The Walking Dead Season 2 Discussion *Spoilers*

[the G-man]

Returning briefly to the CDC Guy's Big Secret, and then I'll stop, promise...maybe Beth's suspicious illness is a sign that you don't have to be bit by a zombie to become zombified. Maybe the virus is airborne and everyone is now a ticking clock.

But Maggie had at least as close an encounter with a zombie (in the pharmacy) as did her sister.

Furthermore, during last season, with all the zombie guts splattering round and both Rick and Glenn disguising themselves in blood and entrails... and in this season, Daryl's habit of wiping used arrows off on his pant leg (not to mention a zombie chewing on his shoe)... if the virus was airborne they'd all be zombies by now.

[sojourner]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

---

Rick is immune. He already went through the no-bite-zombification process and survived.

You're really hoping for this aren't you? I think it cheapens things if one of our characters is "the one". It's Mary Sue-ish territory.

[Dream]

AvBaur wrote:

---

Maybe. I just find it weird that now we finally have an all-out zombie show on TV and it's not only extremely successful, but frankly much better than anybody could have hoped for, and yet all people online seem to do is complain about it.

At times I really wish HBO had gotten this show intead of AMC. At least the show would have a decent budget for something that gets such huge ratings.

[PsychoPere]

DarthTom wrote:

---

You put your finger on what's missing which is a grander perspective on how the world melts down.
People though who follow the comic book series as I understand it would object though to break from that cannon which wasn't included in the comics.

I wouldn't anticipate a departure into such territory. Every interview I've read with Kirkman, Darabont, and now Mazzarra has suggested that none of them have been or are interested in such a larger perspective.

DarthTom wrote:

---

Survivors looking for a safe haven will find the farm and either by intent bring the zombies or by accident - the end result they'll over run the farm and everyone will be forced to leave.

If that does happen, I hope the group suffers some more casualties. There are still too many characters that very little has been done with, so we might as well toss out T-Dog, Beth, and Patricia (though she does play an incredibly naive and idiotic role in the comics during a future camp setting).

EDITED TO ADD: Jimmy should be a casualty too. Forgot about him when I posted last night.

[Dream]

PsychoPere wrote:

---

There are still too many characters that very little has been done with, so we might as well toss out T-Dog, Beth, and Patricia (though she does play an incredibly naive and idiotic role in the comics during a future camp setting).

T-Dog's single "WHO'S THAT?!?!?!?!?" line in the lastest episode when they brought the new kid to the farm made me laugh. They are doing absolutely NOTHING with the character. T-Dog doing so little every episode has become a running joke.

[marillion]

AvBaur wrote:

---

Uhm... weren't they LITERALLY "fighting the zombie herds" in this one? This was probably the least time they spent at the farm since the season premiere.


I'm actually really enjoying the slow pace of the show and the human drama totally works for me. Maybe it's because I know what to expect as someone who's familiar with all the comics, but I really couldn't be much happier with the show.

This... I love the pace of the show and even though they have strayed off the comic canon (don't really care about that), they have kept the flavor of the comic... The farm, the camp... they are micro-cosms unto themselves. They are chapters. While part of me would like them to pick up the pace a bit and explore new places, that could easily lead to "zombie metropolis of the week" and I DON'T want to see that.

[Enterprise is Great]

T Dog is the Travis Mayweather of The Walking Dead.

[Immolatus]

Santeria wrote:

---

Neither of those examples are anything close to the zombie virus. Not even the horrors of the Black Plague approach the levels of how awful it is. It has a 100% infection rate, is often nearly instantaneous, the victims don't just fall to the ground and die but become bloodthirsty, mindless psychopaths that want to eat you alive, and it spreads like wildfire as a result. Even a tiny bite or scratch seems to be enough to do the job.

It can't be quarantined. It'll never go away. Anyone and everyone who dies turns into a monster, no matter the circumstances of their death (sans getting shot in the head or something similar, which is a pretty damn rare way to die). Refraining from sex won't save you from it. A few shots in the stomach won't cure you.

The only way to survive in such a world is to be paranoid and alert 100% of the time. Which is impossible to do. Even if you shoot everyone in the head when they die, zombies will still crop up. Constantly. And forever. With no hope in sight. Ever. Even when highly intelligent and educated medical practitioners were alive and functioning in relative safety -- including the very same ones who came up with the virus in the first place -- were unable to create any kind of cure for it. And all those smart, trained, and equipped individuals are likely dead. So even that's beyond hope for these people.

And worse, the larger the society, the less chance they'd have to survive for all those very reasons. Isolated groups would be the only likely means of surviving for any length of time, and they would slowly die off one by one. You know, kind of like Rick's group is.

Sorry, but no, they would have no hope for a normal society.. Any type of society that could counter all of the issues would be one that is nothing like what these people are familiar with. And it would likely be brutal and cold beyond description. "Shooting people in the head when they die" would be the most simplistic, minimalist trait of such a society.

And if you honestly think otherwise, you're clearly not thinking things through.

Ever see the movie Fido? Apart from making zombies servants they seem to have a society that works.

[Santeria]

Immolatus wrote:

---

Ever see the movie Fido? Apart from making zombies servants they seem to have a society that works.

You mean the comedy where they rely on a collar that magically stops zombies from being flesh-hungry monsters from Hell (or in other words, not zombies at all)? And where when one of the magical collars does malfunction, a small outbreak occurs and is only stopped when super soldiers are sent to clean it up? And the same film where, despite that, there's still a "wild zone" full of rampaging zombie monsters anyway?

To paraphrase from something I saw just the other day: "How do you kill a vampire?" "Stake through the heart, garlic, sunlight... I dunno." "No, you can kill a vampire however the fuck you want, because vampires don't fucking exist. You can make up rules for whatever the fuck you want."

Pointing to some lame zombie using rules and a setting completely alien to the discussion at hand is pretty pointless. Fido is nothing like Walking Dead in any way, shape, or form. There's nothing even remotely similar about them aside that they both have zombies, and even then they're completely and utterly different from the ones in Walking Dead.

[pork3]

Enterprise is Great wrote:

---

T Dog is the Travis Mayweather of The Walking Dead.

Oh, come on now, Mayweather was the blandest character out there played by a less than capable actor who rarely could deliver his lines without inducing a cringe...one of the many reasons why Enterprise sucked.

If I were to compare T Dog to anyone, it would be "Token" from South Park. Hopefully the writers make better use of that character down the line.

-Jamman

[the G-man]

Santeria wrote:

---

To paraphrase from something I saw just the other day: "How do you kill a vampire?" "Stake through the heart, garlic, sunlight... I dunno." "No, you can kill a vampire however the fuck you want, because vampires don't fucking exist. You can make up rules for whatever the fuck you want."

Pointing to some lame zombie using rules and a setting completely alien to the discussion at hand is pretty pointless.

There's a certain irony in your insisting that a zombie outbreak would HAVE to end a particular way (living on earth forever with no way for humanity to adapt) and then chastising another poster for not realizing it's a fictional premise where the writers can "make up rules for whatever [they] want."

[the G-man]

Dream wrote:

---

T-Dog's single "WHO'S THAT?!?!?!?!?" line in the lastest episode when they brought the new kid to the farm made me laugh. They are doing absolutely NOTHING with the character. T-Dog doing so little every episode has become a running joke.

I suspect T-dog is going to play a major role in the future if, for no other reason, I also suspect Merle is coming back very soon.

[Santeria]

the G-man wrote:

---

There's a certain irony in your insisting that a zombie outbreak would HAVE to end a particular way (living on earth forever with no way for humanity to adapt) and then chastising another poster for not realizing it's a fictional premise where the writers can "make up rules for whatever [they] want."

Try re-reading what you quoted. In particular:

Santeria wrote:

---

Pointing to some lame zombie [movie] using rules and a setting completely alien to the discussion at hand is pretty pointless.

I'm "chastising" someone for pointing to something completely alien and unrelated to the fictional world being discussed, where they're using it as proof for how a normal -- that's the keyword, mind you, of the entire discussion at hand -- society could evolve in The Walking Dead.

And I think that's the big thing some of you are missing. I'm not saying that it's impossible for some kind of society to form in a zombie-ridden world, but it won't be anything even remotely normal or what we're accustomed to. Which was the point of this branch of the conversation, and why Rick has likely not told the others about what the CDC might have told him (about everyone already being infected). Because that knowledge would eliminate all hope of any kind of normalcy returning to these characters, diminished as it may currently be. Hope of finding a safe haven is the only thing they have, but if everyone is already infected -- meaning they don't have to be bitten to be turned -- completely and utterly negates that hope. Because no matter where they go, no matter who they live with, the threat of an outbreak will be there.

And no, they don't have magical collars or elite armies of corporate super soldiers to protect them. And no, the painfully insipid suggestion that the only necessary change is adding a gunshot to the head to burial rites won't do it, either.

[Derishton]

If we're going to play the "my understanding of the fictional rules of various universes is better than yours" game, then I'd argue that Fido takes place years if not decades after the "Zombie Wars" were won, and not weeks after the zombie apocalypse. Plenty of time for a society to establish itself, invent collars, etc. I'm fully with Santeria that these worlds are different and can't be held to each other's rules (except in the sense that genres do have rules), but if you really wanted to, you could explain the differences away by referring to the time scale.

On another note, the new arc in the graphic novel Walking Dead series is called "A Larger World." So Kirkman might be about to give us something bigger.

[PsychoPere]

the G-man wrote:

---

I suspect T-dog is going to play a major role in the future if, for no other reason, I also suspect Merle is coming back very soon.

Ah, good point. I wasn't considering Merle when I posted earlier. The desire of the producers to bring Michael Rooker back at some time is all the justification we need to keep T-Dog around, after all.

(I also edited my earlier post to include Jimmy, whom I had forgotten because... well, what has he done?)

Derishton wrote:

---

[...] the new arc in the graphic novel Walking Dead series is called "A Larger World." So Kirkman might be about to give us something bigger.

Oh, interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. I'm still a little ways behind in the comics series.

I think the last issue I read was #72, the last entry in the "Life Among Them" arc.