The Walking Dead--Dead Weight. Episode Review

Better late than never, hopefully.  Sorry I'm so far behind.  Thanksgiving week, and all.

So, about The Governor:

--I wouldn't have let The Governor live, never mind join the group.  He's what Caesar said about Cassius: He's got the mean and hungry look.  Such men are dangerous.

--Many people have said enough with The Governor.

--So someone let the army people turn while tied to a tree or a chair, and then cut off their heads, but then kept the heads "alive?"  Now that's morbid, man.

--Martinez is bitter.  If you're going to rag on The Governor the whole time, why keep him alive?  So you can rag on him all the time?

--The Governor will not be led, or ordered around.

--I would not have made The Governor my golf caddy and then turned my back on him.

--This episode reminds me of a point made last week: Brian / The Governor = Anakin / Darth Vader.  On a less iconic scale, of course.

--In case you missed it, Norman Reedus (Daryl) misses the characters of Shane, Andrea, Dale and Sophia, in that order.

--I'm surprised to see Shane #1.  He annoyed me tremendously, and he was stuck in that Rick, Shane, Lori triangle that was going nowhere, that he was always going to lose.  Plus he had a lot of personal jealousy to boot.  He was the one who saved Rick in the hospital, after all.

--Though Shane could have been the series-long antagonist that apparently The Governor will be, instead.  Shane could've been as Good Guy before the Zombie Apocalypse brought out his Dark Side as The Governor is.

--The other surprise: Lori wasn't on that list.  What issue did Daryl have with her?  (Or that Norman Reedus had with Sarah Wayne Callies?)

--The Governor's got daddy issues.

--You had to know he'd take over somewhere, sometime soon, just to attack the prison again.  Though the image of the zombie forever reaching for the lake's surface was a brutal, but nice, touch.

The Walking Dead--Live Bait

Just a few things to say about the first non-Rick episode of the year, if not of the entire series:

--So the Governor is Brian Heriot?  Or did he just make that up?

--And he just strolls into the house of these two women?  And the kid, and the guy on oxygen?

--The Governor sorta looks like Kurt Russell in his 80s action movies, like Escape from New York.

--In the beginning of the series, most of the characters would kill almost all of the walkers that came at them, often out of sympathy.  (Or at least it seemed that way to me.)  Now, there's no pity.  The Governor, for example, just closed a door on one, and left one strapped into a wheelchair, theoretically forever.

--The guy got "killed" with the oxygen tank that the Governor got to save him.  If I remember right, that's called irony.

--This is the family guy before the zombie apocalypse transformed him to the dark side and he became the Governor.

--The creators of the show are giving the Governor a lot of his own time in order to set him up as Rick's foil character--that is, the one character who he is most similar to, but who also has a couple of glaring differences in order to set up the traits of both.

--The pit kills, especially the last one with the bone and the face-stretching, are the kills of the week.

--I don't mind the total focus on the Governor here, and it seems like next week will be more of the same, but I'm hearing that many viewers are less than thrilled.  A few are threatening to stop watching.

--The show's creators are taking a heckuva chance here, and if the ratings plummet over these two episodes, there'll be a lot of finger-pointing.

Walking Dead--Internment

Some quick thoughts about the episode:

--In an episode soon, Herschel won't have the time to wheel the dead out of view before he stabs them.

--How could Herschel possibly have gone this long without killing a single walker?

--What's up with Lizzie playing footsie in zombie blood?

--Carl's no longer whiny and annoying like he was last year.  Harsh, I know.

--You knew the fence would go soon.

--Hopefully Rick and Carl repaired the fence before they burned the bodies and picked peas.

--You knew the Governor would turn up soon, and that he'd been watching.

--I'll bet the Governor's talking to Carol when he says in next week's promo: "Don't you want to get back at him for what he did to you?"  Or something very close to that.

--Herschel has turned into one tough old dude.

--Quite the father/son and father/daughter bonding moments in this episode.  There's nothing that brings a family together more than annihilating large numbers of zombies together.

--Chris Hardwicke talked much faster than usual on the recent Talking Dead.  So fast that I couldn't tell what he was saying at times.  And that's me saying this.

--Josh, a guest on Talking Dead, asked an awesome question: Could Bob be a spy from the Governor?  I never would've thought of that.

--I've got to look up that Steinbeck quotation.

--I don't blame Rick for putting off talking to Darryl.

--I love the Tom Sawyer and Steinbeck allusions.

--"A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ."  I'm going to guess that was from East of Eden, or maybe Of Mice and Men.  But I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't, too, because I know those two pretty well, and I don't remember that quote in either one.

--Herschel has lately been the optimist that Rick used to be.

--Scott Wilson, who plays Herschel, said in an interview that ibuprofen got him through filming this episode.  Lately, ibuprofen's been swelling up my cheeks and sinuses to a painful extent.  It hurts now more than it helps.

--Okay.  According to Goodreads, the quote is actually:

“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”

― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

The Walking Dead--Episode 4--Indifference

In case it hasn't been obvious, I jot down quick things while I watch the episode, then type them up and publish them afterwards.  I say this so that nobody thinks that I'm embellishing anything after watching the episode--see the third bullet.  And so, a few short comments:

--Lizzie sort of creeps me out.  Not the least because when I hear "Lizzie," I think "Borden."

--Then again, Carol creeps me out now, too.

--"Indifference" is a fitting title for the beginning of this episode, but by the end, I'll bet someone has to do something because he / she isn't indifferent.

--That was an odd couple up there, throwing down the fruit.  How did they stay away from the pajama-clad walker up there for so long?

--Well, so much for the woman upstairs.  It doesn't pay to be a pretty, 20-something woman the last few episodes.

--But the second she made a point of showing the tattooed leg, you knew she was gone.  It was going to be used to identify her, though I thought she'd last long enough to be another burned body.

--I don't know about Rick telling Carol to get out, and I'm really surprised at how complacently she accepted it.  Why not fight that?

--This whole season could be called "indifferent" so far.  Rick the indifferent farmer.  Lizzie the indifferent blonde who shrugs off boyfriends who die.  (Or was that the other blonde girl?)  Carol the sociopathically indifferent judge of who gets to live and who dies.  When did everyone get so blase?

--Why do I get the feeling that Carol will run into the Governor?  But I wouldn't expect an Andrea-like connection with him.

--Rick will tell the truth to Tyrese about how and why he banished Carol, if for no other reason than that Rick simply doesn't lie.

--Where'd the guy go who was with Ana?  Maybe Carol will run into him, too.  If the Governor does first, this guy's in trouble.

--Good to see that these characters are as desensitized to violence as every other American is.  Looks like things don't change all that much, I guess.

--Next week's episode title: "Yeah, Whatever."