The Walking Dead Season 5

[TREK_GOD_1]

The Wacky Shackie was living in a shack with a dead dog carcass. Now he's either completely insane, which would explain why he's spouting on about calling the cops, or he's been completely cut off from society, but neither of those things suggest he is not familiar & capable in dealing with Walkers. He seemed to grasp the concept when the subject was brought up. I tend to think he was just nuts, the fact he had the stench of death around him was probably enough to keep the walkers somewhat at bay. We don't know anything about him other than that. So yeah, I can buy his existence, a year into the ZA without too much fuss

As the dog carcass decomposed, the initial stench will lose its pungent nature--and that alone would not keep walkers away (since the series only had the odor of human remains disguising the smell of the living). By the time Rick's group found him, the ZA was well over a year old, so he would need to leave his shack to get some sort of supplies, as it was clear his place was more junk than necessity.

. It's thin, but not altogether completely beyond belief.

Very thin.

Shut-ins are a valid aspect to the show, even if we are getting long into the time frame. It's not like every new person is like that. The prison had shut-ins.

The inmates had no choice--they were locked in, so they have the best excuse of all.

Tara was a shut-in.

But they were fully aware of walkers, and were armed--and we have to assume it ws due to the new, dominant population.

Hershel's whole family were shut-ins.

Hershel's family collected walkers. They understood the danger, learned enough to know how local society had fallen (Otis' statements), and knew bites can lead to death/reanimation (again, Hershel's question about Carl). They were not in downtown Atlanta, but there were experienced with walkers.

People inside Woodbury & Slabtown & Terminus. It's been consistent throughout the show. Some people have gotten by without being hardened executioners. Seems petty to start objecting now. It hasn't been too long since these other occurrences.

Woodbury was an armed camp, and understood the reasons why that was necessary. They also were familiar enough to enjoy walkers as a spectator sport. That is not the profile of shut-ins.

The Terminus group not only knew how to handle walkers, but devised a means to distract them (fireworks). True shut ins would not have such a system in use.

Abe's not stupid. He's blind & desperate. He's actually been smart enough to organize the entire party that's kept Eugene alive this whole time. His gullibility is explained in this week's episode, but there's no equivalent reason for any of our regulars to be that gullible & unquestioning anymore, not when they grill almost everybody now. They ARE hardened executioners & survivors. We've watched it happen

Then I guess the producers have some explaining to do about Maggie & Glenn buying into the Eugene campaign right up to the last five minutes of the recent episode.

 

[Mojochi]

That's right... when they first met Gabriel I believe he said it was the first time in quite a while he'd gone beyond the stream, didn't he?

Yeah, I rewatched. He mentions a stream near the church. He mentions some scavenging of the town, and I assume he ran from the occasional walker or few. He's been living like a mole

Pretty much everyone they've come across, barring Gabriel has been armed & aware of walkers, and at varied levels of expertise in eliminating them. Gabriel was aware of them too. I'm fairly sure Gabriel is the only person they've interviewed (who'd been on their own) that had claimed to have never killed a walker. It's clear that he's had only minimal contact with them outside his church, & that he probably ran from any he saw

Given all the suspension of disbelief we have to take on with this show, that one guy being a newb just doesn't irk me all that much

 

[Ryan8bit]

There really is no logical rationale or physics to apply to these creatures. I just felt like this one really pushed the limits of absurdity. At this point, there's no reason to suggest that a big guy like Abraham or Tyrese couldn't just barehandedly one-punch straight through a walker head.

A fire hose can have a lot more pressure than the average human punch (well, if the engine is running ). Maybe if these guys were MMA fighters though...

He also had the sacrament wine and there could have been wine or other things available in the food-bank stuff he had on hand.

Except alcohol would only further dehydrate him.

 

[Mojochi]

^ That's why I said Tyrese or Abraham. They got fighter builds

 

[J.T.B.]

A fire hose can have a lot more pressure than the average human punch (well, if the engine is running ). Maybe if these guys were MMA fighters though...

Yeah, it's really high pressure, but bone is pretty hard and stays hard a long time. The water jet would more likely strip off everything soft and blast out whatever skull cavities were exposed; maybe it would have been better for the heads to pop off, bounce and roll away like ping pong balls in the stream.

 

[Ryan8bit]

Yeah, it's really high pressure, but bone is pretty hard and stays hard a long time.

Oh, I know. It was just that the comparison seemed to ignore that most people (even the big guys in the show) couldn't punch with nearly that level of force. Although I wouldn't be surprised to see something like that happen.

It might have been cool if the spray just blew their skin right off, and then they were walking around with revealed skulls. Maybe the real scientific way could've been just as entertaining.

 

[Servo]

Short interview with Michael Cudlitz about "Self Help"

Sounds like he really knows his character, and knows the source material. I'm looking forward to seeing where his Abraham goes from here.

 

[JD]

I enjoyed the last couple episodes. The hospital group was definitely an interesting society, even if they ended up not being much better than Woodbury or any of the other groups we've run into. It'll definitely be interesting to see what happens now that Carol is there. It seems like if they just got rid of the rapist cop, who is dead now, and the cop lady in charge, it really might not be that bad.
It was also nice to get a bit of backstory on Abraham, and I was kind of surprised we got the big reveal with Eugene already, I was expecting them to save that as the big cliffhanger for one of the finales. It'll be interesting to see what Abraham and them do now.
I am a little disappointed that they are splitting the group up again, I was really hoping we'd get more episodes with everyone together.

 

[Velocity]

Then I guess the producers have some explaining to do about Maggie & Glenn buying into the Eugene campaign right up to the last five minutes of the recent episode.

Didn't they agree to go with Abraham and that group mainly to defuse the Abraham/Rick fight and ensure Abraham's help against the cannibals?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Then I guess the producers have some explaining to do about Maggie & Glenn buying into the Eugene campaign right up to the last five minutes of the recent episode.

Didn't they agree to go with Abraham and that group mainly to defuse the Abraham/Rick fight and ensure Abraham's help against the cannibals?

There are many ways to stop a fight--supporting some guy's personal crusade is not one of them (Rick or Abraham--operating on manhood issues could have triggered another fight at anytime after Glenn's decision), so I believe Maggie & Glenn were (ultimately) not so skeptical of Eugene, following on the chance that a cure exists.

 

[Trekker4747]

Didn't they agree to go with Abraham and that group mainly to defuse the Abraham/Rick fight and ensure Abraham's help against the cannibals?

More or less, Glenn and Maggie (and for some reason Fist-Bump Girl) were requested by Abraham in order for him to say to help fight the Termites. Glenn, and the others, agreed.

But, really, that idea should have been out the window by the night's end when the Termites were taken care of. It would have been wiser for Abraham's "mission" to wait another day or two for Daryl (a strong asset to have in fights) and Carol (another asset to have, given what she did at Terminus) returned. Enough time to see if they returned or could be found.

But Abraham had severe tunnel vision at this point which was beginning to put his mission at risk. He didn't even want to stick around the bookstore/library for another day or two in order to scavenge for supplies in the area or to find a more practical vehicle to get.

Instead he goes for a tanker fire truck that apparently barely ran. A truck like that to carry six passengers and supplies and likely isn't going to get too stupendous of mileage off its fuel. I suspect getting a hold of gasoline is tough right now (even allowing for it to still be viable) I can't imagine getting a hold of DIESEL fuel would be any easier. (Though his army vehicle would have been diesel, as well as the bus.)

He had tunnel vision and we could probably gleam why based on what we got of his back-story in the episode. I wonder if they'll have him talk about and reveal more details of it down the road? As the actor noted in TTD, there's quite a dark backstory to why Abraham was pounding that guy to death with a can. In the episode there's little to go on as far as WHY Abraham was doing that and it seems fairly reasonable for his family to fear him and bolt. But knowing his backstory it's tougher to see why his family would have left and it's that much more tragic to know what Abraham has on his mind.

 

[DarthTom]

I rewatched the episode and one of the most absurd assertions Eugene makes is that regardless of the fact that he is a fraud and doesn't have the, "cure," he is still the most intelligent person of the bunch.

I mean, WTF? Because he can spew out a bunch of nonsensical techno-babble hardly makes him the most, "intelligent," by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, I'd argue that Glenn has him beat hands down in that regard because he has repeatedly demonstrated clever ways to get out of difficult situations related to the Walkers.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I rewatched the episode and one of the most absurd assertions Eugene makes is that regardless of the fact that he is a fraud and doesn't have the, "cure," he is still the most intelligent person of the bunch.

I mean, WTF? Because he can spew out a bunch of nonsensical techno-babble hardly makes him the most, "intelligent," by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, I'd argue that Glenn has him beat hands down in that regard because he has repeatedly demonstrated clever ways to get out of difficult situations related to the Walkers.

Didn't Rosita question Eugene's revelation by recalling how he was able to do so many intelligent things / improvise? In the season premiere, he was going to use the shell casing to escape the train car--that's not something the average man on the street would think about, so one can argue that he has a history of using his head.

Eugene may not have been a true scientist (of a ZA-cure level), but he's clearly a thinking person.

 

[Dr. Funkenstein]

Didn't Rosita question Eugene's revelation by recalling how he was able to do so many intelligent things / improvise? In the season premiere, he was going to use the shell casing to escape the train car--that's not something the average man on the street would think about, so one can argue that he has a history of using his head.

Eugene may not have been a true scientist (of a ZA-cure level), but he's clearly a thinking person.

Or, you know, just a high school science teacher who knows a few basic tricks. Hell, anyone who's so much as ever watched Orange is the New Black knows how to start a fire with a battery, for example.

So while he may think he's the most intelligent person in the group, he's also shown that he's a complete moron, too. Knowing some tricks doesn't make you a genius.

 

[Trekker4747]

He very likely could be very smart or even a genius but knowing things, how to improvise things and so forth doesn't make one a good strategist or good in social interactions. Or even a good killer of vicious undead monsters roaming around.

He had book smarts, not street-smarts.

But he was able to parlay those book-smarts in order to manipulate people in to believing him and his "mission." He knew just enough technobabble to sound smart and like he knew what he was doing and Abraham was vulnerable enough (and perhaps enough of a lug) to fall for it. From there-on a combination of Eugene being able to spout nonsense and Abraham's entire persona was able to convince people to go along with them.

It's entirely likely Rick's group was the first set of people he encountered who were really challenging him on his claims, as Rick's group is probably a lot smarter than most other groups of people he's encountered. This made the lie harder and harder to maintain on top of the increasing risk of death being weighted against benefits.

I suspect Glenn and Maggie were already starting to question him (Glenn is no educational slouch) but it just hadn't came down to that point yet. Abraham had tunnel vision and, again, was sort of a lug. Enough time around Rick and it's certain things would have came out sooner or later. Daryl may have been enough of an "antagonist lug" to verbally challenge Eugene enough for him to come clean.

Eugene's lie was running thin, running into the Atlanta group punched a hole in his tank and was causing his lie to hemorrhage and he just couldn't maintain it anymore.

I actually like him as a character okay (he's odd enough to be entertaining and, come on, mullet) so it'll be interesting to see where he goes from here and gets back in the good graces of the group he's with. Thing is, the lie may not have been entirely necessary.

Sure, it gave Abraham something to "live" and fight for in giving him a mission but Eugene could have, instead, used his "book smarts" and intelligence in improvising survival techniques to supplement Abraham's physical strengths for the two of them to survive together. Sort of how Rick and Glenn initially worked together, Rick with his leadership skills and Glenn with his ability to improvise plans to solve a problem.

I doubt when Glenn first joined the Atlanta group he was hardly galloping out of the gate as a stone-cold walker killer but he made himself useful because he was good at getting supplies and solving problems without rousing walkers. Jacqui wasn't likely much of a walker killer but she probably offered something, same with Andrea and Amy. (Andrea didn't even know how to use her gun!) So being able to kill walkers isn't what makes one useful in this world, even this far in. Everyone has something to offer and Eugene's intelligence and improvisational skills likely could be what gets him back into some good graces.

That and he's not *too* bad of a guy and came clean when they were headed into a certain point of no return. Abraham will likely take more time to come around, everyone else I suspect won't be too hard to turn.

 

[Guy Gardener]

He's some where in the neighbourhood of autistic.

When he believes a truth, facts and arguments can fuck themselves.

His mother told him that he was the smartest one in the room when he was three, and he's been clinging to that ever since.

This is the opposite of that episode of Arrested Development where Michael doesn't realize that his girlfriend is retarded because she has a fancy British accent, and here we assume that this guy is normal and that that is a southern accent, when really he is retarded and can't help but slur his words and speak slowly in weird declarative chunks.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I rewatched the episode and one of the most absurd assertions Eugene makes is that regardless of the fact that he is a fraud and doesn't have the, "cure," he is still the most intelligent person of the bunch.

I mean, WTF? Because he can spew out a bunch of nonsensical techno-babble hardly makes him the most, "intelligent," by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, I'd argue that Glenn has him beat hands down in that regard because he has repeatedly demonstrated clever ways to get out of difficult situations related to the Walkers.

Didn't Rosita question Eugene's revelation by recalling how he was able to do so many intelligent things / improvise? In the season premiere, he was going to use the shell casing to escape the train car--that's not something the average man on the street would think about, so one can argue that he has a history of using his head.

Eugene may not have been a true scientist (of a ZA-cure level), but he's clearly a thinking person.

You'll notice though that none of his concoctions ever actually work right. The bullet casing at the train door fizzled out, and the spiking the bus engine somehow made it flip (don't ask). He's portrayed like guy who watches Mythbusters smart, not too much when it comes to the practical application of his knowledge. I won't even insult his fellow fictional science teachers like Arzt on Lost with the comparison, although he blew himself up.

Even when it came to just using book smarts, his explanations were completely implausible. The guy had months of long walks and campouts with nothing to do where his very life depended on crafting an effective lie and it always sounded like improvised bullshit. It really made everyone else on the show like like idiots for ever buying his story. Ultimate insult: Even Andrea would have called bullshit on Eugene if she didn't have the plot blinders our current survivors have, and she bought the Governor's story.

 

[Trekker4747]

He also says he was part of the Human Genome Project which was finished at a point likely before he would have been around to be part of it.

To be fair to him, though, I'm not sure his rigging of the flash-grenade to blow open the railcar door ever got a chance to work or fail. I don't think he completely got a chance to do it.

But I agree, it does seem like he "knows things" that should work in theory or in principle but in practice things turn out differently (like the glass in the tank of the bus.)

I don't know how he's portrayed in the comics, if his "smarts" really pays off into anything or if he just has a bunch of things that are technically possible he once saw on YouTube to try out.

Again, he could be smart but just not smart in the "right ways."

I wonder what Shane would have said to Eugene if he were still around? Or would he still be rubbing his head and ranting about going to Fort Benning?

 

[auntiehill]

Shane would have found a way to "Otis" him and then say, "Gee, guys, the Walkers got him."

 

[theenglish]

Didn't Rosita question Eugene's revelation by recalling how he was able to do so many intelligent things / improvise? In the season premiere, he was going to use the shell casing to escape the train car--that's not something the average man on the street would think about, so one can argue that he has a history of using his head.

Eugene may not have been a true scientist (of a ZA-cure level), but he's clearly a thinking person.

Or, you know, just a high school science teacher who knows a few basic tricks. Hell, anyone who's so much as ever watched Orange is the New Black knows how to start a fire with a battery, for example.

So while he may think he's the most intelligent person in the group, he's also shown that he's a complete moron, too. Knowing some tricks doesn't make you a genius.

Eugene should just start making Meth.

I think that the idea is he is just a very introverted, nerdy person. A situation like this would be overwhelming to someone like most of us "nerds" who stress out at the thought of extended social engagements. (Ask Malcon Gladwell how he deals with fame.)

Eugene's claim that he is the smartest just shows his hubris. Hopefully the show will now give him a chance to step up and redeem himself.