The Walking Dead 2.11 - Judge, Jury, Executioner (spoilers)

NewJeffCT · Mar 6, 2012

Remus Lupin said:
I agree. I'm one of the Dale likers as well.

As for suicide, well, we've seen two attempted suicides, and at least two further successful ones (I may be forgetting someone).

Jim from season 1 was a maybe suicide. He had been bitten and they left him behind with a gun and a bullet... The guy from the CDC and the older black woman were the two I remember, as they went out with a bang. Andrea was an attempted suicide in Season 1.

I thought Dale was a good character as well.

NewJeffCT · Mar 6, 2012

Umbran said:
The only reason I think Walking Dead manages to not get that same reaction from me is that they have a shorter season than BSG.

Well, they are getting longer.

Season 1 was 6 episodes.
Season 2 is 13 episodes, divided into 7/6 episode half-seasons.
Season 3 is supposedly going to be 16 episodes. (is it going to be 8/8?)

Umbran · Mar 6, 2012

NewJeffCT said:
Jim from season 1 was a maybe suicide. He had been bitten and they left him behind with a gun and a bullet...

That's not so much suicide as euthanasia, to my mind. YMMV.

The guy from the CDC and the older black woman were the two I remember, as they went out with a bang. Andrea was an attempted suicide in Season 1.

I'd forgotten about the two in the CDC. Okay, more like four suicides or attempts - Andrea, the two in the CDC, and Herschel's daughter.

Which only supports my major point. It is all well and good to sit back at home on a comfy couch with a cold beverage of your choice in hand to point out how dumb these people are. The reality of their world is that these folks are pretty much riding the ragged edge, well beyond what most modern Americans ever experience. Perfect tactical action from them 100% of the time wouldn't be particularly plausible.

jcayer · Mar 6, 2012

As much as Carl annoyed me last night, he is the one who should be the most troubled. He's the only kid, so he has no real friends....what kind of life can he expect?

How could he not be depressed? Although, he definitely is seriously broken.

Dannyalcatraz · Mar 6, 2012

Part of Carl's problem is that he is a kid in (essentially) a society facing stone-age survival pressures but with modern sensibilities & parenting. He's been too sheltered from everything by good-intentioned parents- who are scrambling just to keep things working- so he has too much unsupervised free time to get into the kind of trouble that only sheltered, naive kids can get into.

Go back to the people living near Lascaux during the Ice Age, and kids his age would have been actively making tools and weapons for the tribe, and maybe even participating in the hunts. They'd already have received some education on the gravity of the dangers facing them.

Not that their young minds would fully grasp them, of course...but wandering off would have been a rarity. Careless, unstructured play with a real weapon would have been even rarer. And losing such a weapon? Unheard of.

Spatula · Mar 6, 2012

Umbran said:
It is all well and good to sit back at home on a comfy couch with a cold beverage of your choice in hand to point out how dumb these people are. The reality of their world is that these folks are pretty much riding the ragged edge, well beyond what most modern Americans ever experience. Perfect tactical action from them 100% of the time wouldn't be particularly plausible.

Well, speaking for myself, I'm not looking for making perfectly logical decisions all the time. And I haven't really agreed with all the folks complaining about how stupid the characters are. All I'm really asking is that people show some basic awareness of where they are and stop running off on their own (Dale in the last episode excepted). And keep their kids on a short leash, especially after what happened to Sophie! Making a foolish decision once or twice is to be expected, stressed or not. To keep making the same mistake over and over is just lazy writing, IMO. The characters are fighting for survival and should be learning from their mistakes.

Umbran · Mar 6, 2012

Dannyalcatraz said:
Go back to the people living near Lascaux during the Ice Age, and kids his age would have been actively making tools and weapons for the tribe, and maybe even participating in the hunts. They'd already have received some education on the gravity of the dangers facing them.

Yes, well, if you go back to Lascaux, you also have the fact that kids his age had parents who had been living in that situation, and their parents before them, and so on.

In apocalyptic scenarios, one of the major points of exploration is that the adults don't have the knowledge themselves, much less the ability to properly train children for the scenario. They can't teach Carl survival skills they don't know!

Mercutio01 · Mar 6, 2012

Umbran said:
In apocalyptic scenarios, one of the major points of exploration is that the adults don't have the knowledge themselves, much less the ability to properly train children for the scenario. They can't teach Carl survival skills they don't know!

We're not talking foraging, hunting, and camouflage. We're talking "don't run off into the woods by yourself." That's...not really that hard to train children to do. I've got two of my own. Not going off on their own was one of the first things they learned.

Kzach · Mar 6, 2012

Remus Lupin said:
Then we hunker down on the farm, build a big wall, and wait.

And who would build this wall and with what equipment? I know a little of construction and can tell you in no uncertain terms that with the resources that are available in a ZA, nobody is going to be building big walls any time soon, whether they are engineers or not. And even if they did miraculously have the machinery, materials and work-force to build such a structure, you're still talking the concerted effort of months to years for completion.

Why bother? That kind of dedicated effort would be wasted in an instant if that marauding band happened by and given the sheer resources and activity involved, is bound to attract zombie and rape-gang attention. Even at its most basic, say a wooden palisade, you're talking a huge amount of resources just for a few feet of wall. Better off finding an already fortified location with a good water supply and shoring up its defences.

Remus Lupin · Mar 6, 2012

Umbran said:
Yes, well, if you go back to Lascaux, you also have the fact that kids his age had parents who had been living in that situation, and their parents before them, and so on.

In apocalyptic scenarios, one of the major points of exploration is that the adults don't have the knowledge themselves, much less the ability to properly train children for the scenario. They can't teach Carl survival skills they don't know!

Just hand him over the Darryl. In a month he'll either know what he's doing, or he'll be dead.