2041

That anger thing makes Shane sort of the anti-Glen. Glen is on the other end of the scale, his passivity and near total lack of passion(about anything) negates his smarts and resourcefulness, as far as being a leader goes.

2042

I’m not sure if the writers deliberately created that contrast, but you’re right, Glenn and Shane are opposites. Each would make a good leader except for the fact that their passions (or absence thereof) get in the way.

2043

Well, Shane also has some severe selfishness and self-interest problems that Glenn doesn’t seem to share. Shane is the embodiment of “the only important things are the things that are important to me” that you always get in these sorts of apocalypse pieces, which is a necessarily self-centered approach to the world. Glenn’s problem is more that he doesn’t value anything quite enough to motivate him to act out, I guess unless he’s got a secret to keep. Glenn has never acted in a way that was specifically harmful to any individual person. Shane shot an accomplished character actor in the leg so that he would have a big wiggly decoy while his lame ass limped to the truck, when the more rational course of action would have been for HIM, the lame one, to distract the zombies so that the able-bodied person could have the best chance to get away.

Or, to shorten that up, because that’s quite a ramble, Shane possesses an intrinsic selfishness that Glenn doesn’t reflect in any way that colors all of his actions, and it’s that selfishness that makes him not just ineffectual as a leader of men (though I would buy him as a strongarm leader of some random Chaotic Evil group of bandits robbing people for food and wimmins), but also villainous, and incapable of functioning in the group. I think that’s one of the ultimate points of his character - while all of his talents and knowledge make him mechanically well-suited to survive in this new world, his selfishness makes him incapable of doing so over any sort of long term.

2044

I think you’re over-simplifying Shane (and humanity in general). Shane’s selfishness clearly doesn’t end with him though- it extends at least to Carl, Lori, and Rick and to a lesser extent, the rest of the group. Protecting your own is a mark of a good leader (to a degree). Saying “it would have been rational” for him to sacrifice himself for Otis is ridiculous, at least from a realistic, human nature stand point. A leader who constantly looks out for others before his own is not a good leader, particularly when it is at the detriment of his own people.

I think Dave hit it on the head: Shane’s anger is what makes him a bad leader, not his instincts or his motivations, per se.

I stand by the position that neither Shane nor Rick (nor Glenn) are ideal at being the post-ZA leader. They each have their strengths and their weaknesses. Part of the draw for the show is who the viewer identifies with more and the frustration of seeing your “guy” go overboard.

In his own way, Rick’s martyr complex and inflexible morality are as detrimental as Shane’s anger. The show has set it up so that the group hasn’t paid too high a price for it (yet), but I suspect real life would be otherwise. For example, Shane’s right to say that both Carl’s injuries and Darryl’s are, at least in part, due to Rick’s insistent on a risky search with a high cost-benefit ratio. Once can’t look at the search and say that it has no cost, since they’re at the farm anyways.

2045

Do you think it would be possible for Shane to end up leaving the group and
Future event from comics spoiler

possibly end up becoming the Governor, albeit a somewhat different one from the comics?

2046

Nah. Unless they completely change that character (which I guess isn’t out of the question) but then what’s the point?

2047

No argument, and that’s the root cause of the anger and passion that I was harping on earlier. Shane has little tolerance for differing priorities and a very short fuze, not a viable combination in a leader. They’d work for a strongarm dictator, as you correctly pointed out, and it’s at least possible that the long-term survival chances of a group ruled by Shane might be higher than those of one led by Rick–it’s a fun topic to debate, at any rate.

Edit: the fact that the group was doing well under Shane’s command before Rick showed up and took control is certainly a point in Shane’s favor.

2048

Nah, Shane’s done one way or the other at some point, I suspect. Things are going to come to a head with Rick, and someone will have to die. It won’t be Rick (I predict).

2049

Wow, that was a really great episode – it fired on all the right cylinders.

Shane came across as too angry and thuggish, but his points were mostly valid, and I liked how the show went out of its way to show the conflict between his “survival at all costs” attitude and Hershel’s aversion to taking any life… without really pointing the audience at the “correct” attitude.

The actor playing Hershel (Scott Wilson) did a really good job this episode, and perhaps he did a great job all season – going from a friendly country gentleman to a vaguely creepy guy to a REALLY creepy pig-headed guy to this episode’s reluctant convert. The scene where Maggie calls out Hershel’s hypocrisy was good (Cohen as Maggie sold it well too), and Hershel’s stricken look as Shane butchers his “charges” was nice.

2050

Caught up with the last 2 episodes from my DVR, damn this season went from “just ok” to “a bit of a bore” to “epic on all cylinders”.

Sadly the next scheduled episode is in Feb of 2012.

2051

Yeah, they closed with a bang. If they had closed on that soap opera crap it might have been bad news for the show. Now, everyone is excited again. :)

2052

Awesome episode. Yeah, I’m not a fan of Dale. I’m also a little embarrassed that I didn’t see the Sophia thing coming.

2053

Man, that ending was a satisfyingly brutal conclusion to a really great setup. I also loved watching Shane look like he was about to kill everything in his path as he stomped around the whole episode (especially when he goes after Dale and the guns). Count me in the “fuck you, Dale” camp. He really got on my nerves more than usual this episode. Seriously though, that was an hour of perfect television.

2054

Well, we do have Daryl, already … but my guess is they’ll stick closer to the original on that one.

2055

I’ll assume that a character name from a years-old story isn’t spoiler territory.

You mean Merle, right? Though I think both are out. I think you’re getting The Governor (if he shows up in the series at all - in a show that desperately needs a consistent antagonist, I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t pull one of the biggest antagonists from the series, but they’ve already made serious departures, so they obviously aren’t tied to the source material) as described in the Kirkman prose book that he just released, unless the people managing the show’s broader presence are complete idiots. I would be entirely baffled if the brand managers allowed two completely different characterizations of the same critical character in realms where the normos actually involve themselves. Departing from the comic book is okay because that’s, like, maybe 500,000 to 1,000,000 total weirdos in the entire world, and they’re already smart enough to manage, like, Earth-One and Earth-Two and the Marveloids and the DCenites and time travel and there’s two different Flashes what, but normos? Dangerous.

2056

This thread is getting a lot of comic book spoilery leakage lately.

2057

Actually, I meant we already had one entirely different character (Daryl, although of course Merle would be another), and therefore it’s not hard to see further departures for those who were carried over.

2058

Who the fuck is The Governor? Stop spoiling shit from the comics. The thread you’re looking for is here.

2059

Me too. As soon as I saw the sneakers I almost started banging my head on the table - duh!

2060

If you are so spoilerphobic that an extremely vague explanation of why you don’t need to worry about the comic book spoiling the show a lot any more because it is quickly becoming impossible, and also why they must be fundamentally different by definition, you should skip this whole thing, and I apologize for the interruption, and I won’t talk about it any more, but this is why I think that nobody should really be worried about the book spoiling the show at this point.

Unless you’re planning on reading the comics, I think we’re getting well out of spoiler territory, so phobics can hopefully relax a little. They’re quickly approaching the point True Blood is at, where knowing the source material is little more than an entertaining aside to see how things are different that in no way informs future events in the series (True Blood example: Jason IS a werepanther in the books, but he specifically is not in the show). I think that there are maybe a few key scenes they’ll be replicating (one I’ve already noted, plus the end of the second hardcover, which I think is the close of issue 24, just because the framing on that shot begs for it to exist, and some stuff I haven’t read yet because my hardcovers are currently lent out as I struggle to process all my media that I think they set up with the tool kit in the very first episode this season and I believe it’s been roundly “spoiled” on any number of covers, though I could be wrong), but let’s be clear. Optimistically, this show will run for six or seven seasons. Pessimistically, three. It’s going to need to end, and the writing staff is going to want to end on a satisfying note. That right there guarantees you that the comic book doesn’t spoil the actual show. Rather than getting closer to the comic book (which is unapologetically an ongoing story that’s already got more years in it than the television show will ever have and Kirkman has said he’s got no plans to conclude any time soon), it’s only going to diverge further at this point. It has to if it’s going to be good television.

It’s different for something like Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones is trying to ape the book series, which itself has a definite ending. Somewhere in his mind, Martin knows how the story all turns out. The show won’t be deviating in any significant way from that plan. You CAN spoil that show from the books if what they’ve done with it to date is any indication. I’ll assure you that the same is not the case for The Walking Dead, which has already deviated from its source material in significant ways that crucially inform the plot and will necessarily have to continue to do so by virtue of the fact that this show will end.

explanation, which I guess I’ll tag, though I’m explaining why I don’t think it will really spoil anything

As for The Governor, he’s an antagonist, but the fact that Kirkman wrote and published an entire prose book a little over a month ago about him leads me to believe that he won’t show up at all under any of the names we would recognize, though perhaps elements of his character will show up in an antagonist in a later season. Even if he did show up, certain aspects of the character simply won’t fly, even on AMC - specifically, all that raping.