The Walking Dead

God I just finished watching the latest episode of The Walking Dead. Read the comics Volume by Volume so I'm a big fan of the series and show. But that last part freaked every joint in my body. I thought that when we heard that heavy breathing of the last walker, I thought it may have been Hersehl's wife or step-son. Then I saw the small shoes, the horror. Perfect way to end for the break.

So how long till we see more episodes?

So if Herschel gets bitten does he then become Herschel Walker?

Just watched the mid-season closer last night.

Thoughts:

- It would have been better if Herschel did know that Sophia was in the barn. Wrangling zombies into the barn would have been a great excuse for him to ask Rick to join him up in the hayloft and point the little girl zombie out too him. It also makes specific sense, in that he prevented Rick and Andrea from going out searching - he was going to tell them with a tough demonstration. "It's not quite so easy, Rick, when they are the people that we love. There she is, the little girl you've risked life and limb for, the one that Darryl nearly died for. She's a part of your group, and it's your choice what to do with her." At least, that's what I'm going to pretend Herschel was going for. Which leads into...

- The final confrontation at the barn was nicely done, and it really underscored Herschel's point. It's easy to shoot a walker when you don't know who they were. Notice that Rick's the only one who could do what needed to be done - Shane couldn't bring himself to do it. That's why Rick gets to be the moral center of the group, Shane.

- What Shane did was the right thing to do to the walkers in the barn, but it was the wrong way to go about it. If Rick wasn't there, the next step would be to put Herschel up against the wall and take the farm for themselves. Shane would have no issue with the theft, and the only other person in the group who would have objected instead of just shrugging and saying "What's done is done" would be Dale. And it's pretty clear that, if Rick wasn't around, Dale wouldn't be either. Shane was psyching himself up to take the farm away from Herschel - we'll see if Rick or the Sophia incident takes the wind out of his sails, or if he goes for it.

- I was expecting either Rick or Darryl to take down the Sophia walker. I can see why they had Rick do it, but I think it would have made for a very interesting extra layer to the Darryl/Caroline relationship.

- I liked the pacing on this episode. More like this, please. Shame about the rest of the episodes this season.

- I was hoping for a better reaction from Shane, a little shame or regret, when Carl showed that he was a better man than Shane was.

So, now that we know we won't be seeing it in the show, anyone care to spoil me in regards to the "nice but small" interactions of Sophia and Carl?

Just a few thoughts...

On the subject of pacing differences between the comics and the show, I can think of two reasons:

1) The comicbooks are published monthly (as far as I know). As a result, something exciting has to happen in every issue to keep readers coming back. In a universe where the Walking Dead comicbook spent half a year's worth of issues dealing with the search for one little girl there would be no Walking Dead TV show because the book wouldn't have lasted more than about 12 or 16 issues. With a TV show, you only have to wait a week for the next episode, and even then the slow pace of this season had a lot of people complaining and probably cost the show a fair number of viewers.

2) The comicbook doesn't have to worry about a special effects budget, so something exciting can happen every issue. You can show a hundred walkers attacking people five times in an issue of the comicbook, but if you have five zombie hoards an episode in the show, you're going to go way over budget, so it's necessary to draw things out with character development and non-action sequences.


On the subject of the safety of the farm - from what we've seen, the farm is in an area of wide open rolling hills and woodlands, and the number of nearby zombies is very small. In such an environment, gunfire, even sustained gunfire like we saw in the last episode, would be rather hard to pin down from a significant distance due to echos and such. Zombies, not being shown to be very smart, would probably perk up at the initial sound, and a half dozen or so that might be nearby might figure out where it came from, but I really doubt they would arrive in any significant numbers. As I said before, I'd be more concerned bout drawing the attention of other survivors.


Regarding the logic behind kicking out Rick's group - in the comicbook it made more sense because the seasons actually changed and it was winter, and Herschel hadn't stored enough food to feed that many more people over the winter. In the show, it appears that despite talking about winter, it's going to remain perpetually summer, so the possibility of a food shortage doesn't seem as imminent. However, didn't Hershel say that there were other farms nearby that Rick's group could move to? It's not like he was telling them to hit the road and hope for the best, just move next door and stop eating all my damn food.

Maggie points out to him why kicking them out is a big deal. He's under-informed about the outside world...she's been out and about;everything nearby is toast.

One other difference between the comicbook and the TV show - in the comicbook when Rick wants to teach Carl how to shoot a gun, Lori states that Carl is, "only seven years old," whereas in the show he is obviously older than that. Comicbook Sophia appears to be about the same age as comicbook Carl.

ETA: IIRC, Hershel in the TV show has at least one daughter around Carl's age who could fill in for Sophia in the future.

So they didn't have the whole Sophia is lost arc in the comicbooks, I take it they didn't kill her off either in the comicbooks, am I right?

I agree with pretty much everything Frost Warden said (and no it's not just the ice brigade sticking together). Tyreese certainly didn't teach his daughter that it was an acceptable thing to do, but it happened anyway. Herschel needs to lose some family if he's ever going to get to the same point in the show as he did in the comic. And there needs to be a catalyst for what Dr. Jenner told Rick. I'm predicting that it will either be Beth and Jimmy or Shane that provides that catalyst, probably in the season finale. Possibly both.

There's an ice brigade? I demand membership!