Monday, November 23, 2015

WALKING DEAD Heads Up, Thumbs Down

THE WALKING DEAD got around to addressing some of the dangling plot-threads it's been avoiding through its last three filler eps but the midseason finale isn't until next week, so even as the series finally starts to deal with these matters, some of which have been left dangling since the first and second eps of the season, the padding required to drag things out to that bigger-audience ep is profuse.

The opening moments of "Heads Up" reveal that--surprise, surprise--Glenn did indeed survive his predicament from "Thank You"; he climbed under a dumpster and hid there until the zombies left. When he crawls out, Enid, who left the safe zone after it was attached by the Wolves, is somehow instantly on the scene to helpfully throw him some drinking water. Absent the use of magic, of course, she had no way of knowing he was under there. Her being there, of all the places in the entire world she could have gone, and finding him just as he emerged is just another of those cosmic coincidences that have become increasingly common this season.

Back at the safe zone, Rick sees Maggie standing watch atop the wall, looking to the west, from whence, she hopes, Glenn will soon return. He mounts the wall and offers her a speech. "When we go out there, it's never easy. It's never simple. It's always a fight. But we've come back from harder things from further away. Glenn, Daryl, Abraham and Sasha, they will too." And so on. As if Maggie is entirely unaware of these things. A hefty helping of screentime-burning low-grade melodrama for the audience but, of course, completely ridiculous as any sort of verbal exchange between these characters.

The scene happens, as noted, while the two of them stand on the wall in plain sight of the gathered dead below. Two eps ago, Rick made a big speech in which his suggested course of action for dealing with the zombies surrounding the town was for everyone there to be quiet and remain out of sight and perhaps the zombies would simply move on. An uncharacteristically good idea from Rick. And, of course, everyone, including, most prominently, Rick himself, proceeded to entirely ignore it. Tonight, we get more of the same. Rick is instructing Ron in the use of firearms and Ron wants to get in some target practice at some of the zombies outside. Rick vetoes this, explaining that the dead outside are spread fairly thin (though only two eps ago, he described the town as completely surrounded by zombies twenty deep) and that he didn't want to risk their bunching up around the source of gunshots, which could result in their overly stressing the wall in that area. He even vetoes target practice in the center of town, which would presumably assuage this problem to an extent. And then shortly afterwards, Rick starts reinforcing the wall, spending an extended period loudly nailing up wood supports on the section of it damaged by the truck collision--the weakest point in the wall.

Viewers, you are being mocked.

Enid and Glenn, meanwhile, basically waste the entire ep. Enid runs away, Glenn chases her down, they argue over whether Enid was going to return to the safe zone with Glenn (something she initially insists she won't do but then relents), then they just dick around, talking, squabbling, no sense of urgency. Glenn is initially terribly concerned about the fate of his wife--the last he heard, zombies were marching on the safe zone--but that seems to go right out the window to make room for this business. And everything that happens between he and Enid is pointless contrivance, there only to eat up screentime. Glenn has absolutely no reason to either pursue her or to insist she return with him; she clearly knows her way around and can take care of herself. Once he's brought her to heel, he's presumably set on immediately returning to town but instead, for no apparent reason, they go in the opposite direction, which appears to be just another geographical foul-up by the writers. A few weeks ago, in my piece about "Thank You," I dealt with the significant geographical problems introduced in that ep. I've prepared a somewhat crude map[1] to illustrate some of them:


Glenn's apparent death happened somewhere in area #6, yet he and Enid, in supposedly traveling back to the safe zone, end up at point #5, where Enid begins to play with the helium balloons our heroes stashed there as part of the zombie herding operation. The two banter. No hurry.

Rick and Morgan finally have a sit-down about Morgan's problematic "all life is precious" philosophy. It's handled much better than one would expect from TWD. Rick learns the Wolves that Morgan allowed to escape were the ones who attacked him and shot up the RV, which killed his plan to lead the zombies away and resulted in the town being surrounded. Morgan confesses he just doesn't know if he can follow his philosophy in this zombified world. Morgan doesn't tell anyone about the Wolf he captured though and in a bit of absolutely unconscionable behavior, he goes to the infirmary and procures precious antibiotics for the homicidal maniac he's keeping locked up. Carol catches on but the ep cuts away before she learns exactly what he's done.

More padding: Rosita teaches a "class" of Alexandrians about how to use a machete, Spencer tries to go off on his own in an effort to lead the zombies away, is nearly eaten and has to be rescued and so on--more events present solely to eat up screentime. After being so generally dreary, "Heads Up" ends on a pretty good last image (though the lead-up to it is marred by another cosmic-scale coincidence) but that can't make up for the fact that a viewer could skip from the third ep of this season to this one without having missed a thing (and most of what happens in this one could have been done in 20 minutes).

--j.

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[1] As crude as it is, it does manage to incorporate every bit of information we've been given about the area. If I've missed anything, I'm sure eagle-eyed readers will spot it. There is a dried-up creek somewhere along the route taken by Rick and Morgan when they were disposing of Pete's body--a bridge passes over it. There isn't enough info to plot its course and it doesn't matter, so I've ignored it.

20 comments:

  1. The mid season finale format ruins this show. Its like they have to always spend the first 7 episodes building to a huge episode so they fill those episodes ip with crappy filler.

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    1. That's nothing imposed by the format though; that's a conscious choice the creators make.

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    2. The format lends itself to this crappy pace, but there's nothing that requires it to be like this. This whole 8 episode span happens in 24 hours according to The Talking Dead last night.

      The number of people still trumpeting this season as "the best one yet!" makes me scratch my head. It is becoming almost a credits-to-credits standup routine.

      Rick pounding on the wall at the presumed weakest point? Standing on top constantly since telling everyone to keep a low profile. JRiddle's 60 second map is more thought put into time and place than this entire freaking crew has put into the show in the last 5 seasons. That's how absurd it has become.

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    3. The "best season yet" talk happens with every season while it's in progress. Chris Hardwick, the night Talking Dead debuted, said the season 2 opener was the best TWD ep ever produced--an assertion that looked ridiculous at the time and looks utterly ludicrous today--and that set the tone for a lot of the fan commentary.

      I've asserted the series has descended into self-parody to an extent we've haven't previously seen and even with that in mind, I'm always surprised by the extent to which every episode brings such a cornucopia of new examples. It's as if each individual portion of each ep is being written by a totally different writer than the others and the writers never meet, never discuss what they're doing with the other guys writing the other segments.

      I started scratching out that map a few weeks ago when the geography first got so screwed up. A fan had created a map that tried to explain it but it was just a mess, full of inaccuracies, so I was going to spend a few minutes trying to put together one that incorporated everything we knew. I ended up doing something else and never finished it. After Enid and Glenn suddenly ended up at "point green" last night, I pulled it out, wrote the copy and posted it. I don't think I've missed anything--if I did, I'm sure readers will point it out. I think I'm going to add in that theoretical road Rick was on with the RV, just for completion's sake.

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    4. There's more points that don't make sense, and this map makes them clear, even though it could be far more detailed. The first part of the route was lined with cars, yet the area with the greatest danger, near Alexandria, was not lined with cars. With disastrous consequences. Also: the zombie herding had to start because the back road wasn't blocked anymore (the truck fell down), so why start the process at all? The zombies would either fall in the pit again or circle back to Alexandria over a period of weeks or more, plenty of time for another plan.

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    5. Enid just popping up on a random rooftop in a random alleyway in a random town randomly placed for sake of plot was a fitting way to "unspoil" a main characters fake death on a show. The only episode my wife has watched this season was "Thank You" and she just watched part of it. So last night when she watched the first few minutes with me of this latest one she said... and I quote. "What the hell is that girl doing there?"

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    6. As I understand it, the upper shelf of the quarry led down to the same road as the front entrance and that road led straight to safe zone. If the zombies got out either way, they'd be heading in a straight shot for the safe zone.

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  2. Hey you didnt bring up that Tara flipped off Rick and told him to F' off!
    That blows your theory that anyone who questions Rick dies out of the water.lol

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    1. Actually it has nothing to do with his point on anyone who disagrees with rick dies. She wasnt disagreeing with him she was telling him where to stick it. Much different than some guy trying to undermine him and try to get a group of survivers to turn on him because "add whatever reason here" is at the time. Try to keep up.

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  3. I watched the scene with Spencer and I could not for the LIFE of me figure out why Rick was pissed at Tara. He acted like she jumped down into the mob of walkers or something. All she did was shoot from the wall. But he acted like she was risking her life. I didn't understand it at all.

    The geography and time passage is an absolute train wreck this season. They don't pay ANY attention to any of that, though. None of it makes any sense. They could hire a 5th grader for minimum wage and keep better track of time and place than these "professionals" do. When TWD is all said and done I will be interested to know where this crack writing staff ends up working for the rest of their careers. SyFy movies?

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  4. I do think that there is an AMC mandate to have 16 episode seasons in order to stretch the season out over prime ratings seasons of fall and spring in order to produce more ad revenue. However it seems as if the writers only write enough story each season to fill 8-10 episodes. This is why we get many episodes each season that only focus on a handful of characters each episode over the same period of time (like last weeks daryl episode), and we often have episodes where characters are walking from location A to B having the same repetitive conversations about surviving in the world (Glenn and Enids plot from this episode).

    Can you imagine if this whole herd plot had played out over the first 4 episodes of this season without the darryl episode and the morgan flashback episode? There would still be problems but the pacing would at least be bearable. Most quality story oriented shows are going for a trim 8-10 episode seasons while the walking dead has a bloated 16 episode run each season. I think the writers clearly do not want to write 16 episodes worth of plot because they would overrun the material of the comics even quicker than they eventually will at their current rate.

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    1. "it seems as if the writers only write enough story each season to fill 8-10 episodes."

      We're lucky if there's that much actual writing going on most of the time. But I'll repeat, the problem with TWD's writing, including its poor pacing, has nothing to do with the number of eps. Talented writers with an enthusiasm for the material would be so full of ideas they couldn't cram it into only 16 eps or even 22, as they do on the major networks. The reason it ends up so underwritten is because the writers write it that way. It's a choice not to do the work. Cutting down the number of eps wouldn't help.

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    2. I agree to an extent but the big mystery is why so little plot and so many episodes? The only thing I can come up with is a desire to not outpace the comics, or the fact that these writers think they are doing a good job which I guess given the ratings up to this point I guess they are.

      Your theory of peak walking dead holds a lot of water imo especially given the whole Glenn fiasco. I could see that event turning a lot of people away from the show. It will be hard for the writers to come back from something that manipulative

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  5. It does not matter that you hate TWD. It is only the zombie show on TV, so what are you going to do (no, izombie doesn't count -its a police procedural, and the big fail that was zombieland tv series got cancelled immediately)? You have to watch it, and you will like it. Don't like this show? Why don't you go and make your own zombie tv series.

    Anyway, it's not really the writers' fault. They have to stick with the comic storyline. Give them some slack, and please shift your blame to the guy who wrote the comics.

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    1. If only AMC would have just adapted the comic to the screen.

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    2. Dude....
      The writing is horrible. That is why characters make dumb decisions. No one talks like a normal real person. All these writers have backgrounds in soap operas. They pick and choose what they want from the comics and spend 8 episodes for something that happened very quickly in the comics. There have been so many things left out from the comic on this show. And then they make up totally pointless stories like last seasons hospital arc that was so long and dragged out it basically took 4 episodes. Yes its the only zombie drama but thats not an excuse. The best sci-fi/drama shows explore human nature and what it means to never compromise on your beliefs. A perfect example is the characters of Capt.Picard vs. Rick Grimes. Rick is a schizophrenic random personality generator with no true beliefs or morals they changevepisode to episode.

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  6. Not the only zombie show. There is Z Nation on Syfy on Friday nights.

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    1. That is just a cheap parody show made by Asylum. We're talking about real zombie tv shows here. You know with actors, special effects and budgets. I heard they have a former hot dog salesman as their lead in that show, who is a blue zombie, and their last episode was about zombie aliens. Laughable, am I right?

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    2. I watch both TWD and Z Nation on my DVR. When I watch TWD I will at some point look at how much time has passed and think "how has this only been running for 24 minutes?"
      With Z Nation most times I realize it's nearly over and I am almost never screwing around on my phone because it keeps my attention.

      Compare budgets all you'd like. It's budget shouldn't be held against it in any case.

      TWD's last episode was about zombies who get easily distracted by a rolling tin can while fresh meat is inches away. TWD has very frequently featured zombies with the power of teleportation and ninja-like stealth. Laughable, am I right?

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  7. I hope:
    "Diving under the dumpster"
    Replaces "jump the shark"
    In the vernacular

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