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]

Did you see my post from Friday?

I did, but before I saw the episode...so I was waiting for it. ;-)
And you're right, it is more logical.

This actually underlines a weakness in Whedon's writing - he writes like many daytime soap opera and comic writers write - in that they will often force plot points on the story with little regard to what the characters would actually do. They are more concerned with either shocking the audience, building to a specific plot twist, or staying true to a theme or a romantic/emotional arc than what the characters would do. It's loose writing. (shrugs). Not that Spike wouldn't have forced himself on Buffy at some point - he would have. Definitely. They'd built that part well. But how they filmed and wrote the actual attack or scene does not quite work - it takes you out of the story. Took me years to figure out why I cringe during that sequence and did not over similar bits in other shows - used to think it was how I felt about Spike - but no, it's how it was written and filmed. They wrote and filmed it too fast and really badly. (OR in daytime soap opera fashion. I've seen that scene in many daytime soaps and filmed in similar fashion. We call it the "very special episode of the week" or "the episode everyone will be talking about tomorrow" episode. )

Whedon reminds me of soap opera writers - they have brilliant episodes here and there (I've seen daytime soaps try to do stuff like The Body and Restless as well - although they don't quite pull it off as well as Whedon did, Whedon is a better writer..in that regard), but their writing tends to be largely off the cuff or loosely written and motivated purely by emotion. Logic rarely enters into it.