Well liked Season 1 a lot. Season 2 is for far a fizzer for me :/

The Walking Dead uses the zombies as a backdrop for the character interactions and how society would handle a change such as that. The zombies are a constant threat, but the show is really about how the people change and react to not having things like a constant food supply, electricity on demand, a basic loss of any and all protection, etc.

I've read all TWD volumes up to number 14. The stuff we are seeing with Herschel's farm is limited to about volume 2. The comics differ significantly in some aspects versus the show. They are really good, IMO.

Judging on the basis of the series only, I think you're overstating the social commentary a little bit. Especially season 1 was more an 'adventure' type series than drama / social commentary (S2).

Anyway, social commentary and drama seem to be integral to every single series these days, I don't think it's possible to get anything without that any more.

The idea that this show is about how humanity would react to those situations is a bit absurd. They've now spent the majority of the series in a safe area with seemingly unlimited gas, electricity, bullets, etc. They live in an area with no zombies because....uhh....magic? They haven't really had to deal with limited supplies at all. They probably should've kept them on the road longer, or gotten off the farm sooner to make any of these ideas actually land. Furthermore, the show frequently makes characters do out of character things to drive the plot or suspense. You can't have a show that's about character drama and their interactions and then have them doing stuff that makes no sense.

Maybe the comic did it better, but the show flounders at it. I don't need a ton of zombie action. I watch and love two of AMC's shows, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, two shows that are at times also very slow. But they have well written and developed characters, people are interesting on that show, and their interactions are generally interesting. I care about a Hank or Peggy, or Price level character on these shows, and I sure as hell don't on TWD. They don't have things like Andrea's shooting, or Lori's car escapades or Dale being a plot psychic. The show is doing a few things right, Shane and Rick's arcs among them. Daryl and Glenn are entertaining (though not that interesting).

Since you haven't read the comics, you can be forgiven for thinking that. The zombies really are a catalyst in them. They're a force of nature. I don't want to say too much about the comics for fear of spoilers.

The people in the show are doing dumb things because *gasp* they're people in a situation that nothing in life has prepared them for, which is far more believable that people instantly adapting and surviving like the zombies are nothing more than a light rain. For every Daryl you get, you'll get a dozen Loris. For every Rick or Shane, you'll get a score of Herschels.

The show is using the comics as a starting point and developing/going their own way. The bit at Herschel's place amounts to about 6 comic issues (one volume) rather than an entire season. Yes, they were drastically stretching things out, but that was due to the filming style/preference of Darabont (from what I've read). The new guy has a different style so we should be seeing a change in how it plays out.

It's not that they're STUPID. It's that the things they are doing don't make sense. Not for their characters, and what we've seen of them. It makes no sense for Lori to go after Rick when he quite literally just left like half an hour ago. Watch the episode again. Rick arrives at the bar, and the next scene is Lori begging Daryl to go after him. This means Lori was freaking out before he even arrived. We've never seen her go out of her way to put herself in danger, especially for such a ridiculous reason.

Here's an example of in character stupidity: T-dog cutting his arm in the season premiere. We've already seen T-dog be a total klutz when he lost the keys to Merle's handcuffs. And zombies were like 10 feet away. Also he named himself T-dog, so he can't be that bright. Or maybe Sophia running away because she's, y'know 10. Contrast that with Lori's decisions this episode, or Andrea suddenly feeling the need to prove herself to the menfolk that she doesn't need to wash dishes when all we've seen of the character shows she's a headstrong, independant person that doesn't give a shit about that type of stuff. And you know what's worse? The characters don't treat the stupid decisions like they are. Andrea was written off with some jokes. Nobody said to Andrea "This is why we kept the guns away from you dumbass." after that obnoxious storyline. Nobody thinks Lori is a stupid idiot in the show except maybe Daryl but he thinks that about everyone.

It's not about everyone suddenly becoming He-men, but remotely competent, in "I can't believe they haven't managed to fall down a mineshaft" way. Or at the very least interesting. Do you honestly want to spend 20 minutes of the next episode with Lori avoiding getting eaten? Stupid people aren't compelling. They aren't sympathetic generally either. But you know we're going to be spending the next two episodes devoted to her rescue. With our characters all super worried. You know why? Because she isn't stupid. Not in the world of the show, and not according to the writers. She just comes off that way because the writers kind of suck.

Well, there's the very good possibility that Herschel's daughter is turning into a zombie. Remember how she got grabbed by the stepmom? Collapses with a high fever right after that? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together there. That right there is an adequate, but not necessarily smart, reason to go out and get them to hurry back rather than having them sitting there listening to Herschel's sob story. T-Dog cut his arm on a car when he was trying to hide from the walker herd. That was an accident. Says nothing about him being "stupid". Nor does fumbling with the keys for Merle. What WAS stupid was pretending that he wasn't burning up with fever from infection on that cut. Glenn is competent. Daryl is competent. Shane is competent. Rick is competent. Maggie is at least semi-pragmatic. Andrea is learning (you simply don't go from 0 to 60 without hitting the speeds in between). Carl is growing up quick. A story with every being able to instantly switch from housewives to zombie hunters is unreasonable and unrealistic. So if you find the characters so stupid and non-compelling, why are you watching the show?

If this was still Darabont directing/producing, your storyline might happen. But he isn't. He's a fan of the gradual buildup storyline from what I've read. The new guy isn't. They can be sympathetic because we all know people like that in our lives.

Oh, and the fact that Robert Kirkman (you know, the guy who created The Walking Dead) is as an Executive Producer on the series makes the progression and character development a bit more palatable.

Rick already knows about the daughter being sick. If Lori really suspected she was zombifying, Hershel can't help, and why wouldn't she say to the other people "Hey, she might be turning into a zombie, be careful. Maybe check for a chunk of flesh missing." It's clearly not what the character was thinking. Furthermore, it doesn't fit into her character development to act that rashly about someone she barely knows. This is a character that only leaves the camp when the ENTIRE CAMP leaves as well, like the one time she helped search for Sophia. She is a practical character. What she did, I'll take from your page, is go from zero to 60 in her actions in how out of character they are.

As far as the T-dog stuff, I wasn't actually trying to make any point in regards to his actions, but to Lori and Andrea, and you more or less restated my case. We already know T-dog is a klutz, and he had zombies 10 feet away. That's why, again, I said his actions are buyable. The other characters are not.

You keep saying things like zero to zombie hunter. That's not what I'm asking for. It doesn't take an expert zombie hunter to tell Lori was being stupid. It takes a barely concious person. Even the walkers on this show would say she was dumb. I don't mean competent in the way that they're ok at surviving a zombie apocalypse, but in that they're okay to not randomly get themselves killed for no reason, apocalypse or no. I don't find all the characters stupid and boring (mainly the female characters), hence why I've only been talking about a couple characters. I find the writing is lacking in that it forces some decent characters to do nonsensical things at times to further the plot or suspense. The fault with Lori's crash is not that she crashed, but the reason she got into the car in the first place. It's especially bad when you watch the preview for the upcoming episode. Rick and company are in town all night. Them taking all night is a legit reason to get a character like Lori worried. Still stupid to go alone, but I can kind of buy that, and it being at night makes the crash easier to buy too. The reason Andrea shooting Daryl is stupid is because her motivation (wanting to prove herself) comes out of nowhere. Good writers would set up Andrea seeking approval a few episodes earlier rather than literally a single line in the episode sparking it.


I really don't care if Kirkman is involved. It doesn't make an adaptation good just because the original author is involved. Many things become far better when adapted. Many things become far worse. Stephen King's been hands on in a few miniseries projects of his. Doesn't mean the TV miniseries Shining isn't super awful compared to Kubrick's.

Bear in mind that we just started watching during the marathon last weekend, so...

A few things:
- she's pregnant, and has been torn about keeping the baby, especially with the possibility of being booted off the farm.
- she just got over the possibility of losing her own kid, after finding that she hadn't actually lost her husband.
- she's still grouped with the man who temporarily replaced her husband, and with whose kid she's pregnant, and also who is exerting an unwanted influence on her own kid. They've started to build on this developing storyline.
- she just watched Herschel lose friends and family, who he thought might yet be saved. This emotional turmoil she witnessed further highlights her own inner struggle with family issues.

So her motherly urges have been tweaked hard lately. Acting out of "character" would be understandable, and I would posit that it's actually a part of her character that has not seen before and is now coming out with the change in circumstances.

Better. The next episode is looking to be a real thriller, cannot wait! God, I hate cliffhangers.
I'm desperately waiting for Lori to be written out of the show, though it all likelihood it's bound to not happen. And if it did, they would take like 2 episodes to do it and we'd inevitably have to put up with a series of shitty flashbacks regarding it.

*Minor spoiler*
Oh and the whole baby thing - giving birth to a kid when this world's gone to shit and they're in the situation that they are in now? Wow. If it actually happens, I can see this turning into a fucking family sitcom in S3. I reckon that would be the principal argument for writing Lori out - so that she couldn't actually give birth. And we don't need no Dawn of the Dead-esque shitty scene with a zombiefied baby either.
*Spoiler and rant over*

Hah. All this talk about housewives going from zero to 60. Given this episode, let's see what Lori has done in the past 12 hours:

Become irrationaly worried and unsafe and decided to go after her husband that had left like 20 minutes before her. All this keeping in mind we've never seen this character act like this.
Goes off by herself and gets into a car accident.
Takes a level in Badass and manages to dismantle a gearshift(!) to make a perfect brain stab, and then nails a perfect headshot.
Decides to walk to town (!) in the middle of the night instead of back to the farm which she is not very far from given how fast she crashed her car.
Thinks it is totally insulting that someone lied to her to get her injured ass back home. Other characters also for some reason think this is awful.
Goes full on Lady Macbeth and attempts to convince her husband to kill someone.

That being said, it was a pretty good episode overall.

This. I want her out :(

I was so disappointed with the first half of the second season that I haven't even bothered to tune in for the start of the second half. The show has NONE of the danger or tension that makes the comics so engaging. It's a boring post-apocalypse soap opera on a farm, with the occasional zombie shambling through the woods.

Had the same sentiment - was on the verge of quitting, but it does get a lot better. Give it another go!