if you were with Ricks group what would you do? tell rick they should head towards Area 51 and see if they have a cure? Maybe to the White House and see if there is anybody there with answers.
Funny, but you're missing the point. The writers thought they were dodging the explanation matter with the CDC episode, but in the end, it did not tell us anything of substance. Rick's group already had a basic understanding of how the disease works (in reanimation causes), but aside from Jenner telling Rick everyone carries the disease, again, there's not even a good shot in the dark about why its happening. If you were in this world, yes--we know survival is the 1st priority, but your longevity will be compromised (ultimately) if you are looking over your shoulder because you have no clue how to stop the disease, so there will be a never ending supply of walkers. What is the defense for that? As guarded as Woodbury was, walkers still found their way in, or were attracted to the location. The prison was not better, as it already had dozens in various corridors, and months later (after the post season 3 / pre-season 4 clean-up) you had armies always at the fence. That is a situation that will only take a turn for the worst (think of what would have happened if Rick & Carl could not hold off the fence-busting walkers). With no answer to address the disease, you will run out of so-called strongholds, ammunition, and do not know if anyone around you will turn when you least expect it. No one said the entire series had to be a conversation about "the cure," but TWD's total avoidance of something as simple as a conversation is cowardly writing.
A cure is not what the series is about. And to illustrate that, the cast of characters has no capability of finding a cure. We have no research doctors, biologists or any other scientists. We have a deputy sheriff, a survivalist, a pizza delivery guy and a farmer/veterinarian. They couldn't find a cure if they wanted to. The scope of the series would need to change drastically in order to focus on a cure.
Putting zombies aside, I think the show isn't really that realistic in a variety of ways. I get the desire to have characters at least question why it's happening or how it started. But maybe our characters haven't had a safe enough situation to have time to question it? At any rate, the characters on this show often seem to just go through the motions rather than critically thinking.
Well, considering my big dislikes of the show are David Morrissey, the character of The Governor, the whole Woodbury storyline and the main cast all being stuck at the prison, I'm pretty happy with where they left it for the mid season break ! Spoiler: Change to Cast Will miss Hershel though.
If the cure for the zombie disease is not important to the plot or character development then it makes sense to me that the writers wouldn't want to the waste time on it.
They had the Governor's Science Guy (Milton?) doing experiments for an entire half season to learn more about it. Add this to the CDC Episode and the couple conversations here and there that have been had, and it seems to me, that's at least 10-25% of the episodes that have dealt with the science/mystery of it on some level
Jenner/CDC was limited, as he had not encountered as many walkers as Rick's group, and since he did not venture beyond the CDC doors, he was operating off of old information. It took all of season 2 to pass before Rick (in the season 2 finale) revealed what what whispered to him, and even after that, the others barely utter more than Carol's indignation that the information was concealed from the rest.
Yes, and then in S3, at least half episodes of the season had experimentation in Woodbury tio learn more about them. And we've also previously had other curiosities brought up about wether the Walkers retain anything of their former lives. So, it really hasn't been ignored, it's been questioned, and experimented on, and commented on quite a bit actually.
That's difficult to say; to this day, fans argue about how much time was spent on the road after the CDC / before the freeway, at Hershel's farm, the time in the prison during season 3, etc.
...and Rick's group hardly said a word about the very thing threatening their survival at every turn (beyond actual walker content). The scenes with Milton and his wacky New Age "experiments" were not addressing the "how," but trying to appease the head psycho with finding some way to communicate with zombies (like the Governor's daughter). That's after the fact "management," not trying to understand its origin.
So, what do you expect these people to do exactly? Not one of them even knows how to work a microscope. Do you really think any idea they come up with will hold water or lead to a cure or something? They could spend 10 minutes every episode making wild ass guesses and it wouldn't help a damn thing. This group just has no way of finding out on their own. You'd have to introduce some Dues Ex Machina worse than the CDC episode. "Day 643, Carl thinks space aliens did it. He may be right. We have no way to know" "Day 984, Carl's little band of alien worshipers tried to feed me to some walkers. I shot Carl and friends" "Day 989, I think it was that whole Mayan calendar shit" "Day 1035, Michonne has debased Quetzalcoatl, a sacrifice must be made to appease him" "Day 1498, Lol, turns out this was all a holodeck simulation with the safety interlocks disabled"
At the beginning of the season we see them on their way to the Fort Benning and taking gas from the cars on the road when stopped (additionally Dale is still having trouble with the radiator hose on the RV.) AMOF there's still talk about going to Benning and there's still tension between Lori and Shane over his drunken behavior at the CDC and tension between Andrea and Dale over him "saving" her at the CDC. So the start of S2 cannot be more than a day away from the end of S1, hell it's probably still that SAME day. The time spent a Hershel's farm is harder to determine but likely a few weeks. And even that's hard to get behind since I doubt given the tensions Hershel would have put up with the group that long, that even Rick would've looked for Sophia that long (until the mid-season finale) but it may have taken that long for Carl to recover from his injury. The time between S2 and S3 is obviously 8 or 9 months using Lori's pregnancy as the guide, the time span of 2 is probably a few weeks to a couple of months using the aging of Julia as a guide.