The Walking Dead Episode 5 Self-help

Yup, posting this a week late, right before I post this week's episode's comments.  Trying my best here!  Just a little behind...

--Everyone knew Eugene was full of it.  No surprise there.  I haven't read the comics, but you didn't need to be to see this one coming.

--And I'm also not surprised to Abraham's life-purpose was to bring Eugene to D.C.  You knew he was over-compensating for whatever tragic thing happened to him, and you had to know it involved his family, because a) isn't that what happened to everyone else? and b) he never spoke of them.  He was way too militaristically gung-ho; you knew he had nothing else.

--Gale Ann Hurd hasn't gotten as much attention outside the industry as she should.  I mean, she's been producing since at least The Terminator, and she was married to James Cameron.

--Odd Rain Man moment with Eugene creeping on them in the library.

--The episode title was "Self-help," but it could've been "Self-serving."  But that wasn't the section of the library, of course.

--Sodden, super-soaked walkers.

--I think they're recycling a ton of walkers between episodes.  One of the firehose walkers looked exactly like the walker who got the machete in the face in "Consuming," Episode 6.  That was some really bad CGI, by the way.

--Criticism: The CGI has been consistently and badly glaring recently.  Whatever they'd been doing seasons past, they've got to go back to that.

--Poll #1: Was Eugene justified?  Well, I don't know.  Lots of people died protecting him and his lies.

--I needed to watch Talking Dead to know the grocery store bad guys were part of Abraham's traveling band and that they'd raped his family.  That explains the soupcan beatings.

--So Abraham's family gets raped, watches him go berserk and kill a few guys with an assist by Campbell Soup, and then leaves him, just to get annihilated by walkers.  I mean, DAMN.

--Michael Cudlitz has a really odd laugh.

--Eugene / Rain Man is not a bad comparison.  Yeah, they're definitely very similar, definitely very similar.

--Poll #2: Still go to D.C.?  Yeah, I think so.  If anything's to be done, it'll be by the federal government--if the government is still functioning at all.  But that's worth knowing.

--What a waste of water.  In a zombie apocalypse, and for real.  Ebola's spreading in Africa because of a lack of running water, and we're wasting hundreds of gallons of it on this show alone.  I'm not saying shows and movies can't be made with water, just as I know people will still water their lawns when there's a drought elsewhere in the world and tons of people are dying.  I'm just sayin'.  DAMN.

--Poll #3: Eugene's mullet--Hot or Not?  Ummm....Not.

--Supremely awkward moment on Talking Dead: Chris Hardwicke's below-the-belt reference of Cudlitz's red hair.  Hardwicke couldn't hyper-babble about something else fast enough.

--Josh McDermott needs a new fashion designer.  And that's me sayin' this.

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The Walking Dead--Four Walls and A Roof--Episode Three

Photo: From the review of the episode from this Yahoo site.

--We haven't seen someone as cowardly as Father Gabriel since Dorothy went to Oz.

--Or, at least it seems that way.  But we live in a world of seems.

--I liked Gareth, in a strange way.  A well-spoken and charming cannibal.  Even Slash said he was articulate.

--So Martin ends up getting it, anyway.  But he was right about one thing: What was he kept alive for at that cabin?

--It would've been interesting to see if the last of the Terminians would've turned.  Was Bob's leg cooked enough?  Real viruses do die in fire.  (The U.S. Gov't had to bomb that medical research building in Reston, Virginia to kill Ebola Reston.  And when I say bomb, I don't mean like you do for insects.  I'm talking an H-bomb, right on the building.  But it worked.)  So...is that true for the zombie virus as well?

--Scariest person in the episode was Gareth.  He'd logically and lucidly and conversationally defended his position that the world had become "Eat or be eaten."  He was so matter-of-fact about it that there was no turning back for him.  Rick will swing violent, then farm.  But Gareth was all the way gone.

--Andrew J. West deserves another role on something, fast.  He plugged a movie on Talking Dead.

--Gareth monologued (to steal from the Talking Dead host) before killing like Christian Bale did in American Psycho.  True, Bale's character babbled about 80s kitschy pop, but really it's the same thing.

--Yes, Glen and Maggie needed to go to D.C. because

   a) The D.C. storyline needed to continue, so somebody major had to go with them to show it to us.
   b) The core of the group had been together, in whatever fashion, for too long.  Glen goes all the way back to fifth or so episode of Season One.  Time to shake things up.
   c) If they're to be in the spin-off, this would be a logical choice and a good way to start that.

--I agree that Darryl is bringing out Beth at the end.  Maybe Morgan from Season One, but I'm guessing Beth.  It's not Carol.

--Beth (Emily Kinney) is one of the guests in next week's Talking Dead.  That does not bode well for her character.

--Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), Darryl's brother (Michael Rooker), Herschel (Scot Wilson) and who knows who else will be at Comic Con this Saturday in Providence.  William Shatner and others from Star Trek, and Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davies from Raiders of the Lost Ark (and Davies was Gimli in the Lord of the Rings films), and Michael Biehn from Terminator, The Abyss, Tombstone, and many other films from the 80s and 90s, and--of all people--Anthony Michael Hall, from The Breakfast Club, Edward Scissorhands, The Dead Zone (TV show) and The Dark Knight---yes, Farmer Ted himself---will be there as well.  He was just added yesterday or today.

--Most importantly, I--a legend in my own mind, the movie that keeps on playing--will be there, too.