Author Topic: Have they finally run out of zombies?  (Read 562 times)

K Frame

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 44,009
  • I Am Inimical
Have they finally run out of zombies?
« on: September 10, 2020, 11:46:56 AM »
Well, The Walking Dead, has, but apparently the world hasn't.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54099889

TWD will end in 2022, but will live on in spinoffs, including one with Norman Reedus (Darryl) and Melissa McBride (Carol).

For me, TWD ended when Negan killed Glenn. I'd been cooling on the series for a long time... It was the epitome of lazy writing.

1. Hero group coalesces.

2. Hero group goes through trials and tribulations.

3. Hero group finds a safe place.

4. Threat rises and blows them out of safe place.

5. Goto Step 1.

Through it all there was actually ZERO development of ways to show that the group had learned anything at all about their new environment.

Zombies attracted by sound? Make TONS of noise.

Zombies pop up from every direction? Move in a group with ZERO awareness of what is going on to your sides or to your rear.

Zombies spread the infection by biting you? Go out into zombie country in short sleeve shirts and shorts with absolutely no thought of bite prevention clothing at all.

Then there's the magical car batteries and permanently stable gasoline.

And the "holy crap, you can only stop a zombie with a head shot... FULL AUTO FIRE SPRAY AND PRAY NOW!"

Good riddance.
Carbon Monoxide, sucking the life out of idiots, 'tards, and fools since man tamed fire.

Ben

  • Administrator
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 45,743
  • I'm an Extremist!
Re: Have they finally run out of zombies?
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2020, 12:17:55 PM »
I've about 90% given up on it. The previous two seasons I was kinda in "auto mode" as I'd been watching it so long, I was gonna see it through, dammit. However I ended up fast forwarding through more of it than I watched. This last season was actually not that bad, though I still hit FF quite a bit.

I will probably see it through, remote in hand with finger hovering over FF, but won't miss it when it's gone. I don't think I have an interest in any of the bajillion spinoffs they plan on doing. I don't believe I even made it through the first season of Fear TWD before I quit.
"I'm a foolish old man that has been drawn into a wild goose chase by a harpy in trousers and a nincompoop."

AZRedhawk44

  • friends
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 13,948
Re: Have they finally run out of zombies?
« Reply #2 on: September 10, 2020, 01:43:30 PM »
Fear TWD was utter crap.  Every character was a weak willed follower Beta/Omega type, catty/pissy/flawed.  I wanted all of them dead after a couple episodes.

TWD ended for me at the defeat of Negan and the death of Carl. 

I'm also at the point of exhaustion regarding car batteries that still work, magic stable gasoline, ammo still available, and quite honestly... Zeds still being around.  They obviously have to eat to maintain their deteriorating bodies.  We've seen zombies in the show that have decayed into the ground and are still animated, but trapped.  Moss consuming their bodies from the outside-in.  So either they have a metabolic process that prevents this, or all Zeds suffer this fate eventually and must be replaced with new Zeds.  So either way, massive hordes should now be impossible several years in to the plague.
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
--Lysander Spooner

I reject your authoritah!

Fly320s

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 14,415
  • Formerly, Arthur, King of the Britons
Re: Have they finally run out of zombies?
« Reply #3 on: September 10, 2020, 02:06:48 PM »
I quit watching TWD after season 2.  It was just the same crap over and over and over and over.
Islamic sex dolls.  Do they blow themselves up?

just Warren

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 5,234
  • My DJ name is Heavy Cream.
Re: Have they finally run out of zombies?
« Reply #4 on: September 10, 2020, 02:44:36 PM »
It wasn't ever a good show.

It played out like a badly conceived table-top RPG.

A small group of characters jumping from one crisis to another, led by an obvious psychopath in a setting where the wandering monster chart is 95% zombies and 5% malevolent humans and instead of there being a 1-in-10 chance of an encounter it's an 8-in-10 chance.

Jump Scare: The Role-Playing Game!

Add to that the bland and boring color palette they used, characters with very little arc to them and a world where the good humans just ignore most of the things they could do to mitigate the walker problem and you have a poor narrative.

Then there's some just outrageously stupid things. I don't remember which season but they encountered a walker who was wearing full bomb squad equipment and they ran from it despite the fact it was harmless to them because of the helmet it was wearing. It had the full face guard so it couldn't bite anyone, so why run?

And why use un-supressed weapons in major calibers? Since .22 was shown to work why not try to equip everyone with suppressed 10/22s or similar and that way you could quietly dispatch walkers until your supply of .22 ran out but that would take awhile as most any home in the south is like to have a supply.

Why didn't anyone train dogs to sniff out walkers? That would be a huge improvement in security.

Just because military bases were overrun by walkers, and it's difficult to believe they all were, doesn't mean the equipment became unusable. I'm not even talking about the weapons. Imagine what a few M88s could do to a herd just by driving through them. That goes for any AFV really.

And with all that and civilian equipment you could build a strongly fortified settlement. Not those crappy metal-walled things in the show.

Since walkers can't climb even moats are back on the menu. A moat topped with a ring of shipping container would be unassailable by walkers and it would be dammed difficult for humans to defeat as well.

Make several rings of this sort for defense-in-depth and have even more fortified strong-points and batteries of what indirect fire weapons you may have set-up and ready to go with ranges and likely target areas already computed so there would be no hesitation when engagement was needed. Plus you'd have numerous direct-fire weapons as well.

Use that as a base to clear the area of walkers and then use that area to resettle people you've found. In time you'd have a nice-sized town from which to start rebuilding society.

I didn't pay close attention to the show, it was on because my wife liked it but I did developed a fondness for Glenn and the red-haired guy both of whom got literally whacked by Negan and that was my exit point, and to my surprise it was also my wife's.

But before that it had gotten to the point where the stupidity was in over-drive.

When the sheriff came up with the plan to migrate the walkers that were in the quarry to somewhere else instead of using those resources to improve the quarry so it could catch and keep and destroy more walkers I nearly had a figurative aneurysm.

You literally had a hole in the ground from which they could not escape without difficulty and you give up on that for this insane plan to take them elsewhere?

No, you use the metal walls and whatever else you have available to further enclose the weak-points in the quarry and then you set up noise-makers all around the rim of the quarry so that walkers are attracted and fall in.

As the quarry fills you can take bulldozers down in there and set to crushing as many as needed to free up space. However many will be broken just from falling in, many more will be knocked over and trampled by other walkers so this might be a minor problem.

That would be the smart way to do it.  

Member in Good Standing of the Spontaneous Order of the Invisible Hand.

K Frame

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 44,009
  • I Am Inimical
Re: Have they finally run out of zombies?
« Reply #5 on: September 10, 2020, 03:13:16 PM »
Good show? No.

Fun show? At least in the early days? Yes.

I had such hope for Fear the Walking Dead. I really thought a look at how people handled the origins of the outbreak would be really interesting. But, I thought they passed some incredible opportunities to expand on characters that made quick appearances but were just as quickly forgotten... In one of the early episodes there was a kid named Tobias who showed up at his school with a knife. He alluded to carrying it because of what was going on... but that was never expanded on, but it should have been.
Carbon Monoxide, sucking the life out of idiots, 'tards, and fools since man tamed fire.

JN01

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 883
Re: Have they finally run out of zombies?
« Reply #6 on: September 10, 2020, 04:01:46 PM »
I guess I'll buck the trend and say that I have generally enjoyed the show.

Are there plot points and reactions that are implausible and/or ridiculous? Sure, but the basic premise of the show is dead people who are reanimated for Pete's sake. 

The zombie apocalypse is a device to examine the human condition- relationships, ethics, how people react in extreme stress, etc.   The characters are what kept me watching (although I agree that many were not fully developed, nor were some of them always consistent).  The acting has generally been better than the average TV show.  The series Lost kept me watching through the convoluted and often baffling plot for the same reason.

I also have kind of a teenager type of fascination with the special effects and the creative ways they invented for killing walkers.

Much of the criticism that has been posted is valid, however.  The storyline was too repetitive.  It probably would have been better to end it with 4 or 5 seasons at most.

I would concur on season 1 of Fear the Walking Dead.  I wanted all the characters to get eaten.  On the plus side, in subsequent seasons, all but 2 of them have been killed, and the series actually got better.

HankB

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 16,564
Re: Have they finally run out of zombies?
« Reply #7 on: September 10, 2020, 07:29:56 PM »
I quit watching TWD a couple of years ago, shortly after the Governor/Woodbury story arc. And even then, I mostly kept watching because for a time I had LIVED in a town called Woodbury.  ;)

FTWD blew chunks from the beginning - after a couple of episodes, I began cheering for the zombies. Never did tune in after the end of Season 1. (I think I quit before the last few episodes.)
Trump won in 2016. Democrats haven't been so offended since Republicans came along and freed their slaves.
Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it. - Mark Twain
Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods. - H.L. Mencken
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. - Mark Twain