Walking Dead Discussion Thread: S3 E3, “Walk with Me”
*Spoiler Alert: Do not read this post or the comment section if you have not seen the show. Also, for those who have read the comics, please do not discuss plot elements not revealed on the show.*
It always gets a little complicated when a show splits its plot in half, but The Walking Dead tackled that last night. Our main group of survivors took the week off so they could get out the Ajax and clean that prison. While they are doing their chores we followed Andrea and Michionne as they went to check out a helicopter crash site. They arrive just before some new survivors and watch as they clear the site of ‘biters’ and dispatch the newly-turned crew of the helicopter. To conceal their location Michionne is forced to take out her two pet walkers, which she does at a different point in the comic books. It seemed sudden as they were such a cool detail, but it at this point I trust the show’s writers pretty well. It didn’t work out though as our old pal Merle got the drop on them.
One thing I noticed this week is how so many questions were asked and answered. The Governor had to explain to Andrea and Michionne that everyone is infected. The Governor’s scientist-minion explained how Michionne’s walkers were made to be so docile and speculates that they retain an ‘echo’ of their former selves. The term ‘lurkers’ is used for the first time (this would have been handy info for poor Hershel in Episode 1). We find out some details about walker biology (they can starve to death?) Andrea gives Merle a good recap of the events since they left him on the rooftop and does her best to explain that Rick tried to come back and save him.
The Governor seems pleasant at first, though serious. Then he takes his men and kills a National Guard unit so he can get their weapons, vehicles and supplies. Okay, that seemed pretty messed up but it’s a cutthroat world out there. Any forgiveness of that decision seems to be dispelled in the final scene as he enters a locked room to stare at a bunch of heads floating in fish tanks, including what appears to be the head of the helicopter pilot they brought back to Woodbury. Yikes.
One other note of record: I’ve been working on a novel off-and-on for 10 years. One of the main locations was a town called Woodbury. Guess I’ll have to reconsider that one.
I’ve never been through a zombie apocalypse but I continue to be baffled that more humans don’t seem to take refuge on second floors. I understand the need for supplies, but from a second floor, couldn’t anybody with a long weapon (blunt or sharp) simply kill the zombies that would gather around the building?
Also, this idea that that human beings are killing other, capable human beings? Without first figuring out if those human beings can be of assistance?Report
The potential problem there is getting trapped in a surrounded building with no egress. I guess maybe you could rig up a zipline or something to get away from the building.
Now of course with a huge supply of ammo and food, you could safely defend yourself and pick zombies off at your leisure.
Ultimately it ends up being about wanting horizontal space. That’s why they seemed so friggin’ happy when they took the prison yard.Report
I suppose so, but I can’t believe that walls between buildings wouldn’t be knocked out, that bridges wouldn’t be built, and that a very obvious, basic fortification would go essentially undiscussed, especially since the zombies can’t climb.Report
That’s a good point. In my mind though the prison is still the best fortification (which is also why I assume there will be some conflict over it later).Report
The Minneapolis survivors must be sitting pretty, what with the harsh winters freezing walkers solid for several months, plus the ability to use the skyway system in the warm months.Report
Good point. Zombies must freeze solid half the year. They would be like statues… zombie art.Report
I’m thinking if you live up there, once they freeze up you should be out there every day busting heads with a sledgehammer. That would help reduce the population somewhat.Report
Glyph, as a resident of Minneapolis and as an inviterate rp geek I can confirm that you hit the nail on the head. The entire downtown of Minneapolis is connected together by second floor skyways accessible only via easily blocked escalators and stairways from ground floor levels. The downtown core also has some built in fortification potential: the big highways box it off on three sides with sheer concrete walls and the Mississippi blocks the fourth side. A large organized group of humans could harden the entire urban core just by demolishing the overpasses, blocking some onramps and walling off some bridges. Then the river could be retained as a means of transporting supplies. The biggest difficulty would be electricity. Skyscrapers are pretty crap unless you can power the elevators and water pumps.
But it’s moot: as is demonstrated in this episode the danger in TWD world was not due to lack of fortifications but rather the explosive nature of the populace of such a refuge. Get it infected with zombie bites and the riots would destroy it as effectively as the walkers.Report
Yeah, Minneapolis pretty much rocks anyway, but in the event of zombie apocalypse, I know where I am headed.
From wiki on the Skyway:
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Some pretty level headed people here too I’d add. But yeah, it’d be an excellent system to defend in the event of zombie outbreak or, barring that, it’d be a good place to set up to reclaim after the fact. You’d just go building by building.Report
The problem I would see there is a big enclosed space that could quickly become infected. The helicopter pilot described exactly the kind of scenario where enclosed fortifications go all to hell. I would favor a large open area with individual dwellings separated by some distance.Report
I’d be inclined to concurr Mike, especially when you factor in the long term in (you need farm land). Problem simply is that large spaces enclosed in barriers or enclosed in something easily repurposed into barriers is not common.
Really what TWD survivors should really be thinking about are larger islands and the like either in a major river or just off the coast. Natural barriers to entry would be ideal though there has been some debate about zombie capacity to get through water barriers (can they just walk on the bottom).Report
Per World War Z, zombies can move under water. I believe at the end the government had troops stationed on all of the beaches to shoot zombies that had walked across the Atlantic from England. Now good luck exploring the logic of that one! What if they get eaten by a shark? Zombie shark?Report
Mike,
I’ve got documentary footage of just such an encounter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSN2s8FY8QReport
See? He ate his arm. Zombie shark!Report
Mmm yes you’d think the Marianas Trench might have given them pause too. I mean our average joe walker has some modest difficulty navigating in a 1 atmosphere environment. You’d think that wading through tons of water might present issues.Report
There are lots of problems with zombies, including their apparent lack of decay and their lack of a food source. But the idea of zombies surviving a trek under water achieves some brand new level of ludicrousness(ness) that I doubt any viewer could stomach.Report
What about zombies that walk into lakes and then occasionally surface again Jason Vorhees-style?Report
I’m sure there’s a special effects wizard already fapping about this possibility, but it’d be a stupid thing to see. I would expect maximum snark from everybody on this board were such a scenario come to pass.Report
Mike,
I can’t find your email – I edited a tag in this post that was italicizing the website.Report
OK, so I am pretty happy that they addressed the ‘zombies on chain leashes’ question, and that my speculation was basically correct (camouflage + pack animals) and they also mentioned that if they *can’t* feed, they stop trying (which explains why you can use chains and not have them crowding you all the time).
So B+ for effort there, but I am still not convinced that armless zombies on leashes is the ideal plan, because even if they don’t fall over all the time (they would) you are still moving at their speed (slow) so if you run into a whole bunch of zombies at once, you are screwed, unless that camouflage is 100% effective (in which case, why doesn’t everyone do it? Hey, remember when Rick’s group found that smearing zombie guts on themselves made them invisible to zombies? Neither does this show.)
Michonne is fast becoming annoying. They better give her some lines, or at least some different facial expressions besides this one.
OK, so I get the Governor is a bad/nuts guy (he certainly said ‘We will rise again’ in an ominous way, although there were black people in Woodbury, so maybe he’s not racist at least?) due to heads in fishtanks and, you know, using friggin’ Merle in your outfit – but why’d he kill those army/National Guard guys? They have equipment and training, seems like they could be helpful.
More to the point, *how’d* he kill them? You mean to tell me a bunch of trained and armed military guys, keeping a lookout from a high vantage point, got completely ambushed by the Governor’s ragtag, self-trained guys? If this is the true current state of the US military – not only completely unable to handle slow-moving, brainless and unarmed (sometimes literally) zombies, but also unable to beat ragtag survivor groups like the Governor’s, then I think we definitely need to increase military spending, and get those guys some training.Report
It’s not just that those were trained military guys. It’s that they’d been on the move for months. They must (MUST!) have been highly sensitive; you can’t live otherwise. Yet a few yokels sneak up on them without problem? Come on.Report
The military guys would probably immediately try to take over. They are the closest thing to law enforcement so that would just make sense. Eliminate the competition for power. A smart move from the Governor’s perspective.Report
I know that is sort of a trope of zombie movies (that the remaining survivors get Darwininan real fast), but I guess I am optimistic and feel like the few remaining humans would try to work together a little more than that. But again, they are setting the governor up as a dictator/cult leader type guy, so I guess I can see that.
It’d be funny if somebody discovers his fishtank setup and he is all blase about it, like, “hey, what’s the big deal, it’s not like I can watch TV anymore to unwind at the end of my hard day Governing?”
Or if he talks to them, like Swearengen to the Indian head.
Or maybe they are a Greek chorus and give him advice, or just sing peppy show tunes once in a while to cheer him up. I want this show to go bonkers.Report
Agreed that from any rational or sane perspective the murder of those troops was idiotic. It seems to me that in TWD-world the most valuable and increasingly rare resource is living generally sane humans with useful skills. I mean how hard would it be to dredge up a helicopter or fuel? C to B- difficulty I’d say; but try piloting the sucker with no training? Just about impossible. The pilot alone was a prescious asset to say nothing of what looked like a coherent group of soldiers. The guns and ammo they were carrying was trivial in actual value compared to the men carrying them and they were ripe for recruitment: dispirited, frightened and isolated. This is also a factor that I’d think Rick should be considering vis a vis those two remaining prisoners. Even unskilled humans are awfully valuable in TWD-world.
But fortunately the show demonstrated that the Governor is batshit insane so this calculus doesn’t need to factor into his brain. It looks like Mearl and science sidekick were unhappy about it.Report
Since the soldiers are all dead this is a non-spoiler, but in the comic book there were some soldiers brought into Woodbury and they caused all kinds of problems by trying to take over. I am assuming the writers didn’t want to explore that subplot.Report
Oh cool, I missed that book in the series but that makes a lot of sense.Report
The longer the show goes on, the more interesting the comparisons to the comic. For example, TV Michonne is pretty much living off a few cool visuals and her comic book appearances. We’re only 3 episodes in and I’d bet those millions of folks who haven’t read the comic are wondering what the big deal is with her.
MikeReport
I watch the show with a former farmer. When they opened the doors to the apartment in Woodbury, he saw apples and screamed at the television, “WHERE ARE THOSE FROM? IT’S THE SPRING!”Report
Apples will keep for up to 6 months if stored properly. But yeah, it’s probably a plot hole. The kind of stuff set designers don’t think about but fans will obssess over.Report
Also worth discussing: what’s in the tea?Report
I was wondering that too. It was referenced several times. Maybe it’s ground up zombie to create some kind of immunity. Or maybe it’s Soylent Green!Report
I’m thinking some kind of sedative. The helicopter pilot explains that the military post got overrun within hours basically due to panic; in Woodbury, even though the Gov. mentions that they have had a wall breach and an internal incident in fairly recent memory, nobody panicked, and the place didn’t descend into anarchy.
So keeping everyone on a constant low dose of Xanax might be the way to go in a zombie apocalypse.
Actually, now that I think of it, this may have some explanatory power in the real world too. If there weren’t so many medicated-Americans, maybe we all also would have panicked and turned on each other by now. 🙂Report
That’s a really intriguing theory. Andrea seemed to mellow out pretty quickly but I don’t think Michionne drank any and she still seemed paranoid.
Although, to debunk, didn’t the Governor drink some of it? What would be the purpose of that?Report
Well, if it’s a mild sedative, he might benefit from it too. Governing’s stressful work, and he presumably also needs to keep a calm head.
His homey accent seemed a bit put-on, too. When he told Andrea “Never” it seemed like the accent was gone for just a second.Report
You know the old Hollywood adage, “Any time you can get the guy who starred in Basic Instinct 2 with Sharon Stone, YOU’VE GOT TO GET HIM!”Report
Who wants to be mildly sedated when the next herd shows up?Report
I can see being (mildly) sedated as possibly being helpful, if your worst enemy is panic, which causes loss of cohesion and strategy. The zombies themselves are neither smart nor fast. You are your own worst enemy.Report
Actually with a herd the ideal response would be to group your civilians as far from the walls as you can. Keep your armed folks out of sight but watchful and stay -silent- and wait for them to shamble on. Calmness would be an invaluable asset.Report
I’m not sure, but I’m thinking the TEA is some sort of fertilization enhancer and that drinking it makes anyone more fertile. I can see the Governer wanting to create his own society of offspring willing to do more of his bidding and I’m pretty sure the brunette tour guide isn’t the only one he’s sleeping with before he checks out his trophie collection….Report
Also, did anyone notice the male to female ratio in Woodbury? It seemed to me there were quite a few more girls around then men. Remember the end of 28 days later?Report