I would like to subscribe to your newsletter sir!
Really though, where are all the people? All the walkers? All the dead bodies? Did all of the non-survivors shamble off down the 405 to San Diego? Did they ferry all the walkers over to Catalina Island? There would be hordes and hordes of zombies just milling about, waiting to chomp down on whatever’s available. This is the version of L.A. that I would love to drive around in because damn, it’d only take me 30 minutes to get across town!
Presumably the sixth episode is totally unrelated to the characters we’ve seen so far and just details the construction and operation of a powerful catapult the military has been using to launch anything alive or dead across the continent to Atlanta.
This episode was mostly a crash and burn for me. That scene with the sniper rifle, Travis couldn’t just tell the commander that “Hey, you guys are acting like you’re hiding something, that’s what’s causing the problems. All we want is to know what’s going on with our family members.”?
And that’s what bothers me so much. The military guys are doing their best to deny these people any information. Why? How hard would it be to let people talk on the radio to their loved ones IF nothing bad is going on at that hospital? The show has gone all in on the military guys being evil, even taking bribes(!), and for no good reason. If Nick talked to his mom once a day it does not harm the military operation one bit. It’s so contrived it’s pitiful.
Another thing, the daughter of the barber comes out of the torture room acting as if she’s seen the guy skinned alive. Then we see him and he’s sitting there talking rationally and not looking all that bad. If it wasn’t for the bandage on his arm you wouldn’t know he was even hurt. What was she all upset about?
If the barber opens those doors and leads them back to the military guys like the Pied Piper of zombies, I’ll be placated.
I think they should just rename this to “Missed Opportunities of the Walking Dead”. Pretty much what Slainte said on the previous page. They’ve got all the makings of a great “fall of civilization” story here, and the show is doing its damnedest to NOT show any of that, aside from a great snippet here and there (the “drive past the hospital” scene and the highway emergency response workers being attacked scene). It’s very frustrating.
Still out after Ep 3…no regrets. Hope the regular WD show carries a little better.
When your hook is, “The Walking Dead Without Skipping Over How it All Went Down”, and then do your damnedest to skip over all of how it went down, you’ve failed. Failed on your premise, failed to the viewers, the writers failed, the producers failed. Yes, there are some nice bits strewn about here and there, but we get that and more from the original series. It’s, as noted, Walking Dead West, but with new characters we don’t particularly care about, not just because they are new, but that they really aren’t very interesting characters in the first place. How civilization got to the state of things in episode 4/5 is a complete mystery. From so few walkers that absolutely no one, not a news agency, not a blogger, pretty much no one beyond conveniently mysterious pointed looks and guarded comments - no one was picking up on it. And then suddenly almost all of Los Angeles is overrun and wiped out. it’s just aggravating. I’ll limp through to the finish for this season, but I doubt I’ll be back next season.
I suspect the show has a really, really low budget. 80% of the episodes are filmed in generic suburban houses/sets. The FX budget must be dinky, since we’ve seen like two zombies between all the episodes.
At least they introduced the Most Interesting Man in the World last episode. He was the best thing about it.
I would have loved to have them evacuate the city at the end of the season. Move East to Primm or something. Military leaves in an organized fashion. “City is too infested to defend the safe zones. We need to pull back”. Now you’re in a safe spot, feeling safe in what seems like a good place to be. The last episode ends with a fly-away from Primm, following I-10, coming to rest at Bakersfield, pulling back to show half of L.A. County slouching to the East.
Season 2. Primm seems safe, but you’ve lost the bread-basket of the West. How do you handle all these evacuees with no supplies coming in? And coming very slowly is 6 million zombies in a horde, moving East, devouring everything in their path. Reports of small hold-out communities being overrun. Our family from SoCal is literally starving. Water is a precious commodity that is traded like money. People start to die and turn inside the perimeter. The military decides they have lost containment and that no supplies are forth-coming. They make the call to begin another evacuation East. “The Vegas horde has moved South, suggest you take Northern routes”. etc…
Instead we’ll get “Real Walking Dead of Orange County” in season 2. The family will be on their own with maybe a few of the 600 people from the town with them. Having Walking Dead with different characters filling the same general roles. (El Salvador guy will obviously be the Shane of this group. Kim will be Shane Jr. Dad will be Rick - start off nice, eventually do “what has to be done”)
No longer have the energy to craft the missives I did after the early episodes - I just feel deflated after the past 2 episodes - agree with what you guys are saying, particularly Wholly and Tin, even though their satisfaction with the show varies.
The only things I liked about the how were:
- as Tin said, the scene in the office building and the strain among the guardsmen at least showed SOME explanation for how the military could fall apart through attrition and flagging morale. But it could just be done so much better, and the amount of time that’s past is too telescoped - the 9 day jump that resulted in the complete collapse of LA already seemed too abbreviated, but this episode is literally the next day from the previous one and the soldiers that seemed capable and content yesterday are now completely frazzled and on the verge of insta-abandoning everything? You can’t just say that things have deteriorated that badly and only show the audience 1 zombie during 48 hours, and nowhere near the safe area.
You can’t just say “we’ve been up 50 hours” when you depicted the same guys a day ago playing golf, as if they’d rather stand around and watch some 200 yard drives from the CO instead of using the opportunity to nap for 6 hours. You can’t just show soldiers cavorting and romantically trying to pick up locals if they’re supposed to have been up 50 hours and panicked, on the verge of mass murder. You can’t just show hospital staff and soldiers arranging for an “urgent” midnight extraction of the sick or mentally struggling civilians for the benefit of the community, and then waste hours trying to treat them, if they’re already planning to abandon (and murder them!) shortly. Really poorly done.
-
“Cobalt” and having El Salvador suddenly abide by House Bolton’s banner a couple of blocks from the other soldiers, who would clearly come to get him promptly and yet El Salvador didn’t even seem to contemplate that possibility, as he casually disrobed and recited outtakes from his speech in The Counselor. Hola. Such awful, lazy, lazy writing.
-
the only other thing I liked was the Auschwitz “salesman” dude. He’s a good cast addition. Despite my disdain for El Salvador’s plan, his reveal of his history was a genuine surprise and he’s a great actor. The father also continues to grow on me as a character, as well as his first wife. But nobody is truly likable on the show the remaining characters are being polarized in the opposite direction - the wife gets less likable every scene. The daughter is fine/good but pretty bland so far, and the fact that I prefer Johnny Heroin Depp better than the other son shows how poor the material they’re getting to work with has been. Heroin kid was o.k. in this episode, and I have sort of liked him in the show even though his destructive nature is annoying, but he’s not exactly a joy to watch.
Mok chose a good time - the exact second of the show’s collapse was at the end of episode 3 when some random national guardsman fast-roped down a helicopter and fired a pinpoint headshot at the Japanese gardener from 50 feet away in the nick of time. That was a laughable moment and the show has continued to decline since then.
That all said - I still find it watchable and interesting, and certainly better than the Strain. I wish there were more good moments detailing the collapse of society, as I could forgive a lot for more scenes like the hospital drive-by and the on-ramp confrontation. I also still like how the zombies themselves are being depicted compared on on the parent show (more frightening and creepy), but it’s absurd how little we’ve seen of them in the past 2 episodes. It’s just becoming more Day of the Dead-quality when it started as Dawn of the Dead-quality.
o.k., I guess I had a missive left.
Wow, I hadn’t even put that together. That’s a great point.
Well, I took “we’ve been up for 50 hours” to mean just that one squad or whatever. Possibly multiple squads. But not everybody. And obviously the CO will order people to watch him play golf because. . . yeah that one’s much harder to sell.
I shouldn’t need to come up with a way that comment makes sense. It’s easy to convey this stuff by having civilians accidentally overhear things like “man, these extended shifts are really getting to me?” “You shouldn’t complain, you got 4 hours sleep last night. I hear Bravo squad hasn’t slept in over a days”, etc. Further, if you need to do some time jumping, do an ep 3 days later where things seem better at a glance - military is out patrolling a lot but their demanor is pretty good, everybody feels safer, etc - but show cracks. Then do the next ep 3-5 days after that and the cracks are clearly much wider, the lack of information flowing in to the civilian population is becoming a huge strain on their relationship with the military, etc. Instead they jumped ahead 9 days. And while the military was apparently doinf some rounding up during that time one almost got the sense they saved most of it for 9 days later. Which makes zero sense, though maybe the safe area is really big. Not that we would know, right?
The salesmen got on my nerves at the very beginning but I really liked him later, and I would agree he was the best thing in the episode.
Yeah I could listen to the salesman monologue anything, so good.
Also, Dear National Guard, how about a little better job or reinforcing them stadium doors? COME ON… I am pretty sure I saw a bamboo utensil set keeping one of them shut.
Ha ha, you guys are watching Fear the Walking Dead!
-Tom, also watching Fear the Walking Dead
If you re-watch the scene at the Colosseum, the left most door isn’t even shut. In a deleted scene a reservist mentions they just taped up signs on both doors saying “use other exits”, which the dead have obligingly tried to do. It’s the series’ social commentary.
Also, there’s nothing about the plan to unleash the undead that’s going to be satisfying at this point (I mean, IMO obviously). The however many millions of undead that should be walking around (less - being crazy generous - 200k that the military has "taken care of) but aren’t has basically ruined that.
I really wish they had done this as a 3 or 4 hour “event” movie over two nights. Throw out the extraneous shit, show the plague of Undead starting to spread out of control as society falls apart, and perhaps have it culminate with Ruben Blades opening the coliseum doors.
The more I think about things on the show, the more trouble I have understanding what the writers are trying to do. For example, the fencing around the neighborhood. We see the military staying outside the fences for the most part. Then there was supposed to be some kind of counterattack. If you’re using resources to guard the 12 pockets of survivors, that leaves fewer resources for the counterattack. Why wouldn’t you arm all the able bodied people, set them as guards, and use your troops for the attack? We saw a gun just laying there in the street, imagine how many guns(civilian) they could give people, not even counting any extra military weapons they have. They probably have far more hardware than manpower when you think about it. If they got to the point of only having a dozen groups of survivors, that implies huge losses of people.
In truth, if things are this bad, then everyone gets drafted into a last ditch army and fights for their lives alongside the military guys. That’s how this should have gone down. Imagine the parents going from trying to shield their kids from the horror in the early episodes to seeing their kids become psychotic killing machines by the season ending episode.
That film sucks because it does not have enough family dysfunction and senseless relationship drama. Who the hell would want zombie horror and apocalyptic beginnings woven with social commentary?
“This was an important place in their lives…”
Did they play Monopoly in that one? Did they? No? Case closed.