Lost strayed from its central mystery – in other words, the thing that attracted me to the show – and put it on hold in favor of absurd contrived character motivation twists – abrupt jerks, really – about who was allying with whom in favor of which camp in pursuit of which mysterious agenda and, oh, look, isn’t our blandly handsome and carefully unshaven and sweaty lead tormented by his past while our superpretty and more clean actresses are torn by their love of unworthy (?) men! Swoon! Also, Battlestar Galactica.
I guess that’s just TV for you.
-Tom
Mmmm, Elizabeth Mitchell–the best part of LOST.
Comic SPOILER!!!
In the comics he actually unplugs the phone and carries it in his backpack, all the time taking calls from his dead wife. His son eventually catches him doing it. This goes on for over a year, maybe 15 issues?
I don’t think the ghostly wife is any nuttier than that.
So the Governer really does only have a few actual combat ready folks left. Thus he develops a masterful plan that kills the second most useless member of the group (behind the baby) and what…gets them to use up all their ammo? While the walker wagon was a neat idea, it served no real purpose. Walkers in the yard are easy to deal with, no ammo required, just lure to the fence and stab. I suppose the Governer figured he might kill Herschal and Michone since they were in the yard too? It just didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Perhaps it was just a test of their defenses?
The other buring question of the episode : Where the fuck were the new people? Rick went nutso last episode and they were ushered from the room, but I seriously doubt
Glenn and Herschall would have sent them packing on the mean streets of zombietown. So where were they when all the shooting went down? Locked up? Seems like a major oversight not to at least hint at their whereabouts.
Menzo
3245
<<SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS>>>
On Talking Dead, Kirkman said that this was just a show of force, not a full-on attack, so that explains why they didn’t press or do anything more menacing than the zombie bomb (which was a cool idea).
Of course they could have accomplished their show of force with that single first bullet and the zombie truck alone.
But who’s counting bullets?
Martinez
3246
I don’t understand how they can be a dead eye aim with a pistol, but can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a rifle… with a scope to boot.
BTW, file cabinets make a poor choice of cover for .223 fmj rounds. So do skinny white guys for that matter.
Well today pretty much rebounded right back to “holy shit” territory. Just when you thought last-remaining-prisoner was going to make a move on Carol and a collision course with Daryl oddness, bang. Oh yeah, and nasty station wagon trunk door death on the bridge there. Jeeez.
I didn’t see the reconnaissance in force (essentially) happening this early, but man. Though of course, it is slightly harder to hit someone if you’re firing bursts. Plus you’re under fire. It’s a lot harder to do than you realize. Killing zombies is not quite the same thing.
I was almost for sure thinking that the zombie bomb driver was Andrea. The person also had a somewhat slim figure and had a mask. Why? To make a big reveal of course. I guess it isn’t that way (considering the previews of next week), but it was kinda odd to see that event.
Finally, I liked the return of the “wife” theme from way back of episode one. It’s practically my favorite music cue of the entire series.
— Alan
This is actually pretty funny (about Axel) from Kirkman:
I’ve got to say, Axel is one of the characters in the comic books that I miss the most. I had a lot of fun writing him. He was a good bit of comic relief and definitely served that purpose in the show to an amazing degree. Lew Temple did such an awesome job with the guy. We’re always sad to see our characters go but this one was rough for me. I’d spent years [being] like, “Oh my god, I can’t wait to write Axel again! I love Axel! I miss him so much!” And then I didn’t really get to write Axel very much so I was kind of upset. But it is what it is.
— Alan
Pogo
3249
They armored up the driver of the van but they were OK with having one of their guys sit in a deathtrap tower?
The show doesn’t even bother to try to be consistent within a single scene, let alone an entire episode, let alone an entire season, let alone the entire series. They ended half an hour of hokey melodrama, much of it repeated, with a 10 minute action scene that once again made no sense and had bullets clinking off near misses.
Show of force? This show has no idea how to create a scene that actually communicates what it’s attempting to without just pulling a 180° and going “oh, hey, we were just joking, we totally meant to almost get hit with bullets just to teach you guys how badass we were.”
Next episode, another snoozefest of arguing about how Rick is no longer fit to lead, but neither is Glenn, while Andrea looks sheepishly up at her boyfriend and takes another 2 episodes to figure out what a fucking asshole he is. Oh, no, wait, she’ll just ask his permission to go to the prison.
LOST all over again. Tom’s right.
tgb123
3251
Pretty lousy episode, and while it was supposed to get the audience cheering (I guess), the Dixon-ex-machina was just dumb.
Wow, what a bunch of haters. I liked the episode, aside from any scene with Andrea in it. RIP Axel!
The whole point of the van crashing through the gates was to provide a distraction and to mess up the prison so the Governor’s guys could shoot at them from outside. As to people who say the van didn’t crash through the inner gate, it seemed reasonable if you’re driving up to a place you’ve never been before - no time to scout it - that if your goal is to create confusion and mess stuff up, you’re going for the obvious, and the double gate is obvious. Whereas the gate up at the prison is less so. So I don’t find any issues there.
As for protective clothing, the driver was geared up because she had to deal with the walkers in the van, whereas the guy in the tower wasn’t protected because he was part of the other assault force - nobody in that group had anything besides vests on (I think Martinez - the one shooting at Rick - had a bulletproof vest on, didn’t he?).
And you guys complaining that everyone was a bad shot… you must not watch any TV or movies. The Governor’s guys obviously went to bad guy shooting school, where you use tons of bullets and don’t kill any main characters you’re shooting at. Why we complain about this here and not in every single movie/tv show that uses guns, I don’t know.
I do have to admit I wonder where Tyreese’s group went. Last episode it seemed they were ready to get out of crazytown, but I’m sure they are around there somewhere.
Also, isn’t there still one prisoner left? Oscar? I coulda sworn he was still around, but I don’t see him listed in any more episode credits on IMDB, and I don’t recall him getting killed.
And this is nowhere near Lost territory (yet). It’s obviously been a while since many of you saw Lost.
Pogo
3253
The whole point of the van crashing through the gates was to provide a distraction and to mess up the prison so the Governor’s guys could shoot at them from outside. As to people who say the van didn’t crash through the inner gate, it seemed reasonable if you’re driving up to a place you’ve never been before - no time to scout it - that if your goal is to create confusion and mess stuff up, you’re going for the obvious, and the double gate is obvious. Whereas the gate up at the prison is less so. So I don’t find any issues there.
Sure, you don’t find any issues, possibly because you have a number of things wrong. The van didn’t crash through the gates until after several minutes of shooting. As a distraction, all it did was get everyone to stop shooting, at which point some of the Governor’s men still shot at some people trying to move. Which is kinda funny, because hey this was “just a show of force,” right? So these guys are all sure they can miss the most important people of the show on purpose, just to scare them.
No time to scout it? There’s time to keep a van full of zombies from being noticed driving out of Woodbury, away from the watchful newly-anointed eyes of Andrea. They had time to wait until one of their guys walked all the way around the prison to get into a tower that should have been impossible to get into. But hey, no time to scout!
As for protective clothing, the driver was geared up because she had to deal with the walkers in the van, whereas the guy in the tower wasn’t protected because he was part of the other assault force
An assault force that infiltrated a previously-locked tower door during a time where the group was setting up fortifications to make sure they weren’t invaded by humans.
And you guys complaining that everyone was a bad shot… you must not watch any TV or movies. The Governor’s guys obviously went to bad guy shooting school, where you use tons of bullets and don’t kill any main characters you’re shooting at. Why we complain about this here and not in every single movie/tv show that uses guns, I don’t know.
Uhh… it’s complained about in lots of places. It’s particularly ridiculous in a show with constant convenient headshots, but everyone is fucking Rambo when the situation calls for it. It’s jarring and it’s fucking stupid.
I do have to admit I wonder where Tyreese’s group went. Last episode it seemed they were ready to get out of crazytown, but I’m sure they are around there somewhere.
Why are you sure? This show isn’t even sure about itself.
I liked it as well. I guess there’s no accounting for taste, lol.
Anyway, Oscar bought the farm during the assault on Woodbury. There were some real headscratchers in the episode, but nothing beyond what I typically encounter. Yes, aim was both awful and spectacular: the Goovernor’s first shot was excellent, but then he couldn’t hit anyone and seemed to spend half the time spraying bullets into the air for no discernable reason. I believe Axel had some heavy duty magnets on him, because the Governor’s minions were able to riddle his body from a distance over and over, but were otherwise fairly useless. I’m also a little confused as to how one of them made it up to the guard tower without getting inside the fence and I wonder why that gunman wasn’t prone, but that’s okay. As Charlatan mentioned, this is typical TV aiming and combat setup. I don’t begrudge them their silliness.
Pogo
3255
I do, because the show had been internally consistent for a long. It wasn’t until the end of Season 2 that it jumped into ludicrous firefights that were pretty unnecessary.
Do you think having the Governor be an absolute snap shot, and I’m talking head shot from half a mile away, for that one shot did the scene any favors? Would the show have been worse if someone closer took the shot that killed that dude? Or if that dude had maybe been standing somewhere that shot wouldn’t have been as ridiculous?
It’s these weird sloppy decisions that take the greatest parts of this show and just… drag the experience through the mud. The pacing, the consistency, the internal logic, it’s just all so silly and drawn out. It’s lowered its own standard.
Hell you even bring up a good point, dude’s body was shot three dozen times while Carol hid behind it, which plays more into how ludicrous it is that this was a superficial assault, because those were shots that could and should have killed a person. Was it really necessary to have her lay there with 3 dozen perfectly fired shots blocked by a body?
I mean, come the fuck on. There’s nothing about this show that requires these “typical” action tropes whatsoever, at least not as bland and generic as they are. This show could take walking through dark hallways killing zombies, as common a scene as anything else in horror movies, and make it exciting and fresh. Why do you accept the foolishness that is these spray-n-pray shootouts that make no sense even when divorced from the context of the show?
Aw, rats, I was really enjoying the scenes of Lew Temple flirting with Carol. :(
As for Tyrese’s group, they’ve probably holed up in that cabin where the crazy dude who threatened to call the police used to live.
-Tom
Pogo
3257
I thought that group is who would be on the bridge. That would have, like… made actual sense instead of these guys, a baby, and a Subaru* somehow living this long with no clue how to deal with a pack of zombies. It also would have given a much better segue into Daryl arguing about going back to the prison, since Merle was all like “they’re already dead little bro’!” Then we could have skipped the horribly written heart-to-heart.
*It was probably this, since I have an Outback and am pretty sure it would hold up well in a zombie apocalypse
You seem to be taking this difference of opinion kind of … hard. I watch TV to be entertained. I was entertained, so I’m good with it. Could it have been better? Absolutely, but why should I get bent out of shape over it?
Pogo
3259
I take it hard because I compare every episode to the best the show has done, and I think it has slid down as the second half of a decent season.
Good TV doesn’t have to make so many sloppy mistakes.
I hope this is on a loading screen in Wasteland 2.
