Sunday, March 11, 2018

The Walking Dead: Season 8 Episode 11 - Dead or Alive Or (Discussion)

Hello friends and welcome back to our ongoing discussion of The Walking Dead season 8!  It was a late night for the family and I so I'm getting to the episode a little later than normal.  I hope no one minds, but I'm going to go ahead and skip the recap this week.  Let's be honest, these recaps have been pretty brief lately anyway!  I'll share my thoughts in the comments when I get a chance, but please feel free to chime in with yours as well.  I always love the discussion and insight everyone brings to the table.   Thank you for your understanding and I'll see you next week!

8 comments:

Jason B. said...

I really dislike the predictable "this small character got a lot of screen time this episode, so now they are going to die" writing this show always does. I wish we could get some long term, developed characters that start really small or in the background, like we used to with characters like Carol, Sasha, Tara, and Noah (although he didn't stick around very long) for example. Now every main character is either introduced in such a way that you know they are important, or has some special attribute/weapon/role that does the same thing. And all of the smaller characters are either doomed to stay in the background or they get a small chance to shine and then die. I would personally love some characters that fall somewhere in between those extremes.

Also, it's obvious that Dr. Carson only died so that the writers could make Siddiq a useful/worth it character for Carl to risk his life and die for, since he has medical experience. I don't know exactly why, but that just bothers me.

I enjoyed most of the rest of the episode, except Tara really gets on my nerves since she was in a similar "on the wrong side" situation with the Governor to the situation that Dwight is in now. Hopefully she came around when Dwight helped them out yet again toward the end.

Mike V. said...

Hi Jason. Yeah they really sold me on the doc being a longer term character. Though I should've seen it coming because of Siddiq being the "new medic" and Carl's death being worth it because he brought the crew someone who can add value.

Gimple does love telling these stories. No detail gets uncovered. If someone is traveling to Hilltop, we're going to see it in an episode and focus only on that! This time it was 2 groups heading to hilltop and only one made it. It's funny though, these are the details that game of thrones skips now and we complain about that too. "it's moving too fast!!!" But they're also in fast forward mode to the finale. If TWD's finale got announced, I'd imagine we'd start to see similar things happen. Travel time would start to disappear and they'd just start showing up places.

Totally agree on Tara...she's been a little annoying lately. I said to my wife when she started lashing out, "this is the episode where Tara and Dwight form a bond!" (I drive my wife nuts btw....) Some of the moves are so telegraphed you can see them coming.

One thing I'm not sure I totally understand is this new "GUTS" theory that Eugene inspired for Negan. We've seen survivors covered in zombie guts and they don't get infected. I'm guessing it'll have something to do with cutting them but not killing them. So if Lucille scrapes someone with guts all over it that will infect them. But if they just touched the survivors with zombie guts??? That should not infect them. Guess we'll see if they maintain continuity next week. lol

In any case, I'm glad this is the episode I decided to skip recapping. Not too much to cover. Still entertaining, but still very formulaic. We're moving towards a climactic showdown in the penultimate ep or finale. Surely the Negan conflict will be resolved...whether that means killing Negan? Dunno. If not...then I'm guessing a larger threat comes that requires Rick and Negan to work together. But this is with no knowledge of the comics to come.

MJ said...

Good to see Negen being crazy again. I enjoy his character when he is being bad ! LOL I thought for sure Dwight was a dead man with Tara - and it was a brave thing he did to show himself and he just got lucky that the woman who knew he betrayed his people didn't get back. So what is the plan - take out the guts from walkers and toss them at the Hilltop - hoping someone of them get infected ? Or infect their water or food? Not sure I get this plan.

Can't recall - who did kill that kids brother ? Did they lie to him about that? I hink it was the guy who said the kid was creepy - so they lied to stop him from a cold-blooded kill on that guy. Not sure though.

Oh Gabriel ! You just had to keep believing that god was leading you - and it got the doc killed. And just what they all need now - a blind man to take care of.

Was there any one who thought taking the swamp was a good idea ? it was odd - like sniper zombies - they way they stayed below the surface til anyone showed up. But I'll go with it. And I agreed with Dwight - putting everyone in one place might not be a good idea.

Eugene has become such a tool ! LOL - Just saying.

Hoping the new EP coming in next year shakes things up a bit and it's a little less predictable.



Mike V. said...

I don't get the plan either MJ! Doesn't make any sense to me. Infecting the water/food sounds interesting though.

Totally thought the same thing with the kid (Henry??). When Morgan said that Gavin killed his brother (William?)....I said to my wife, "I honestly don't remember who actually killed him". Actually....is it Jared? I'm just making up names at this point and hoping I'm right. The annoying savior guy that's a prisoner at Hilltop and was complaining about the creepy kid. I feel like he may have killed the kid, but I honestly forget.

Eugene is definitely a tool...but I still think it's part of his survival act.

Agree on the new EP. I'm just hoping for a series finale announcement coming. I don't anticipate it, but I feel it's what the show needs. A focus to move towards some end point. Even if it's 3 more seasons. But with the comic designed a never ending story, I don't know what they're thinking from a tv show perspective.

Jason B. said...

Haha yep just like Lost did, as far as the travel time disappearing in the end game of the series. It does vary in this show though, sometimes we see them travel and sometimes we don't. In the season 7 mid-season finale the group was all in Alexandria in one scene, and showed up at the Hilltop in the next (if I'm remembering correctly). And Enid got back from Oceanside this episode without us seeing any part of it.

Mike, you got all the names right except that Henry's brother was Benjamin, not William haha. And yes, Jared was the one who killed him, when he was actually supposed to kill Richard.

The guts plan is definitely to cover their weapons, although I don't quite understand it (even though it was also in the comics). My thought was that the weapons would have to be covered in stuff from the zombies' mouths, not just anywhere on their body, since the bites are what kill people. All in all, it's not a foolproof plan. There's no guarantee that this should kill people, unless the key is getting enough of it in someone's system that it will kill them (still, I wouldn't think that it would be guaranteed). We've seen small instances where zombie blood gets into someone's body and they've been fine (without going into detail on all of them, it's at least happened to Shane, Abraham, and Rick).

Jason B. said...

Also, unless it's an error on AMC's part, their website says that episode 13 is 2 hours long with commercials. That would be the longest episode ever by a long shot, which would make me wonder if they're gonna switch it up and have the big final battle be in that episode. But then what do they do for 3 more episodes? No idea, I guess we'll have to see if the episode is even truly 2 hours first.

Mike V. said...

Thanks for the corrections Jason! Fair enough on the travel time in TWD varying too.

Maybe the finale will be 2 hours? (And if it is I think it would count as 2 episodes, not just 1) That said, I looked up schedule and talking dead is scheduled to come on at 10:08 after TWD. So, I think it's still an hour and change this week.

Jason B. said...

Oh not this coming week's episode, next week's. I'll have to check again to see if it still says two hours. The finale will actually be immediately followed by the FTWD season 4 premiere, so each episode is likely just an hour. They're actually showing those back to back episodes in some theaters.