Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Zombies with bees in their mouth, so every time they walk towards you and moan bees fly out of it?!



What can be worse than zombies? Wait... More monologues.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Oh by the way... This "everybody's infected" thing sure explains why everybody could cover themselves in zombie gore or stand 1 meter from a zombie being smashed to pieces.

But I still think it's idiotic.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Conversation's sake - and curiosity; why do you think that everyone being infected is idiotic?

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Covering yourself in zombie gore is idiotic. Everybody being infected doesn't seem to matter at all.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

They were covering themselves in zombie gore to smell like a zombie. Makes sense to me.

I agree that everyone being infected really doesn't have any bearing on the story at all. I'm not sure if they expected that to be a "big reveal" or not, but it really doesn't change anything, it's just kind of a neat fact about the virus. Maybe it will mean something later on, like creating a "cure" virus to kill the zombies.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Not to harp, but this is one area of the story that I think the books handled much better. There is no "infection" in the books. No one knows why people turn into zombies. They just do. This makes the reveal much more dramatic, IMO, because there is no way out... no way to avoid your fate. And because there is no infection, there is no cure. The reveal is the realization that they are living in a new horrific world with no happy ending. THEY are The Walking Dead, not the zombies.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

That episode was terrible. The whole "hacking up the dead guy" should have stayed in the comic book. That shit belongs in comedy....and in fact it was used as a comedy piece in the BBC miniseries Dead Set.

Shameless plug, again, I already plugged this and I wish you people would watch it because it's good:





Anyway, my only question, and I chose not to nitpick about this before because you guys don't like when I complain: if Rick knew that dead people come back as zombies, why was he sitting pretty mindlessly on top of Shane. It doesn't matter though. He mentioned he wasn't sure he believed the CDC guy anyway.

Along with what Prof S said, the fact that dead people come back to life as zombies is used in the comic to set the tone. In the comic book, Rick goes well out of his way to kill a zombie that was already killed earlier in the comic. It sort of sets the tone and explores the nature of Rick's character. The TV show reversed the role of the situation, and IMO diminished the tone a bit.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

A) His son was right behind him and he had just murdered his best friend. I doubt "Hold on a moment, son - I've got to decapitate the warm corpse of my former best friend before he re-animates and attempts to kills us both. I'm just assuming this will happen at this point, though. But you've got to be sure, even though I have no proof yet!" would be on the tip of his tongue opposed to "Holy fuck, I need to make sure my son wasn't emotionally scarred from possibly seeing his father stab his best friend."

B) But really You argued against yourself the best:

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To those who know: How was the scene of them hacking that dead guy up in the comics a comedy bit?

I think the scene was handled well in the show, I can't imagine how something that heavy could have some "hahas" in there, especially when the tone of the show is clearly not a comedy. Granted I never saw the "first incarnation" of that scene when it was...comedy - but the fact they went over the emotional distress they were having with the fact the people they're murdering and the corpse they're about to desecrate was once a real person just like them was good enough, if not better than any type of comedy I could imagine - especially when placed into this show; which has had very little to no intentional laughs in it.

When I think back to that scene I don't think "Fuck, I wish I was laughing right now at them chopping this guy up", I think "Fuck, hacking up a dead human being and putting his guts all over my body would be fucking hard as shit to have to cope with doing."
Maybe that's just because I can't see the comedy in the show, because it's not a comedy. Maybe the comic was a comedy, or had comedy. Maybe the show isn't intended to have any, and is supposed to be a juxtaposition of the comic - like a more hardcore 'real world' version; especially considering from what I've heard from those who've read it - is that a lot of key things in this are entirely different, if not the exact opposite of what they were in the comics. But I didn't read the comic. I just watch the show. Maybe comedy is what the zombie-infested world is missing. Maybe that's the cure for the disease, and they're all infected because nobody is laughing, right?! Solved it. Comedy


Edit: I've also never heard of Dead Set, but I'll try to check it out this weekend. I am intrigued.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

No no no, I should have clarified my original statement, because I think I caused some confusion.

The scene where they hack up the zombie in the comics wasn't comedic at all. I need to go dust off my comic, but I believe it was just Rick and Glenn in the comic.

What I'm saying is that the whole "hacking up the dead guy/zombie" scene is ultra violent and kind of absurd. It's the type of violence that is very difficult to make work in live action because it's comic violence.

My opinion is that if you are going to take something that violent, and that absurd....you need to put a comedic spin on it to juxtapose the violence. Here are some contexts where a scene like that might work:

Real Life - yeah, I have friends who are going on to be doctors, so they take real college-level anatomy where you dissect donated cadavers. Everyone I know who has taken these classes has a sense of humor about, and strongly dissociates.

In Horror, by the villain - I don't think anyone would have any questions or concerns if Leatherface or Jason cut somebody up.

Comic Violence - One reason why Sin City has not budged from my top 5 comic films is because it is one of the few comic films that actually feels like a comic book. And because of that....scenes like this work:



Comedy - If you are going to show a bunch of characters chopping somebody up, juxtapose that shit with some dark comedy. Dead Set did that brilliantly


My issue with the scene in the Walking Dead where they were cutting up the zombie is that it was not properly juxtaposed with comedy, and it wasn't comic enough. Now....maybe if you had REALLY GOOD ACTORS you could make that scene work in a realistic context....but I just felt like the scene was uncomfortable, and unintentionally funny because it was awkward.

The scene wasn't funny at all in the comic. It was pretty dark. It just didn't work as a dark scene on the show because it was awkward and unintentionally funny. To fix that issue, you can do what I cited in my above examples: juxtapose with humor, or be comic-like.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

I'm trying to dig into my ultra-violence memory bank. I can think of realistic examples, like the Beach Scene from Saving Private Ryan. Very serious, based on a historic and real event....so that's an example where guts spilling out worked on a realistic level.

But then you have movies like Kill Bill, where Uma Thurman is dismembering people and limbs are flying everywhere. The whole scene in Vol. 1 is juxtaposed with various film techniques, and it's actually darkly comedic as well.

I'm just saying...I think the writers/director on the Walking Dead are supposed to be doing their job, and they are not. If you are adapting a TV show, you need to decide what stuff from the comic book works on live action TV, and you need to decide what does not work. The scene where they were axing up the zombie did not work, because the acting was not up to par, and it was awkward and uncomfortable. They could have simply fixed the issue by throwing in some dark humor or by leaving the scene out altogether.

I'm of the opinion that the scene was awkward, and it was funny not because it was intentionally funny, but because the acting was so bad and it was so awkward. That's not a nice criticism I'm making either.

Edit: There is a reason why comedy and horror are best friends. 99% of horror movies feature some form of humor, be it dark social commentary, or over-the-top, B-movie gore.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

And I just mentioned that scene because we finally knw why they "weren't infected" at that time.
Oh and I think T-Dog was in that scene even though he was supposed to be watching Merle on the roof. Movie mistake! :)

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Overall loved this season, by the way. I definitely liked the second half better, but I enjoyed every episode.

Can anyone spill some spoilers and explain (just a little) who the samurai with two pet zombies on chains is?

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Origin comic which just appeared in Playboy this month. Huh. Could have swore this was known already. Guess she just mentioned it.



If don't want to read that (and is annoying to do so in a video): She was an attorney who had practiced fencing. When the apocalypse hit she found katanas at a neighbor's house. The zombies with her are her boyfriend and his best friend. Cut off their arms and lower jaws so they couldn't attack her and uses them as camo.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Please explain what this means.

Re: The Walking Dead: The Television Series
 

Ugh. I thought that whole idea of covering yourself with zombie gore was retarded. They were trying not to get infected by whatever it was that was causing the zombies. So why would you COVER YOURSELF with zombie flesh and blood? "As long as it doesn't get into your eyes, right?"

And now in the last episode we find out that they had been infected the whole time. So it finally makes sense...