"Walking Dead Recap: Midseason Finale... (spoiler)" Topic

… Kills What Needs Killing.

"There's something deeply sad about zombies, once the fear goes away. They're a form of ambulatory grief, a twisted sort of wish fulfillment for that perpetual lament of the bereaved: please, just bring them back somehow, anyhow. We've spent enough time with zombies now that it's easier to see them for what they are – as living tragedies, as walking tombstones. Imagine if you could see all your losses in life, roaming free in the world. Imagine that your grief could literally eat you alive.

The Governor lived with his grief for a long time, literally; he kept it chained in the back of his closet, like a little undead keepsake of the daughter he lost. Rick's pathology manifested a little differently; after his wife was eaten alive he found a way to keep her alive nonetheless with his hallucinated phone calls to the afterlife. The problem with this kind of grief isn't that it makes you crazy, although it does. It's that it puts your life into stasis, and locks you into a narrative loop that allows no growth and no progress, because that would force you to leave the thing you love where it belongs: in the past.

Much like the Governor and Rick — and poor, deluded Lizzie — it's the same trap the show itself fell into this season, circling around one of the most defining and climactic moments of the series like it couldn't bear to put it in the ground. The siege on the prison is the little zombie daughter of this show, the tragedy that it couldn't let go of. It's how last season ended, and after eight episodes of meandering and walking the Governor through the heel-face-heel turn necessary to get him back outside the gates, here we are again, watching an undead version of of the the Season 2 finale shamble towards us…"

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I really enjoy that final chapter.
Sad what happened to old man and baby.

Amicalement
Armand

I'm not a zombie-phile, but watch TWD strickly out of morbid curiosity like when you drive by an accident on the highway … I'm not a real fan of the whole brain-eating Zombie paradigm … However, I know it's sci-fi/fantasy. What really pushed me over the edge, when they blew up an M60 MBT, by throwing a standard hand grenade down the main gun barrel ?!?!??! I don't know which has a higher improbability, blowing the M60 up with a grenade down the barrel … or the entire concept of zombies … I probably won't waste my time watching the series any more … There are to many other things I can be doing instead …

Well, in regard to the tank I figured the grenade must have come down when the chamber was open for another round. Otherwise why would they yell, "Grenade!" and bail out? Could have just been a tin can rattling down the barrel for all they knew (assuming they could even hear it above the engine noise). No, that didn't bother me. Now why grass doesn't grow, THAT bothers me! <grin>

It was a great show. Frustrated that I'll have to wait till Feb to find out what happens to each of the survivors.

After the twists around the reasons for the zombies being an added inconvenience to how humans would react to each other in a apocalyptic environment (really badly). They may as well have added all the extras from the Fallout computer games( that would have been a brilliant idea) right now I'm just watching to complete the story. Again these story writers are earning big money for old rope.0-)

blowing the M60 up with a grenade down the barrel … or the entire concept of zombies

The Plus Boards have YouTube video of a T-72 getting blown up in this fashion.

How about that zombie body shield stopping assault rifle rounds like it was made of armor plate?
There are barely any characters left on the show that are interesting now.
Although maybe Hershel will come back- I mean he made out ok when they cut his LEG off….

Yes, I know how a the 105 breach works Snowman, thanks, I appreciate your technical expertise. We had M60s in the Tank Bn of our Mech Bde. But like I said, the it is improbable that it would have caught fire like that even if the grenade made it into turret … Admittedly that type of Frag Grenade, M68 IIRC, is about 2.5 inches (about 63mm) at it's widest point. I have an inert one sitting here in front of me … So it could roll down the barrel of a 105. Maybe because I'm not a Zombie-phile and have some biase, I guess. I went thru a lot of AT training and never was I taught that. Of course you can pop a thermite grenade in the barrel and melt part of it … making it unable to fire. As far as the T-72, what kind of grenade was it ? Frag, Incendiary, etc. … Well … alright I'll stop being so critical … it is a Zombie show … And again I don't know which has a higher improbability, blowing the M60 up with a grenade down the barrel … or the entire concept of zombies … so enjoy … I'll stop being a curmugdeon …

The M60 shouldn't have caught fire… Maybee some smoke, but not fire. That was a visual effect for the less educated who will say "why didn't the tank catch on fire when they blew it up?"

The thing that bothered me was the fact that the governor and crew had to drive to the prison, and Lilly just shows up only minutes after her daughter is killed. I guess Star Trek helped out with teleporters.

It was a good episode though, but I do agree that it is getting a bit monotonous and depressing. When everyone is getting killed, then there is no longer any shock when someone does get killed!

Haven't seen it, but…

Tank? Uh, fuel? It gets what? 1 mpg? Or 2-3 minutes of engine run-time?

Even if you have a bio-diesel manufacturing capability-that's silly. Get some diesel pickups and make technicals.

I was more concerned with the moral turn than the tank. They killed off the spiritual character and replaced him with a very confused alternate lifestyle representative. Frankly I am surprised the series made it this long without some forced fed politically correct diversity.

Who was the 'spiritual character' and 'alternative lifestyle'?

Herschel was the spiritual character. I'm assuming the "alternative lifestyle" character referred to is the younger sister of the Governor's "girlfriend", as she seems to be in a same-sex relationship.

Not really sure how either affects the "moral turn" of the show, however; nor do I personally feel any concern.

Snowman, I'd guest it's possible that the ammo could blow up … but I'd think a low probabilty … Maybe that's what happened to the T-72 Elmo mentioned ? But in the M60's case if ammo did blow up it would do more than start a fire, I'd think … like in Elmo's T-72 on YouTube … Oops … sorry, said I wouldn't spoil anyone's fun any more. But again it's a series that is about zombies and has a HUGE Fan following (?!) …

The youtube T-72 was staged on a dead tank, the baby is not dead, and Herschel's blonde daughter will be the next franchise player to die.

the grenade bugged me as being really stupid. With the fuse, the chance of it rolling down is negligible. Had it just burst in the barrel, as it would have, and screwed it up so they couldn't shoot I'd have been happier. I'd like it more if they did something realistic like toss a can of gas on the back and light it on fire, so the guys bail out.

Of course you realize that an M-60 being taken by a tank driver from Ft. Benning in this day and age is, ahem, rather improbable. I gather don't know if the Army refused to help them, or the cost of renting an M1 was too much.

You can add zombies to the world and that's OK, but changing other things, like physics- bullets being stopped by rotting zombie, is just stupid and wrong. You make your changes to the world for the story, then you stick with reality. But then putting a knife through a skull is also kinda stupid as well.

This season, so far, has had way too much incidents of "hey, it would be cool to see zombies being killed in this bizarre and unique (and improbable) way" that just does nothing to advance the story. Doing "cool stuff' just cause it has not been done before. Lets have zombies come out of the leaves, let's have zombies killed with bones from other zombies, etc.

Besides I hate all this 'mid season finale' stuff. Just pre-empt the show for the Christmas week, and get back to it!

When the grenade rolled down the barrel you could hear a distinctive "clunk" as it supposedly dropped out of the breach into the turret. I'm not saying it could happen, but they at least covered that base. As for the fire, I think it was a nod to not blowing the thing up visually as it would have cost too much (probably a rented piece and a smoke pot worked fine),

As to the comment about aiming high…..remember the initial orders were to take the prison intact, I assume even after the "kill them all" command, this still had some impact on the battle…..or else the battle was for not.

Now that they broke the group up, I suspect that the second half of the season will be a series of character stories (kind of like the governor thread) before they are reunited for the season finale.

So if the Youtube video was staged on a KO'd T-72, it would have been easy to put fuel and explosives in the T-72 before the grenade was dropped. Or there could have been it's own fuel and ammo storage that was damaged or leaking in the tank already … I don't think that video is a good example …

I can't believe people a criticising a Zombie show for lack of military realism. In fact compared to the majority of Hollywood war movies esp 50's 60's and 70's it's practically a doco!
For example "Battle of the Bulge" TS's tank gets its turret blown off by 88. The crew all survive ( I guess they ducked) and they drive off with TS carrying the tanks MG which I suppose blew in the air then landed back down in the tank. They then come across some Germans which TS mows down with the MG with one sweep. There was no ammo belt in the MG at the time BTW so it was an empty MG that did all the killing.

Max shadow. Lol

I mean really the deeper concern should be the overrun checkpoints seen all the way back in the first season… a bunch of dead soldiers, tanks, etc, with stacks of ammo and sandbags and wire all around them, and a handful of dead zombies scattered around as well.

How the hell did that happen?

So don't look to zombie shows (in general) for a whole lot of realism, at least Walking Dead has interesting characters and such… the whole set up doesn't make sense, but once its set up the post apoc stuff is well done.

You guys kill me! The dead can rise and drag their rotting corpses round the countryside and eat people and you're fine but pull a slightly improbable "Hollywood style" trick with a grenade and a tank and everyones up in arms. LOL.