Sunday, February 9, 2014

WALKING DEAD Crappily Filler After

THE WALKING DEAD ended the first half of its fourth season with an unfortunate bout of prick-waving by showrunner Scott Gimple; rather than break any new ground, Gimple decided to spend some episodes trying to prove he could do the end of TWD season 3 better than season 3 showrunner Glen Mazzara had done it. No real task, that, and even so, the results were, to put it as kindly as possible, significantly less than spectacular. That's over, though, the prison is gone, our heroes are scattered, and TWD returned tonight from its midseason break to pick up the story. I was curious to see what direction Gimple would take the show. Would it reflect the reformist TWD he launched earlier this season or would it fall back into the unfortunate habits of the Mazzara era, also in evidence in recent episodes? Alas, the first ep out of the gate, "After," is a frustratingly mixed bag, one I'm beginning to suspect may be the new normal for TWD.

The first thing that must be said of it is that virtually nothing happens. It's yet another TWD ep that features perhaps 15 minutes worth of plot that has been padded to the gills in order to fill a full hour. Gimple's strong distaste for Rick is, depressingly, still in evidence; the first act features Rick behaving like a clueless idiot toward his son, who, to his consternation, has adapted rather well to their zombified world. While Rick sleeps off his injuries, Carl rehashes a monologue he originally delivered at the end of season 3, noting Rick's serious failings as a leader and venting his anger over it. He concludes by noting that, if Rick died, he could take care of himself just fine. All things that needed to be said, just as they needed to be said the first time around. And, just as the first time around, the episode then sets out to refute Carl's view, showing him as less uber-competent than he believes himself to be.

Need I even note how very tiresome this particular pattern has become?

Much of the ep is nothing but filler. We follow Michonne around as she surgically alters a pair of zombies into neutered, zombie-repelling escorts on leashes, allowing her to once again walk among the dead. She has dreams and does a lot of walking, pointlessly kills some zombies, and adds essentially nothing but running-time to the ep. That's mostly what happens with Carl as well. There are some nice little Gimple-esque character bits tucked away in his plotline, but they're small and virtually lost in it, as his "story" amounts to little more than his doing a lot of walking, foraging for food, dealing with zombies, and proving not to be as capable as he thinks he is, all stretched over far more time than it should take. The ep's last line is a good one. I'm not sure that matters very much.

--j.

5 comments:

  1. Didnt you notice how michonne first notices ricks trail and chooses to instead go alone to disappear you said nothing of her dream she doesnt kill the zombies for no reason didnt you see that she kept picturing that one zombie as herself and didnt want that to be her so she killed it and had to kill the others she went back and found ricks trail to find her family so she wasnt alone. You glossed over a lot of cool moments just to hark on rick and carl. Whats the point of reviewing something you already hate going in?

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  2. Something's up with Robert Kirkman, who is the write-of-record in this episode. He may write a fantastic story in the comics, but his screenplays have been mixed bags. I'm not really sure why. Maybe his mind is stuck with the comics while writing scripts?

    By the way, the episode is almost a word-for-word adaptation of issues 49 to 51. So essentially this is what happened for three issues in three months, so it's hard to blame Kirkman, since he's just following his story. One of the only exceptions is that crazy telephone-call Rick shows up here in the comics.

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  4. wow, someone learned how to copy and paste - give that child a cookie (to the moron spamming the comments). Some people just can't accept the fact that the show is void of any storytelling and simply filling time between advertisments.

    It must be getting more and more difficult to review this show, as nothing new ever happens and the storyline, if you can call it that, is rarely advanced more than a minute or two each week. They have killed zombies in every way they know how and are just re-using footage at this point.

    Nice job on the review, which was spot on, other than the one obvious detail about the Michonne look-a-like which you were taken to task for not mentioning by a person who is so detailed oriented, they forgot to use one piece of punctuation on the longest sentence in history, rendering their brilliant reply as unreadable. Mr, detail was probably looking for the comma or period key when he noticed it.

    The dream sequence was boring and did nothing to advance the hollow story. The only entertainment in tonight's episode was getting to hear Carl finally, and once again, repeat what everyone with a brain has been wanting to scream at Rick since the day he took leadership, then gave it up and then took it back again.

    From soldier to farmer, to insane dictator to Ghost Hunter to telephone operator and back to farmer. He needs to first heal up from the ass-kicking he took from that stupid mustache twirling governor for the millionth time. He needs some lessons in how to defend himself. I guess that's not necessary in police training in Georgia.

    No wonder his kid has no respect for him. Even Carl would know to poke out the governor's one good eye. Rick must have been in the hospital the night "Kill Bill" aired on television or he confused Daryl Hannah with Daryl Dixon.

    Next week will advance the story another minute or two, as Beth sings while Daryl single-handedly takes on a fleet of destroyers or even or a battleship with his crossbow and some grenades (which have inconsistent timers as the first one went off immediately upon contact with the ground and the second one gave the bad guy ten or fifteen seconds to escape the tank so Daryl could dispatch him more dramatically and with his signature crossbow)

    Daryl has become the new A-Team and Rick the town drunk, like Otis. Beth is just another American Idol wannabe. maybe I can become a writer for TWD, they seem to change writing staff and Showrunners every season.

    I forgot about Tyreese, Glen and Maggie, but they're quite forgettable the way they are written and handled on the show. Somewhere an entire bus-load of nameless extras, otherwise known as "redshirts" to the Trekkies are driving around.

    They probably hitched up with Carol and ditched these losers, got smart, took one of many available abandoned boats along the eastern seaboard (a cruise ship if they wanted) and found a tropical island off the coast of Florida, cleared it of all the zombies in a day and are actually living without having to fight zombies every minute.

    They were also smart enough to pick up a few of those lightweight titanium shark-proof chain mail suits, thereby making them invincible to zombie infection. If it can withstand the powerful jaws of a shark, a zombie would certainly not be able to break the skin.

    No one on this show, in Rick's group anyway, are very good problem solvers. They were those kids who insisted they could pound the square peg into the round hole. If I came across that group, I would run away as fast as possible.

    I think my reply is longer than the actual show was, so I will stop now.

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    Replies
    1. Litsen you madde some vslid points.. its true tat this show has idiot charecters that doesnt reactivly acess the zombie apocolyses world. They all diserve to die and hopes to burnses in hell, I was hopings that gimple would finally be free of the priisoners strory time and eager to see where he wouldve tak the show. It seems kirksman wanted to make a episody as close to the picture book as possibl that might be as we ended up with this one week. Next week more syrvivors will be shown not just one group it shouldd bie a busier tv programme. I see forwards to your thoughts and brain activities of next weeks episodS. I trieded to beters the grammer Sincerly...
      -mr. Detail

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