The Walking Dead

The whole tension with Milton biting was a pointless waste of suspence.

Rick Grimes is still one of 10 men who seems to grow facial hair in this universe.

The only people who don't bother to shave, more like.

Great way to wind up with face mites, dude. ew.

See in the comic it made sense because Rick had this greater, sociological mindset to him, and he was purposefully emulating Alexandria's previous leader... or something like that.

I don't know, I prefer this to the way he looked in the comic post-Saviors.

And we got a trailer.

Where are they...

Depends on the they

No, seriously, what did you mean by "they?" Where is Team Alexandria? They're in Alexandria-Hilltop-Sanctuary which is somewhere in Virginia.

On a different note "Andrew Lincoln explains why he's leaving the show." But not only that, Reality Ensues in Season 9. Here's a snippet from that same article:

This might be this show's last chance to impress anybody ever again. They're finally down to the wire and I'm sort of interested in the battles were going to see from here on out. They're at Battlestar Galactica Season 4 levels of screwed.

The only way they can mess this up is by discovering some kind of magic animal that craps bullets and gasoline.

Edited by Soble on Jul 31st 2018 at 5:00:17 AM

Mad Max did okay on that premise.

Except Mad Max had badass cars and leather gimps doing cartwheels.

Why is Battlestar Galactica S4 screwed?

I have no interest in S9. As far as I'm concerned, the show peaked with S5 (mini-arcs, introduction of new factions/enemies, lots of payoffs for the main group coming into contact with another community), and everything since the S7 premiere has been diminishing returns. They never should have killed off Carl - that was unforgivable.

If the spoilers are true for this season, I'm glad I'm not sticking around. Reads like fanfic.

Edited by crazyrabbits on Aug 15th 2018 at 1:46:06 PM

Welcome to Supernatural Syndrome.

This happened btw...

Call it stockholm syndrome but I still think there's enough material here to keep me interested. I want to see what becomes of Team Rick before we shift over to Team Daryl. If they actually have the balls to have Alpha and the Whisperers mount Rick, Michonne, Maggie, and the other canonical leads on a fence, forcing the understudies/B-list characters to rise up and be important - I'll keep watching. If they don't, and Rick gets a lame, idiotic death well...

I might genuinely be done with this franchise. I won't stick around for another 5-7 years of memes that spawn from The Walking Daryl and Fear the Morgan. I'm especially salty over the latter since they killed off a cast of characters who were becoming interesting - and it reeks of Scott Gimple's influence and new showrunners having no idea what to do with the existing cast.

Edited by Soble on Aug 16th 2018 at 4:20:56 AM

^ Several spoilers for the first half of the season have already leaked from the SpoilTheDead fansite. I'll summarize them here, but I warn you, this is major, major stuff. Don't read on if you don't want to be spoiled.

Seriously. Major.

- There are two timeskips. One is a year that passes between the end of S8 and the beginning of S9. The second is a major time jump (approx. five to seven years) that takes place at some point in the season.

- The obvious one: Andrew Lincoln was last seen filming in episode 9x05. There's speculation based on set photos that he goes out sacrificing himself to save other group members from a herd (possibly by blowing himself up with dynamite as he runs into them), but no one's certain. There are also set pics showing that the camper Heath and Tara had to abandon in S7 shows up again, and there are rumors that Heath may be back in some capacity.

- Gregory is killed off in 9x01 by the Hilltop's blacksmith, Earl Sutton, after he conspires to take out Maggie and Enid.

- Prominent Saviors Arat and Regina both die at some point (possibly in episode 9x03/9x04).

- Aaron loses an appendage at one point (either a hand or his entire arm) in episode 9x03 or 9x04.

- Henry (from the Kingdom) takes over the plotline Carl would have had with Lydia in the comics.

- Negan gets out of his cell at some point during the season and goes to live in the woods near one of the communities.

- Don't believe it myself, but there are multiple sources on SpoilTheDead corroborating a claim that Carol and Ezekiel are revealed to be married in one episode, although it's unclear if their wedding takes place on-screen or if it's revealed in an off-the-cuff way.

- Jesus dies in episode 8 or 9 to the Whisperers. The exact nature of his death hasn't been given yet.

Edited by crazyrabbits on Aug 16th 2018 at 2:56:59 PM

Yeah I'm - not the biggest fan of reading or believing leaks so I can judge an entire season of something before I've seen of it, so I'm going to politely decline. Reading leaks and discussing them morally offends me somewhat.

Wow. So much for a new beginning. Same old killing off cast.

I found this amusing.

With the show coming back who got the worst death? I'd say poor old Patrick. Dying from flu blood flooding his lungs, dropping on the shower floor with no one to help, and seeing his walker body...

I have only seen up to season 2's fourth episode, "Cherokee Rose", so I will have to say Amy. Not only bitten on the hand and neck, spilling loads of blood, but while she is dying, she could only look at Andrea's devastated expression. She couldn't even say goodbye to her older sister due to her wounds!

On the other hand, the most horrifying thing I have seen on the show was Carl being conscious when Hershel was performing surgery to remove the bullet from the former's chest. This was in season 2 episode 2, "Bloodletting". His pained screams struck a chord in my heart, and I couldn't even speak at the time.

And one last thing. Do things get even worse in future seasons? And this does not refer to the show's quality, but the horror factor that our survivors will face.

In a sense.

The show doesn't really get "scarier" if you ask me because the largest bombs - that everyone is infected, there are roving bands of murderers and cannibals and rapists around, there isn't a huge gas supply, and that there's a much larger army of trained killers wandering around - have already been dropped by Season 2. The show's budget/writing since Season 1 has changed in such a way that the walkers aren't really as terrifying and each character becomes so badass/generic that nobody is truly affected by how grotesque their Crapsack World is anymore - it makes it hard to relate or consider the "horror factor" when the protagonists don't really seem bothered anymore.

Compare Andrea and most of the Season 1-3 group's reactions to the Season 6-8 group's. One of my strongest memories from this show is when Maggie kills a SWAT team walker in the prison - she looks genuinely excited that she pulled it off because at this time, we'd never seen anyone kill a walker this impressively or one that was so hard to kill. At another point, Rick literally tears the face off of a walker after removing a piece of its headgear, and he's visibly disturbed by this because, yeah, he just ripped the flesh off of its face by accident. By Seasons 7 and 8 this sort of thing is irrelevant and the "Body Horror" factor is somewhat lost.

There is a moment in Season 7 when Rick has to fight a walker bare-handed while said walker is covered in spikes, and the atypical nature of the fight kind of evokes the feeling of the early seasons whenever someone had to deal with walkers in a roundabout way. For the first time in awhile a single walker has been a massive threat to someone.

Unfortunately the show's quality plays a lot into the horror/scare factor. The most horrifying aspects I think, and spoilers ahead, were or should have been the appearance of The Saviors and how random and cruel their attacks were, which was good, but most would probably agree that Season 6, 7, and 8 was a colossal waste of time and that the Savior arc was too drawn out. But when you see Team Rick/Alexandria get outmaneuvered and surrounded by this tenacious enemy group for the first time, combined with the creepy leitmotif they have going on, it creates a tension the show can't normally give with gore and violence alone.

The junk people were supposed to be eerie and unexpected, but the lack of explanation and their overall design made them a bizarre and unflattering group of characters who were summarily killed off in the following season.

There's a scene in Season 8 where the antagonists start using the infection itself as a weapon, coating bullets and blades in guts so that anyone shot or stabbed is done for no matter what. This is a pretty terrifying concept that would have shaken up the status quo, but this, again, comes at a time when the show's quality is such that most of the critics would rather focus on the glass being half empty. Why didn't they do this before? Why are the villains such idiots? Okay we saw this mess up the good guy team, but then we just stop using this tactic all together?

There's some obvious Adult Fear with characters like Carl, Lizzie, and Mika - the latter two were well-written and do, in fact, make the show a little harder to watch. Carl, however, is played by an actor who noticeably ages, and it gets to be a little awkward how most of the cast either ignore him or treat him like a kid when he's about the same height as Andrew Lincoln. This was kind of an unavoidable problem.

This upcoming season is introducing walkers that can talk - which raises some profound questions about what the protagonists have been doing all this time when the walkers actually are capable of intelligence. If you've read the comic (or just found a few spoilers online) then you already know what the story behind this is. In the comic this moment raises the HSQ, it's sudden, it's new, it warps the seemingly established rules of this apocalyptic setting.

But, yet again, the show writes most of our characters with less feeling and nuance, so it's difficult to say that this makes things "worse." I can't see TV Rick or anyone from the cast really caring or thinking about the walkers as anything more than a threat.

Things do get worse for the heroes (especially now - they've got no gas, no cars, and ammunition is low again, plus there's some in-fighting going on), but it's easy to forget that when most of the characters are Bad Ass, hardened people who don't feel or emote anything.

Edited by Soble on Sep 22nd 2018 at 4:55:02 AM

It took a tineskip for the show to feel somewhat fresh again.

New intro for season 9 has been released. It's such a breath of fresh air...

Note: Anyone notice the noose as a comic reference, where Gregory was executed by Maggie after he tried to poison her and steal her leadership?