The Swamp

I finally caught up last night. I've avoided these threads for the last year to avoid spoilers, and now I see all these semi-spoilers from you comic book people. Haven't gone through all the threads yet, but the entire time they were safe in the prison I was thinking they should have been more aggressive killing walkers. If each able person killed about 10 walkers per day, they'd eventually make some progress, right?

(Spoiler- kind of) I knew that would be resolved quickly, but not that quickly! I expected it to last at least one more episode. Another gruesome human on human overly violent scene! And it was awesome! They deserved it. Sick Bastards. Maybe if they were eating pieces of each other like they did with Bob, it would be more acceptable. I think if I ever had to resort to cannibalism that's how I would try to organize it, we all eat parts of each other until we get out of the situation that requires us to eat each other. But trying to organize such a thing would probably end up with everyone feasting on me.

Yeah, I enjoyed that massacre as well.

Priest: But this is the house of the lord.

Maggie: Nope, it's just 4 walls and a roof.


So who do you think Darryl has with him? Beth? Morgan?

Morgan is my guess (not exactly out on a limb).

Sitting there, calmly explaining to a dude to have some perspective, while you are munching on his flesh is just so damn cold. Glad Bob had his moment of retort.

"Didn't want to waste the bullets." That is pretty cold too.

They just keep escalating the evil, and I like it.

Even after showing the red handle of the machete, the writers made it look for a second like Rick was waffling with his "anyone, anywhere" speech.

Of course, they have decided to split everyone up again, making sure to send Glenn and Maggie with the DC group so that viewers have a vested interest in them.

howard wrote:Glad Bob had his moment of retort.

I loved that. If I ever get eaten that's the way I want to go.

I hate when Walking Dead just does a whole show on one story line and ignores what's happening everywhere else. Especially, when it's built around Beth who just isn't interesting enough to carry an episode. Although, it sure ended with a bang.

Nice to see the Ferguson, Mo police force survived the zombie apocalypse. As well as the tradition of cops beating on a black man who didn't do nothing.

I too enjoying having a medical monopoly.

(most jokes stolen from twitter. the medical monopoly one is original.)

Civil Rights Zombies!

Rough episode for Sgt. Hatred. I don't know if I unconsciously picked up the secret that was revealed, from reading on the internets or something, but I sure suspected this would happen.

I knew from the comics but in a way it was more fun waiting for the time bomb to go off.

fwiw, I am enjoying this season tremendously, and the expanded world view. On board with the vision of the current showrunner.

I knew almost immediately that Eugene wasn't who he said he was. So did my kid. I think they made it rather obvious.

Jerloma wrote:I knew almost immediately that Eugene wasn't who he said he was. So did my kid. I think they made it rather obvious.

I watch with 2 friends - one who has read the comics and one who didn't (I have read some early ones but they are way past that in the show now). The one who didn't watched called the Eugene thing out way before I believed it. In hindsight I feel dumb that I didn't see it coming. But while I really liked the backstory with Sgt. Sheamus, or whatever the hell his name is, I'm getting tired of seeing only one group/person per episode. Though the Carol & Daryl show looks awesome next week

Falling walkers will never fail to make me laugh.

Melted walkers are really cool.

Tyrese is a giant puss who is going to get someone killed.

Did I miss a touching scene earlier in the season where Daryl told Maggie not to worry and promised he would find her sister? Because it's slightly annoying that pretty much everyone is risking everything to rescue Beth, while Maggie seems to have completely forgotten about her.

Yeah, I don't recall Maggie ever asking about her.

More burning questions...

What's the deal with Gabriel? I tried getting answers out of him at Comic Con but he was a rock. Where the fuck does he think he's going?

Why did Dawn give Beth the keys to the medicine cabinet to help Carol after blaming Beth for killing Carol for suggesting that they try to save Carol? Seriously...what the fuck was that sequence of events?

Does that last show break the record for the most things happening with nothing really happening?

I think the mark of any good storytelling is that the character's motivations are understood. You may not agree with them, but they make sense given the context of the situation and what we've learned about the characters.

This show is not great at that.

It's fun to watch, but it can be maddening at times.

Risking all of those lives and resources to grab Beth - Beth! - out of a heavily armed and well-managed building in Atlanta, is one of those choices. Why would they, Rick especially, do that? Beth has pretty much never been much of a help in any way. The way people in the group come and go, why do this?

The other one that baffled me was the captured cop at the very end. Why would he attack whatsername like that? Seems like a lot of risk - what if it doesn't knock her out, what if others hear or see, how is he going to escape with his hands tied behind his back? And not much reward. He goes back to that crazy hospital? Did he think the prisoner trade wasn't going to work? It seems to me like that trade would have been just fine. Why would the hospital folks NOT want their people back in exchange for Beth and Carol? It's not like those women were any asset. And getting into a firefight with Rick and Crew would just be pointless. The only reason to start a fight would be if they thought Rick and Crew were really trying to steal the hospital from them.

Ah well. The show's doing better than at some other times (Season 2), but it still gets lazy.

Risking all of those lives and resources to grab Beth - Beth! - out of a heavily armed and well-managed building in Atlanta, is one of those choices. Why would they, Rick especially, do that? Beth has pretty much never been much of a help in any way. The way people in the group come and go, why do this?

Empathy?

Jerloma wrote:

Risking all of those lives and resources to grab Beth - Beth! - out of a heavily armed and well-managed building in Atlanta, is one of those choices. Why would they, Rick especially, do that? Beth has pretty much never been much of a help in any way. The way people in the group come and go, why do this?

Empathy?

Sure. I get that. But I have to think they don't have much left at this point. They just got finished beating three or four unarmed people to death in a church. From what the black kid told them, they don't even know if Beth is still there, do they? Or maybe dead already? Rick has TWO kids relying on him and he risks his life for that chance? It's honorable, sure, but not too smart.

Shirley wrote:

Jerloma wrote:

Risking all of those lives and resources to grab Beth - Beth! - out of a heavily armed and well-managed building in Atlanta, is one of those choices. Why would they, Rick especially, do that? Beth has pretty much never been much of a help in any way. The way people in the group come and go, why do this?

Empathy?

Sure. I get that. But I have to think they don't have much left at this point. They just got finished beating three or four unarmed people to death in a church. From what the black kid told them, they don't even know if Beth is still there, do they? Or maybe dead already? Rick has TWO kids relying on him and he risks his life for that chance? It's honorable, sure, but not too smart.

Herschel saved Carl's life. I think Rick at least feels obligated to return the favor for his daughter.

Jerloma wrote:

Shirley wrote:

Jerloma wrote:

Risking all of those lives and resources to grab Beth - Beth! - out of a heavily armed and well-managed building in Atlanta, is one of those choices. Why would they, Rick especially, do that? Beth has pretty much never been much of a help in any way. The way people in the group come and go, why do this?

Empathy?

Sure. I get that. But I have to think they don't have much left at this point. They just got finished beating three or four unarmed people to death in a church. From what the black kid told them, they don't even know if Beth is still there, do they? Or maybe dead already? Rick has TWO kids relying on him and he risks his life for that chance? It's honorable, sure, but not too smart.

Herschel saved Carl's life. I think Rick at least feels obligated to return the favor for his daughter.

And at this point, Carol is there, and Rick definitely feels obligated to help her.

Beth sings Tom Waits tunes. Reason enough right there.

She's darn cute too. Although sometimes I can't tell if she's like 16 or 25.

Damn, I love this show. And only halfway through the mid-season finale.

howard wrote:Damn, I love this show. And only halfway through the mid-season finale.

Pretty assholish parking job by Abraham.

Stay in your lane, bitch. I was just gonna comment on how I don't really care about Cagney and her hospital police force drama, but it led to a cool fight. I like this show better when there is a little hope, like the DC promise with the mullet guy. Now it just seems like some mindless fighting and killing, which is fun, but I'd like to see more big picture stuff.

"Where are your people?"

BLAM!

"They're close"

ETA: I hope I haven't crossed the spoiler line

I guess I didn't dislike Dawn enough to see why Beth absolutely felt she needed to do that. Bad day for Maggie.

rass wrote:I guess I didn't dislike Dawn enough to see why Beth absolutely felt she needed to do that. Bad day for Maggie.

You can't ask for Noah back. Rick didn't take Noah, he escaped.

bfj wrote:

rass wrote:I guess I didn't dislike Dawn enough to see why Beth absolutely felt she needed to do that. Bad day for Maggie.

You can't ask for Noah back. Rick didn't take Noah, he escaped.

I get that. The "everyone comes back" conversation between Dawn and Beth and the "I knew you'd be back" comment from Dawn to Noah was there to drive that home as a tipping point. Life in the hospital was unpleasant for the wards, and Dawn was willing to let some ugly shit go to keep control, but I didn't think they painted the situation as so horrible that it made sense for Beth to risk not only her freedom, but her life and the lives of all of her friends in that heavily armed hallway to nail Dawn in the shoulder with a pair of scissors. She didn't even try for a fatal blow (shouldn't everyone be used to aiming for the head after years of walker fighting?) so what was the point?

Well I think you're making the mistake of assuming that everyone is thinking rationally. Beth had just fucking had it. Of course the main point was to stir up some cheap emotions so that people will have something to remember until February. The Maggie breakdown rang hollow because as we've mentioned before...Maggie has never even asked about Beth. Darryl got me though.

I sort of had enough too. I'm glad that hospital storyline is done. One of the few things on the show I didn't really enjoy.

This morning's attempt by "Good Morning America" to make me dumber was reporting that there is a petition signed by over 36K fans of the show trying to get the creators to bring back Beth. Apparently, now is when many people who watch the show realize that cheap, emotional jolts are used to advance the story on this show.

I didn't even realize people cared about Beth. Can we bring back Beth and kill off Carl instead?

The black character count is currently +1. I thing this beth thing is racist. (Or everyone assumes Father Gabriel is gonzo at the first opportunity. He reset the bar for most worthless survivor.)

This is hilarious to me...

Meh.

Entertaining. A little predictable. I said as soon as he got bit that her machete is going through that arm. Didn’t think he would die anyway though. That’s a lot of show for a guy that’s just gonna die anyway.

howard wrote:The black character count is currently +1. I thing this beth thing is racist. (Or everyone assumes Father Gabriel is gonzo at the first opportunity. He reset the bar for most worthless survivor.)

+/- 0


All is balanced.

bfj wrote:Meh.

I think I really liked it.

Thoughts:

Rick is gonna fuck this up for everyone.

If not, then Sasha is gonna fuck this up for everyone.

Why does seeing a horse getting zombied disturb me more than humans?

Is Darryl maybe gonna get gay with the gays?

Oh man...that Carol scene going all Lizzie on the kid was tremendous.