4.09: The Walking Dead - After

[ctg]

As Rick deals with old wounds, members of the prison have to come to terms with their new environment and ask themselves if survival alone is enough?

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This episode will air on AMC at 9/8c on February 9, 2014, and on Fox (UK) at 9pm on February 10, 2014.

 

[DaCosta]

New promo for The Walking Dead season 4 | Den of Geek

 

[ctg]

*** Spoilers ***
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There is something to be said about the troubles of fatherhood and the relationship sons makes with their fathers, and that is, it's not easy. Not from either side. And certainly not, when your son reaches teen-years and starts rebelling against everything that you've ever said to them.

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But who else they can put up with and try their damnest to show that you're the man, even though you aren't. Carl isn't the man. He is just a young boy, who would had loved playing video games and doing what Huckleberry Finn did back in the day.

And he was so angry on everything when he spilled it all out to the shell of Ricknator. The man who'd lost his family, his friends, his people and his kingdom. And rightly so, because back in the day I would had done exactly the same thing.

But to Carl, there are no friends, no safe play-grounds or gadgets to take out rest of his frustration and he finally does - what his mum denied and Rick never allowed - he goes out and finds beautiful and quiet urban neighbourhood.

A place that looks as if it was just left behind for the nature to take over. A place, where there could be no danger. But as it is with rest of the world, the danger lies in the settings. And no matter how lucky Carl has been in his past, the experience hasn't got into his backbone as his eyes sparkle when he see all the stuff he could own.

And that is what we fathers are afraid. We are scared that when it comes to these sort of situations, the experience and skills we have tried to give them goes out with a blink of eye. And it wasn't neither of those things that saved him but I bet he learned through the hard way that no matter what you cannot give up. You can lose your shoe and it doesn't end your day.

You also can lose your family, like it happened with Michonne but as long as you know there's someone else out there that care about you, all is not lost. You just have to get up and keep going no matter what.


I loved this episode and I would like to raise my hat to Mr Kirkman, who'd written this episode. It was a superb return from the mid-season break.

 

[Lenny]

Sublime.

It was a risk to make Carl the focus of an episode, and I'm not sure I'd have said Chandler Riggs could pull it off, but it worked. It even managed to consolidate whiny Carl, child-soldier Carl, and just child Carl into a single survivor Carl in an effective way. He had his teen outbreak at Rick being over-protective, he tried twice at pretending to be an independent survivor, and he even got a shot at, as Zombieland would put it, enjoying the little things. But in the end he realised, despite projecting an image of total toughness, that he needs people. Particularly his Dad. Awww.

I feel the Michonne story was put in as a safety measure, just in case Carl's path to enlightenment wasn't as strong as it might have been. Which is a shame, because we could easily have had a full episode of Michonne wandering with her troubles. Imagine her herd growing for the full forty-five minutes as she tackles her past.

Still, both stories went well together, and they did complement each other quite nicely - Carl wishing, pretending, and demanding he was left alone, and Michonne existing alone in her herd, wishing her boyfriend/husband and brother(? Brother-in-law?) were still with her, both coming to the conclusion that they need other living souls to survive.

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Does anyone else get the feeling that maybe we're only really seeing the start of Scott Gimple's The Walking Dead now. The previous pipeline has been cleared - the prison is gone, the Big Bad is gone, the community is scattered - and Gimple now has the chance to mould TWD into a series that deals with the human survivors without the need to throw in huge action sequences. Zombies falling through the roof of an abandoned supermarket is cool and rarely seen, but it's still not as effective as someone flailing amongst scattered books, a zombie trying to sink its teeth into their thigh, desperately fighting for survival because that single bullet needed to save you was wasted twenty minutes earlier.

 

[ctg]

Does anyone else get the feeling that maybe we're only really seeing the start of Scott Gimple's The Walking Dead now. The previous pipeline has been cleared - the prison is gone, the Big Bad is gone, the community is scattered - and Gimple now has the chance to mould TWD into a series that deals with the human survivors without the need to throw in huge action sequences.

Maybe you are right. Maybe it's just starting even though in the comics they were as much in disarray after the Governors attack and it took months (read many copies before they were all back together) and [censored] So...

 

[Dave]

Does anyone else get the feeling that maybe we're only really seeing the start of Scott Gimple's The Walking Dead now. The previous pipeline has been cleared - the prison is gone, the Big Bad is gone, the community is scattered - and Gimple now has the chance to mould TWD into a series that deals with the human survivors without the need to throw in huge action sequences.

I'd like to think so, and it looks like the next few episodes will deal with only a few characters each week; allowing a much more detailed analysis of each.

My problem is that I am no longer believing in the world they have created. The lawns are still cropped and the edges cut neatly. By who or what? Because we see no wild animals at all. No packs of roaming wild (former domestic) dogs (there are almost as many dogs as people.) Kitchens are full of unspoilt food and there are no rats, mice and cockroaches. When they enter a house nothing scatters out of the way. Storms have not brought down trees, or washed away roads. Saplings do not grow in those neat lawns or through broken roofs. It is meant to be several years after the event now. We have had long breaks when the story picked up again months later. Nature should have taken control again.

 

[ctg]

I know what you're saying Dave, but there isn't much they can do about the locations and the urban decay. The budget is limited and they cannot just rent a town for two-three years time to shoot a properly set episode in it, do they?

 

[Dave]

Just look at your picture from the graphic novel inthe first post. Even that has grass growing out of the pavement.

If think if a studio built such a town then other film companies would come. In the way that Hollywood used to have a permanent Western set. (Blazing Saddles anyone?)

However, I don't see what cost has to do with my point about the internal scenes. That is a question of the scriptwriting. I think most food that was not in tins would be spoilt and houses would be infested with vermin. Even tins might have rusted where roofs had leaked. When you hear a noise upstairs, then your first thought would be "coyote" and not "walker."

 

[ctg]

Dave, you're going overboard now, because it hasn't been that long from the day when stuff were new. And I've been in much older places, and still have found stuff that looks as good as what it was at the day when it was bought. But if it's making your head in then maybe it's time for you to switch channels and find something else to watch.

 

[ctg]

Maybe I'm overboard. So sorry about blasting you out, but I just don't see a point of kicking a **** out even though the settings weren't realistic enough. And if you'd really compare the decay in the comics to what you see in the screen, the comics would win any day and twice on Sundays.

In matter of fact, further we go towards the next big bad, more decay and desolation should appear, as most of the places should start looking like what you saw in the Governor episode. Stil,l the stuff that has been encased in plastic should stay the same as the plastic is hardest stuff to decay. And tins, like you say, should start rusting wherever they come in contact with moisture. That same thing should apply all materials, as lot of places should start looking like what you see at the background of Michonne's dream.

In the same time this same thing should apply to so many other series, like for example the Revolution, where the world has been almost completely decayed in the aftermath of a permanent blackout. But there aren't such authentic setting anywhere in the world, except in Chernopyl, Fukushima and they are beyond the safety of any film crews. No actors would set a foot in there for a long period of time.

However, maybe all is not lost as there are lot of abandoned urban settings around the states that the film crews could use to do their shootings. So in that regards you're right. The production crew were extremely sloppy in that regards as they could had easily shown how far in sh*t the world has gone in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.

But I feel there is still more places to come as they progress towards the next location - the Washington D.C.

 

[svalbard]

That was a deeply, engrossing episode. I enjoyed finally getting to know the real Michonne. As I watched the episode the Cormac McCarthy book The Road kept cropping up in my mind. I couldn't help but compare the relationship between Rick and Carl with that of The Man and The Boy. So disimaler yet at the end very much the same.

 

[ctg]

The Road might had been out as a book when this came out as a comic, in fact, it came out in 2006. The book I mean, and so you are right, the walk between The Boy and The Man is very similar to the one McCarthy wrote out. And Carl goes in very dark place than what was featured in this episode.

The only exceptions to the issue number 49, 50 and 51 is the televised episode Carl went out and found himself a can of chocolate pudding, where as in the comics he stayed and lured away the zombies. And when he came back Rick developed the "phone people" in his head, because Lori had been slaughtered by the Governor.

So everything that happened after the prison send the Boy and the Man and the boy into a very dark place as it was featured in the McCarthy's novel. But I would not say that Kirkman copied Cormac's ideas.

Also your note about Michonne was a good one, because to me that was the very first time I've seen anything from her past.

 

[thaddeus6th]

I liked this episode a lot. Good emotional intensity, and it did make me like Carl rather more than before. Very glad Michonne's still around.

 

[ctg]

I liked this episode a lot. Good emotional intensity, and it did make me like Carl rather more than before. Very glad Michonne's still around.

I feel sorry for you man for having to watch these episodes on weekly basis while knowing that the new season is going to start in months time. But I'm so glad that you're liking them even if you missed the beginning. And Michonne, well... I think you should know that she's one of most favourite characters to viewers and comic readers. So, you can be large sums on money on her NOT going away.

 

[thaddeus6th]

To clarify, I have seen all the episodes, it's just that I only realised the series was on (5* isn't exactly my favourite channel) when episode 5-6 or so was next. I watched the earlier episodes online.

It's only the same as seeing Game of Thrones late.