"The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers)

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"The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers)

Post by Guardsman Bass »

The second half of the season is upon us soon, and I honestly almost forgot about it. I forgot to write it on my calendar, and I wasn't reminded that it was on tonight until a few minutes ago.

Anyways, I wonder what's going to happen. I haven't read the comics, but it could likely be the Spoiler
the whole "prison" story arc with the Evil Governor from Evil Town. Knowing the show, the Governor will probably be Merle, since he was likely going to be re-introduced sooner or later.

I've heard it's a good story arc, although I'm not too enthusiastic. The whole "Real Monster is Man" theme can wear thin real fast if the antagonists aren't themselves sympathetic and interesting.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by FSTargetDrone »

Yeah it came upon us pretty fast.

And as a reminder, It's on at 21:00 PM EST for those who are wondering.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by FSTargetDrone »

Quite a good way to resume the season. I was not at all surprised to see Rick blow those 2 guys away. As soon as the overweight one threatened them I knew he and his buddy were dead.

I really want to see some smart behavior, though. Glenn should have been keeping watch outdoors.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Block »

Lori seems only to exist to get into trouble. In fact all of the female characters seem stupid, and I'm not sure if it's bad writing or something else.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by FSTargetDrone »

Block wrote:Lori seems only to exist to get into trouble. In fact all of the female characters seem stupid, and I'm not sure if it's bad writing or something else.
They still haven't figured out the Buddy System. No one should be going anywhere alone, Darryl's outdoor skills or intransigence notwithstanding.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by JME2 »

Good start and worth the wait.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Guardsman Bass »

Good episode, although you could level the "Talking Dead" criticism at it again.

1. I'm not shocked that Rick blew those two guys away, either. I think he was at the end of his rope regarding anything that threatened his "folk", and as soon as those guys effectively made it clear that they were less than desirable companions, he was trying to get rid of them. They were desperate and stupid enough to provoke a fight instead of leaving once it became clear that they weren't welcome.

He seemed to get more and more disgusted with them as the conversation went on, but I think the ultimate decision to keep them out came after they talked about refugee communities they had come in contact with . . . and yet they were still out walking on their own. The other communities may have denied them, or driven them out after they made nuisances of themselves.

2. Poor Lori. I suspect her pregnancy will survive the accident, but it's another problem that they now have to deal with.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Meest »

Did the big guy take Glenn's shotgun? Was expecting him to cover Rick and get a Mexican standoff, or if anything help mature his character. Preview of next episode is promising, hopefully the band of living people makes things desperate and tense again.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Skylon »

I really enjoyed Darryl telling off Lori. She really has had been due for getting knocked down a peg.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by JME2 »

Guardsman Bass wrote:The other communities may have denied them, or driven them out after they made nuisances of themselves.
Or they could have killed them if they were provoked.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Guardsman Bass »

I think I'm wrong, and those two guys were part of a bigger group (of thugs). There's a next episode preview I missed where they're holed up in the bar while the two guys' companions are visible outside with guns, or so I've been told.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Dread Not »

Yeah, you hear the group say "Hello? We're looking for our friends." Looks to be an exciting episode. Things have been cozy for too long. Each episode has a brief scare and then it's back to life on the farm.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Guardsman Bass »

I just watched one of the special features on my DVD for season one. Man, it's weird to hear Andrew Lincoln talking in his normal, very british-accented voice. It sounds totally different from his voice on the show.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by FSTargetDrone »

Yeah, his American accent is good enough that I didn't even know he was British until I heard him speak out of character. On the other hand, It's easy enough to pick out all the Canadians on nBSG or The X-Files, but Lincoln does a nice job. Same goes for Damian Lewis who played the American solider Winters on Band of Brothers.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Akhlut »

I'm surprised no one's said anything in the past two days. Oh well.

So, what do people think of bringing the now-crippled fellow back to the barn? I think he might prove useful if he can use a gun. Or, at least, he'll be useful if they need to get away and they can have the cripple eaten first. :P

As for Shane, my wife is thinking he's gonna die by Rick next episode; I think that's about as likely to happen as Lori developing laser eyes. I'm pretty sure Shane and Andrea are going to break away though and form a separatist enclave and be long-term antagonists to Rick and company.

In the short term, though, I'm expecting the remnants of that group that is now down four people to come upon the barn next episode in addition to Rick and Shane pummeling each other over leadership issues.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Wing Commander MAD »

I absolutely loved the look on Dale's face when Lori said they had never had "The Talk" with Carl. Dales response when Carl looked at him afterwords was priceless. Hershel telling shane to STFU was also memorable.

Another aspect of the show that I'm likeing is the contrast between Shane and Rick. Rick is actually trying to regain some of the old world it seems. Shane on the other hand seems to be embracing the new world, to the point that it almost seems like he has more in common with the zombies than he does humanity as he reverts to more primal human behavior.

Also, do we know much about Dale's past other than his wife dying and becoming attached to Andrea and her sister. His talk with Lori about Shane, and knowing guys like him, got me thinking. How exactly does a somewhat timid guy mix with hyper-macho alpha male types like Shane to the point that he's the first to notice Shane's slide into the deep end, seemingly from past experience?
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Guardsman Bass »

Dale's an old guy. He probably encountered people like Shane in his life, or even was someone like Shane at one point.

I didn't get to watch the episode until tonight, but I really enjoyed it. The confrontation with the other group at the bar (who referred to Rick & Friends as "Roamers" IIRC - or were they talking about the Walkers?), Herschel's final putdown of Shane, and Shane's continued personal unraveling were all great. The episode felt fast-paced most of the time, and we saw a good number of zombies!

Shane was the most interesting character in this episode. What makes him so fascinating to me is that it's always difficult to tell where Shane's self-interest ends and "doing what needs to be done" begins. He's done a lot of things that fit into the category of "necessary evil", such as tricking Lori into coming back, clearing the barn of zombies (convincing Herschel that they're undead in the process), and even arguably leaving Otis for dead (since Otis refused to leave him behind, and both of them together weren't going to make it). Despite that, his own personal flaws and tendency towards being an asshole continue to generate bad blood between him and the group, and leave him thinking that he's never thanked for anything he's done while Rick gets all the praise while getting them killed.

I doubt he'll live past the end of this season. One of the preview shots for this season a couple of months back was of Shane running down the highway by himself with a shotgun, while getting chased by a large group of Walkers. He's already outlived his counterpart in the comics.

Rick seems to be balancing between his older self from Season One and a Shane-like ruthlessness in dealing with threats to his "people". The look on his face at the end was scary, like the look he had when he killed the two guys at the bar. At the same, his Good Samaritan-like behavior asserted itself when he saved Randall. Knowing Rick's luck with these types of things, it probably won't turn out well for him.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by JME2 »

Guardsman Bass wrote:Knowing Rick's luck with these types of things, it probably won't turn out well for him.
No good deed goes unpunished.

This felt like the last calm before the storm. All hell looks like it'll be breaking loose of the final run.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Block »

I don't think anything Shane does is "what needs to be done." That's just how he justifies it to himself. Everything he does seems to be completely self serving, and I think he, like almost every other character, with the exception of Glenn and maybe Rick, is completely one dimensional. Shooting the zombies in the barn, they were locked in, clearly had been for weeks if not months, unnecessary. There were more gentle ways of convincing Herschel that the walkers are zombies, like not using his family as the example. Using Otis as bait was just easier than doing the right thing, lying to Lori, all about getting "his" baby and "his" woman back to the farm. The guy just goes for the easiest, most brutal answer.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

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Block wrote:I don't think anything Shane does is "what needs to be done." That's just how he justifies it to himself. Everything he does seems to be completely self serving, and I think he, like almost every other character, with the exception of Glenn and maybe Rick, is completely one dimensional. Shooting the zombies in the barn, they were locked in, clearly had been for weeks if not months, unnecessary. There were more gentle ways of convincing Herschel that the walkers are zombies, like not using his family as the example. Using Otis as bait was just easier than doing the right thing, lying to Lori, all about getting "his" baby and "his" woman back to the farm. The guy just goes for the easiest, most brutal answer.
I would argue that. The zombies in the barn were a danger, and Herschel was wrong to believe that they were merely "sick" and could be saved (he said as such when they found him in the bar). The way he did that "reality check" was in-your-face hostile, but that's been Shane's problem for most of the season (as Andrea said, he has issues with "presentation").

I watched that episode with Otis and Shane, and together, they weren't going to make it back. By the time Shane left Otis for dead, Otis was completely exhausted, Shane was still limping from the window jump, and they were surrounded by zombies. Shane actually asked Otis at least once to go ahead, and he refused. There was no "right thing" to do in that situation, and if they failed to get back, three people were going to die.

As for Lori, she ran out impulsively after Rick because she was worried about him, and almost got herself killed in the car wreck and subsequent zombie attack. Bad enough that Shane had to go out in the night and look for her (although he does have a double standard, since he'd previously cautioned against launching a search for Rick's group until morning) - if he hadn't lied to her she would have insisted on going to the bar despite what had happened in the middle of the night. He would have had to drag her back to the farm. Even Rick thought it was a stupid decision on her part.

Do these incidents overlap his self-interest and "what needs to be done"? Of course they do, and the other characters notice that as well. Like I said above, that's what makes him so interesting to me. That ambiguity plus his personal flaws/asshole behavior means that the others in the group (plus Herschel) are turned off by him, which only makes him even more bitter that he's "unappreciated" while Rick (the man who led them into two disasters that got multiple people in their group killed) gets all the praise and respect.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

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Guardsman Bass wrote:The confrontation with the other group at the bar (who referred to Rick & Friends as "Roamers" IIRC - or were they talking about the Walkers?), Herschel's final putdown of Shane, and Shane's continued personal unraveling were all great.
Rick first heard them referred to as "Walkers" from Morgan in the first episode. Glenn once called them "geeks." The guy in the bar from Philadelphia, Dave, called them "lame brains." I don't think it's a stretch that people from different areas would call the Dead by different names, "Roamers" included (I think they were talking about the Dead, yes).
Shane was the most interesting character in this episode. What makes him so fascinating to me is that it's always difficult to tell where Shane's self-interest ends and "doing what needs to be done" begins. He's done a lot of things that fit into the category of "necessary evil", such as tricking Lori into coming back, clearing the barn of zombies (convincing Herschel that they're undead in the process), and even arguably leaving Otis for dead (since Otis refused to leave him behind, and both of them together weren't going to make it). Despite that, his own personal flaws and tendency towards being an asshole continue to generate bad blood between him and the group, and leave him thinking that he's never thanked for anything he's done while Rick gets all the praise while getting them killed.
Rick may not always make the right decision, but he's extremely unlikely to abandon people. He went back for Merle, a man who has no love for him and the others. He went back for Glenn when the Vatos had him. He searched for Sophia and he went back for Herschell. Shane, on the other hand, is perhaps a bit too quick to cut and run, or at least he would if given the chance. He shot Otis, crippling him so that he'd be bait for the Walkers so he (Shane) could make his own escape (though this isn't yet fully public knowledge to the group). This is right after Otis kept encouraging Shane to go on, after Otis had killed Walkers to save Shane. Shane was never fully interested in finding Sophia, and he certainly didn't want to go back for Merle.

I think it's clear why the group continues to mostly defer to Rick's judgement, for good or ill. He's not going to cut and run. The kid he pulled off the fence, Randall, unless he has people he cares about back with the group he came from, he has zero incentive to be trouble for Rick's group and return to his own. Rick stayed with him and kept him alive after the other survivor drove away from the bar. That guy didn't even take a moment to try to help. He just cut and run. No one from that other, unknown group (again, assuming no loved ones or friends) will think Randall is even alive.

Andrea might not like all the decisions that Rick makes, but when she finds out what Shane has done, what he is doing, I don't think she will follow him in any rebellion. She doesn't want to be a victim or have Dale be overly protective of her, but she has compassion. Shane has little of that.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by JME2 »

Guardsman Bass wrote:That ambiguity plus his personal flaws/asshole behavior means that the others in the group (plus Herschel) are turned off by him, which only makes him even more bitter that he's "unappreciated" while Rick (the man who led them into two disasters that got multiple people in their group killed) gets all the praise and respect.
And the sad irony is that Shane is incapable of seeing that it's a self-fulfilling cycle.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Guardsman Bass »

JME2 wrote:
Guardsman Bass wrote:That ambiguity plus his personal flaws/asshole behavior means that the others in the group (plus Herschel) are turned off by him, which only makes him even more bitter that he's "unappreciated" while Rick (the man who led them into two disasters that got multiple people in their group killed) gets all the praise and respect.
And the sad irony is that Shane is incapable of seeing that it's a self-fulfilling cycle.
Too true. When they were all sitting in the living room after he brought Lori back, I kept thinking, "Apologize, you asshole!" But he never did.

It'd be interesting to get more flashbacks of how the whole pre-Rick group got together. We know that they encountered Carol, Ed, and Sophia on the highway out of town, but I wonder where they ran into Dale, Andrea & sister, and the other people.
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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Themightytom »

Does anyone else see Herschel's daughter turning into a zombie? She had barely any developement in the first place, everything we know about her is coming from Glen's girlfriend. I wouldn't be surprised if Herchiel has to kill her himself to complete his transition into his new reality. Watching the walkers devour that guy outside the bar pretty much brought that home for him.

I see conflict in the near future between the town gang and the farm, which is a problem because while the farm is effectively guarded from walkers with it's vast fields, it is not as guarded from having those fields set on fire by an intelligent opponent, or any other number of debacle. I hope this doesn't turn into jericho

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Re: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Part II Discussion (Spoilers

Post by Guardsman Bass »

I wonder if we'll finally find out what Dr. Crazypants told Rick in "TS-19" at the end of this season.
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