had been on for so long that TWD characters took zombies for granted, which made the show a bit less scary for viewers.

So, they said, they'd do this spin off show, going back to square one, and dwell longer on what happened to society when the zombie apocalypse initially hit.

But they seemed to sort of seemed to fly through that part pretty quick.

They had the survivors quickly get with Strand on his yacht and then start traveling the world. 

I wanted to see more of things like how did the military handle the zombies? How did every day average joe blows deal with it? But they seemed to skip over all that fairly fast, to the point FTWD now feels similar in some ways to TWD.

[SpyGuy]

So sick of Morgan and his bullshit. It’s old, I wonder what the writers are trying to drag out here.