Tag: Zombies

What I’m drinking: Bell’s Winter White Ale.  One of my favorites this time of year.  They take familiar winter spices and put them into a white ale, giving it a different character than I’m normally used to in this type of beer.  It’s a nice comforting winter beer, but a more subtle flavor than most winter ales.  I still love a darker winter beer, but this one is a nice change of pace.

Eight things that annoyed me:
1. How easily The Governor overtook Michonne and Hershel.  Michonne is one of the top zombie-killers at the prison.  She survived on her own for a long time.  She always seems to be aware of trouble.  And yet she let The Governor sneak up without suspecting a thing?  I suppose you could say that she had grown complacent, but I don’t buy it.  It’s not like she had been sitting idly at the prison while her skills slowly eroded.  She had just been out on a medicine-finding expedition that constantly put her and her group in danger.  Her senses were honed.  A sneaking man is quieter than a clomping zombie, but I refuse to believe Michonne would have let The Governor sneak up on her.

2.  How easy it was for The Governor to win over his new group.  I don’t have a great sense of time that he has been with them, but I have a feeling it has been about two weeks.  During his time, two of their main members have died under mysterious circumstances (something I talked about last week), and now he’s telling them they need to invade a prison full of people, and there will probably be bloodshed.  I can understand Tara joining him with no questions.  But the rest of the group?  I just don’t believe they would be swayed so easily.
Of course, I may be underestimating the power of a charismatic personality over a group of sheep.  Perhaps they’re all just looking for someone to take charge, regardless of where it leads them.  But I have to believe at least a few of them wouldn’t just nod their heads and say, “Sure.  Let’s go invade this prison and kill some people.”
Big up to Lilly for pushing back a bit, but she didn’t do it in view of the others.  Perhaps that could have prompted them to ask some questions.

3.  Tyreese’s character.  This has been the biggest disappointment of the season so far for me.  I love his character in the comics, but they haven’t done anything with him here.  They’ve turned him into a character who can only focus on one thing at a time, and funnels all of his decisions through that focus.  As Fremont has pointed out many times, he’s nothing but a liability for the group, and he should be a productive member.  I hope they turn him around at some point, because it just feels like a missed opportunity at this point.  Maybe have him start a boxing club to help out the kids?  Just a thought.

4.  The Governor showing up at a fence completely devoid of zombies.  They have had zombies at that fence the entire season – even had a couple of big moments devoted to it – and now they’re gone?  A tank has just fired.  Zombies should be swarming.  Instead, there is not a zombie to be seen, and no bodies at the fence.  For something that has been such a big problem throughout this season, to find them suddenly absent is puzzling to say the least.  They eventually showed back up, but only after the battle was in full swing.  Where were they before that?

5.  Letting Meghan play on her own.  They may think that water keeps them safe (at the very least, water with a strong current.  Any Romero fan knows that zombies can travel underneath the water by walking on riverbeds), but they’re not currently living on an island that has been swept.  Zombies can still attack from land.  It’s amazing to me how stupid most of these characters are.
I’m not saying Meghan deserved to die.  She was just a little girl.  What I am saying is that these people need to pay a little more attention to those who can’t protect themselves, especially in areas they are not familiar with.  Or just give the kids guns. (Kids with guns.  Kids with guns.  Taking over.  It won’t be long.)

6.  No one thinking to look for Rick behind the overturned vehicle in the yard.  They knew he was there.  He was shooting at them a few seconds ago.  And yet they all walked right past him without a second glance.  I understand the heat of battle does things to a man (I beat Left 4 Dead 2, so I know what’s up), but I can’t imagine every single person would suddenly forget there was a man with a gun hiding 5 feet from them.  (According to The Governor, Rick was a very dangerous man who would kill everyone if given the chance.  And they just walked right by him.)

7.  Daryl using a zombie as a shield to walk towards men with automatic weapons.  Cool visual, but those guys were 20 feet away and firing like crazy.  Those bullets would have gone right through the rotting corpse Daryl was using.  Still, it’s hard to be too mad at this, seeing as how he blew up a tank with a grenade a few seconds later.  God bless Daryl, man.

8.  Michonne not killing The Governor when she had the chance.  She should know better than that.  She could have assumed zombies would finish the job, but she didn’t know for sure.  (As it was, zombies never got a chance.  Lilly brought the thunder.)  Go for the kill when you can.

Four things I liked:
1.  Hershel, for standing up to The Governor.  He kept a level head and brought logic to the table in his discussions.  It didn’t work, but he had to try, and I commend him for that.  He did everything he could, even though he knew it was a long shot.

2.  The extras in The Governor’s camp.  For the second straight week, they have made me chuckle with their attempts to get noticed by the camera.  In this episode, it was a lot of concerned head-shaking and confident head-nodding.  That’s how you overact in the background, my friends.

3.  Rick, for delivering a rousing speech.  I half expected him to break into Rocky’s memorable, “If I can change, and you can change, then everybody can change,” speech.  Unfortunately, it didn’t end as well for Rick as it did for Mr. Balboa.  Or, I guess, it didn’t end as well for Hershel.  (So long, Hershel.  I guess that moves Beth up to the moral center of the group.  Let’s hope she takes after you more than Dale.)

4. Tara, for finally seeing The Governor for what he really was all along.  The line, “He chopped a guy’s head off with a sword” was perfect in showing just how absurd their situation was.  They were clearly following a maniac.  Why no one else in the group saw it that way is beyond me.  Bloodlust is a helluva drug, apparently.

Before I get to my final thoughts, I’d like to take a look at my predictions for this episode to see how well I did.
Every character I said would survive made it through this episode.  BAM!

Four of the seven people I predicted would die met their demise in this episode (Hershel, Alisha, Meghan and The Governor), if not exactly in the way I thought they would.  One of those characters (Judith) is currently M.I.A.  I doubt that means she’s dead, although I suppose it could and they just didn’t want to show a bunch of zombies devouring an infant.  Prudes.  I whiffed on Tyreese (although he would have bit it, if not for the intervention of some well-armed rugrats) and Tara.  Still, not a bad set of death predictions.  Although I will say this: until I actually get some sort of visual confirmation that The Governor is dead, I won’t quite believe it.  It certainly looks like he’s dead, but they didn’t show him dead.  If X-Files taught me anything, it’s that no one is truly dead until you see them dead.  He was stabbed, then Lilly walked up to him, pointed a gun at his head, the camera panned away, and we heard a gunshot.  We can assume that bullet meant the end for The Governor, but we didn’t see it.  I never assume anything when it comes to off-screen deaths.
I hope he’s gone.  That story was completely played-out.  Time to move on to something else.  But, unless we see his corpse, I’ll always expect him to just pop up again.

Carol didn’t come back, so I missed on that one, but I totally called the end of this episode.

All-in-all, I’d say my predictions were pretty amazing.  And that’s why the good people at Horror Writers keep me around.  For my terrific predictions, my curmudgeonly attitude, and my heaps of humility.

Final thoughts:
A good episode heading into the break.  I hoped they would go big and lead our characters into different adventures when the show returns in February, and they did exactly that.  I certainly have my issues with this show (shocker, I know), but they are terrific at big action scenes.  I may not have been overly emotional about this episode (grumpy old men can’t cry.  To us, sad and happy taste identical), but I can certainly see how it would have been for most fans.  The speeches didn’t seem forced or over the top.  I loved seeing The Governor revert back to his distrusting, crazy ways right in front of everyone with his venomously spewed “Liar” at Rick, followed by a vigorous bout of old-man-neck-hacking.
I wanted them to go big into the break, and they did that.  I’m curious to see where they go from here.  I guess we’ll all find out in February.

What I listened to while writing this: Zola Jesus – Versions.  Not an album of new material, but a reimagining of her back catalog.  The electronics have been replaced with a symphony.  This is a beautiful album.  I’ll be listening to this a lot this winter.  Her version of “Collapse” on this album is tremendous.

Once again, thanks for reading during this season.  I’ve had a blast doing these, and I’ve loved reading Fremont’s take on all of them as well.  It has been a fun exercise, and I’m really looking forward to picking this up again in February.

We find ourselves on the eve of the midseason finale of this season of The Walking Dead.  Allow me this chance of saying thank you to all of you who have read the recaps me and Fremont have done for this season.  I’ve had a blast writing them, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them.

But our time is now nearing an end (until it picks back up in February).  Since they like to go big into these midseason finales, we thought we would throw some predictions out there.  On Monday, you can read back through these and see just how wrong we were.  Or, perhaps, just how smart we were.  But it’ll probably be more the former than the latter.

Fremont has already written her predictions.  You can read them here.

Let’s get started, shall we?

What we know:
The Governor and his new lackeys know where the prison is, and are going to attack it, both for the supplies and for a fortified place to live.  Apparently a circle of RVs is unable to keep out zombies.  Who knew?  The Governor has people and a tank.  A TANK!

If these revelations were dropped on us during the fourth episode, I wouldn’t have batted an eye.  “We’re still 4 episodes from anything interesting happening with this,” I would say while trying to get these damn kids off my lawn.  But this is the midseason finale, and things get a little crazy during the midseason finale.  No way they tease all that sweet, sweet action and not do anything with it until February.  Bullets will fly.  Tanks will roll.  To paraphrase Cat R. Waul, “Saliva will flow.”  People will die.  But who?

Deaths:
When I said this would be about predictions, what I mainly meant was I would talk about who would die.  Because people are going to die.  Before we get to that, we’ll talk about who is safe.

Rick – No way they’re killing Rick.  He may not be overly popular, but he’s the leader of the group and the main protagonist.  This isn’t Game of Thrones.  Rick is safe.

Daryl – If Daryl dies, they will lose at least half of their viewers.  He may be completely neutered by this point, but he’s not going anywhere.  I understand Fremont’s fears of Daryl’s demise, but I can’t see it happening.  Game of Thrones is a completely different monster.  They have so many well-loved characters that it doesn’t matter what they do.  This is the most-watched show on cable, and AMC is currently hurting for viewers.  There’s no way they kill off the most-liked character on their most popular show right now.  Maybe they’ll look at it when the ratings start to dip a little, but not now.

Carl – Maybe someday, but not yet.

Michonne – I know the last episode ended with the Governor pointing his oddly shiny gun at Michonne, but she’s not going to die.  They finally started giving her a bit of a character (but not in the sudden, “T-Dog drives people to church” way), and she’s very well-liked.

Glenn & Maggie – They won’t kill the lovebirds.  Not today.

They’re all safe.  Everyone else is fair game.  But some are in more danger than others.  Here are the ones I’ll put directly in the crosshairs:

Hershel – I can see Hershel biting the bullet, probably at the hands of the Governor.  He’ll die doing something noble, like saving Beth.  Beth will then become the moral center of the group.  She’s practically there already.

Tyreese – I love Tyreese, but they really haven’t done much with his character, besides make him crazy when he found his girlfriend burned to death.  They’ll have him stop being crazy, make amends with his sister, then promptly die.

Tara & Alisha – The new couple.  Sad.  I’m pulling for them to make it, but I don’t see it happening.  They seem so cute together.

Judith, aka Lil’ Ass-Kicker – Maybe.  Not sure they have the guts to kill a baby on TV, but this is a possibility.  Mainly because we rarely see her, and life on the road would be much easier without a baby in tow.

Meghan – The child will be killed in the crossfire, leaving The Governor crazed and heartbroken.  It’s alright, Gov.  You won’t have to grieve for long.

The Governor – He’s as good as dead.  The smart money is on Michonne finally finishing the job, but a much more fun prediction is contained below.

Bonus predictions:
Carol will show up towards the end of the episode and will shoot the Governor dead.  Then her and Daryl will do terrible, terrible things to each other while everyone watches.  It will be uncomfortable.

Rick and his crew will come out victorious, but the prison will be untenable (because a tank ran over all the fences and blew large chunks out of the walls).  They will be forced to leave and try to find another place to live.  The episode will end with the survivors trudging along the road in search of a new place to call home.

That’s all for now.  See you all on Monday, when we can talk about what actually happened.

You can read Fremont’s write-up here.  It looks as though some of my grumpy old man views are rubbing off on her.  Progress!

What I’m drinking: Country Boy Jalapeno Porter.  Like last week’s selection, this is a local beer.  It’s tremendous.  A dark, smoky porter, with a little bite of jalapeno that hits you in the back of your throat.  Probably my favorite beer in the world right now, especially on a cold night.

Seven things that annoyed me:
1. I know “Brian” has been teaching Meghan for a while by this point, so showing them playing chess to start off wasn’t a complete stretch, but the opening was just another example of the writers trying very hard to show you how clever they are.  “He’s playing chess, and he’s plotting his next move.  Like chess!  Get it!”  There’s nothing subtle about the way these scenes are done, and they have at least one in every episode.  It’s clever, but they feel the need to make sure you know just how clever it is.  Like Dane Cook.  (I joke.  Dane Cook is not clever.  He’s making you a smoooothie.)
Is Dane Cook still a thing?  That’s a dated reference, I guess.  It’s alright.  I’m old.

2.  Martinez surrounding himself with people who don’t seem to understand life in a zombie apocalypse.  When searching a house that probably has at least one walker present, don’t talk incessantly, and don’t scream like a five-year-old girl when one grabs your shoulder.  That’s Zombie Survival 101.

3.  “You seem different now.  Changed.  Are you?”
“I am.”
“Good.”
Unlike Martinez, I would have required a little more proof than this little conversation before I trusted the Governor completely.  A simple response of “I am” doesn’t undo the dozens of innocent people he shot in the back.  I certainly wouldn’t proceed to get drunk with him and talk about the past (which the Governor clearly doesn’t want to talk about) and turn my back on him while he’s in the presence of blunt objects.  But I guess that’s why I’m still alive.

4.  The way Pete and Mitch assumed leadership of the group (which obviously riled up the camp), then promptly left.  That’s no way to calm everyone down.  To make matters worse, they immediately started yelling about random things in the woods.  Beyond the obvious threat of zombies, there also appeared to have been a group of people sweeping through the area, killing and robbing the groups they found.  And here stand two men yelling at each other and drawing attention to their location.  These are not intelligent men.

5.  The Governor did all of his killing in broad daylight.  I have a hard time believing that no one saw him.  A lot of the camp seemed to be tightly-packed RVs, too.  The intelligence level and observational skills of the people in this show are extremely low.

6.  Megan being attacked by a zombie – a slow moving, almost-on-one-leg zombie – easily outrunning it, and immediately crawling under a parked RV.  That is one of the worst things you can do in that situation.  I know she’s just a kid, but she’s a kid who has grown up in a zombie apocalypse.  Then again, I guess she was raised by people who didn’t know you had to shoot a zombie in the head to kill it.
A lot of these complaints drive at the same point: there are some supremely stupid people in this show, and all that stupidity comes out at the worst possible moment.  As I’ve talked about before, the laziest way to build drama is to have your characters make the worst possible decision at the worst possible time.  Time and time again, The Walking Dead has shown that this is their preferred method.  It’s like they took the characters from A Simple Plan and dropped them in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

7.  How did the zombie get in the camp?  They just spent a few minutes going over all the recent safety measures taken to keep zombies out, and yet one got in and was standing behind the laundry like some kind of zombified Michael Myers.  Or maybe more like a Mr. Riddle that could do more than just watch.

Four things I liked:
1.  Seeing Kirk Acevedo and Enver Gjokaj.  They’re fantastic in everything I have ever seen them in.  Sad to see Enver go so soon, but I’m still happy he showed up, if only for half an episode.  May you swim forever, Victor.

2.  Chomping zombie heads on the cabin floor.  (Pretty sure that’s a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band song.)

3.  The overacting of some of the extras.  I’m a sucker for background actors trying hard to get noticed.  A lot of disapproving shaking of heads and hands thrown up in disgust and disbelief.  And it wasn’t just one: pretty much the entire camp was guilty.  World class overacting.  It absolutely killed me.

4.  Zombie Pete in the lake was a pretty cool visual.  It’s like the Governor’s wall of heads in aquariums, but the full body version, and chained to the bottom of a shallow lake, like Jason Voorhees.  The Governor just has to make sure no one with telekinetic powers shows up, or he’s the first to go.

Final thoughts:
Not a bad episode, but I kind of feel like we took two episodes just to show that the Governor is still crazy.  I already knew that.  They easily could have fit this into one episode.  I guess they wanted to show his softer side: to allow the viewer a chance to see where he was coming from.  But I never totally bought that angle, so parts of this really seemed to drag.
I’m excited to see what happens next.  They’ve set this up for a big finish going into the midseason break.  It’s going to be a stretch to get his new followers to go to war (after the last two leaders mysteriously disappeared not long after he arrived), but they will because the show needs them to.  If the last few seasons have taught me anything, it’s that they go big into the breaks.  That should be no different here.

What I listened to while writing this: Hammock – Oblivion Hymns.  I’ve been a fan of Hammock since they started (and Marc Byrd long before that), and this may be the best album they have ever released.  Beautiful soundscapes.  There is a lot going on in every song, but it never feels jumbled.  A great late-night album.

You can read Fremont’s write-up here.

What I’m drinking: West Sixth IPA.  This is from a local brewery.  One of the best IPAs I’ve ever had.  Has a strong grapefruit taste to it.  If you like IPAs, you’ll love it.  But good luck finding it outside the Lexington area.

Five things that annoyed me:

1. The Governor’s demeanor.  I don’t understand how he went from “murdering psychopath” to “emotional cripple” within a day.  Sure, he shot innocents in the back, those weren’t the first people he killed.  I doubt killing all those people broke him mentally.

2.  A lot of the tension in this episode seems to be built on the thought that we care whether The Governor lives or dies.  Since I don’t care if he dies, that tension is removed, and large portions of this episode drag.  I understand that they’re trying to make him into a likable character, but he’s not there yet.  It takes longer than one episode for me to forget about all the people he murdered.  I’m old fashioned that way.

3.  “No one told me just how boring the end of the world was going to be.”  Sums up large portions of this series, actually.  If I thought this series had a single self-deprecating bone in its body, I would’ve thought this line was brilliant.  As it was, I just chuckled to myself when Lily said it.

4.  Lily leaving her daughter in the sole care of a one-eyed psychopath.  I know they don’t know all the terrible things he has done, but they know that he is – at best – emotionally damaged.  They don’t know what he’s capable of.  Lily knows that he had a daughter (she saw the family picture he had out earlier), and that he may be unstable about it.  I know he has helped them out a couple times, but, with as cautious as they are, I can’t see Lily leaving her daughter alone with him.
Of course, I also don’t understand how they could have survived as long as they did without knowing that you can be turned without being bitten, and the only way to kill a zombie is to destroy the brain.  My point is, I don’t understand a lot of things about this family.

5.  The Governor ripping out a zombie’s throat and having even the slightest effect on it.  That zombie wouldn’t drop.  That zombie would keep on walking and chomping.  This ain’t Road House, fella.  And, since he didn’t rip out the throats of three consecutive zombies, this ain’t MacGruber, either.  Go turkey or go home, Governor.

Three things I liked:
1. The concept of this episode.  I like that they’re showing what happened to The Governor since the last time we saw him.  I didn’t want to see him just show back up without any explanation.

2.  Watching The Governor head back to Woodbury and check out all his old haunts.  Big fan of the “hero shot” of him standing in front of a burning house.  I could almost picture him saying, “Burn the fields, and when you’re done with that, burn the house.”  You know.  Like a hero.  Just call him Brian Wolf (wolf wolf wolf…).
This also doubles as an annoyance.  I could practically hear the writers screaming, “Get it?  Cleansing fire.  He’s reborn through cleansing the sins of his past.”  The writers have not been subtle with their symbolism this season.

3.  The scene in the old folk’s home.  I’ve been in those places late at night, and this scene was one of my greatest fears come to life.

Final thoughts:
This was basically the plot of Rise of the Governor, but set in a different time in his life.  Which is fairly important to note.  Where the book focuses on how he became The Governor, this episode is showing him trying to find redemption for the things he has done as The Governor.  If done well, this could be a pretty cool little storyline: a man who has done terrible things trying to overcome his darkness.  Unlike Rise of the Governor, we don’t necessarily know how this story ends.  This isn’t watching Anakin grow up, knowing he would be Darth Vader.  This is (or, at least, could be) Darth Vader trying to find the person he used to be, and saving lives instead of taking them.  “Turning towards the path of the true Jedi,” as it were.
This episode set up some of those things pretty well.  Of course, as I mentioned earlier, some of the tension they were trying to build didn’t work, there were some major flaws in logic, and there were quite a few slow moments.  But I can deal with slow as long as it sets up something good down the line.  I have a feeling that’s what this episode was: set-up for the last two episodes going into the break.
It wasn’t a perfect episode, but it wasn’t terrible, and it could portend some big things in the not-too-distant future.  I reserve full judgment on this episode until I see what happens next.

What I listened to while writing this: Minor Birds – Hold Back All My Dark.  Beautiful and haunting album.  On a stormy day like today, it’s just about perfect.  Great music.  Fantastic vocals.  Big fan of this album.  If you can catch their live show, I highly recommend it.