The Walking Dead Season 2 Discussion *Spoilers*

[Ryan8bit]

sojourner wrote:

---

I know the prison storyline in the comics is great, but is anyone worried about a general backlash against it in regards to the show? I can see a lot of reviews to the effects of "great, they finally get off the farm and now they're going to sit in a prison all season".

I think people have too high of expectations as to the locales. It makes sense that people trying to survive would attempt to establish a safe place that they could live in. I didn't mind them being at the farm for as long as they were, although admittedly some of the story could have been condensed.

As long as they keep it interesting and the plot moving, it should be fine. The last few episodes of this season were a good example of that.

[Temis the Vorta]

WOW! Great frakkin' season finale! It will be a long wait till Sept... Fewer people died than I expected. I was relieved to see that Andrea was not a goner, they need to hang onto her for a while yet.

The helicopter is a sign that there's some kind of organized attempt to handle the zombies, inducing them to migrate towards some gigantic firepit where they can be destroyed. Tough luck for anyone who's in the migration path, such as Our Heroes. I doubt it has anything to do with the prison we saw in the final scene.

On the subject of irrational characters, yes, it can be an annoyance if it it gives the writers carte blanche to just have the characters do any old thing for the convenience of the plot and chalk it up to zombie-induced PTSD. There haven't been any truly egregious cases yet, but a lot of marginal ones.

Rick not telling everyone what Jenner said: he gets a pass because like I said before, it's not clear how to interpret something like that. Jenner could be wrong or lying just to fuck with all of them, or even to induce them to stay and commit suicide with him.

Even if he's right, what does it mean? Does it mean that any of them can turn into zombies at any time? That would be my first assumption. Until it happens, there's no reason to depress everyone with that thought. I'm sure they're all thinking it now. And Rick did confirm that until he saw Shane turn, he wasn't sure what Jenner meant/if he believed him anyway.

The possibility that everyone on Earth became quickly infected with the airborne virus explains something I've been thinking is just a production convenience, the large number of uneaten or even partially eaten zombies. It's hard to tell how many of them have visible bites, given the state of decomposition.

Why aren't there more Bicycle Girls around? Because it would drive the budget through the roof of course, but now there's an in-story reason: a lot of people were turned by the virus immediately, without being bit and without dying first. That would explain why there weren't more pockets of survivors holed up in defensible positions, like you'd expect from a virus that had to be transmitted only by close contact.

The few survivors are doubly lucky: resistant enough to the virus not to turn immediately, and quick-witted/fast on their feet/gun-owning enough to avoid being killed by the zombies. If they are all fated to turn eventually, when the virus finally kicks in, that's not very lucky, more like slow torture, but it's possible some are naturally resistant to the virus entirely.

Another (more interesting) possibility is that doctors the hospital where Rick was staying managed to create a vaccine and experimented on patients to see if it worked. It killed the patients, but ironically, that's part of how it worked. It killed Rick - that's why Shane didn't hear a heartbeat - and resurrected him, immune from the virus because the virus has already done its work. The vaccine doesn't prevent people from dying, it prevents them from becoming zombies after death.

This scenario also explains the still mysterious incident Shane observed in the hospital - soldiers gunning down non-zombified doctors. That was probably revenge after the doctors apparently murdered test subjects.

All this won't be revealed for a while - probably not next season, even - but it would be cool if how it's revealed is that Rick is killed. Everyone's waiting for him to revive as a zombie, Lori is freaking out and won't let Darryl put him down, then Rick wakes up - perfectly normal. And at that point, everyone remembers Shane's story about not hearing a heartbeat...

So, see yall back here in Sept! I'm looking forward to the Season of the Prison. There's no reason you can't get 13 amazing kick-ass episodes out of a bunch of zombie apocalypse survivors hunkered down in a prison.

[Temis the Vorta]

Tom wrote:

---

Even though they are all infected the pathogen strain is passive until the moment of death, then it becomes active. When they are are bit by a zombie, it's active strain passes to the victim thus causing the victim to die. Medically speaking this does happen in nature with various viruses that have dorment/active stages.

Or, people don't die from zombie bites. They die like Amy did - from massive blood loss, and then they turn. Wouldn't have mattered whether a zombie had caused that massive blood loss. If they're already infected, the possibility remains that the virus is simply taking longer to turn them than it did for others. We've already seen that post-mortem, the "incubation period" varies widely.

But they can't have the characters thinking along these lines until the vaccine plotline is close to kicking in. It would render them too hopeless. Shane was starting to turn into a zombie before Rick killed him. That was an ironic stroke of luck, because if Rick had seen Shane turn without being killed or bit, that would be utterly hopeless for everyone and they'd all just commit suicide, end of story.

The producers can keep dropping little hints about it, but there's a good season or two ahead before they need to activate that plot twist.

[Borgminister]

Or even 16 episodes!

[Temis the Vorta]

We get 16 episodes next season??? That's almost like a regular season!

Personally, I was never bored by the farm. I have no problem at all with a story pacing itself reasonably.

[DarthTom]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

---

Shane was starting to turn into a zombie before Rick killed him. That was an ironic stroke of luck, because if Rick had seen Shane turn without being killed or bit, that would be utterly hopeless for everyone and they'd all just commit suicide, end of story.

Is it conjecture on your part that Shane was turning in advance of death or did I miss something in the dialogue?

If people turn in advance of death why hasn't anyone else in the group started to do so also?

[Derishton]

There was definitely something going on with Shane before he was knifed, and I was unsatisfied with the explanation on The Talking Dead.

[Temis the Vorta]

DarthTom wrote:

---

Is it conjecture on your part that Shane was turning in advance of death or did I miss something in the dialogue?

Purely speculation, I don't read spoilers or the comic or read/watch any interviews, so it's coming solely from what I see in the show. It wasn't anything in the dialogue, it was more the way Bernthal played the role (more mouth breathing and shuffling/hunching than usual) and especially the way his scenes were shot, such as Shane looking sinisterly from the woods, framed by trees, the way a zombie would be depicted.

I got the distinct impression that the director was giving us very subtle clues...and they shouldn't be more than subtle because it's way too early for that shoe to drop. Yet. I'd say S4 at the earliest, but I'll sure be watching like a hawk for more clues. For instance, the sheriff deputies who had no visible signs of death of any kind, yet had become zombies - that could have been suicide by poison, but armed deputies would be far more likely to choose to eat a bullet as their favored means of suicide.

And I just thought of a way we'll be able to tell early next season. If I were one of the survivors, my first thought upon learning I was infected would be, "does that mean I can become a zombie at any time? And all the rest of you, too?" My mind would instantly snap right to the worst-case scenario and I don't think I'm an unusually negative person in this regards.

If none of the characters voice this fear early next season, like in the first episode, that is a big fat clue that the writers don't want us to be thinking about that. Yet.

EDIT: holy SHIT! TWD's season finale got 9 million viewers! NBC should be so lucky to get numbers like that!

[DarthTom]

Derishton wrote:

---

There was definitely something going on with Shane before he was knifed, and I was unsatisfied with the explanation on The Talking Dead.

Irrational fits of jealous rage? IMO Lori's little "I'm sorry speech," through Shane around the proverbial bend.

[DarthTom]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

---

EDIT: holy SHIT! TWD's season finale got 9 million viewers! NBC should be so lucky to get numbers like that!

It's interesting to note that for comparison purposes TWD is beating most of the broadcast network shows.

Variety

[Temis the Vorta]

Shane was already irrational, so having it all just be jealousy doesn't add anything or more importantly, do anything for the plot going forward.

I'm already thinking ahead to what they're going to do after S3, and we've done the prison thing, and having these characters fight each other and try to survive and not turn into monsters starts to get a little dull. Which it will after another 16 episodes of the same. It's fun now, but it can't last.

They need to keep ratcheting up the threat to hold our interest year after year. We've already seen how antsy people get when the narrative slows down like it did in the first half of this season. The ratings started to sag around that time, and then picked up as the action picked up, which is a big warning sign to the writers that they cannot let up the tension.

Yet they can't have a show that is only zombie-fighting and people fighting among each other. There's got to be some larger mystery that gets doled out judiciously, to keep the audience engaged.

They've got two ways to do this: the helicopter mystery (is there some form of civilized government still?) and curing the virus (there's gotta be some cure, or they're all doomed and then how does the show end?) Even if the cure fails, there's gotta be a plotline about it, so that we can have more episodes and keep the audience engaged for another year or two. AMC has got a golden goose and the show needs to use every trick in its bag to keep going and keep the story fresh.

[the G-man]

I don't read spoilers or the comic or read/watch any interviews, so it's coming solely from what I see in the show. It wasn't anything in the dialogue, it was more the way Bernthal played the role (more mouth breathing and shuffling/hunching than usual) and especially the way his scenes were shot, such as Shane looking sinisterly from the woods, framed by trees, the way a zombie would be depicted.

Considering that one of the main themes of the show is how humans can be "monsters" when faced with a horrific situation, I took it as foreshadowing and a subtle reinforcement of that theme: his actions had made him as much a threat as any walker.

[DarthTom]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

---

Shane was already irrational, so having it all just be jealousy doesn't add anything or more importantly, do anything for the plot going forward.

The writers admitted on last night's Talking Dead episode that they don't even know necessarily how the season might progress.

In fact they cited an interesting example. The original plan was to kill off Herschel but they changed their minds at the last moment

In short, I think you may be giving them way too much credit for foreshadowing what may come when they don't even know themselves.

[pork3]

Mistral wrote:

---

Someone needs to put a bell around that kid's neck. Or duct tape him to a chair.

Or put a bullet in his head. He's a liability, eliminate him lest ye get eliminated first due to his lapses (see Dale).

-Jamman

[MPH]

DarthTom wrote:

---

Is it conjecture on your part that Shane was turning in advance of death or did I miss something in the dialogue?

If people turn in advance of death why hasn't anyone else in the group started to do so also?

Shane wasn't turning into a zombie he had just totally lost the plot. In every zombie film I have seen everyone is already infected and rise again with the onset of death, this is nothing new.