1901

Why did you quote me then say that? I said finally they showed the farm works. If you want to post about plot and future episodes go ahead. I’d rather talk about what I’ve actually seen not wild guesses.

I think Glenn was put in a real shitty situation knowing what he does. If that was me I’d probably tell Rick about the pregnancy and tell everyone about the barn zombies. Just telling Dale seems like the easiest way out.

One specific thing I thought was stupid was working back from the farthest house. It made almost sure they’d have to run to their car past a bunch of zombies. Make much more sense to start near the car and work away from it instead of vice versa.

I am somewhat coming to the conclusion this show isn’t going to be what it seemed to be in season 1. Zombies and survival are taking a back stage to melodrama. They like to keep the same problems going for a long time too and just keep picking at it slowly.

I get what you are saying but having read the comic books now some (I’m up to the prison) I’d just say the comics move much faster overall. The comic has a lot more gratuitous violence and some sex too. Each one is only about 20 pages or whatever so even if they are pure dialogue it is over quick and much more to the point. The TV show seems to like to drag things out over multiple episodes and it’s dragging.

1902

With Glen I think it’s natural for one of them to ask Glen for something. He’s their ‘go to’ guy for making forays for supplies. It does not mean he has to do it, just that he’d be the first guy I’d ask(assuming I was Lori).

I don’t see how Glen is in a tough situation knowing Lori is pregnant. MYOB seems to be easy here. Glen has a girl to have sex with(maybe), one of their group is missing and needs to be found ASAP, and they are living in a post apocalyptic world. How Lori and her personal problems even rate an appearance in his thoughts, much less an obsessive focus, is beyond me. He can’t even act normal around Rick, that’s how much he’s thinking about Lori and her issues.

I think the idea of coming back to the car is to keep the car as free from being surrounded as possible. If you assume your presence will create noise to attract the zombies, then the house you’re searching will be the focal point. If the car is there, it’s in the area of encirclement. On the other hand, being that zombies are slow and you are armed, it should be relatively easy to break out from encirclement and outrun them to the car. Then you make a clean getaway, and in fact that’s how it played out.

1903

I thought the new one was a step down from last week, but my wife dragged me to see the sparkly vampire movie, so my bar is actually buried under the ground.

You know, the Lori character is annoying and whiny and nagging to a fault, but the actress that plays her really does pretty well with the crap role. I am damn tired of the “oh, what if we have a kid and they never laugh” routine though.

I thought Glenn got some decent character growth in this episode. He’s still the geek/nerd stand-in for their target demographic, but I have faith he’ll grow into something more interesting in time.

I rather liked comic-book Dale, but TV-series Dale just needs to either mind his own damn business or take charge and do something constructive.

And whoever suggested up-thread that Shane needs to father a child on each and every woman in the group: that’s genius.

1904

Couldn’t agree more with both of these statements.

1905

So one thing that I think is a valid nitpick with the episode: some people have pointed out that the “morning after pill” – it wouldn’t do jack to stop her pregnancy. It’s RU486 (which isn’t available in pharmacies,) that is what she would have needed.

1906

That nitpick requires her pregancy to actually terminate to become valid, which it looks like it won’t be.

There’s nothing wrong with her thinking that those pills would have a chance to stop her pregnancy, even if she is medically wrong.

1907

How is that a valid nitpick? Glen asked her whether they would even work and Lori said she didn’t know. If, as you say, you can’t even find proper “abortion drugs” at a pharmacy, it’s an even dumber thing to complain about. She was desperate, and working with what she could get. It’s a not a plot hole.

Still enjoying the show, not enjoying this thread.

1908

I think the issues people have with the abortion thing is that the show’s creators made a point of showing ‘morning after pill’ in those words in conjunction with the idea of the character having an abortion. Thus perpetuating the lie that the pill is for that purpose.

They just as easily could have included RU486, even if realistically Glen couldn’t find it, or offer an alternate but real approach a women in Lori’s position might take. Personally, I think this is simply a case of the writer/s not caring to be technically correct. Sort of like having Lori pee on her test strip out in the open, they’re trying to get their point across and not being too delicate about it. I doubt they really were trying to pander to anti-abortion types. On a zombie show? Haha.

1909

Maybe this has already been nit-picked, but every time they mention “making a run to the store” I wonder why they don’t just clear out the damn place once and bring it all to them.

1910

With Hershel’s group, it was probably to honor the “Take what you need, God Bless!” sign in the window – take only what you need and leave the rest to other poor travelers. I won’t try to support that attitude in the ZA, but it’s consistent with the Farm Folks’ values.

My only real nit-pic was with the subdivision. I liked how the show-runners put over-full trash cans in front of everyone’s houses, because trash collection would have been on of the first services that knocked-off… but all the damned garbage cans were still upright! This is Georgia in the summer: if the almost-daily thunderstorms didn’t knock them over, the raccoons would have, or the (presumed but as-yet unseen) packs of dogs that must be running around.

Don’t know why that bothered me.

But I’ll close with a compliment on the same scene: I like how they try to tell a little mini-story with each tent or house or whatever that they come upon. It would be easy enough to just wreck the house and put some blood smears here and there, but instead they tend to show that, yes, there were other people that tried (and failed) to do smart or stupid things; there were other people that had similar crises of faith or conscience and chose the other path. Here they had the walled-off corridor (maybe a nod to the original Dawn) and the burned corpses in the garage. Maybe they’ll make them into webisodes later on, but if they don’t I still appreciate the effort.

1911

I am now more convinced than I have ever been that my prediction will come true. They’ll move that scene from the sixth issue to the close of the second season.

The Hershel Loves Zombies thing does feel a little bit like a retread of the conversation Lennie James had with Rick about totally shooting his wife in the face in the pilot.

1912

I don’t think Lori is “getting” annoying, she’s been vying with Andrea for the title of most-annoying character all season. Her coup de grace this episode was going off on Rick for not telling her they would have to leave while continuing to keep her pregnancy a secret. Forget “get over yourself”, how about being less of a goddamn hypocrit. And then when Rick finds the pill wrappers and is all “why didn’t you talk to me?” she replied with “I’m talking to you now.” Thank god Rick called her on that bullshit, but I still want her to die.

Also, their fight/pregnancy discussion was so boring that we were actually talking over it, and had to rewind when she dropped the Shane bomb. But then that turned out to be another dud. As Kevin Smith pointed out so well on Talking Dead, this episode was written by a woman. No man would ever say “Oh yeah, I know you were fucking my best friend. It’s all good.” That was probably the biggest let-down of the show. The show is filled with manufactured conflicts over nothing, and then when they have a real source of conflict between three major characters, they just shrug it off. Terrible.

It’s also annoying sitting here knowing that the characters have seen a brain scan on a person who dies and then comes back to life with no higher brain function, and none of them mention this fact to the farm people who think walkers are just people with a bad fever. Or for that matter, Maggie saw the well zombie get ripped in half and not die. How about bringing that up?

1913

Herschel might be a scientist, but he’s still a christian. There’s no reasoning with those types, even in instances where the dead are legitimately rising from the grave for a change (oh!).

1914

For the first time I actually fast forwarded a bit when Lori was yapping.

My hope is that this episode is leading up to a wiz bang semi-finale on Sunday. There is certainly a lot of potential for it.

1915

Lori is pretty much the lest sympathetic character on the show right now. She makes all the men in her life fucking miserable. She is neither nice nor attractive, I don’t know what anyone sees in her.

1916

The two CDC episodes were the start of bad showness, and from then on out it has just been mild spikes of good laden with generous dollops of total unrelentingly shit television.

I’d be pretty much happy if T-Dog and Darryl murdered the rest of the group, fed them to the barn zombies and left. Maybe Glen could come too, but only if his tongue were cut out so that he’d stop having awkward moments non-stop. If I could set up my tv to automatically fast forward whenever Shane, Rick or Lori came on screen, I’d be overjoyed.

Also I think we all know the proper solution to Lori’s pregnancy: shoot her in the head.

Last thing, Atlanta does not look like what they portrayed, not even a little. Rural Georgia sort of does, but the Atlanta (and especially the CDC) sets were just lolarious. Atlanta is a ridiculously woodsy city, with loads of tiny winding roads and loads of rain in the summer (afternoon showers erryday). The CDC is right next to Emory – which has loads of medical supplies thanks to all the various medical programs, and shitloads of food – so where were the college kid zombies and why didn’t they loot the college?

More importantly, why didn’t the producers just play L4D2? That game didn’t really care about getting anything right about the south, but it captured the southern feel and the terror of the zombie armageddon perfectly.

1917

I’m torn. On the one hand, you sound like you know what you’re talking about, so you’re probably right. On the other hand, the entire show shoots in Atlanta, so I’m not sure how they could possibly not make it look like Atlanta, whether they wanted to or not.

1918

…you do realize the majority of the “Atlanta” scenes were shot in…Atlanta, right?

1919

That wasn’t the CDC, or even close to what it looked like. And while the Atlanta scenes were shot in Atlanta they were only shot in parts that don’t really look like the vast majority of Atlanta.

The area they shot in was basically just the southern part near the airport – that I can practically guarantee. The rest of Atlanta you can look at on gmaps with street view: loads of trees, not many tall buildings, lots of winding roads.

Sure it’s fine to shoot in the one part of Atlanta that looks like every other city, but why choose the unrepresentative boring part when most of the city isn’t like that at all?

Seriously go look at Druid Hills (where the CDC is) on google maps. Or plop the street view thing down at random anywhere inside the Perimeter. Large parts of Atlanta look like that. There’s only a very small part of the city that is built up, basically the area around Georgia State.

They could have, and should have, hit some of the more distinctive parts of Atlanta. Little Five Points (our “built up” hippie hang out place), Lennox Mall, Buckhead (freaky ass deer statue!). Maybe the giant freaking airport, or College Park, some of our many downtown clubs. Not even a So So Def shoutout?

And despite being downtown, they totally ignored an opportunity to shoot at Underground Atlanta. Which has a sizable shopping area underground that is all sorts of ghetto and advertises strange things like transvestite transgender “world renowned” strippers. And happens to be next door to the Coke Museum and the Aquarium, if I remember right.

Or even freaking Stone Mountain, which is where I assumed they were hanging out prior to the CDC adventure. I mean it has a giant Robert E Lee carved into the mountain, nobody thought that was worth a “holy fuck Georgia is weird” shot?

Instead it was a generic anywhere sort of filming that could have been shot in Pennsylvania or Oregon for all they’ve tried to tie it to the actual locale.

edit: None of which is at all relevant to my actual annoyance with the show, the fact that the three lead characters are utterly useless and should all be shot. I can forgive them not giving a shit about generating a sense of place (which is a large part of what Mad Men so awesome), but I can’t forgive such weak characters.

1920

That presumes that city permits, costs, and other issues are equal or even available for the more distinctive parts. Typically, the more distinctive a place is, the more pain in the butt it is to close it down for a shoot.

Whether you like it or not, that is Atlanta.