The Walking Dumb: Atmosfear's Walking Dead Liveblog: S02E11 [Spoilers]

Note: I'll be posting live during the course of tonight's episode of AMC's The Walking Dead, starting in roughly 15 minutes. Every update will be a new post, and I'll go through the thread after the show ends to condense and curate my posts into this top post. If you plan to follow along while watching, make sure you refresh frequently. Feel free to post along and/or in response to my comments, I'm not opposed to including others' thoughts in The Walking Dumb.

When we last left our intrepid band of utter morons, Shane and Grimes were riding in the car on their way back from playing grab ass with the zombies in some public works facility. They still have their hostage in the trunk, and basically nothing happened back at the farm, so the episode might as well have been a dream sequence. It didn't really develop the characters or advance the plot much; Grimes still won't kill innocent people, and Shane will. And some girl that probably doesn't have a name decided not to kill herself. Probably a mistake, I hope she zombies up soon.

The episode description for tonight's episode reads:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AMC via TimeWarner

"Judge, Jury, Executioner" Rick sides with Shane causing Dale to worry that the group is losing its humanity; Carl's actions have unintended consequences.

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The description implies that Rick has "slept on" his decision regarding their unnamed hostage (side note: have you ever noticed that characters only get names after they are dead or missing?) and wants to kill the kid to prevent some dumb "war" amongst the Farm and the other survivors that is just so not going to happen because it's insanely stupid and impractical. This is a dumb decision, but not because it's inhuman. The kid healed from a catastrophic leg injury ("the muscle will be tore all to shreds") in like three days; you do not sacrifice superhuman Wolverine-type healing so readily. The real question is why they haven't executed Dale yet. They haven't been on the road in forever (remember that fixing his shitty RV was his "talent" in season 1? Now his talent is making Daleface and whining about Shane being a badass.) Dale needs to sit down and shut the fuck up. Dale is the worst.

There's also the implication that Carl is going to screw something up, which is about time. They have long given Carl too much latitude in the group. Remember when he was asking to be allowed to carry around a gun, and then pulled one out of the waistband of his pants? Or when he thought he was going to find Sophia and dumb bitch Lori promised him they wouldn't leave until they found her? Or when Grimes let him walk up to a wild fucking deer in the woods and he got shot? Carl needs to sit in the corner and shut up.

Anyways, we're about 2 minutes away from kickoff. Time's up, let's do this.

Oh good, we open with the redneck beating the tar out of the hostage kid. We get the description of the other gang of survivors. Apparently they are rapists and thieves with a bunch of heavy guns.

He's a threat. We have to eliminate the threat.
/Daleface

Daleface Count: 1

Ugh, Dale makes the worst arguments ever. It's like he completely fails to grasp that the rules have changed because of the Zombie Apocalypse. He just takes survival for granted, probably because he's never really been particularly close to harm.

"Rick's the leader of this group. It's Herschel's farm." --Andrea

WTF WHY?!?! I mean, what has Rick done for the group? That's just endorsing mediocrity, at best.

I guess his name is Randall. That's not a good sign for our prisoner friend.

The best part of that segment was the advertisement for Mad Men. Apparently it involves an anti-smoking campaign for the American Cancer Society, and winning another Emmy. March 25th really can't come soon enough.

Oh God this episode is going to be terrible if it's a series of Dale arguments. Dale is such a blathering idiot. "You're a decent man" blah blah blah. If I'm the redneck, I'm taking my crossbow and going to find the other gang to come merc all these fools.

"I know the world has changed" --Lori

Translate: I know the world has changed, because I fucked your best friend a couple days after you died, but otherwise I'm too dumb to make adjustments to anything that I do or think.

Carl is talking back to Carol, and then talking back to Grimes. Now he's talking back about killing Prisoner Randall. He hasn't been backhanded yet, which makes me believe discipline is going to be highly underrated in the Zombie Apocalypse.

Holy Shit, some character development happening. Despite Dale's dumbass attempt to rally his support, Herschel has somehow come to the realization that he's not a very good leader. Despite this clear breakthrough in his mental processes, he has somehow ascribed leadership qualities unto Grimes, so I have to assume that senility is setting in.

WHY HASN'T ANYONE PUT CARL ON A LEASH YET? Fucking dumbass carl is wandering around in the woods unattended, taunting zombies and, what's Shane's word--letting his guard down? I guess Lori is too busy chewing on birth control pills in lieu of abortion or setting women's rights and division of labor back to the 1950s to be bothered keeping track of her only fucking son.

So going back to this whole episode format: Dale is unflappably stupid, and he's failed to garner support from any of the people who typically listen to him. A normal person would give up or do something extreme, but Dale has no balls so you can pretty much rule out him freeing Randall or something. I guess the ideal play here would be for Dale to jump in front of the bullet, die, and then Grimes/Shane/Daryl walk up and shoot Randall in the head anyways.

Well, fifth time's a charm. Dale actually makes a decent argument (if you buy into the importance of, which Shane then reduces to the dumbest possible terms while inexplicably agreeing not to stand in Dale's way. Whatever. This is all going to end up in some dramatic sequence that pits Grimes' responsibility to the group against his responsibility to rescue his stupid son, and characters aren't going to develop in between, so I can hit the snooze button on these sequences.

Now Glen and Herschel are talking about nailing Maggie. Herschel is like "If someone has to bang my daughter, it might as well be an immigrant" and Glen is like "Well, we're already out of condoms so..."

Oh good, Carl is going to get eaten.

Nope, instead, he gave his gun to the walker and ran away. Stupid Carl.

I like how nobody bothers to ask Carl where he has been for the past few hours. Great parenting there, guys.

The roundtable scene is great overwrought, annoying repetition. This is a nice microcosm of how dumb democracy is.

Well that whole scene was pretty meaningless. I do like how after two or three monologues, including chastising Sophia's mom for walking out of the decision-making process, Dale proceeds to cry a little bit and then walk out of the decision-making process. The writers are trying really hard to paint the group into a corner here, undoubtedly for some eventual middle road solution and/or deus ex escape pod.

The sweepstakes phrase this week is Struggle to Survive. I assumed it was going to be Struggle to Get Laid, because Glen has been in a dry spell recently.

The Deus Ex was Carl. IT WAS FUCKING CARL. THAT ASSHOLE LITTLE SHIT.

PUT A LEASH ON CARL YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES

Lori isn't happy about Grimes pussying out here, but now she's forgiving Grimes. If that isn't a mixed message, I don't know what is.

Dale seems to be taking a walk in the woods, so I hope he stumbles into Carl's walker friend and gets shot.

OH YES THEY FUCKING ATE DALE. THEY ATE DALE. THEY FUCKING ATE DALE.

THIS IS THE BEST EPISODE EVER OH HELL YES.

I'm not fully sure what the rules are with the contagion, but they've discussed scratches causing infection and zombification in the past, so I assume Dale is a goner, considering that zombie was fingerbanging his thoracic cavity for a while.

Well we've got the reveal on Carl's unintended consequence, as it was the walker that borrowed his gun in the woods that ate Dale. We end with Daryl pulling the trigger to execute Dale, saying "Sorry, brother."

On the bright side, there will be no more Daleface, Daledumb monologues, Dalebitching about Shane, or Dalestealing the guns from everyone and hiding them next to a tree.

/liveblog. Since no one interrupted, I guess I'll just leave the thread as is.

i wish i could watch these shows in realtime. i'll weigh in, but only retroactively.

I'm watching this right now.

I wish it stayed a little more with the comics. Carl is a little less retarded in them. So is Rick.

Spoiler

Shane is dead

Also, I lol'd when you said he gave the gun to the walker

Also please do this again next week

I will. I rather enjoyed this. This is the first time I've watched the show without my roommate in a while, but usually we just sit together bitching about it, so I figured I needed to bitch to someone. I'm a "fan" of the show in the sense that I tune in each week to see how awful, dumb, racist, or otherwise pathetic the writers and actors can be.

I am consistently amazed at, for living in the Zombie Apocalypse on a working form, how little time they spend doing any of the following things:
--Seeing zombies that didn't just sneak up on them haphazardly
--Seeing zombies at all, for that matter
--Working on the farm (this episode Herschel was vaguely corralling cattle, and one of the cows was eaten by a sneaky zombie, but typically they do nothing but laundry and eating Herschel's food.)
--Scavenging/hunting for food
--Scavenging supplies in some pre-emptive form. They started looking at the cars on the highway, and they've been to town like 3 times, but no one ever thinks "Hey, we don't have to keep making a new trip every time we need a tampon for Grimes' gigantic gash"

I know that the format of these types of shows (actually, just Lost--does this not feel like a Lost imitator? It is definitely a Lost imitator it might as well be called Terra Nova: Zombie Makeover Edition) is to lampshade these normal activities once, and then leave the viewer to assume they continue on. But we've never seen many of the characters do anything meaningful. They spend more time bumping into each other on walks about Herschel's property than they do working to maintain their main advantage.

Atmosfear and I came to the same conclusion about Carl and the Walker.