Ah, my bad. I didn't notice the s.

 

Just watching a late night rerun of last weeks TWD. The encounter with Rick and the 2 raiders/bandits made the episode for me. As mentioned before, Lori is really playing up being a dumb bitch. It came to me when I saw her read the road map while driving at a medium speed.

It's been said before, but very few of the characters mind their surroundings properly, given they're all living in a zombie apocalypse. Lori not focused on the road and watching for stray lamebrains was asking for something to happen. How about just driving down the road until you hit the town, eyes in front, bitch?

 

Its a sad state of affairs when the crazy guy makes the most sense. Maybe Shane is losing it because he's surrounded by morons.

Speaking of morons, Dale takes the cake. What dumb motherfucker hides all the guns (for safety reasons) during a motherfucking zombie apocalypse?!

 

Actually, Dale was being incredibly intelligent. Most of their group doesn't know how to handle a gun, or is just a kid. Maybe I'm the only guy who's actually taken gun safety courses (mandatory for hunting permits, kthx), but what the hell, guys. People that don't know how to handle a gun are actually more dangerous than a zombie would be, in my opinion. Someone like Rick, Darryl, Dale, or Shane could hold off a small group of zombies (I'm talking 5-10) by themselves. If, say, one of the other members of the group from season 1, like that blonde bitch or the little girl's mother, they'd be more liable to get bitten or worse, shoot someone else from the group.

Yeah, yeah, you're just going to say something like "lol point the end the bullets come out of at zombies and pull the trigger herpderp." Do you even know what a safety is? Odds are, they didn't. So while they're trying to pull the trigger and the safety isn't on, they're fucking everyone else over because the zombie's just getting closer.

Also, even if by some miracle they did get the safety off and kill the zombie, I guarantee that they'd probably forget to put it back on, and then accidentally shoot someone. Just FYI, that's how more gun-related injuries happen than anything else. Stupid idiots that don't know how to handle a gun end up shooting someone because they didn't know what they were doing.

Furthermore, in a zombie apocalypse setting, ammo is not an infinite resource, as much as you'd like to believe, and you're not going to find it just laying around in the street. You'd have to break into a gun store, which would create a shit-load of noise both from the glass breaking and from the alarm going off, which would attract zombies. So, there's that. There's also the fact that most, if not all, of the group wouldn't have brought more than one or two magazines with them if they had any at all. People don't just walk around with boxes of ammunition.

In closing, maybe you should think about more than the zombies as threats. I'd be of the mind that someone like Carol handling a gun without proper training is a lot more dangerous than a walker.

Oh, and another thing? Gun training doesn't take a real long time. My class was all of one afternoon, although I'd been shooting for years before that.

 

Don't try to pretend shooting a gun is rocket science. It's really not.

 

I didn't say it was, genius. What I'm saying is they're more dangerous than you guys seem to believe.

 

Dale's reasoning was bullshit. Yeah, guns can be dangerous, but everyone in the group except Carol and Carl know how to use a gun and aren't mentally retarded when handling them. Hiding them away for 'safety reasons' only does more harm then good when it wastes time if the guns are really needed. Carol never fights and Carl is rapidly maturing and is being taught how to properly use a gun anyway. Even if they forget to put the safety back on, the capable members of the group aren't so stupid as to point guns at each other and actually pull the trigger.

Why would you break the glass to enter a gun store? There are much quieter ways to go about it. As for the alarm, no electricity remember? Also, they had gun training, remember?

 

Every single part of my post was referencing a specific time at a point either in the series or during a zombie apocalypse (We really need a better phrase for that...)

In any case, as far as the gun store goes, what I meant with the alarm is anyone remotely intelligent during a zombie apocalypse is going to want get as much guns and ammo as they can carry. With me so far? During such an occasion, most people will get the hell out of Dodge and let someone else deal with it. In all likelihood, the gun store's going to be either locked up or unlocked. If it's the former, you're going to have to break in and set off the alarm, which is going to attract walkers and be counter-productive. If it's the latter, it's already been looted.

Speaking of already-been-looted, if it's that far along that generators run out of gas, and thus alarms will no longer work, then you bet your ass someone's going to loot as much as they can.

As far as gun training goes, notice that part about Season 1 in my post? That's what I was talking about, when I said Dale's decision to hide the guns was intelligent. During Season 1, the group hadn't fully tacked onto the fact that they were well and truly fucked, and it didn't happen until that CDC building blew up.

Season 2 is where everybody starts realizing that they're going to have to pull their own weight, and they realize that civilization is fucked. After everybody that wanted to learn has learned, then yeah, Dale hiding the guns after that was dumb. But, again, I was referring to Season 1, not Season 2.

On another note, why in the hell did T-Dog actually think that Darryl was going to treat him differently because he's black? As far as I've seen, Darryl treats everyone the same until they do something he doesn't agree with, which is why he called Carol and Lori out on being stupid (in the former's case) and a total bitch (in the latter's).

 

So Dale /was/ dumb, but he would have been less dumb if he had acted a few weeks earlier? By that logic about half of the dumb people in the world no longer qualify for the name...

 

Yes, that's essentially what I'm saying. In a perfect world, Dale would have given out guns as soon as everyone that wanted the training had received it. However, Dale had (probably) come to see him keeping the guns as something that made him more important to the group than simply a mechanic, and he probably wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.

Not to mention that he's old, and most old people that I've met seem to think that those younger than them just don't have the experience they do, so said young people can't be trusted to make informed decisions about something important.

 

Or maybe Dale's just an idiot.

His self righteous attitude pisses me off more than any attempted gun hiding he did.

 

Spoiler

Anyone else think that the writers just passed of Rick's leg amputation to Randall? So far, not a single main character has gotten killed or maimed. We've only seen the death of minor sides, which while still emotional, shows that the writers are pussying out on what makes The Walking Dead comics awesome.

 

Kind of early for a final review of this latest episode, but here are some early impressions...

The bitch claws are coming out now, and not out of nowhere. Andrea and Lori have an argument that first stems out of Lori stopping one of the girls on the farm from killing herself. Andrea made a point when she said Lori took the girl's choice away from her. In this setting, finding a reason to go on beyond living for others is essential. YOU have to see a future.

 

Spoiler

Rick got his hand cut off. Dale was the one with the leg amputation.

 

Oh my God fuck Lori. Putting aside the fact that she /still/ hasn't fucking taken those pills, she's becoming more of a bitch with every episode. I love how she just out and out says that a woman's place is in a kitchen while the men do the work. She's disgusting. Andrea is totally right, she plays house all day and pretends like everything is fine instead of going out there and learning the skills that could truly help. But she's fine with staying in the house and letting Rick and Shane risk their necks when it suits her. And lets not even talk about how much worse the situation will be when she becomes visibly pregnant, and the lives she'll risk just by not being able to run on her own two feet.

As for the girl who wanted to kill herself, I'm indifferent. Blatant emotional blackmail aside if she wanted to go then she should have gone. But I was pretty sure she wouldn't have done it, she was just in shock. I honestly have no idea why they wasted so much time on it. Yes, human beings have a self-defense mechanism that can override all logic. So? What's the story value of going down that road.

I still dislike Rick too, he's that kind of thick bastard who knows what he has to do but refuses to do it because he thinks it's wrong, or too 'easy' or whatever. And who the fuck appointed him leader? Why should Shane follow his lead when his lead has been so disastrous in the past? Not that Shane was that much better mind you -the campfire.But if he had just shut his fucking mouth at the bar things would have gone fine. It's like the writers just take for granted that we're gonna like these people because they're the main characters and don't really give us a good reason.

 

Accidental doublepost.

 

How can you prefer Andrea and Shane to Rick? They are literally the two least human characters in a show chock-full of zombies.

 

Because they know what needs to be done. That to survive, they've got to do things they don't like, things that most people would consider evil. They essentially represent what the comics made even Rick and Carl into. People who will do anything to keep those close to them alive, even if means becoming less human than the zombies.

 

This. I'm tired of watching/reading stories where drama is created because characters are idiots. I don't mind "human" characters (although I dislike your label, what makes Shane and Andrea less human than Rick?), Rick taking a day to decide what to do with that kid was completely fine with me, I recognize that it was a hard thing for him- although I think it's more cowardice, he knows Hershel isn't going to let him murder anyone on his land.

What I can't stand is when characters constantly act in an illogical manner and then the only voices of reason are thrown under the bus because the writer wants more 'human' drama and everyone just rolls on doing stupid shit because they feel like it. I don't feel like having an abortion so I'll bring a baby into this fucked up world, I don't feel like shutting up so I'll bring down another group of survivors on me and so on and so forth.

Zombie stories have this worse than most, simply because traditional zombies can only be used as a threat so often. TBH if Shane leaves the show I don't really think there's much reason to watch, not without the vital conflict he provides.

 

I was referring to the view that Xantam had about Shane and Andrea not being what would be considered human or humane in a non-apocalyptic society.

The Governor, nuff said.