Now that you’ve had months of the show being off the air to catch your breath, catch it again! IOW, I’d agree with your assessment if the third season weren’t split, but having a catch-your-breath episode as a “mid-season” premiere is just bad planning.
Andrea staying with the Governor despite his increasing cartoon-villainy is harder to justify. I think that the girl who got shot at Andrea’s side during the rescue attempt was supposed to have made a bigger impression on the audience than it did on me: this was the girl that Andrea was supposed to be friends with and I think her death was supposed to hit Andrea hard, but I don’t think we as the audience saw enough of any relationship to make it work.
I don’t think they were supposed to be friends, that girl was a terribly overconfident brat and a snitch. Snitches get stitches (or eaten by zombies)!
Andrea assuming a leadership role in Woodbury could be interesting; it certainly could take the final confrontation in an interesting direction.
Andrea is a terrible character (in the show), I hope she dies. Soon!
Same here.
I was really expecting Andrea to say “that’s it, I’m leaving” after the Merle vs. Daryl fight sponsored by the Governor. What more does she need? The Governor brandishing an “I am EVIL” sign? I can see her being concerned about the community, but she continues to say shit like “I don’t want you withdrawing on me” when she really ought to be viewing him on the same plane as Merle. Despite at least 3 incidents that point out his real character in no uncertain terms.
I don’t remember the girl who got shot at all. That’s the problem with the mid-season break, I’ve forgotten all the minor characters.
I agree about Daryl leaving with Merle. Daryl’s feelings about his brother have been clear for a long, long time, so of course he’s going to leave, and Rick (or anyone else) would have to be insane to accept Merle into the group.
About the only thing that Rick could have done is go touchy-feely in Daryl. I.e. “Look, I understand why you have to leave. He’s your brother. And we can’t have him in the group, because he’s proved that he has no loyalty to us at all by abducting and beating Glenn. But you aren’t like Merle, and we care about you. Keep in touch if you can, because we want to know you’re still alive.” Probably wouldn’t work either, but making it about Daryl’s choice works better than trying to push him. Daryl doesn’t push.
Rick of course is not capable of that, even before he started to lose his marbles. I’d like to see Tyrese take over, because he does seem capable of clear and direct speaking. About the only character on the show so far who can, actually.
I don’t disagree, but having constant chaos in your character-driven show is probably not a good way to go. The mid-season finale/premier thing has got to be rough on the writers.
This is my bad, actually. I thought the girl who was shot was the one that Andrea was walking around town with after she first arrived, but you’re right: it’s the championship archer snitch who can’t hit anything. The girl I was thinking of was the pregnant one in the background.
I somewhat revise my statement. We should have been some reason to see Andrea’s staying as a rational or emotionally reasonable action. Instead the inhabitants of Woodbury are either worthless sheep or cartoon villains/thugs. It should have been the pregnant chick that was shot in the confusion, or a kid – Then Andrea could have been faced with staying with a community that seems decent and in need of protection or her old group of “friends” that never really took her seriously, left her to die, and who apparently kill innocent people.
All the panned-out shots they used showed that the Maybury “arena” as one of the cheapest sets I’ve seen in a long time. I’m talking Buffy season 1 cheap. Having Rick and crew pop-up behind paintball tire stacks didn’t help. Twenty old ladies demanding blood made the supposedly powerful Maybury look like an antique convention. The Maybury wall scene was similarly cheap-looking. A couple of guards shooting at zombies 20 yards out while there are some tiredly banging up against the base of the wall itself.
Andrea’s whole conversation with the Guv was lame. No “wait, did you say you had kidnapped Glenn and Maggie!?”
For an episode-after-break, the whole thing came off as rushed and cheap. Rough set, rough dialog, rough plot progression.
I think that is supposed to be the point of Woodbury. It’s not a bastion of survivalists or para-military folks holed up against the zombie apocalypse, it’s simply a collection of random people, most of them effectively useless now that society has broken down, huddled together in a small town-sized fort they built to hide in. The fact that the girl manning the gates was a terrible shot and that the Garhulio character Merle killed was so ineffective on patrol basically illustrates that Woodbury has only a handful of actually competant fighters.
The Governor knows this, which is why he won’t let an outfit like the National Guard guys or Rick’s group come anywhere near Woodbury if he can help it. Most of his people are individuals and families that have no choice but to stay in Woodbury because they can’t face the dangers outside the gates on their own. The Governor knows that as long as he provides safety, and nobody shows up that appears stronger or more organized, he maintains control. That fact that half of the people were ready to adandon Woodbury the moment the Governor lost control illustrates that fact.
Now that Merle is gone, Michonne/Merle killed a few guys and Rick’s crew killed half a dozen more, I suspect that Woodbury has very little left to mount in terms of offensive power. I would not be at all surprised if the Governor decided to take all his remaining men to the prison on a mission of vengence, and Woodbury got overrun by a herd in their abscense.
I think the issue with Andrea is that, for all of her demonstrated prowess with a gun, she is desperate for someone to take care of her. She latched on to the group, then she latched on to sword-girl (who’s name escapes me at the moment), then she latched on to the Guv. She is terrified of having to stand on her own two feet, and she is very loath to give up any perceived security.
It will take either being carried away from Woodbury, or being forced out, before she will leave what she perceives as the best security available, and all the insanity he can show won’t break that desperation.
HEX716
3227
It really wasn’t a set, that whole building that borders the “arena” was an abandoned factory they found to use on the show. I’m not sure what you want a make shift arena to look like when it’s obvious they put together what they could from stuff they had. Seemed legit to me. It looks exactly like an “arena” a bunch of people left in a small town would slap together. There are things you can point out with the writing and what not but sets aren’t the problem.
I think you’re confusing my complaints as being one about reality, when it’s a complaint about shooting a show. They used the same set better in previous episodes, mostly by avoiding panned out shots that demonstrated how unfinished the set was (it’s clearly a cleared-out, abandoned factory area, rather than than outside of factory that unexpectedly shutdown to the ZA) and how few extras they had bouncing around for the supposedly 80+ person Maybury.
The scene, as shot, looks like cheap genre show scene where you see someone supposedly holding a press-conference and there’s like two people. If you have only 20 extras, use better shots to disguise it. In general, the Maybury shoots stand in stark contrast to how the prison looks and the previous Atlanta shooting. The writing doesn’t help: they’re trying to present Maybury as a huge threat to Rick et al., but they stage a scene that leaves the viewer (and Glenn) wondering why they didn’t just wipe the idiots out right then and there. Hell, Maggie shoots the lame girl she doesn’t know but doesn’t pop the Guv, who made her strip while twirling his moustaches?
garin
3229
Okay, I have to ask… why do you keep calling it Maybury? It’s Woodbury.
Subconcious conflation of Woodbury and Mayberry, apparently. It’s so hokey that I’m expecting Gomer Pyle to show up at any moment.
HEX716
3231
oh well, agree to disagree then I see nothing wrong with the set or how it was staged. Unless Vince McMahon shows up with his WWE crew to set things up it looks exactly like it should to me for what they would have had in that “reality.” I will agree on the Guv thing though, if they are going to bother to shoot anyone any not him…it would have been the first shot I took, the guy in charge.
The funny part was that Glenn said in The Talking Dead that it’s a real town, and they simply threw up walls and tossed around appropriate debris outside of them. The place where they had the “arena” fights was an old, burned out warehouse that they really didn’t do anything to dress up.
Thanks, Walking Dead, for making me feel like Lost is back on!
-Tom
For once, I agree with Tom!
Pogo
3235
I don’t think it matters. I think the writers will just somehow make the people of Woodbury suddenly turn into well-trained soldiers at a whim in order to further the ridiculous plot.
They don’t need large numbers, they have access to the military equipment from the national guard dudes they killed.
I’m curious, why the comparisons to LOST? There aren’t any red herrings here. It’s Rick’s camp vs. Woodbury. Pretty simple. Even the new people seem pretty straighforward. So far the Governor has acted exactly as I would expect a petty despot desperate to maintain control over his little empire would act. Rick was acting like Rick right up until the break with reality. If that’s what you’re comparing to LOST, it’s all in Rick’s head, and the writers have done a ham-fisted job of making that pretty obvious (phone calls, Lori’s ghost in the gallery). I suspect that whole aspect will be short-lived and only serves as a vehicle to get Rick replaced as leader for a time and cause strife and discontent among the other survivors.
Indeed, the Lost parallels are… lost on me. I only saw the first couple seasons of that show, but everything was a set-up to yet another mystery or mysterious happenstance wrapped in a supernatural fog.
In the TWD the only mystery is the origin of the walkers themselves, and that doesn’t seem to be in the process of advancing at all (which is the way it ought to be). The “paranormal” stuff happening with Rick is not happening at all – he’s hallucinating everything; there is no ghost Lori or mysterious phone phantoms that are going to pop up elsewhere or interact with characters other than Rick. TWD seems to be as reality-based and non-mystic as a series with ambulatory corpses can be.
HEX716
3240
Yeah, have to chime in too…don’t see “Lost” in WD at all. The Lori thing is just his mind breaking…it seems drawn out but in actual show time (Ricks time)it hasn’t been that long and he was pretty much thrown back into the fire with no time to really deal with it. The break between episodes had me thrown off a bit the first show back as far as the time disconnect. I watched most of Lost and WD is nothing like that show…believe me if it was I wouldn’t be watching it.
My one beef is the dialogue this season. You can say what you want about Season 2 but for one I miss the the interaction of the characters. It was more talky; more was expressed with detail. This season it’s like they went to the extreme other side of it where no one says anything in any great detail which leads to situations where if you had just said this or that we could get farther along in the story (I’m looking at you Michonne and Rick).
On a side note I hope they leave the prison and Woodbury in the fourth season. I’ll be over it by the end of this season. I find them being on the road the most exciting so hope they head to the coast or wherever.
