The Walking Dead thread

[Kanati]

next week... king ezekiel and shiva.

[AetheLove]

Sigh...here I come crawling back to the spiteful masters at buzzfeed, err, I mean, AMC.


While the episode seemed very long and drawn out, and on the surface seemed like they were just filling a whole hour with needless gore-drama that could have taken a scene, I think that in some ways it was alright.


[...] I'm so happy that all this finale/premiere nonsense is over so we can actually see what's going to happen.

I was at a friend's house Monday and he's a Walking Dead fan so I watched it with him.

My opinion on the previous page of this thread wasn't changed; it was reinforced. They took an HOUR to do almost nothing. What happens in an hour? Two people die. One person submits to a force he can't resist.

Do the people die in dramatic or interesting ways? Nope. They were executed.

How did the character decide who to kill? Randomly?

No. Arbitrarily.

The distinction can be important because the way a character makes choices helps the audience to learn about that character and their motivations.

But in this case the distinction couldn't matter less because the choice made by the character had NOTHING to do with the story.

What motivated the choice of who dies? I'll tell you: the choice was made to satisfy the constraints of producing the show. That is: the character DOESN'T make the choice. The writers make the choice out of a motivation that has nothing to do with the story and they do it in a way that has no respect for the world they've created or the characters who populate it.

Is this some crazy deep allegory about free will? No. It's bullshit.

"Who do we kill in the first episode next year? This guy? No, we can't kill him, we need him for the season. This guy? No, that guy isn't important enough, we need to pull their emotional strings harder than that. This guy? No, that actor's contract is very inexpensive relative to how much people like the character he plays, so the cost/benefit ratio is too good for the producers to kill him off. This guy? Yeah, that's not a bad choice. What if we kill two? Hey, that's a good idea because the entire first episode has almost nothing in it and a second execution helps us pad-out the hour of nothing."

It's all the pointlessness of "choose your own adventure" stories without even getting to make the choice!

Am I clever to have seen through the curtain? No. Everyone knows what's going on. Everyone knows that the choice isn't important to the story. Everyone who cares about the show has been reading gossip and speculation on the net since the last season ended.

Salty, you called it "needless gore-drama" and I think that's an excellent phrase. But you are too generous. There's no drama.

What's the point of this show?

I'd say, "It teaches the audience to fear and mistrust things they don't understand and people they don't know. It makes murder a reasonable response to the Other and the Unknown, and it desensitizes us to the unfortunately messy results."

... but I'm not quite that cynical nor enough of a conspiracy theorist.


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[AetheLove]

"Plotblocking"

That's a new one for me today, and I like it.

Stranger Things and the Problem of “Plotblocking”

It's a little rambly at first, but he makes some excellent points.


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[Warprosper]

What's the point of this show?

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Entertainment.

Nothing more.

[rv2pc3dLIVES]

Entertainment.

Nothing more.

I thought it was to distract. Boy was I wrong. lol.

[Kanati]

"Who do we kill in the first episode next year? This guy? No, we can't kill him, we need him for the season. This guy? No, that guy isn't important enough, we need to pull their emotional strings harder than that. This guy? No, that actor's contract is very inexpensive relative to how much people like the character he plays, so the cost/benefit ratio is too good for the producers to kill him off. This guy? Yeah, that's not a bad choice. What if we kill two? Hey, that's a good idea because the entire first episode has almost nothing in it and a second execution helps us pad-out the hour of nothing."

No.

Abraham was killed as a "gotcha!" to the fans who thought they were going the easy route and taking him out instead of one of the primaries. But to anyone that has read the books, Abraham was on borrowed time anyway as HE was the one killed on the train tracks by Dwight with the crossbow instead of the doctor-lady that they killed last season. And Glenn died exactly... almost EXACTLY... like it happened in the book. The entire episode played out reasonably closely to the way it did in issue 100 right down to the little flashbacks that Rick was having.

They took exactly as much time as they needed to break down Rick and his group that were feeling pretty invincible by this point and prove to them and the audience that they weren't the hot shit they thought they were. They took just enough time to show that Negan was the villain that everyone THOUGHT the Governor was. But the Governor, nor anyone or anything else they have encountered to this point, had anything on Negan.

You can intellectualize it all you want and call it gore-drama or torture porn or anything else that comes to mind to minimize it, but fans of the series and genre and books... We're there watching every week for the next chapter. Some are better than others, but we'll stand behind it.

[AetheLove]

Entertainment.

Nothing more.

If some people like it, that's all good.

Not everything has to be high-minded, or dense, or intellectual. Not everything has to take the art of story-telling to the next level, or recontextualize the blah blah blah ohmygodshutupwithYourPedanticNonsense.

But lots of episodic stories these days feel disrespectful to the audience, and I think that if someone's not going to play fair then they deserve to be called out for it.

I thought this forum was a reasonable place to express my displeasure :)

No.

Abraham was killed as a "gotcha!" to the fans who thought they were going the easy route and taking him out instead of one of the primaries.

That's fine, and I don't know enough about the series to agree or disagree - but either way that supports the point I was trying to make.

The choices were made to work within the financial and franchise considerations of the production. The quality and value of the story was (at best) a secondary consideration.

Don't get me wrong: I like it when writers wink at the audience. I think lampshading is fun. Unexpectedly breaking the fourth wall is a thrill. Acknowledging the show within the show, and the show outside the show, is wonderful.

But does no one here think that this episode (or the previous) was kinda drawn out and empty? That they took a long time to say not very much? Can anyone really argue that the hour was well spent?

Am I the only one who thinks that "Plotblocking" is a valuable new phrase?

You can intellectualize it all you want and call it gore-drama or torture porn or anything else that comes to mind to minimize it, but fans of the series and genre and books... We're there watching every week for the next chapter. Some are better than others, but we'll stand behind it.

If something is torture porn then you ought to call it torture porn. If you get off on torture porn then go ahead watch it, but also be honest about what it is and what you like.

If you love gore, then the same thing applies.

Some shows feel to me like they're telling interesting stories, and some shows feel to me like they're trying to build a franchise by manipulating the audience.


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[AetheLove]

I only watched the season premier because I was at a friend's house and he's all about The Walking Dead.

Watched the second episode for the same reason, and I'm prepared to soften my criticism. I enjoyed the second episode.

I thought there was a bit too much exposition. I love dialog, but it felt like the characters (Ezekiel especially) were a bit too explainy.

But overall there was good character development, and good scenes that expressed the relationships between factions. It pulled me in, and made me wonder about the people, about their past and what had brought them to now, and how their personality and experiences would affect their future.


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