The Walking Dead season 4

That was a rather complex, 'psychology driven' episode. The guests on The Talking Dead were Chris Jericho, the wrestler, and Gillian Jacobs from 'Community' they both had interesting and insightful comments, especially Jericho who analyzed the character's motivations so thoroughly and accurately that Chris Hardwick the host said,"You should be sitting in this chair." Of course Gillian being who she is, could have just sat there without saying a word and would have been totally entertaining. But she did add some "softer" interpretations to counter Jericho's "kill them all/take no prisoners" attitude.

They think that Carol will be back, which only makes sense given that she is a major character and the potential tension between her and Tyreese would provide too much of a good plot line to ignore. Of course it's possible that Tyreese's hot headedness will get him killed soon but I think that "honor" might go to Bob next due to his moral weaknesses and subterfuge.


‘The Walking Dead’: Banished

by Sharyn Jackson | November 4, 2013 at 8:28 AM | Recap, The Walking Dead, TV News

Melissa Suzanne McBride of "The Walking Dead" (Photo: AMC)

There was very little prison action on this week’s “The Walking Dead.” Instead, those of our core characters who are not suffering from a horrible flu that causes you to drown in your own blood were wisely staying away from disease-ravaged cell block D.

Last week’s cliffhanger-ish antibiotics crew was still out pursuing the vet school, working out addiction and anger issues, and doing some minor auto repair. Meanwhile, the one-man justice system that is Rick Grimes went on a run with Carol and made a big decision about the cold-blooded murderess.

The vet school crew picks up pretty much where it left off, with Tyreese in a careless blind rage, Michonne and Daryl flirting, and Bob being at once shady and clumsy. They come across a car with a dead battery in it, and try to make their way into an auto shop by hacking through some bushes laced with Walkers. Tyreese goes all out mad on them and won’t let go of a Walker. Um, isn’t it usually the other way around? He makes it hard for Mich to take the zombie’s head off, and later, she gives Tyreese a lecture about how his anger is going to get him killed.

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In the auto shop, Daryl discovers that the attendant and family drank antifreeze and calls them douchebags for taking their own way out. Bob defends them. But then, Bob knows about strong drinks. He tells Daryl that before he met him, he had watched two complete groups die and would drink himself to sleep at night. He admits that he caused the shelf collapse that led to the ceiling collapse at the Big Spot.

Now at the vet school, the crew grabs whatever meds it can find. But instead of going back out the way they came, which seemed easy enough, they get themselves trapped by Walkers. They jump out a window onto another roof, but Bob stumbles and almost loses his satchel of meds to the Walkers below. He wrests it free and out flies a bottle of liquor. Daryl is about to toss the bottle and Bob actually threatens him by grabbing his gun. Daryl gets all up in his face and tells him he never should have picked him up on the road and welcomed him to their prison civilization.

But irresponsible alcoholism is not cause for banishment. Murder, however…

First of all, since when is Carol invited out on runs? She had to know something fishy was up the minute Rick proposed it. She says a long goodbye to sick Lizzie, who accidentally calls Carol “mom.” “Don’t call me mom,” Carol snaps. “Just don’t.” Cold as ice, that one.

Rick, who last week figured out Carol was behind the deaths of Karen and “David,” traces the steps of the murder while searching for gas to fuel up. He’s stalking around gravely and looking like he’s got some moral conflict going on inside that pretty head.

Carol and Rick’s run is really an excuse for an epic talk. She explains that killing the duo was necessary to stop the flu threat. “I had to save lives,” she says. “Somebody had to,” emphasis on “anybody but you, Rick.” I mean, she does have a point. Rick’s been farming, badly at that, gone all pacifist and stopped making decisions, except for the one where he busted his knuckles on Tyreese’s face last week. So, yes, Rick has not exactly been a Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader lately, leaving room for Carol to step up.

Carol does put herself at his level later in the conversation. She tries to tell him that the whole farming thing is stupid. “You can’t JUST be a farmer,” she says. He defends himself by saying he never murdered two of our own. Nope, “just one,” Carol says. Shane flashback! Remember that old bro? And that time Rick killed him? Awe, snap.

But Rick does prove he’s still a little in charge, when he and Carol come across two young’uns who are on the run. He decides they can come back to the prison with them, after asking the requisite three questions. He also gives them each a gun and gives the guy his watch, and says they have two hours to scavenge for food and medicine. Well, he never sees the guns or the watch again, though he and Carol do come across poor Ana’s leg after she became zombie food.

This episode is probably the final point in Carol’s evolution from battered wife to frigid sociopath. Out picking veggies, she talks about life with her abusive husband, about being afraid to be alone. She calls her deceased daughter Sophia “someone else’s slideshow.” Rick, meanwhile, still imagines Lori is there and making him and Carl some nasty sounding pancakes. And ultimately, that longing for the old life is what compels him to banish Carol from the prison.

He says it’s because Tyreese will kill her, which he probably will. And the others won’t want her there. But then he says with Carl and Judith around, HE wouldn’t want her there. Way to pull the concerned parent card, father of the year. It was only a few months ago, I believe, when Carl killed a fellow teen for no reason?

Rick divvies up the supplies, leaving Carol with the gas can she used to burn Karen and David, and sends her on her way in poor Sam and Ana’s car, with “pardon our dust” fingered onto the windows. Rick tells her to find other people, which I’m sure is a piece of cake these days. I wonder what their “three questions” are. Carol doesn’t make a huge fuss of her banishment, but she does defend herself to the end. The camera closes up on her face and the word “pardon” before she drives off.

“The Walking Dead” airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

Last night's ep was pretty good on several levels, we see The Governor reappearing right at the end, we see that some victims of the virus can survive, Glen for one, for  unknown reasons. But....there were other oddities. Yet again it was shown that trying to prop up the fence with their methods is inefficient and doomed to failure. The guy from Mythbusters on The Talking Dead had the right idea in using the prison machine shop/maint. shop (which we haven't seen) to make big, steel triangular braces to brace the fences. But......that became academic when the Walkers broke through two fence lines requiring Rick and Carl to take immediate defensive action.

Which brings us to the biggest oddity; They grab their M-16s from a big bin full of rifles (which we hadn't seen before, ditto the big bin of ammo right next to it.) And both bins are outside !  Why would they store them there to get rained on, etc ?  Because they were handier to the fences where the Walkers were massing ?  Well then, why didn't they take them down there and shoot the Walkers in the head, a more efficient process than stabbing them with spears/poles ?  Rick and Carl did demonstrate the greater efficiency of the M-16s when the Walkers broke through the second fence and they dispatched dozens and dozens, even hundreds, hard to tell, without any Walkers getting past them.

Their methods weren't the most efficient at conserving ammo though. The M-16 has three firing modes; one fires one shot for each trigger pull. The second fires three shots automatically with each trigger pull. The third keeps firing automatically as long as the trigger is held back. In the scene they seemed to be using the third option because they would fire bursts of 5-6 rounds along with single shots, and three round bursts.  But they never stopped to change the firing mode (move a small lever on the side of the gun) Since it only takes one round to the head to "kill" a Walker they should have used the single shot mode and aimed more carefully. With the three shot and auto mode the extra shots were redundant even if they all hit a Walker and there was no indication they all hit them in the head, very unlikely because the barrel moves upward with each auto-round, affecting accuracy, and is used for mainly for spraying the area with suppressive fire when individual targets are unknown. Of course firing blanks as they were during the scene there was no recoil, allowing the barrels to remain level.

The guys on The Talking Dead didn't address this 'problem'.

Valid points about the guns and ammo Banjo but I think the audience was happy to see auto fire zombie carnage.  

Over the past few weeks I have thought of various way to brace the fences as well. I do not know why they have put up with the walkers there for so long. They could have easily lured them away long before. Why do they keep showing up that fence line? Making other traps and obstacles before the fence should have been a priority.

And there is still that gang of 7200 (Nicotero's number) Walkers that they ran into on the road two eps ago.  If that mob ever makes it to the prison they will have a BIG problem.

What they need is some heavy construction equipment, bulldozers, trenching diggers, etc. They wouldn't be real easy to acquire but they have to be out there somewhere and if they had a bulldozer with a blade they could run it down along the fence line and scoop up the Walkers and push them into trenches dug by the trench diggers then cover them up.

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Info on Walking Dead spinoff

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I would think that a prequel premise would be the best way to go. Otherwise it would have sort of a 'copy cat ' feel, and just because it would be set in another location there would presumably still be many Walkers so how could they make it different ? Of course even a prequel would have Walkers but the plot lines could be different. They have some good exec. prods. and writers, and genius special effects folks so they'll probably come up with something.

It looks like The Gov. has developed some degree of human compassion. David Morrissey was on The Talking Dead last night and said that the Gov. has taken it upon himself to protect the two women and little girl that he convinced to go with him. What happens when he comes back to the prison with or without them.....?....of course he was mum about that... He said people come up to him on the street and say, "I hate you, I hope you die. " He said he's amused, it shows he's doing a good job in the role.

It must be fun playing the bad guy that everyone hates.  

These episodes featuring the Gov. and his henchmen are interesting but they do raise some questions.  From last night's episode:

There are apparently various camps out in the woods with survivors living in tents but are not bothered much by Walkers....why ? When the Gov. and his henchmen ran across that one, surrounded by barbed wire, they decided not to raid it and left. Later they returned and everyone in the camp had been killed. By whom ? Why didn't they hear anything ? How far away from the camp were they, and how long were they gone before returning ?  This timeline anomaly caused even Chris the host of the Talking Dead to be confused.

So Mitch, the Army guy who was stationed at Ft. Benning before the virus apocalypse, drives his M60 tank out to where ever the RV/ trailer camp is. Good luck with that. Where does he get the fuel ?  The M60 gets about 2-3 mpg on the road, less off road. It has a 375 gal. fuel capacity. It normally burns diesel. It can burn other types of fuel under emergency conditions for a short time. It takes a trained maintenance crew to keep it running. According to the previews he drives it over to the prison in the next ep. to threaten them. Good luck with firing the gun. If the tank sits for long periods without firing the gun, a condition presumably that Mitch's tank is in, it requires a maint. crew to exercise the recoil system by hand to prevent the dried out hydraulic seals from blowing out when the gun is fired, showering the tank crew with hot hydraulic oil.

It wouldn't have been hard for the production crew to get an M60 for those scenes. 15,000 were built and National Guard units still use them but they were replaced in the U.S. army by the Abrams tank in the 90's although the Marines did put them to good use in the initial Iraq invasion. The Israelis  and Egyptians still use them.

"Martinez" was on the Talking Dead last night. He knew 3 weeks in advance that his character would die. They showed how they filmed that  scene.

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I was thinking the same thing. How far are you going to walking in a day and not be able to hear the gunfire that kills 10 armed people camped in the woods. If you have ever been hunting you know the sound of gun fire travels for miles in open areas and even from one canyon to the next.

I would think the tank would be more for show and protection if needed. Keeping that thing running properly would be a lot of work. I'm not sure it is possible for one person to handle.

It's possible for one person to drive it but in most operations such as driving on roads, etc. they use other crew members as 'spotters' to keep it clear of other vehicles, obstacles, etc. In combat it would be buttoned up and only the driver, gunner, and crew commander would have an outside view.

Mid season finale this Sunday. Get ready now !.........

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Holy Hannah !  No one saw that coming.... Hershel has been a very popular character since early in S2. Fans were in shock.  Chris on
The Talking Dead tried to console us. It was traumatic....   Scott Wilson who plays Hershel was a guest and he said he knew Hershel's death was coming about 2 eps ago. At least Michonne took out the Gov. after he had killed Hershel. So we start the second half of the season in Feb. with two of the major characters gone.....and with the inhabitants of the prison separated in all directions, and what has become of Judith, Rick's infant daughter ?  Truly a classic and gut wrenching cliff hanger....

Also, a minor point given the other massive developments.....the tank is owned by a private collector so that's how they were able to get it. The supposed explosion and fire onboard when Darryl throws the grenade down the barrel was really done with camera angles and possibly CGI. Looking closely we can see that the fire is behind the tank. Also when they fired the round that set fire to the top of the prison tower....that would have been impossible with the tank gun because of the angles involved. They would have needed a mortar to do that.


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He's too naive. Just because we see the empty baby carrier with blood on it doesn't mean Judith is dead. It's most likely that she was taken on the bus that got away with some of the prison occupants. But Maggie, Rick, and Carl are left behind. How will they cope ?  

Great and bloody episode. I knew the governor was too crazy to make a deal and be rational. As soon as he put the sword to Hershel's throat I knew he was going to die. But before that I had no idea how things would go down. Very good cliff hanger elements.   February is too far away.

Oh I forgot to mention a theory floating around out there: Carol covered for the the troubled little girl Lizzie the older of the young sisters that named the zombies and feed them rats. That Lizzy actually killed Karen and David and Carol moved and burned the bodies to protect her. After last episode we do know that she is not afraid to kill and in doing so she saved Tyresse.

That's a reasonable theory but I'm not sure what her motive would be. At least she showed some tactical sense when shooting to save Tyreese. If the rest of them would learn to aim rather than spraying bullets, they could have hit most of the Gov's. army because they weren't hiding behind the tank all that well when advancing.

I watched some of the Breaking Bad marathon, especially the early eps, where I had forgotten some stuff.....and now will watch some early eps of The Walking Dead...

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