Walking Dead Thread V.3

[Jerjo]

Klonk, I had problems with that too. But then I remembered that she had already blown a couple holes in that tank and it was leaking a big stream of gas. All she had to do was place that rocket in the vicinity to spark it.

[dropforge]

Klonk, I had problems with that too. But then I remembered that she had already blown a couple holes in that tank and it was leaking a big stream of gas. All she had to do was place that rocket in the vicinity to spark it.

With the size of the emission, the "aim" wasn't as critical as was the spark.

[Plasmatopia]

With the size of the emission, the "aim" wasn't as critical as was the spark.

That's what she said.

[dropforge]

[Man In The Mountain]

Zombies are from a cult "B" movie genre, that really focused on being overly gratuitous. They were not movies your Mom & Dad would watch, and certainly not suitable for TV at all. You watched them secretly with your buddies, late at night, while being stoned. What I really love about The Walking Dead, is that they consistently step up to the plate to be true to the original Zombie movie genre. Everything from the (preferred) slow lumbering zombies, to the ripping out of human flesh by hungry zombies, to the crazy "B actor" characters, and end of the world misery.

The one thing that will make this show fail overnight, is by cutting the camera away before they cut the guys throat. If it wasn't gratuitous, you might as well spend a few million bucks on it, put Brad Pit in it, and make it PG-13. Then you would have an A grade Hollywood movie, and not a B. Not that WWZ wasn't cool, but it wasn't of the same ilk as TWD.

I mean, we're talking about a show that had a little boy "Carl" shoot his mother in the head just a moment after she gave birth. But, blood squirting from some guys neck is over the top?

If The Walking Dead is too gratuitous, then the show might not be for you.

[nosebone]

It' not the gore that bothers me about TWD, it's the soap opera looking actors with great haircuts & nice clothes.

[dropforge]

It' not the gore that bothers me about TWD, it's the soap opera looking actors with great haircuts & nice clothes.

Yeah, Andrew Lincoln always looks like he just filmed a shampoo commercial and that Norman Reedus somehow maintains that "just walked out of Supercuts" look.

Not.

[WytchCrypt]

Yeah, Andrew Lincoln always looks like he just filmed a shampoo commercial and that Norman Reedus somehow maintains that "just walked out of Supercuts" look.

Not.

Darrel looks like he hasn't washed his hair since the plague hit

[TheLoony]

Darrel looks like he hasn't washed his hair since the plague hit

Yet, if they killed him off, they would have no female viewers after that. Go figure.

[Jerjo]

My wife has a button pinned to the wall above her Daryl action figure. It reads "If Daryl Dies, We Riot".

[nosebone]

Yeah, Andrew Lincoln always looks like he just filmed a shampoo commercial and that Norman Reedus somehow maintains that "just walked out of Supercuts" look.

Not.

Then look at the girls.

In a zombie holocaust hell, men would be unshaven cavemen with beards down to there knees and most women dead or trembling in caves.

[dropforge]

Then look at the girls.

In a zombie holocaust hell, men would be unshaven cavemen with beards down to there knees and most women dead or trembling in caves.

That show would last one season, so roll with it, baby.

[dropforge]

"Most women dead or trembling in caves"...people, we got a HATER!!!

[nosebone]

"Most women dead or trembling in caves"...people, we got a HATER!!!

Not a hater. Just a lover of a great BAD show.

[SteveSly]

Not a hater. Just a lover of a great BAD show.

I think you just hit the nail on the head. Since they are both on Sunday nights I often watch The Walking Dead and HBO’s Boardwalk Empire back to back. In terms of writing and acting there is no comparison. Walking Dead is not even close to the same level as most HBO productions or the better TMC shows (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc.). But………as you say The Walking dead has something that keeps you interested. In the same way that I used to enjoy films by Roger Corman, John Carpenter and others of their ilk, even though Walking Dead does not have the best writing or acting in the world, it does have that “X” factor that somehow makes it great, even though it is not really that great.

[dropforge]

I'll be SO glad when this Mad Men crap is finally over. Then I won't have to sit through those friggin' commercials. Dudes in suits smoking cigs. Wow.

[SteveSly]

I'll be SO glad when this Mad Men crap is finally over. Then I won't have to sit through those friggin' commercials. Dudes in suits smoking cigs. Wow.

I enjoy Mad Men for it’s portrayal of what business life was like in the 60’s, and how much things have changed in some ways and not changed at all in others. On the other hand the soap opera aspect of the show gets a bit much sometimes (not unlike the Walking Dead in some ways). I think it has gone downhill a bit the last few seasons, but I am still interested to see how they wrap it all up this year.

[JKL2000]

Agree with what everyone's said - a great season opener. I thought the firework aiming was pretty suspect too. But who cares !

I read a funny Tweet today that someone had sent to a hashtag about New Yorker's complaints or something like that: "If the zombie apocalypse ever happens, it won't be the hunger for human flesh that kills me, it'll be all the slow walking.

LOL

[Hal...]

I thought the graphic nature of the scene was commentary on the ruthlessness of the Terminians to demonstrate their rapid evolution from the altruistic communitarians they were "then" to the heartless cannibals there are "now"

The shot of the blood running down to the drain was about the only thing excellent in that scene. That, the four dead guys leaning over the trough with blood dripping from their necks, and the nonchalance displayed by the butchers would have sufficed to show their devolution, imo. Indeed, I would argue that by leaving everything implied but letting the foley artists and sound designers do their job, the effect on the viewer would have actually been worse by letting you empathize, rather than sympathize, and by not focusing on the blood spurt.

On many other shows such a scene could be labeled as gratuitous, but I give the producers and writers of TWD more credit than most and they have frequently used violence to make a point, develop a character, and/or support a concept.

Really? I don't give them much credit for anything. Case in point: the woman comes up behind Carol and tells her to drop her weapons. She drops the crossbow but turns quickly as she fires the assault rifle. The woman ducks and drops her gun in the process. The gun, btw, slides across the floor a couple of feet. But, rather than holding the gun on her and telling her to freeze or simply popping a cap in her ass, Carol runs over to kick the gun away putting her in dangerous proximity of the woman which then results in the woman jumping her. WTF?
And, as others have commented on, Carol's amazing aim with the bottle rocket. No, the shot of the throat being slit was simply pushing the envelope on the kind of violence shown on TV (thus, making it gratuitous). I don't have a problem with violence but let's be honest about what it was. At no time in the history of TWD have we seen anything like that. I noticed it immediately. It's no different than actors swearing on cable shows. Again, I have no problem with that, but it's the evolution of cable networks working toward emulating HBO, which is not a bad thing. I just think TWD becoming splatter porn is a step in the wrong direction.

I mean, we're talking about a show that had a little boy "Carl" shoot his mother in the head just a moment after she gave birth. But, blood squirting from some guys neck is over the top?

Wow, if you don't know the difference...

If The Walking Dead is too gratuitous, then the show might not be for you.

It's either gratuitous or it isn't. "Too gratuitous" doesn't exist. As for gore, like I said before, it doesn't bother me. I watch Hannibal, a show that almost makes TWD look like a kids' Saturday morning cartoon.

...even though Walking Dead does not have the best writing or acting in the world, it does have that “X” factor that somehow makes it great, even though it is not really that great.

I couldn't have said it better.

[Facelift]

One could argue that in The Walking Dead the first throat slash was the set-up. The only problem is that the blood spurts onto the camera lens which is not a point of view of any of the characters. The rhythmic spurting of blood from the neck as the heart continued beating was, I admit, a nice touch albeit over the top. But the whole thing was nothing more than splatter porn which, by definition, is gratuitous.

Agreed. But then again, as someone else pointed out, WD is not a very good show. It is, however, a really watchable bad show. So, gratuitous violence with feebly artistic pretensions? Par for the course, and I fully expect more where that came from!

[dropforge]

The shot of the blood running down to the drain was about the only thing excellent in that scene. That, the four dead guys leaning over the trough with blood dripping from their necks, and the nonchalance displayed by the butchers would have sufficed to show their devolution, imo. Indeed, I would argue that by leaving everything implied but letting the foley artists and sound designers do their job, the effect on the viewer would have actually been worse by letting you empathize, rather than sympathize, and by not focusing on the blood spurt.

"Less is more" has only been applied in this show wherever a budgetary constraint has presented itself, i.e. the episodes where loads of people complained there was too much yakkin' and not enough hackin.' That was because of AMC's suits. Obviously the point of the throat slashes — and the perspective we got via the camera eye — was meant to shock, and it worked. This isn't art house cinema, it's not Cronenberg, it's not a Hammer film. It's The Walking Dead, which takes everything that came before it in the genre and processes it through a new filter.

As for gore, like I said before, it doesn't bother me. I watch Hannibal, a show that almost makes TWD look like a kids' Saturday morning cartoon.

I felt the throat slashing scene was pushing the envelope and just flat out gratuitous.

So which is it?

The Italian zombie movies of the '70s-'80s were just as gory, if not more so. Guys like Lucio Fulci didn't hold back. Fulci made an actress swallow a bunch of sausage links so that when she regurgitated them it appeared as though she vomited her intestines. IMO, where I think the splatter genre went too far was in films like Cannibal Holocaust where they killed real animals because their budget was so thin they couldn't afford prosthetics. THAT is fucked up. A fake fucking throat slash? Damn, we've seen that before. I thought I Spit On Your Grave was more provocative when I first watched it in 1989.

[Facelift]

The Italian zombie movies of the '70s-'80s were just as gory, if not more so. Guys like Lucio Fulci didn't hold back. Fulci made an actress swallow a bunch of sausage links so that when she regurgitated them it appeared as though she vomited her intestines. IMO, where I think the splatter genre went too far was in films like Cannibal Holocaust where they killed real animals because their budget was so thin they couldn't afford prosthetics. THAT is fucked up. A fake fucking throat slash? Damn, we've seen that before. I thought I Spit On Your Grave was more provocative when I first watched it in 1989.

I think his point was probably not that such things had never been done before, but that he was disappointed that the show chose to stoop to the level of the films which had done them.

[Klonk]

Guys like Lucio Fulci didn't hold back. Fulci made an actress swallow a bunch of sausage links so that when she regurgitated them it appeared as though she vomited her intestines.

Gates of Hell...classic!

[dropforge]

I think his point was probably not that such things had never been done before, but that he was disappointed that the show chose to stoop to the level of the films which had done them.

Yes, it's on its way to becoming splatter cinema.

[Man In The Mountain]