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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Comic talk:

Spoiler:

So ah, anyone confused about the latest issue of the comic? Youknow, the whole Jesus possibly being infected thing?

The Whisperers covered their weapons in zombie guts, which has been shown to turn someone before. Jesus took a cut to his arm, which is seen bleeding, from Beta's knife. Nobody addresses this in the issue, despite them presumably knowing the effects of the Whisperer's weapons (people mentioned it a few times in previous issues).

Just sort of weird it was glossed over.

Beta being a basket ball player explains his height at least.

Comic talk:

Spoiler:

Not necessarily. Its a slow acting infection, could take several hours or a day before symptoms begin to exhibit. How much time passed from the time of the cut, to the end of the issue? Minutes? Hours?

What you perceive to be "glossing over" may prove to be a Chekov's Gun and central plot point for a future issue. If Jesus has been cut and infected, he might not be showing symptoms now but that could change in the next issue.

Strange episode.
I liked the Jesus/Morgan interaction and possible dilemma at the Hilltop developing.

But Ricks piece and the Ezekiel preaching fights were not good.

Also what is Carl/army girl doing right now back at Alexandria? Mowing the lawn?
And are Gabby and Neegan still trapped inside a trailer full of zombies?

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Comic talk:

Spoiler:

So ah, anyone confused about the latest issue of the comic? Youknow, the whole Jesus possibly being infected thing?

The Whisperers covered their weapons in zombie guts, which has been shown to turn someone before. Jesus took a cut to his arm, which is seen bleeding, from Beta's knife. Nobody addresses this in the issue, despite them presumably knowing the effects of the Whisperer's weapons (people mentioned it a few times in previous issues).

Just sort of weird it was glossed over.

Beta being a basket ball player explains his height at least.

Comic talk:

Spoiler:

Not necessarily. Its a slow acting infection, could take several hours or a day before symptoms begin to exhibit. How much time passed from the time of the cut, to the end of the issue? Minutes? Hours?

What you perceive to be "glossing over" may prove to be a Chekov's Gun and central plot point for a future issue. If Jesus has been cut and infected, he might not be showing symptoms now but that could change in the next issue.

Spoiler:

If he is infected, that neither he nor Aaron - who are aware what Whisperer's weapons do - not addressing it is so fething weird to me. Just saying. :(

Nice to see them show fairly a realistic aftermath of .50 rounds hitting human beings...


... and then throw it away by having the same rounds get bounced by a Jeep's front end.

Here's hoping that now a huge chunk of the CG budget isn't being wasted on 2 minutes of tiger per season the gunfights will improve.

I can't really stand this show anymore. It just feels like a complete cartoon at this point. Whatever realistic connection the world of the show had to the world I live in has just been completely eroded at this point.

I'm not the kind of person who normally nitpicks every scene and thinks 'that would never occur that way', but I just cannot help it anymore. Every scene in every episode it just a constant faceplam situation for me. I just do not understand the decisions the showrunners are making anymore. The overall plot is fine, but how the individual scenes are being set up, blocked and shot is just beyond frustrating.

What's even crazier to me is that, even though I don't read the comics, I always just assumed that the comics were setting up these scenes in unbelievable ways and the showrunners have just been following that lead (which I know they have been to a certain degree). However, I just read online a comparison between this episode and how it played out in the comic and was flabbergasted to see that the comic played it much, much more believable manner, which is an unforgivable sin as far as I'm concerned. The TV show should *always* be the more believable of the two versions.

The idea that two .50 cal guns could somehow kill every single Kingdom member in that party (besides the King, Jerry and Carol) before some of them could scatter into cover is simply ridiculous. And if those guns did manage to kill every single person they hit (instead of leaving many people wounded and dying), how weren't some of them already turned into walkers by the time the King woke up?

It just doesn't make any sense. Either the start of the episode is only a few seconds since the guns stopped firing, in which case there should be several wounded/dying Kingdom members moaning on the ground or the start o the episode is supposed to be several minutes since the guns stopped firing (which could allow for all the wounded Kingdom members to have bled out), in which case those Kingdom members which were killed instantly by the guns should be up and walking around as walkers by the time the King wakes up.

But of course all that is thrown out the window because they want the King to wake up to see the devastation that has been caused to his people *before* the danger he is in is revealed. And of course we have to ignore the fact that EVERY SINGLE Kingdom member that was killed was armed with an assault rifle, but suddenly the King can only find one nearby that is jammed? Stupid. Ridiculous.

And why does everyone in the show now fire continuously on full auto without ever reloading? Again, the gun combat all seems like a cartoon now. I'm smart enough to realize that the budget doesn't allow for the cars and stuff they hide behind as cover to take actual damage except in specific scenes they shoot...that's why most of the time you just see a stupid little digital 'BING' hitting cover most of the time and then in one random scene you finally see a bunch of actual bullet holes explode on the car...that's because they only have the budget to explode the squibs ONCE on the car. So they shoot most of the scenes with only cheap digital 'BINGS'. I get all that. I understand that's how TV production works. Yet, as a showrunner, if your whole season is centered around gun battles, you have to be aware of that fact and shoot the show to hide your limitations. Soooo many of the gun battle scenes in both this episode and the last few are shot from behind the person shooting, looking down the gun as they're firing (full auto, of course) and you see NO damage occurring at all at what they're shooting at, except for a few lame digital 'BINGS' here and there.

Why are they shooting it this way? All you have to do to get around this is to always choose shots where you're looking directly at the person firing (so you can't actually see what they're shooting at) and then as a reaction, you cut to a shot where the person being shot AT is ducking down behind the cover, and you throw little bits of glass and debris over the top of the cover they're hiding at so it gives the feeling like the cover they're behind is actually taking damage. THEN you use your one 'money' shot where you see all the squibs going off doing damage to the cover. That way it ALWAYS feels like all the shots people are firing are dangerous/actually doing something.

I just also don't understand why everyone is constantly firing on full auto like they've suddenly got unlimited ammunition. Its ridiculous and unneeded. They've already stretched credibility to a breaking point with gasoline still existing this far into the apocalypse, but just a few seasons ago there was talk about how useful Eugene would be in order to produce more ammunition, but now every episode people are firing off thousands of rounds like there is some endless supply.

I just don't get it, especially after seeing how it played out in the comics.


Why couldn't there have been a few more Kingdom members who managed to avoid the ambush show up at the end to return with the King/Jerry/Carol? That way the whole thing wouldn't have felt so stupid?

I mean, the show has always made it feel like there's very few able bodied men in these communities besides the main characters until there is some kind of conflict, at which point dozens of 'red shirts' suddenly appear, but then they have to go and have an ambush kill EVERYONE for no apparent reason? And I'm sure down the road should the Kingdom survive this, we'll magically have some more Kingdom redshirt dudes appear back again to fight in some other battle, despite the fact that they were completely obliterated in this episode.

And don't even get me started on:

1) random lone 'evil guy' who shows up out of nowhere to capture the King. Why was he there at all? Why was he by himself?
2) Jerry appearing out of nowhere with no talk about where he went or why it took him so long to get back to the King.
3) Carol perfectly killing all the dudes with a single clip when firing through a ceiling panel (when she just have easily could have been hiding in a corner, popped up and killed them all before they got a shot off).
4) The dude in the back of the truck somehow un-crating and setting up a .50 cal gun by himself in the back of a truck.
5) A .50 cal somehow not able to hit a jeep driving directly behind the truck its firing from, and then when it does hit the jeep not completely tearing it apart (again, cheap ass budget ruining things).

Just all so dumb. It continues to make sense to me why their ratings keep plummeting and I see no end of that in sight.

Good points MarsNZ and Yakface. I actually think this was one of the better episodes storylinewise. I actually felt for Ezekiel but the way they do gunplay in this show: They are some of the worst in the business. I think it's because this started as a horror/psychological thriller show and now they are doing a full blown war show and they don't know what they're doing. Show has been so successful no one's bothered to mention it's stupid now. Zombies still look fantastic....Rick's deflector shield jeep...not so much.

Guys, just switch your brains off. You'll enjoy it more.

Anyone else more sad to see Sheeva die than any of the Kingdom "survivors"?

Not really, for the same reason I didn't really care for any other individual kingdomers. We never really got to know anything about Shiva other than her being so incredibly expensive to put on screen that we ended up with continuity errors like the glaring one this week. One second Shiva is here, the next she's vanished.

whew... you would think a popular show like this would have someone who knows what they are doing involved in filming all these gun battles...

They are really cheaping out, the CGI added muzzle flashes are not well done, many guns have the ejector port closed, NONE are cycling or ejecting rounds, several semi autos have mini gun cyclic rates expending thousands of rounds missing after only moments ago carol hits every shot on 5 guys though a roof... basically one step up from pointing guns and going PEWPEWPEW, really disjointing and rough to the point where some of us just cant shut down the brain enough like others might be able to.

The car chase scene was just brutally forced... rick wins because hes rick... they approached the saviours in the worst way and win through dumb luck/plot magic....

The stuff with ezekial did well enough at least.

 yakface wrote:

I can't really stand this show anymore. It just feels like a complete cartoon at this point. Whatever realistic connection the world of the show had to the world I live in has just been completely eroded at this point.

I realise nitpicking is half the fun (hell, half the point!) of watching tv today, but it's a zombie show, man. It takes itself a little seriously, but at the end of the day, it's meant to be a cartoon! Remember comedy walkers climbing fences back in s01e01?

nfe wrote:

 yakface wrote:

I can't really stand this show anymore. It just feels like a complete cartoon at this point. Whatever realistic connection the world of the show had to the world I live in has just been completely eroded at this point.

I realise nitpicking is half the fun (hell, half the point!) of watching tv today, but it's a zombie show, man. It takes itself a little seriously, but at the end of the day, it's meant to be a cartoon! Remember comedy walkers climbing fences back in s01e01?

The show has never been marketed as a comedy so trying to deflect valid criticism by saying "it's just a joke man" doesn't fly.

We're talking about a long running TV series about Zombies.

Zombies that somehow haven't long since been picked clean by bugs and maggots and that. Zombies where their eyes haven't completely dessicated in a matter of weeks, nor their brains decayed away completely months, if not years later.

Zombies.

And you're complaining about realism?

You may way to check out Band of Brothers and similar shows. There's a place for realism, and it's not Zombies.

 MarsNZ wrote:

nfe wrote:

 yakface wrote:

I can't really stand this show anymore. It just feels like a complete cartoon at this point. Whatever realistic connection the world of the show had to the world I live in has just been completely eroded at this point.

I realise nitpicking is half the fun (hell, half the point!) of watching tv today, but it's a zombie show, man. It takes itself a little seriously, but at the end of the day, it's meant to be a cartoon! Remember comedy walkers climbing fences back in s01e01?

The show has never been marketed as a comedy so trying to deflect valid criticism by saying "it's just a joke man" doesn't fly.

Doesn't need to fly - it didn't say it was a comedy. When I said 'comedy walkers climbing fences' I didn't mean the show was a comedy, I was drawing attention to the fact it has had cartoonish elements from the start. Silliness has always been part of the show. Whether it's walkers clambering over fences, Butterbean getting pulled in half in a well, or slapstick firearms use.

It's not even that there's been a descent into inconsistent depictions of the effectiveness of firearms or a sudden lack of tactical nous - guns have always been exactly as powerful as the plot demands, and users have always bounced between Hawkeye and Stormtrooper depending on the immediate importance of the target; and pretty much everything bad that's happened in the last 7 seasons could have been solved had someone thought to just stay inside the house on the farm.

The lack of realism (even within a show about the undead) is a perfectly fair criticism of the show, but it's a strange one to be making if you've watched 7+ seasons.

And everyone seems to regularly forget the 'cover yourself in Walker Guts' trick. How easy would it have been for the main three protagonists of last night's episode to do that and get safely out of dodge?

As a Jeep lover, I am glad one show finally got it right! Jeeps truly are bulletproof. Look at how many 50 cal shots it took just to get the radiator to leak a little. You should buy one, so you can survive the zombie apocalypse.

#OnlyInAJeep

Genuinely struggling at this point with the show. Another pretty woeful episode.
Its actually starting to remind my of Darker Skies - cheesy, silly in many places, poor dialogue (well poorer than usual) and no investment left.
And they couldnt even give Shiva an epic death.....

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

And you're complaining about realism?

.

No we are complaining about sloppy production, poor execution of scenes, and a lack of continuity. Hand waiving away critiques as appeals to realism is as lazy as not spending 5$ to put banks in your prop guns.

There is a pretty big difference between a well made fight/car chase/shoot out scene and a poorly made one. You just dont feel as entertained by people pointing their fingers going "pewpewpew" as you do with people who act the part properly, and have prop-guns that properly simulate guns.

When watching a show about car chases, if we saw the driver constantly shift into reverse while driving forwards, it doesnt matter if its some zombie car chase movie, thats bad production value. Jon wick is not a realistic movie either, but it suspends your disbelief enough to make it a ride worth taking, they put a lot of effort into making an unbelievable thing, believable. Seems like that effort is just not there in TWD.

For a multi million dollar show its really quite sad at this point, especially since the issues are getting worse, not better.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We're talking about a long running TV series about Zombies.

Zombies that somehow haven't long since been picked clean by bugs and maggots and that. Zombies where their eyes haven't completely dessicated in a matter of weeks, nor their brains decayed away completely months, if not years later.

Zombies.

And you're complaining about realism?

You may way to check out Band of Brothers and similar shows. There's a place for realism, and it's not Zombies.

So would you be ok with Gandalf flying in on on a unicorn and destroying the Saviours with a lightsabre? I mean if realism is of absolutely no concern at all...

Also I think you miss the entire point of the show if you thinks it's "a show about zombies". The titular walking dead actually refer to the human survivors.

 Necros wrote:
As a Jeep lover, I am glad one show finally got it right! Jeeps truly are bulletproof. Look at how many 50 cal shots it took just to get the radiator to leak a little. You should buy one, so you can survive the zombie apocalypse.

#OnlyInAJeep

...hope you got paid for that.

 Ratius wrote:
Genuinely struggling at this point with the show. Another pretty woeful episode.
Its actually starting to remind my of Darker Skies - cheesy, silly in many places, poor dialogue (well poorer than usual) and no investment left.
And they couldnt even give Shiva an epic death.....

I tend to agree. I lost interest during the episode, which would have been an unthinkable thing in earlier seasons. There are many bigger issues with the show than the specifics of the gun battles. It feels more and more like a typical network program, and less and less like 'prestige TV'.

More enjoyable episode this week I felt. And Im not sure why
Thought the dialogue between Gabby and Negan was quite weak overall but Negans moment of breakdown was actually very well done. Boy did they need a bit more of that.
Also enjoyed the bickering/politic of the Saviours without Negan - was a nice contrast and angle.

Whats the deal with Rick seeing the helo?

Definitely the best episode this season, so far! Cemented the fact that my wife likes Negan and his views more than Rick’s (minus the whole graphic head smashing bits).

I thought this episode was better. I was thinking the chopper was setting up something for the next group of aholes the gang runs into next season.

Decent character driven episode by two we’ve needed to know far more about.

Yep, a much better episode. I'd point to the relative lack of shooting as a plus, nothing of late suspends my disbelief as much as the awful fighting scenes this season.

Also nice to get an inside look into the Saviours for a change rather than rehashing the same tired storylines with the same tired characters - eg: Today Morgan is a killer and Carol is a pacifist, next week they will switch roles. See also: Rick/Daryl, Jesus/Tara etc. Tune in next week to find out which characters the writers use to create the exact same dichotomy!

What I wonder about is the scene where Negan questions Simons loyalty and infers there was an issue with this in the past. Simon shows no physical evidence of any 'corrective actions' such as Dwight (scalding iron to the face) or Michelle (amputated finger). Was his correction a psychological one, did Negan punish someone close to Simon for this breach, or is this just an oversight?

The chopper seems to be another of the 1st season easter eggs the writers have been cramming in wherever they can. "Choke hold's illegal" was predictable as hell, you might have heard my eyes rolling back when we saw `the helicopter only Rick can see` again.

Id love for this show to go back to the days of when the Zombies were terrifying and a credible threat. They literally just shove the walkers out of the way now.

 KingCracker wrote:
Id love for this show to go back to the days of when the Zombies were terrifying and a credible threat. They literally just shove the walkers out of the way now.

Its true to the source material. Survivors have learned how to handle Walkers, and Walker-related deaths are very rare now.

I managed to begin watching the latest season. After the first few episodes my thoughts are: For the love of god why can't anyone in this show shoot straight? People are within metres of each other, firing full auto, and still missing... Not to mention that nobody reloads (I counted just how many shots Eric was firing out of that AK...).

...And where is everyone finding automatic weapons in the Northern USA? Did a gunrunner die or something? M16s fine, but where are all the imported automatic AKs coming from? Apparently there must be a gunsmith who died just before the show takes place who was just churning out those conversions. I half expected to that Ruger Mini Maggie was carrying to open up like a machine gun when it appeared, though that's seemingly one of the only semi-auto weapons which exists in this world.

Other than that I'm still watching this show, but yeah I'll feed into the echo chamber of criticising the lazy writing. If anything I still keep at it for the set pieces, and interesting things they can do with the zombie genre. I'm concerned about the longevity though if they're already hinting at the time skip even though All Out War's just started (the governor had a few seasons to himself).

I watch it purely because I'm a fan of the Comics, and as crap as the writing is on the show sometimes, I'm still excited to see some of the big set piece moments from the comics played out on screen.

TWD is the only I still read atm.