The Walking Dead...a mini-review on the last episode

[shadowkat]

Just finished watching the Season finale of The Walking Dead, which amongst other things had an incredibly similar attempted rape scene to Buffy S6, Seeing Red, albeit far more realistic. I actually preferred this one to that one. And felt it made a lot more sense. The one in Seeing Red - is jarring, for several reasons - one it makes no logical sense whatsoever that he enters her bathroom. Her house yes, but her bathroom, while she's clearly about to take a bath?? Two she's almost too weak in the scene, considering she only fought a vamp in a graveyard, and fell into a gravestone - this is nothing. And third, it's filmed in stark blacks and whites, then cut in the middle for a commercial, if someone had been flipping channels they'd think they were watching a completely different show. The rest of the episode is photographed/filmed in campy low-production Buffy style, except for that scene. It's like reading a comic book and they switch artists for one panel, then flip back again. While in The Walking Dead - it makes sense that Shane is in the room with Lorie, that he would enter the rec room, and Lori is clearly weaker than he is, yet, still able to stop him - by scratching him and the fact that much like Spike, he doesn't really intend to rape her. That scene was filmed correctly and effectively. The other one - not so much.

Will give the Walking Dead points for being gripping tv. That hour flew by. I was riveted. Also, favorite characters are Andrea and the old man, Sal (?). Was quite worried about them in this episode. Also Lincoln is rather compelling as Rick Grimes, the lead protagonist. It's a good survivalist horror tale, even if it's a tad on the sexist end of the fence, but then so are the Buffy and Spike comics, so I barely noticed. Beginning to think Helen Mirren is right - the vast majority of entertainment, tv, film or comic book (okay less in the tv department perhaps) seems to be targeted to 18-25 year old boys and their penis. Which are oddly quite small at least according to Mirren, I wouldn't know haven't done any measuring. ( of the penis not the boys) .

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

If you want to make a series of it, you need to come up with more of a story to tell than just "The zombies are still after us, run, shoot, scream!" If you compare this to, say, Stephen King's The Stand (which it's similar to in a lot of ways), there's an actual plot apart from the survival, we get to know what the characters want, their differing motivations matter, conflicts arise between them, etc.

Ah. Thanks for clarifying. Yes, I agree. I think, of all things, Resident Evil is a good one to compare to. Resident Evil based on a video game - actually has more plot and characterization than the Walking Dead. (Not filmed as well, maybe.) And that's saying something. And you're right about The Stand - Stephen King oddly is the opposite of most tv writers, he overwrites. With King - you pretty much know everything you ever possibly wanted to know about every single character, leaves little to the imagination. While the Walking Dead...sort of underwriters, creating somewhat stock characters. Rick Grimes and Shane feel very much like stock characters to me at the moment, so agree - under-developed. Actually all the characters are - with the possible exception of Andrea but only because we got that nifty fishing tale.

though Darabont's decision to fire his entire writing staff and have freelancers piece s2 together doesn't fill me with confidence.

Darabont fired his entire writing staff?? He must have realized there was a problem? OR was it money related? And he's doing freelancers? Uhhh...okaaay. No, that does not bode well at all.

Either give me a character drama or a tight plot.

It will definitely lose me eventually if it doesn't have either.
Right now, I'm sort of interested in Andrea, Glenn, and Dale.
But you're correct they haven't been developed yet. And Grimes is pretty much boilerplate.

I would say Mad Men isn't in itself sexist so much as a story about sexism (among other things).

True. Should clarify - I was talking about Rubicon and Breaking Bad - which felt very male focused and sexist or gender imbalanced to me. Admittedly I've only watched 2-3 episodes of both, so should give Breaking Bad another chance before making a finale determination.

Mad Men to give it credit comments on sexism and at times feels like a feminist noir series - where the men are anti-heroes, and the women heroes. The true protagonist of that series - I think, may well be Peggy.