The Walking Dead

[Anarky]

Theory on how that episode ended:

What do you think?

Spoiler: show

Merle delivered a truck full of zombies to the camp!

Also, I wish Amy (the sister who died) was Andrea. Her face fits Andrea better than the current actress. She, Andrea, has been my favorite character in the comic.

Spoiler: show

I read this in another forum. It's possible, but it seems so outlandish considering everything Merle went through. How does one round up zombies into a truck? But I guess it would make sense considering the traps never seemed to alert anyone and they made a point of showing that shot earlier in the episode.

[SineSwiper]

Might be good to let us know exactly which spoilers are from where. I've seen the TV series, but you guys seem to be talking about the comic past where the series might be at.

[Shrinweck]

After how that episode went, Sine, I'm not sure it's even following the comic book any more besides some minor plot points. Still, guys, you really need to point out before the spoiler tags that you're spoiling the book, if it's just some big in-spoiler-tag post then no one has any idea what you're even spoiling.

I think now that I've adjusted my expectations that this show is very kick ass. Episode five has some of my favorite bits so far. I think they may have written the television series differently because you can't really expect 10+ seasons from the get-go, even though from what I heard from the first episode, half the people watching could have stopped watching and it would still be AMCs show with the highest ratings.

[SineSwiper]

To be honest, I don't understand the popularity. It's a show about a zombie apocalypse. Sure, it's has good writing, but one, that subject matter would lend itself to just a cult audience, and two, it's not like we haven't had various movies/books/comics/games about that sort of thing before.

[Mully]

Zombies have always ramped up in popularity, they're just on a peak right now and really in.

[Shrinweck]

Maybe the audience is just happy they aren't shiny.

[Mully]

I don't think zombies are cult audiences only anymore.

[Zeus]

To be honest, I don't understand the popularity. It's a show about a zombie apocalypse. Sure, it's has good writing, but one, that subject matter would lend itself to just a cult audience, and two, it's not like we haven't had various movies/books/comics/games about that sort of thing before.

And old story done very well is still entertaining

[Shrinweck]

Indeed, and unlike a lot of shows of this type (shows with a continuous story, not zombie genre), the audience has actually grown since the first week. The world ending seemingly overnight and the changes the survivors must undergo to go on will always be interesting when done well.

Gonna have to disagree with you on Andrea's actress not fitting, I think she fits just fine. The actress playing Amy was too young and pretty to be comparable, in my opinion.

(spoiler to the comic book)

Spoiler: show

Too young and too pretty and the thing with Dale ends up looking creepy. Even if Andrea comes off as that pretty in the graphic novel, seeing it with actual people would likely weird out a decent portion of the audience.

[Imakeholesinu]

I just hope the show doesn't go the way of Battlestar halfway through season 2. Season 1 was so compelling because of the sense of urgency. After the Admiral arc mid way through season 2 it got wayyyy to soapy.

[Shrinweck]

Well if it does end up following the quality of the comic you are going to get so fucking pissed at this show lol

After this episode I have hope it won't make the same mistakes where they linger too long in certain places.

[Imakeholesinu]

http://gawker.com/5703239/entire-walkin ... taff-fired

On one hand...WOW.

On the other hand, if he does end up hiring another staff and does this again season after season then maybe it could be a good thing. Fresh writers, fresh ideas for a fresh start? Maybe a bit too fresh though.

Update http://io9.com/5702995/frank-darabont-f ... ting-staff

[Zeus]

I like Darabont and all, I think he's great. But I'm a little worried now. What makes shows like this great is the cohesion of the storyline and the care the curators of the franchise put into it. Without any on-staff writers (like the freelancers) or a lot of turnover, we'll lose at least some of that. For a show like this which is completely reliant on such cohesion, that's not a good thing. The very last thing we need is a new direction every 3 episodes.

Now, if Darabont himself is thinking "I'm doin' all the work, why share the wealth?", he might have a point. If all he needs is a production line while he takes on everything, maybe freelancers is all he needs (if the Writer's Guild allows it). It's a helluva lot to do but with excellent organizational skills and some smart resource management, it's doable.

Either way, I'll watch the show until it gives me reason not to.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah I can see this being really shakey without giving freelancers really strict guidelines on where things are going in just about every way since creating complicated characters and plot would be very difficult if the writers aren't solidly entrenched in the design of the series and where it's going. Another positive side to the comic being so far in before the series was created.


I'm a tad more hesitant at season two because I just found out today Rubicon isn't going for a second season.. I guess it's better than letting the writers create shoddy stuff compared to season one, but I'm not completely sure that's the case.

[Zeus]

Well, I can't say I'm too sad to see Rubicon go. It was really a wasted opportunity and was too "AMC-ed". It's the same problem Breaking Bad has and that's been declining in ratings each year as people get sick of waiting for SOMETHING TO FUCKING HAPPEN (then the fly episode happened and completely destroyed any shred of hope many had left for the show). I wouldn't be shocked if Season 4 will be the last of that one as well.

So far, Walking Dead has avoided getting "AMC-ed". But with it's increasing ratings and the downturn of all its shows not called Mad Men, it may just be a matter of time. Let's hope Hurd and Darabont tell them "fuck off, we're going to do this properly" and we can avoid filler.

[Shrinweck]

Wait, wait, wait, we've talked about this a lot so we probably shouldn't any more - but was there actually a drop of 'many' after the fly episode? The forum I follow this show on barely had any bitching about it at all. I haven't seen any data on this. I agree that Breaking Bad is moving way too slowly most of the time, but Rubicon was paced slowly on purpose. You aren't creating a thriller based off of a dude who works at a think tank. The show wasn't about him getting chased by people with guns and if that was the bulk of it a la Prison Break I wouldn't have watched. The show was about him slowly unraveling a mystery while taking enough care to not get shot in the face by the government.

[Zeus]

Breaking Bad's season 3 ratings were pretty poor. A 1.2 share is bad, that's worse than wrestling. The Fly episode was the second worse rated of the entire season (curiously, the one right after was pretty high but the worst was the one right after that). The finale did well but the season was pretty weak ratings-wise. By comparison, The Walking Dead started out strong (5.1 for the opener) was still at 5.1 by episode 3 and 5.5 by episode 5

Breaking Bad: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/0 ... ings/47698
Walking Dead: http://justjared.buzznet.com/2010/11/15 ... -the-rise/
http://justjared.buzznet.com/2010/11/29 ... h-ratings/

And I don't care if he slowly unravels a mystery in Rubicon. But fuck, man, he barely scratched the surface by the end of season 1. Where they ended up is where I would have pegged it at about ep 7 or so. What hook did they have to bring people back in season 2? Nothing, really. There was no buzz, no one cared whether the show continued or not. That's why it was cancelled, not enough happened to keep people interested. The same thing happened with Breaking Bad which, IMO, is why its ratings have been sliding. Great idea, lots of hook off the bat but it's just doing nothing and going nowhere with the family crap acting like filler as opposed to a secondary storyline you spend 5-7 minutes on per ep.

So far, Walking Dead is going against AMC's trend of great ideas implemented poorly. Until that show, I coulda sworn AMC stood for "Abrahm's Multitude of Crap"

[SineSwiper]

I like Darabont and all, I think he's great. But I'm a little worried now. What makes shows like this great is the cohesion of the storyline and the care the curators of the franchise put into it. Without any on-staff writers (like the freelancers) or a lot of turnover, we'll lose at least some of that. For a show like this which is completely reliant on such cohesion, that's not a good thing. The very last thing we need is a new direction every 3 episodes.

Now, if Darabont himself is thinking "I'm doin' all the work, why share the wealth?", he might have a point. If all he needs is a production line while he takes on everything, maybe freelancers is all he needs (if the Writer's Guild allows it). It's a helluva lot to do but with excellent organizational skills and some smart resource management, it's doable.

Either way, I'll watch the show until it gives me reason not to.

See, this "make up whatever the fuck we want without a plan" bullshit is what fucked up BSG. They didn't plan the Final Five; they just thought of it on a whim. How the fuck do you not plan that?! And the ending blew, because they didn't plan the finale, and didn't know what the hell to do?

Babylon 5, for all of its problems with dialogue and some of JMS's writing, was fucking PLANNED. Start to finish, most of the story was planned before the first script was written. And it made it a much better series that most of the shit that out there at the time.

Walking Dead is going to end up like the former if they aren't going to planning anything. And if they don't have a writer staff, then I don't see how they can plan for anything, anyway.

[Zeus]

The only problems I had with BSG was about eps 11-17 in Season 3 where it was clearly filler. I actually thought Season 4 was quite strong and really liked how the show ended

[SineSwiper]

TNT gave them a fifth season, since the show was canceled early. That fourth season finale was an attempt to explain what it could have been. The fifth season finale (the one from 20 years later) was the one he really wanted to show.

And then TNT fucked up the time slots and canceled Crusade. Such a good show gone to waste. JMS swore he would never trust a cable network again.

EDIT: Wow...even more fucked up than I thought:

Like Babylon 5, Crusade was intended to have a five-year story arc, although as Straczynski notes in the DVD commentary for A Call To Arms, it was intended to resolve the Drakh plague after a season or two and move onto other arcs. However, conflicts arose between the producers and executives at TNT, and production was cancelled before the first episode was broadcast.[1]

TNT's research had indicated that the audience for Babylon 5 did not watch other TNT programming, and likewise TNT's main audience was not watching the show, making another related program unattractive to the network's management. Straczynski believes that the network's "interference"[2] with the production was an attempt to get out of their contract by allowing them to argue that he failed to deliver the series they wanted.

Thirteen episodes were made and broadcast by TNT, with at least four more scripted. The Sci-Fi Channel attempted to pick up the show and continue production, but was unable to find room in its budget.[3] Cast and crew have indicated that the asking price TNT gave to Sci-Fi was purposely set too high so that the executives at TNT would not risk embarrassment if Crusade had gone on to do well on another network.

[Zeus]

Oh, we've moved on to Babylon 5 from Battlestar....

Sorry, I never did see that show. I heard it's pretty solid, though

[SineSwiper]

Oh, I'm still talking about B5. Crusade was the spin-off show, five years after Babylon 5. The show had solid writing and good episodes, but TNT skullfucked it before it even went on air. They even changed the order of the episodes to try to make it look bad.

[Zeus]

Oh, I'm still talking about B5. Crusade was the spin-off show, five years after Babylon 5. The show had solid writing and good episodes, but TNT skullfucked it before it even went on air. They even changed the order of the episodes to try to make it look bad.

It probably wasn't serving their purpose based on your quote above and they had a commitment so they killed it so it wouldn't go somewhere else and make coin. That's pretty normal in the biz, look at Conan's contract with NBC and keepin' him off the air for 9 months. There's been very little buzz since he came back and his ratings are lower than when he was on the Tonight Show when NBC decided to cancel him. I'm sure TNT did the same thing here, it would make sense

[SineSwiper]

Still doesn't make it horribly shitty and wrong. The public thought the Conan thing was a very dickish move on NBC's part, and rightfully so.

[Zeus]

Still doesn't make it horribly shitty and wrong. The public thought the Conan thing was a very dickish move on NBC's part, and rightfully so.

Oh, I agree. But that's business

[Shrinweck]

Well I think Conan's millions probably aid in cushioning the blow. And even though there's the obvious ratings deduction from moving from network to basic cable the show is funnier and edgier, now.

[SineSwiper]

Anyway, back to Walking Dead. The finale wasn't bad, but it's more episode to episode writing shit. I really hope he hires a writing staff, maybe the people he was contracting, so that there's some sense of an end goal. It's like every episode is about somebody dying and them leaving some horrible situation behind. It's really going too fast, and it's going to get boring quickly if it continues in the second season.

[Shrinweck]

Funny that the show suffers from the complete opposite problem than the book.

[Anarky]

Comic/TV Spoiler

Spoiler: show

They're not going to kill off Shane. He is going to be a regular because they're doing what all TV does, they become pussies to kill off characters. This will be Heroes all over again. SHANE MUST DIE!

[Zeus]

There was no real ending to Season 1, that much was clear. It really felt like just half a season. We'll see where they go in Season 2

[Shrinweck]

There was no real ending to Season 1, that much was clear. It really felt like just half a season. We'll see where they go in Season 2

Agreed, it was somewhat disappointing since I was hoping that the season would at the very least end with them still there. Did they drop any hints to where they could go next that I missed? I'm hoping that it dips back into the comic to grab some new characters that have been established in the book.

[SineSwiper]

Heh, Heroes indeed. Though, as screwed up as they were, they had some idea of what they were planning, even if they bumped into these obvious plot holes and inconsistencies. The guys behind Walking Dead have no fucking clue where they are going with this series.

[Zeus]

There was no real ending to Season 1, that much was clear. It really felt like just half a season. We'll see where they go in Season 2

Agreed, it was somewhat disappointing since I was hoping that the season would at the very least end with them still there. Did they drop any hints to where they could go next that I missed? I'm hoping that it dips back into the comic to grab some new characters that have been established in the book.

I would have liked to see them flush out the storyline in ep 6 a little more instead of dumping it so damned fast. But I guess they don't want to stray too far from the comics, just bring in other stuff here and there

[Zeus]

Heh, Heroes indeed. Though, as screwed up as they were, they had some idea of what they were planning, even if they bumped into these obvious plot holes and inconsistencies. The guys behind Walking Dead have no fucking clue where they are going with this series.

I don't know about that. They have the comics to use as a guide, Darabont seems to be a control-freak over the series, and Kirkland's involved. We'll have to give it at least halfway through Season 2 before we label it as another directionless show in the vein of Lost (which, ironically, described the writers of the show, not the cast)

[Mully]

Book spoiler and future tv show spoiler plotlines

Spoiler: show

In book 5 they find that redneck scientist mullet guy and head for the CDC, that plot can never ever happen now that they saw the destruction of the CDC.

The show didn't seem directionless to me. Darabont, as the executive producer, wrote the first two episodes and then did rewrites on the remaining four, so this really may not be as big a deal as it is being reported. He didn't need the writing staff that was hired, he seemed to have fixed what he thought they F'ed up.

Although, the io9 story linked above does say the rumor is that Darabont may hire freelance writers to write each episode, which he would then tweak as he sees fit.

Source: http://www.moviesonline.ca/2010/12/walk ... ters-axed/

[Shrinweck]

Book spoiler and future tv show spoiler plotlines

Spoiler: show

In book 5 they find that redneck scientist mullet guy and head for the CDC, that plot can never ever happen now that they saw the destruction of the CDC.

Book spoiler

Spoiler: show

The mullet guy's CDC backstory is much different from the one used in the AMC show and I'm fairly certain mullet guy was taking them to Washington DC and not the CDC in Atlanta. If they want to take it in that direction mullet guy could just as easily come from a different research center. They probably won't. This plot line was shit even for the comic book.

I don't think we've seen enough of what's going on to call it directionless quite yet, as well. I think we'll have to see the first few episodes of the new season before drawing conclusions on that, especially since how this season ended the first episode of season two basically has to be directionless.

[Imakeholesinu]

I could have sworn they were heading to Fort Benning next.

[Shrinweck]

Shane wanted to go there but since when do they listen to him?

[Imakeholesinu]

Who knows, I would think they would after how the CDC panned out.

[Mully]

Comic spoiler

Spoiler: show

Probably true, they could cut back to the comic real quick and stop at the Willshire Estates, but they already thinned out their numbers, which that is basically what Willshire does for the group.

I don't think this is spoiler at all, but I'll close it just in case

Is T-Dog (the black guy) from the show (the guy who drops the keys on the roof), is

Spoiler: show

Tyreese

from the Comic?

[Mully]

Still not a fan of the choice to play Andrea.

[Shrinweck]

There's no way that's Tyreese

[Mully]

I hope not, that guy is the biggest wuss, however it's awful close that his name T-Dog and he is black. T-Dog as a name could be Tyreese.

[Shrinweck]

In theory but Tyreese is a former pro football player. T-Dog could at best play a pro football fan.

[Shrinweck]

Excited that this is restarting in a week and a half (the 16th). Remember reading some kind of confirmation on the survivors getting to

Spoiler: show

the farm

this season. Hoping for a return of the quality while the comic is still mostly mired in mediocrity. Still better than Marvel's Fear Itself series and DCs Flashpoint series, though.

[SineSwiper]

I still hope they are sticking to most of the source material. Again, if you like the comic series so much to write a TV series around it, why fuck it over by not using the source material?

[Anarky]

I don't know about you guys but I've given up on the show. It's just horrible.

[Flip]

I don't know about you guys but I've given up on the show. It's just horrible.

Whaaaat. This last episode was awesome... lots of secrets came out and i cant wait to see how it keeps going. I did not expect all the dirty laundry to be revealed in one episode. You're insane.

[Shellie]

I tend to stick with shows even when they start to get lame. This season is draaaaaaging.. Yeah a lot of stuff came out and it will be interesting to see what happens, but I really wish it would get a move on.

[Shrinweck]

I tend to stick with shows even when they start to get lame. This season is draaaaaaging.. Yeah a lot of stuff came out and it will be interesting to see what happens, but I really wish it would get a move on.

This is basically what the entire series is now. Expect something incredibly fucking crazy and interesting to happen by the end of the season to hook you for the next.

And then expect to get shafted again for the majority of the next season only for something incredible to happen again. That's basically what the comic is. The CDC episode had more answers about zombies than the entire run of the comic so far.

On the plus side, if they follow the comic the next season will be more interesting than this one, especially if they take people feeling like it's dragging to heart. For Zeus this is probably the perfect example of "AMC'ing" a show but in reality it's more Kirkman's fault.

Still this fucking farm storyline is dragging even more than the comic. At least one of the best characters in the series gets introduced soon.