OMFG Walking Dead

Actually absent the availability of a walled or fenced in property like the prison, the Farm is ideal if no people alive know you are there.
They should have been prepared with an escape plan, lead any horde that shambles in away from the farm and then head back when it's clear.

Of course that would make for terrible television.

I believe Milton's experiment may spell trouble for Andrea. He said that his theory was that trace memory and consciousness may exist after turning. They used the photos and the cues to test this with Coleman. Previously, Andrea was looking at a photo of the Governor's family and then looked at herself in the mirror (basically pointing out the likeness).

Perhaps the Governor took such an interest in Andrea because she fit the parameters of the experiment. He tells her his first name and draws her close because he wants to use her as a test subject to see if she triggers a trace memory in his daughter. He doesn't care about her, he's using her.

At the end of episode, Andrea tells him the experiment failed. He says, "It's alright, it's over now." Yeah, for Andrea. She's dispensable now.

I didn't pay super close attention to the last episode, but Merle originally wanted to be taken back to Rick's group, right? It seems like it might have been tactically smarter for Glen and Maggie to take him back to the prison, where he could be pretty easily dispatched. Make him their prisoner rather than the other way around, in other words.

That's assuming that he doesn't shoot/stab them as soon as he figures out where they're taking him, and then take the info back to the Guv'nor. He wanted to see his brother, but once he could figure out where his brother was at I have no doubt he'd find Glen and Maggie dispensable.

Glenn's experience of Merle is that he's a bit mental, so he was understandably reticent about taking Merle anywhere and then Merle draws on him and Maggie anyway, making the whole question redundant.

Merle's a racist, misogynist psychopath. He wanted to know if Daryl was alive and have Glenn and Maggie take him to where he was at. When they were non-compliant, he went native on their asses, and even though I think Glenn should have shot him on sight, I can understand why he didn't. The shock of the whole scene, the weird metal prosthetic, the chance Merle might actually be better than before (as he claimed during the standoff), it's all shit that would mess with anyone's head. Glenn doesn't like to kill live people. Yeah, he's regretting it now, and both he and Maggie should have double-checked for a second gun, but again, I understand.

That said, I would not be sad if either Glenn or Daryl put an icepick through his fucking skull.

More like left handed man, AMIRITE?

Well that was an unexpected twist right at the end.

Ten points to Glenn for the zombie-shiv. I'm surprised we didn't get hashtag #armed&dangerous out of that one.

And I was wondering when Merle lying about killing Michonne was going to come back to bite him. Now we know.

Oh I think I called it somewhere that Murl and Durl were gonna meet in a brother on brother showdown, but I didn't think it would be at the zombie brawl death circle.....better than a cage match!

I think this is a setup to get Merle on the inside at the prison.

Hey writers, it's ok to have more than one black guy in the group at a time.

Also, Michonne needs to either start talking to people or die.

Really, TWD? A half-hour machine gun shootout at ranges of <50 yards with nobody getting hit except for the black guy that nobody cared about?

On today's episode of The Call of Walking Duty . . .


Was it just me or shouldn't that glass shard have done a lot more damage the way she jammed it up in there?

I knew people would say something about that scene....the old "A-Team" type of shootout, few thousand rounds fired and nobody hit!

No possible way. Merle lied to the Governor about Michonne, which resulted in the Governor's loss of his daughter and one of his eyes.

Merle is fucking toast, the only question is whether him being cut loose by the Governor is enough to make him suck up to Rick's gang sufficiently to have his sins forgiven.

Come on, they even talked about it during the episode, albeit from a POV of convincing Dale to do it. I suspect that there was a scene we didn't see where they came up with this idea.

I guess we'll see, but if there's one thing the Guv'ner don't play around with, it's his zombie-daughter.

I kept expecting Michonne to push the zombie girl to the Guv'ner and then slice them both in half while he hugged/fended her. How she practically lost a fight against an unarmed man when she had a captive and her katana is beyond me.

Athryn, can you clarify a bit? I'm not following you. I'm not disagreeing - just not understanding. :)

The writers have some obvious women issues. To the point where they leave the prison in charge of a little boy and a hobbled old man because the women there are dead weight. To the point where they've passed the baton for most hate-worthy character from Lori straight to Andrea. The the point where the women are little more than victims for the men to rescue. I guess they think Michonne offsets this because she's such an incredibly self-sufficient badass. They must not have noticed that she's annoyingly one-dimensional and turns incredibly stupid on a dime.

I was really liking this season up until this episode, but the drama for the sake of drama is beyond old. They constantly bend over backwards to keep Andrea from finding out that her old group is still around and to keep Michonne from killing anyone important. That scene where Maggie had an SMG on Merle just killed me. Why she wouldn't have instantly killed him at that point defies all explanation other than the show needed to keep him around.

That was exactly my idea. She totally should've used the zombie as a weapon then took them both out. Dumb move, Michonne. Dumb move.

She means Daryl, not Dale. Merle and the Guvnor discussed Daryl become their man on the inside and helping them to clear Rick's group out of the prison once they (they being the Woodbury gang) had the lie of the land.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode but there was some dumb stuff and I was a bit dismayed when Oscar got shot because he was shaping up to be a good character. It's cool though, they have another burly black dude to take his place.

There was a point during the episode where the Gov and Merle mentioned getting Daryl (sorry I said Dale before) to help them by being the inside guy. It was kind of a throwaway line, but the moment I saw the scene where the Governor calls Merle a traitor, it stuck in my brain. What better way to establish cred for an inside person?

Edit: or what Dermot said. My apologies, I always get people's names on this show mixed up.

Ahh. Yeah, the Dale thing threw me. Thanks.

To be fair, up to this point it was always a tie.

That season finale was pretty terrible.

Yeah, this season was shaping up to be pretty great when it comes to dealing with walkers as the main villains, because they're dumb and they make the characters seem relatively smart. However, when they do human on human they seem to get lost - it's like they need at least one side of each equation to be completely braindead to make their plots work.

You have these characters that have time and again shown themselves to be incredibly efficient marksmen - able to headshot walker after walker - but they can't even tag someone on an open street? It's such a pathetic bait and switch to build up characters for two seasons and then force them to be aimlessly incompetent because you can't figure out how to write a plot with two brain-thinky groups pitted against each other. This bodes extremely poorly for the remainder of the season, because they're setting up to have the rest of it be chock full of what they're least good at writing well.

They've had some episodes this season that have left me jonesing for the next episode, but this "winter finale" just leaves me bleh. I really don't give a shit about this tribal loyalty stuff - Who will Durl side with? Who will Murl side with? Who will T-Dawg III side with? Who will Andrea side with? Trick question! No one cares!

I must have watched a different show. I loved how the season concluded by reminding everyone that in the end biters are biters.. like any other dangerous animal.. But people, people are always the real danger.

To be fair, a lot of the Grimes Gang's shots were finding their mark and walkers arguably make easier targets because their movements are predictable.

I don't hate Andrea the way everyone else seems to but the 'tension' around whether or not she'll realise just how far off his rocker The Guvnor is and how close she is to her original crew is frustrating. It really makes you appreciate how tidy 'Homelands' is when it comes to that kind of thing. The bit were Andrea was asking the Guvnor to give her a gun and let her do what she does best was sort of like Andrea asking the writers to do the same thing.

Walkers are slow, easy targets. Also, the gunfight in Woodbury was effectively in the dark. Ain't NOBODY making headshots in the dark while trying to scramble for cover.

Such a refreshing zompocalypse perspective. And brought off with such nuance. Yeesh.

Also, is there any reason Michonne didn't tell Andrea that she'd found Andrea's old group? At all?

That bothered me as well, but does she know it's her old group?

Edit - I've a feeling she does, or should because of the Merle/Daryl link, but I honestly can't remember if she was privy to any of the conversations between Merle and Andrea about Daryl.

Also, she really needs to start trusting someone, otherwise a potentially great character is going to be squandered. I think we were starting to see something stirring in her at the end of the episode when she was pleading with Rick to let her help them rescue Daryl but that could be because she has a score to settle with the Guvnor.

They traveled together for quite some time. I'm guessing Andrea at least mentioned them.

I wouldn't bet on it, since Michonne never seems to have a conversation that lasts longer than "no."

True, but this show is suffering from the same problem that ultimately killed 'Lost' for me: people just don't tell each other anything. Remember that episode of 'Lost' when two characters spent a day or two putting slips of papers into plastic cylinders and then inserting them into vacuum tubes because they thought it was really important for some reason? And then two other characters were wandering along and came across a big pile of plastic cylinders with slips of paper in them, beside the egress of a vacuum tube? And later on when they were back at the beach, no one felt compelled to say something like "man, guess what we came across in the middle of nowhere today?" or "dude, you won't believe what we've been doing all day?"

Biters, eh? How very... Woodbury of you. Whose side you on anyway?

I do appreciate that the writers put those words in Maggie's mouth in case they were failing to represent the message through the storytelling.

She should have been able to at least connect the dots. Andrea knew Merle, Merle knew Glenn.

That was disappointing.

I went along with the TV-guvernor, because the one in the comics was just a psycho, so I thought they were going for a more nuanced character. Instead they just decided to make him vague and unclear on motivation... well, now it's revenge, but why. Because Michonne "killed" his daughter and tried to kill him as revenge for... what exactly? In the comic book there was no doubt why killing the govenor was very important to her. It was one dimensional, but it made sense.
Here she just tried because... and failed spectacularly even though he'd laid down his weapons.

Stupid people with bizarre motivation does not drama make.

... and even though I saw the new group entering the prison, I thought the screams were the series take on another pivotal scene from the comic book. I don't trust the prisoner with the weird beard. But alas, it was just walkers and new people... probably so there's some cannon fodder for when Woodbury attacks.

I feel like Kirkman is pretty good at the big picture (survivors find a prison, idyllic small town actually run by deranged tyrant) but not at the details. I stopped reading the comic in part because it was so verbose and the dialog was so bad. I noted that he wrote this episode and many of the problems cited with it (crappy shootout, Michonne vs. Gov, everything involving Andrea) fall into the category of details. This is not intended as an excuse. It is also not a comprehensive explanation because the black guy revolving door is a big picture thing and is both really obvious and really dunb.

So netflix recently got Season 2, and I finished it, and I realize I'm way behind. But hell, they really manage to make so many of the characters unlikeable.

Spoilers for season 2, which is what, 2 seasons behind?