FUCK YEAH! Are the new Walking Dead shows awesome or what? I watched the latest episode and was thinking to myself about how much I liked it. Then I thought about how much of it seemed dumb and contrived. I realize these are conflicting opinions but for whatever reason I just fucking love watching this show!
Anyways, this isn’t a kiss ass post. It’s a complaint (what else is new). Here’s the problem. Sure Carl’s gotten all bitchy lately. And further, he is a kid so he’s going to be some degree of a fucking moron by default. But he seems to have regressed instead of maturing more quickly through trial by fire. His intelligence is leveling off with your average Neanderthal. He goes wandering off to Daryl’s hillbilly tent-city and steals a gun from the dude’s motorcycle? What the fuck? It’s just too glaringly out of character. The second I saw him walking up to Daryl’s camp I was like yup, he’s gonna get himself in shit, and probably die or get someone else killed.
The director or screenwriter or whoever is in charge of this shit should try to keep us sucked in and NOT ruin situational believability. This has to stop! I mean, the following is basically what Carl’s thought processes were throughout the episode. You tell me if you buy it.
“I’m gonna sneak into the barn to view the prisoner. Oh he’s talking to me I better get right up in his face where he could possibly injure me. Shit Shane’s yelling at me again, I’ll go sulk. Hey it’s Sofia’s mom, she thinks Sofia’s in heaven? ‘If you think heaven is real you’re stupid!’ FUCK YEAH, told her! That stupid old lady. What do adults know anyways. I’m gonna go see Daryl he’s legit and not crazy like Dad and Shane. Oh I can’t see him, it’s probably safe to go through his stuff. NICE a gun! I’ll be taking that. Gonna go wander off in the woods, hope there aren’t walkers. OH SHIT WALKER! Oh wait he’s stuck in mud. HAHA LOSER. Surely the mud will hold forever. Let me throw rocks at it. Heh, that rock hit him, heh, he looks mad. Heh. Well I’ve had my fun, guess I’ll clamber down into the gulley and get really close and try to shoot him. Yep… there he is… 2 feet away… in my sights… meh now I’m getting stage-fright. Dunno if I wanna shoot it anymore, I mean… look at its disheveled hair and stuff… it’s kinda cute... OH SHIT IT’S FREE AND NOT CUTE HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OMG GOTTA SHOOT IT BUT I DROPPED MY GUN AND NOW I CAN’T FIND IT FUCK FUCK FUCK time to run away and not tell anyone and lead the walker right back to the camp npnp.”
So much of that is just full of shit. Seriously. C’mon. Do better. I’ll be keeping an eye on you directorscreenplaywriterproducer people.
Right, the last episode… fuck the only other thing that happened was Dale finally eating it. I rather liked the crazy old nice guy and his bushy-separate-entities that eerily resemble eyebrows. I mean the poor guy basically gets shit on by everyone throughout the whole series. Shane threatens him constantly. Andrea is incredibly condescending to him despite the fact that he saved her in one way or the other at least twice. Other people just sigh and ignore him when he’s complaining. Whatever you guys know this already.
Point being, he gets all “humanity matters” on the group, and when everyone else wants to kill the prisoner that he wants to give a chance, he looks forlorn and wanders off to pout. He stumbles upon a half-eaten cow and obviously gets ambushed by a walker (who made zero sound until he was close enough to lunge… wait what?!). He valiantly holds the zombies mouth away from him, but makes no noticeable effort to throw it sideways off of him. Being a particularly resourceful zombie, it just uses its hands to rip his guts all apart. As we’re all well aware, scratches infect people as well so… yeah… bye Dale.
Not so thinly veiled symbolism: it’s the walker that Carl is responsible for freeing and leading back to camp. So the only surviving kid (typically associated with innocence) is responsible for killing the only arguably innocent character left in the group. So now with Dale out of the picture and Herschel having become a more realistic albeit somewhat crestfallen guy, the last remnants of the old meaning of “being human” have been eliminated. Welcome to the new world folks, it’s gonna be a fuckin’ blast!
