AMC's The Walking Dead

"Aw, hell naw!"

T-Dog remains the best character on the show.

And holy fuck, that was some shit.

The zombie-related twist, which I won't reveal right now but I think we should be able to talk about sometime soon, really wasn't a twist as much as an explanation.

 

Well, I knew it would happen eventually. Liked the juxtaposition from the comics. The writers really know how to write into a cliffhanger. It's about to get really messy folks.

 

I've been critical of the show, but I've got to give it to the creative minds for last night's episode. It was fantastic. It was very well paced, they used the characters properly to develop the story, the suspense was incredible, and they hinted a huge piece of the mythology (the dead rise no matter what!?!).

I knew Shane was going to die for quite some time. Not only from what I heard about his early death in the comics, but being cast as the lead in Darabont's new TNT project was pretty much writing on the wall. Plus, the writers continued to make him more dangerous and borderline insane, and it was a matter of time.

I've got a feeling what Jenner whispered to Rick has something to do with any of the dead rising, regardless if they've not been bitten or scratched. I think Rick will explain it in the finale.

Finale prediction: The farm becomes so overrun with walkers that they've got to flee it. Or they kill all the walkers and in the midst of beginning to compile and burn the bodies, the Gang of 30 shows up. Cut to black.

 

Here's my question: Do the dead rise no matter what or only the dead that had been scratched or in some way infected while alive?

 

I wonder if everyone has something in their genes that need to be turned on in order to walk when they're dead. But that would mean something - an event, a poison, a toxin - would have to activate said gene. Because millions of people have died throughout history and not risen. But now they rise. So, what is this event? And how was it able to spread so quickly?

 

In Walking Dead world, assuming it's like the comics, all dead rise. The scratches and bites don't turn you into a zombie, they just cause a lethal, incurable infection.

 

One gripe: Carl again wandering off. The very next night after Dale is attacked by a walker, that little shit is out in the middle of the night very far away from the farm.

That is not shitty parenting or a natural human happening. That is heavy-handed writing that specifically puts Carl in that situation, so that it creates drama.

Plus... 25 feet away, moving target, and the 10-year-old goes bullseye on Shane. Not happening.

 

I might be way off, but my guess is that all of these people who have been exposed to zombie fluids (blood, drool) will rise once they die. We assumed it was the bite that was turning them to zombies, but the bites really did the double duty of infecting and killing people. Those who get splattered with blood but not bitten will get infected, but it will lie dormant until they actually die.

 

They did show Carl standing in the farmhouse window looking out with his binoculars, so I think the assumption is that he saw them out there before going out into the field himself.

But, yeah, that was a hell of a shot.

 

Well it wasn't that far away either.. Which was a point of contention with me.. They were within sight of the house.
So WTF was Shane doing? He was going to kill Rick in a open field a few hundred yards in front of the house and in no discernable proximity to the dead kid he was planning to blame?
I thought Shane was losing it.. .he looked sick and crazy. When he had the kid in the barn and his head is tilted sideways, and he's drooling. I thought he was infected then.


And where the hell did all there zombie come from out of the woods? Was there some sort of Zombiepalooza in rural Georgia that we missed? Now, a couple dozen zombies have converged on the farm?

 

He saw them in the dark?

 

Remember the big herd of zombies that walked down the highway at the start of this half-season? Maybe it's them.