Author Topic: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?  (Read 10613 times)

Lothic

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #20 on: April 09, 2013, 02:44:31 PM »
By that I mean, ultimately "might makes right" in this world and, at least for most of us, the might is....arguably....in the hands of people we have invested with authority, hopefully working in the interest of the greater good.  People (individuals, groups, regimes) commit hurtful acts all the time and as much as we may say, "stop, don't do that", they typically don't until someone else asserts authority (through force or threat of force) to stop them.  In the world of the walking dead, you've got your individuals and groups trying to survive and then you have someone like the Governor who is relatively well organized, but not necessarily working for the greater good...and he simply won't be stopped until someone stops him...

Well when you have a civilization with millions of people the reigns of authority/power are naturally going to be abstracted into multi-leveled bureaucratic governments that are usually well removed from the average individual.  For instance how many people who live in big cities like New York or Chicago ever personally interact with the mayors of those cities?  The concepts of direct leadership don't apply to most people in modern society.

But when you strip away all those layers and boil things back down to a handful of people you suddenly have the "Lord of the Flies" scenario where personal, direct, charismatic leadership takes over again.  You have people like Rick and the Governor who can once again impose life and death decisions on individuals on a daily basis.  Politics become personal again - it's not about abstract liberal or conservative ideals as much as who can put food in your stomach and keep you safe from the Walkers.  The primitive caveman mindset can't really be labeled as good or evil in modern terms - its what you have to do to survive.  Survival by any means necessary becomes the only "greater good".

Simply put people like Dale and Andrea were idealists in a world where things like idealism and morality are luxuries of a civilization that no longer exists.

P.S. While it's been fun to judge the Governor as being the obvious "evil leader" and and Rick as the obvious "good leader" there's an interesting hypothetical to consider:  If Rick and Company had never run into the Governor would things in Woodbury have actually turned out that badly for most of the people living there?  Sure we know the Governor was a bit kooky already with his daughter Penny and the heads in fish tanks.  But it seemed that as long as no one was challenging the Governor's situation that Woodbury itself was doing fairly well.  One could argue that Rick served as an Agent of Chaos which ruined Woodbury as a bastion of civilization.  At the very least this line of thinking should make you question just how completely good or evil any leader is. ;)
« Last Edit: April 09, 2013, 02:52:23 PM by Lothic »
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Mental Maden

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #21 on: April 09, 2013, 05:38:08 PM »
The Governor had those soldiers gunned down for no reason then took the head of the pilot that lead them to them thinking they were going to get help.  Yeah, great guy.

Lothic

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #22 on: April 10, 2013, 04:26:25 PM »
The Governor had those soldiers gunned down for no reason then took the head of the pilot that lead them to them thinking they were going to get help.  Yeah, great guy.

I'm not trying to say that the Governor was ever a Happy-Fun guy who would have been the model of perfectly sane and upstanding leadership.  Like I said he already had his Walker-daughter Penny chained up and the head-in-the-fish-tank thing going on even before those Army helicopter guys or Rick's group ever showed up.

All I'm suggesting is that it seems as though as long as no outsiders were threatening the Governor's authority over Woodbury (even if those "threats" were pure psychotic paranoia on the Governor's part) that the average townsperson in Woodbury probably would have continued to be safe and protected.  Again when you're talking about day-to-day survival in the ZA the ivory tower concepts of strict good and evil will become a bit blurry.

For all the Governor's faults and brutal strong-man tactics he did, at least initially, do a better job of maintaining a patch of "civilization" than Rick ever managed to.  In that sense I don't really see the Governor as being the simplistic "bad guy" in this story.  Yes he cracked, went off the deep end, and finally managed to kill all sorts of people.  But I still contend that if no other live humans had showed up to Woodbury to threaten his little Utopia that he might never have gone totally nutty.

Like I said it's an interesting point to consider. ;)
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Nilbog

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #23 on: April 10, 2013, 04:43:34 PM »
I believe the kid's hesitation in dropping the gun was the seconds he was thinking to himself "Oh, it is an old guy and a kid." that fleeting moment of underestimating the situation cost him his life.

I am a little bored of the Governer

I hated that scene when he survived being in that small room with like 12 zombies. In the begining of the show when a few zombies go near you they would bite away flesh as easily as melted butter, now they can't get a single bite or scratch in when they have an unarmored mortal completly cornered? If the zombies are not that scary anymore it takes away from the tension of the whole (fictional) world.

I hope once Breaking Bad ends Bryan Cranston joins The Walking Dead. He could be like an evil scientist that caused the outbreak in the first place :O

Lothic

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #24 on: April 10, 2013, 05:15:42 PM »
I believe the kid's hesitation in dropping the gun was the seconds he was thinking to himself "Oh, it is an old guy and a kid." that fleeting moment of underestimating the situation cost him his life.

Yep if that guy had -instantly- dropped his gun Carl probably would not have killed him.  Those extra few seconds gave Carl all the justification he needed.

I am a little bored of the Governer.

I think they've definitely run the Governor's character arc through its paces.  Without Woodbury there's not much left for him to do.  We know he's returning in Season 4 but it may only be for a few episodes.  He'll probably prove to be instrumental in setting up the drama for the rest of the Season before he's killed off in some strange/ironic way.

I hated that scene when he survived being in that small room with like 12 zombies. In the begining of the show when a few zombies go near you they would bite away flesh as easily as melted butter, now they can't get a single bite or scratch in when they have an unarmored mortal completly cornered? If the zombies are not that scary anymore it takes away from the tension of the whole (fictional) world.

This show is definitely suffering from "selective threat" syndrome.  It's kind of like what happened in the Starship Troopers movie: when they first encountered the bugs it took like 1,000 bullets to kill one bug then by the end of the movie it seemed like they were killing 1,000 bugs with each bullet.  Unfortunately with a relatively low-budget show like this it's probably hard to smoothly throttle the risk/threat factor up and down episode to episode to conform to the needs of the story from week-to-week.  It's the sort of thing you have to try to mentally gloss over to maintain your suspension of disbelief.

I hope once Breaking Bad ends Bryan Cranston joins The Walking Dead. He could be like an evil scientist that caused the outbreak in the first place :O
I'd be happy as long as they even vaguely hinted at what's going on in the world at large.  Frankly I'm getting a little bored with the story being so tightly focused on the main group that we've learned virtually nothing about anything else for like two season's worth of episodes.  If that tight focus really is the franchise's main "plot paradigm" as it were it's getting very tedious and drawn-out at this point.
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Nilbog

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #25 on: April 10, 2013, 05:32:32 PM »
I'd be happy as long as they even vaguely hinted at what's going on in the world at large.  Frankly I'm getting a little bored with the story being so tightly focused on the main group that we've learned virtually nothing about anything else for like two season's worth of episodes.  If that tight focus really is the franchise's main "plot paradigm" as it were it's getting very tedious and drawn-out at this point.


Completely agree with this. The characters may not be privy to the knowledge of what caused the apocolypse but it is high time the audience is cued in

Nilbog

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #26 on: April 10, 2013, 08:19:46 PM »
I can see a spin movie with Carl as a young adult. Last survivor from the show, trained by Mishone to use the katana which he now wields, mastered crossbow trained by Daryl and of course his father teaches him fire arms and survival/police procedures. Could be like a mad max in a zombie world :o

Kaos Arcanna

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #27 on: April 10, 2013, 11:50:44 PM »
I can see a spin movie with Carl as a young adult. Last survivor from the show, trained by Mishone to use the katana which he now wields, mastered crossbow trained by Daryl and of course his father teaches him fire arms and survival/police procedures. Could be like a mad max in a zombie world :o

Don't know how much of a show it'd be with Carl killing everyone else he met so they couldn't turn on him.  ;D

therain93

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #28 on: April 25, 2013, 01:53:14 AM »
I'd be happy as long as they even vaguely hinted at what's going on in the world at large.  Frankly I'm getting a little bored with the story being so tightly focused on the main group that we've learned virtually nothing about anything else for like two season's worth of episodes.  If that tight focus really is the franchise's main "plot paradigm" as it were it's getting very tedious and drawn-out at this point.


Completely agree with this. The characters may not be privy to the knowledge of what caused the apocolypse but it is high time the audience is cued in
Well, we know the helicopter is out there so there is still some higher level of organization -- I expect that will be where S4 goes.
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therain93

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #29 on: April 25, 2013, 01:54:08 AM »
Simply put people like Dale and Andrea were idealists in a world where things like idealism and morality are luxuries of a civilization that no longer exists.
Very eloquently put -- I was struggling in a roundabout way to say as much.
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TigerKnight

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Re: Walking Dead - Season 3 Finale Thoughts?
« Reply #30 on: April 27, 2013, 09:01:23 AM »
Okay, a little late to this party but I'd like to throw in my 2 cents.

First, with Otis and Shane, I'm not sure why everyone feels that this was such a villainous act. In the episode, Shane tells Otis to go ahead. Otis refused struggling with his own moral compass on leaving someone for dead. Shane however looked at the bigger picture. Carl needed the medical supplies and Otis refused to make sure Carl got those supplies and risked not only his safety but Carl's because he couldn't "Do what needed to be done". Shane couldn't outrun the walkers on his own, Otis couldn't carry him and the supplies, and ultimately Shane made the call to make sure Carl lived. I'm sorry but he made the only rational call he could. Otis forced his hand and ended up getting what he deserved. This is ZA world, not Disney World.

Second, with Carl shooting the kid, I for one don't believe for a second that the kid was doing anything BUT surrendering. He's a kid, not a solider. The fact that 2 armed people chased off some 20 plus people who were fully armed themselves shows this. I don't think when the people of Woodbury came along, they were going to be doing more than just being a show of force. The Governor obviously thought otherwise but then he isn't in his right mind himself and when reality smacked him in the face that these people were just liabilities and NOT the army he thought he had, he snapped and cut his losses. In so far as "But he didn't drop his gun", the kid was already pissing his pants before he ran into them. I think he was moments away from dropping to the fetal position and crying for mercy cause even if he wasn't scared, he had two guns on him (Hershel as well) and he never would have succeeded in any funny business anyway.

However, did Carl shoot that kid in cold blood? Yes. Does that make him deranged and a sociopath? Nope. Let's face facts, they attacked and no one was taking prisoners. Would he leave and never return or will he be back again tomorrow ready to shoot Carl? What Carl did was basically the ZA world version of the saying "Better safe than sorry" Didn't Rick do something similar when he had to drive an Axe into Tomas's Skull after one too many "Accidents"? "Better safe than sorry" except in that case, it was a lot more clear that Tomas had to go.

Andrea had to die. Not because she was becoming Dale but her constantly stopping to talk and look at Milton to see if he was a Zombie was the most unrealistic thing I've seen in the series so far and I'm glad I won't have to see it again.

The one thing I feel for sure that is season three was leaps and bounds better than season two. OMG was that one brutal. Other than Otis's death and Sophia's death (Which thankfully happened.... another "needed to die for making the audience suffer" character) season two was really one to just forget about. Other than that, I'm sure civilization is still out there somewhere.... after all, if the apocalypse happened in 2010, then someone is still making cars out there cause they are driving a 2013 indestructible mini van. In season four, they are going to come across an overturned Dr. Pepper truck.... Calling it now!