The Walking Dead Season 4

[RJDiogenes]

I agree with Daryl. Herschel is a tough sumbitch. I hope he doesn't go anywhere anytime soon.

This was a really good episode all around. Herschel's superhuman efforts to save the sick and control another zombie outbreak, Rick and Carl taking down the zombie horde, Glen and Maggie stepping up, and the arrival of Daryl's cavalry. And I don't know what to make of the little girl. Very heroic of her to lure the zombie away from Glen, but she is clearly very damaged.

Glen's attempt to resuscitate his patient makes me wonder, though: What does happen if you resuscitate someone who dies? What if you're dead long enough for the virus to kick in first? What becomes of you then?

As for Rick versus Carol, I weighed in on that a few pages back: Rick is a hypocrite for doing exactly what Carol did.

 

[bbjeg]

^If you're talking about Shane, Rick didn't do exactly what Carol did.

 

[Triskelion]

I agree with Daryl. Herschel is a tough sumbitch. I hope he doesn't go anywhere anytime soon.

And I don't know what to make of the little girl. Very heroic of her to lure the zombie away from Glen, but she is clearly very damaged.

Is she though? Or is this just the adaptation of youth? She is growing up in a world of Walkers, without a baseline of normalcy. IE, blood and guts are as normal to her as eating and sleeping. So is that her personality not coping? Or is that a generational adaptation and survival mechanism? The world turned, nobody knows why - Rick wonders if it's a test, and Herschel suggests it was always a test. The girl - has not been exposed to a different kind of moral human life. I guess the question becomes, is human morality a survival mechanism or a liability?

As soon as I saw that gunshot on the beam, I kept waiting for Rick to scout the perimeter to find a bootprint or something.

??? huh? what do you mean by "gunshot on the beam"?

When Rick and Carl were reinforcing the beams at night, watch when the beam snaps under the zombie weight. You can see a bullet impact the stress point and shatter the beam that allows the fence to cave in. At least I though I saw it. I wondered why Rick and Carl still stood around outside with a sniper around - was I mistaken? Did anyone else see it?


The reason the away team got back so late was because of Daylight Savings Time.

 

[sojourner]

When Rick and Carl were reinforcing the beams at night, watch when the beam snaps under the zombie weight. You can see a bullet impact the stress point and shatter the beam that allows the fence to cave in. At least I though I saw it. I wondered why Rick and Carl still stood around outside with a sniper around - was I mistaken? Did anyone else see it?

That was just the pole snapping "like a shot" under the strain of the zombies.

 

[Shanndee]

^If you're talking about Shane, Rick didn't do exactly what Carol did.

I think he's talking about Rick making the unilateral decision to exile Carol (which realistically could result in her death). Carol also made a unilateral decision to deal with the the infected. He's certainly a hypocrite in that respect.

 

[bbjeg]

^Rick didn't kill her though, so it's not exactly the same.

That was just the pole snapping "like a shot" under the strain of the zombies.

That's what I took from it.

 

[Pavonis]

What does happen if you resuscitate someone who dies? What if you're dead long enough for the virus to kick in first? What becomes of you then?

From the CDC evidence, it appears the virus kicks in after brain death only. You shouldn't be able to resuscitate a brain-dead victim. Breathing is an autonomic response, and they'll never breathe on their own if their brain is dead. So it's not technically a problem, except that distinguishing between resuscitation and reanimation might be tricky if the victim is only dead for a few minutes, and reanimates while you're working on them. It's a risk that the medical professionals of the post-apocalyptic world will have to incorporate in their decisions when working on dying patients.

 

[Trekker4747]

Even then upon brain death it's said the reanimation takes anywhere between minutes and hours and at brain death resuscitation is pointless even if reanimation wasn't a concern.

 

[Pavonis]

Right. How would you distinguish between reanimation and resuscitation if the victim were only dead for, say, two or three minutes? Initial responses are the same for both - movement, breathing (though the zombies don't need to do it, the lower parts of the brain control it, so it happens regardless), eyes open, etc. Conveniently, though, the eyes of the undead always are cloudy. I don't know how quickly the vitreous humour of the eyes starts changing after death, but it seems convenient that the eyes are a dead (pun-intended) giveaway.

Speaking of eyes, shouldn't rotten eyes be a weakness of walkers by now? They may be able to hear and smell, but their vision should be crap by now. At least, I'd expect them to be shuffling around mostly blind.

 

[sojourner]

How can you tell they aren't mostly blind?

 

[Pavonis]

I can't. Not really. Yet they manage to find their prey really well if they're mostly blind. I mean, humans have relatively poor hearing and smell compared to most predators, and having most of your sense tissue rot should not help your hunting ability. Yet the walkers never fail to track a target, and they never give up their target, either. Of course, the data is inherently biased, since we only see walkers that are hunting people. I imagine there are billions of walkers that are barely functional, unable to catch anything, starving slowly. Like that walker on the side of the road in this past episode. Even a dog wasn't afraid of it, and that's unusual. Walkers will eat anything.

 

[Mojochi]

Lol, that dog. I think it was considering snacking on it, & then changed its mind

Given next week's teaser, I find myself wondering about Martinez & Shumpert (The Gov's last 2 men) Clearly, their tents are pitched right next to his. What would possess them to continue to follow him for months after he murdered everyone else? You'd have to be crazy, or scared shitless, & even the fear can't be 24/7. They had to have had an opportunity to ditch by now. Why wouldn't anyone with any sense be looking to distance themselves from that guy?

 

[Trekker4747]

Right. How would you distinguish between reanimation and resuscitation if the victim were only dead for, say, two or three minutes? Initial responses are the same for both - movement, breathing (though the zombies don't need to do it, the lower parts of the brain control it, so it happens regardless), eyes open, etc. Conveniently, though, the eyes of the undead always are cloudy. I don't know how quickly the vitreous humour of the eyes starts changing after death, but it seems convenient that the eyes are a dead (pun-intended) giveaway.

Speaking of eyes, shouldn't rotten eyes be a weakness of walkers by now? They may be able to hear and smell, but their vision should be crap by now. At least, I'd expect them to be shuffling around mostly blind.

Well... there's a LOT of questions we can get into if we want to start questioning how various states of decomposition effects how the Walkers operate and behave. I mean we know at the very least they have an "advanced" or particular sense of smell sense they only attack the living by virtue of the living not smelling dead.

I'd suspect even though the eyes are cloudy they have fairly normal vision (or at least the same or similar vision as the person had when they were alive. Harry Potter Walker probably didn't have very good vision since HP had glasses.)

Hell we see Walkers without lower bodies or intestine with the desire to eat. I think they can "see" just fine, probably by bizarre magics that allow their bodies and brains to "operate" at some level and aren't limited to the state of the host's eyes.

 

[Triskelion]

That was just the pole snapping "like a shot" under the strain of the zombies.

That's what I took from it.

Yeah? Maybe you're right. I watched it again, and I'm still not sure. Watch and listen at 29:06 and 29:10.

The two beams crack with pings that could be ricochets or could be stressed wood snapping like a rubber band. After the second beam cracks, look at the stress point below. It's carved out into a cylindrical bullet shape:

Production-wise, maybe it was just a squib to give the illusion of stressed wood snapping on a pre-cut beam.

In fact I think it's definitely a squib. But meant to look like a shot? I don't know. I immediately thought the Governor was at the perimeter - and that turned out to be true.

What do you think?

 

[sojourner]

I think Rick and Carl would have noticed a gunshot.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I agree with Daryl. Herschel is a tough sumbitch. I hope he doesn't go anywhere anytime soon.

And I don't know what to make of the little girl. Very heroic of her to lure the zombie away from Glen, but she is clearly very damaged.

Is she though? Or is this just the adaptation of youth? She is growing up in a world of Walkers, without a baseline of normalcy. IE, blood and guts are as normal to her as eating and sleeping. So is that her personality not coping? Or is that a generational adaptation and survival mechanism? The world turned, nobody knows why - Rick wonders if it's a test, and Herschel suggests it was always a test. The girl - has not been exposed to a different kind of moral human life. I guess the question becomes, is human morality a survival mechanism or a liability?

Well, she wasn't born into the world of Walkers-- she presumably had a normal and benign childhood until the apocalypse. I think they're probably going to something more along the lines of showing the effects of war and disaster on children, which would be an excellent plotline to introduce. They've already done it a bit with Carl, but with a secondary character they can take it further.

^If you're talking about Shane, Rick didn't do exactly what Carol did.

I think he's talking about Rick making the unilateral decision to exile Carol (which realistically could result in her death). Carol also made a unilateral decision to deal with the the infected. He's certainly a hypocrite in that respect.

Exactly. They both made their decisions and acted on them without consulting the group.

From the CDC evidence, it appears the virus kicks in after brain death only. You shouldn't be able to resuscitate a brain-dead victim. Breathing is an autonomic response, and they'll never breathe on their own if their brain is dead. So it's not technically a problem, except that distinguishing between resuscitation and reanimation might be tricky if the victim is only dead for a few minutes, and reanimates while you're working on them. It's a risk that the medical professionals of the post-apocalyptic world will have to incorporate in their decisions when working on dying patients.

That's pretty much what I was thinking. It would be an interesting situation to have arise. What would such a person be like? Maybe that's what happened to Rick in the hospital.

 

[bbjeg]

^If you're talking about Shane, Rick didn't do exactly what Carol did.

I think he's talking about Rick making the unilateral decision to exile Carol (which realistically could result in her death). Carol also made a unilateral decision to deal with the the infected. He's certainly a hypocrite in that respect.

Exactly. They both made their decisions and acted on them without consulting the group.

But Rick didn't kill Carol for her actions.

 

[Kosh Naranek]

I think he's talking about Rick making the unilateral decision to exile Carol (which realistically could result in her death). Carol also made a unilateral decision to deal with the the infected. He's certainly a hypocrite in that respect.

Exactly. They both made their decisions and acted on them without consulting the group.

But Rick didn't kill Carol for her actions.

I would argue that Rick did condemn Carol to death.

Carol has morphed into a person that is more than capable in their new world, but sending her out on her own is dooming her.

One wrong thrust, car troubles or any number of scenarios could end in her being zombie snack without backup.

Plus, he made a decision that could potentially rip apart their small band.

Maggie and Herschel understood, but that does not mean that everyone is going to.

Did he put Judith and Carl in more peril, by deciding Carol's punishment without consulting anyone? I would say yes.

 

[Morpheus 02]

But bringing Carol back would have been a death sentence as well. Tyrese would be suspect # 1. But anyone who recovered form the flu -- and would have been one of Carol's victims, might get revenge and kill her before killed someone else.

Carol had to choice to go along with Rick's sentence. This was at least a plea bargain, where she would have been sentenced without trial or option.

 

[PKerr]

Great Episode, lots of suspense, Daryl is right, Herschel is a tough S.O.B., there were several times there I thought he was a goner, with his speech last week and the way Maggie and Beth were talking I didn't think he would survive the Flu story line, I honestly hope the writers move past that, only so much you can watch our heroes laying around sick.

As far as Rick and Maggie/Carl adding support the to fence and someone shooting the logs, I just think those were production squibs set off to help the logs CRACK with a more dramatic effect, these types of things are getting harder and harder to hide with more and more of us having HD TVs, Rick and Carl would have heard the gunshots and those would have be hellova a shots to shoot through the Zombies, Fence from a distance in the dark, if you that good of a shot why not just shoot Rick and Carl as they were right next to the logs and pick off anyone else that comes out?

IMO the real question comes in where did that big pile of trees come from and why wasn't the time spent in cutting all that down spent in clearing the fence to begin with?
So let's spend hours and hours outside the fence cutting down trees and not inside for an hour where it's safe and actually eliminate the actual danger, in essence killing two birds with one stone.
These people have nothing but time yet they seem to waste tons of it.
As I said before, if 5 people killed a Walker a minute for one hour they would eliminate 300 walkers and I think one a minute is being very, VERY generous.
There weren't more than 50-75 (100 at the very most) walkers on the fence, this should be a very simple task to complete.