There’s not much lingering on Carl’s well-being afterwards, checking to see if he’s all right or relishing in killing so many at once. But the next morning, Rick gets to sample some beans, and hand a few to Carl.
I think the lack of lingering was to show precisely that both Carl and Rick have gone through some mental healing; Rick had to admit he needed Carl’s help, and Carl was able to focus on doing the job without enjoying it. This wasn’t about it being cool to fire a gun and kill walkers—it was about saving their skins.
Weren’t those peas, shelled from a pod?
I have to argue this series is going nowhere. It’s an obvious vehicle for commercials as intended but way too much so. There is no real story just rehashed episodes just told a different way. No new dialogue, no new action and no new scares. Sadly it’s worn itself too thin and I really can’t believe AMC thinks this is quality TV. The only real strength it has is killing off the terrible actors one by one. And if it doesn’t, wait till the next episode. Did the governor really have to turn his head to show his eye patch? Can the writers actually write a classy cliffhanger?
P.S: I wasn’t sure if Carls second little “Hey I’m here!” jig from the hall of papers was supposed to be funny.
P.S.S.: Do these people have a broom?
One thing I noticed in the last episode is that the zombies aren’t as lazy as they look because the lawns are all mowed and even the highway right of ways have been cut. Also at the end of the previous episode Rick is shown driving past a plowed and planted field.
Those .223 carbines they were using to kill zombies would have caused really messy head wounds at that range rather like JFK getting shot in Dallas. But at least it finally dawned on them to think “Hey, we’ve got all these guns and all these zombies …guns …zombies …guns …Hmmmm…”
In this episode, Hershel gets to demonstrate the futility of being a one-legged, one-man band, while leaving himself and everyone else exposed to an inevitable and highly predictable reenactment of the zombie outbreak on Cellblock C. I marveled at his pigheadedness, adhering to a strict code lacking in self-preservation, killing zombies only after they turned and failing to secure his worst patients. While he takes Shasha’s mocking criticism in stride (it may have been light humor, but she was calling him stupid), he demonstrates, indeed, that he is, indeed, tough and stubborn old SOB (even if that means patiently waiting for his dead patients to turn to zombies before braining them, and compromising others while he labors to shelter them from viewing what they already know is going to happen, yet failing to protect them when it matters the most). So much being foresighted and economical (hell, even the dying Dr tried to talk some sense into him).
Which leads us to the fence. I’d read a comment on Wired’s critique, and I laughed at it’s surgical accuracy regarding how the plot has failed to move along, with the same issues cropping up, but without any real solutions being devised. Quite simply, he called it fence sitting. Fitting. Oh, how the story fails to be suspenseful when you already know that the fence will fail, just as the second outbreak is looming inside the jail. How many times did they have to deal with the fence, observe it’s weaknesses, only to become complacent (like allowing a huge crown of zombies to amass in the first place). You’d think they would have devised some other form of obstacle (like the moat Kevin McFarland suggests), or perhaps a way to distract them whenever they mustered in the same area (or is just getting inside just more important to zombies that human flesh these days?).
At least Carl and Rick got to spend some quality time together, continuing the long and over-played arc involving the on-again-off-again taboo of guns (seriously, like so many other subplots, it’s become a trope). Unfortunately, this mowing down of zombies just wasn’t as suspenseful as it should have been, and there was a significantly missed opportunity for them to start to lose it, or at least have their backs up against the wall. Yeah, I guess Carl got to kind of save his dad, and look cool, tossing pops an extra clip, before cooly blasting away like a seasoned infantryman…
And the Governor? Recycle, Reuse, Reanimate… I think this is pretty much The Walking Dead’s script in a nutshell. Hell, even the sustained idiocy of the regulars is interspersed with the repetitive bouts of madness, glowering rage (Tyreese seems to have channeled both Rick and Michonne), folksiness, etc. Honestly, I think they’ve gone bankrupt with ideas. I can only hope that the prison burns down and another regular finally gets it, because I’m getting extremely sick of the same old geography and characters (like Martin’s Red Wedding, let em die). Anyhow, you’d think they’d have depleted available supplies in the nearby surrounding area by now (clearly, not having access to adequate medical supplies has become an issue).
Finally, I can’t help but wonder, how long can zombies last without completely rotting away, what’s been sustaining all of them for so long? Oh well, I guess I should just chalk that last one up to questions you should never ask about an ongoing zombie apocalypse.
And why does Carl need to be told how to use a gun? He’s done lots of absurdly accurate shooting. And everyone should have had firearms training anyway.
I liked this one, and still like the show, but I keep wondering - why don’t they use a little bit of the gas to spray a huge group of walkers and burn them out at the fence?
If things at the fence have really been progressing as shown, the decaying bodies of walkers would be stacked head-high by now. Yet every day it’s “live” walkers right up to the fence, no corpses in sight.
there’s that. and the 2013 hyundai… 
When I was a teenager, I lived with my grandmother. Every school day, she watched to make sure I crossed the street safely, despite the fact that there was practically zero traffic and that I’d been crossing streets safely my whole life.
This particular question has been driving me nuts the last several weeks. It’s not like the herd’s gonna run off, so I don’t really think any accelerants are even required to light 'em up. Do it a day after a rainstorm, and the surrounding grass won’t burn much, either.
And nobody has made any effort to armor a vehicle - not enough to stop gunfire, but enough to resist assault by zombies. A lightly reinforced full size pickup truck could be used to crush and mangle large numbers of walkers outside the wire.
Good point.
I mean, I get it, we’re supposed to suspend disbelief and all that. Most of the time I totally do, but when people do REALLY dumb things (or don’t do things) to the nth degree, it kind of takes away from getting into the story. IMO.
Then my friend had to point out that the Hyundai they’ve been driving is a 2013…
By this point, it should be like the Zombieland “Kill of the week.”
And I’m going to say this every week - a couple .22 rifles and some bricks of ammo would make all their problems go away.
Here’s the guy I wish I had for a grandfather Hickok45
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