@poit57 said:

The actions, or inaction, of the stadium residents were very frustrating to watch. They already knew that Ennis's group had gathered up all the zombies, so they would have known by that point what was contained in all the trucks. Why, then, did they never open fire to try to prevent the trucks from being opened in the first place. Also, there was nothing to prevent Alicia from simply driving away instead of sitting in the middle of an obvious trap. The oil had not yet been lit, and even after it was, I'm not convinced that it would have been a sufficient barricade for the car.

If not before, Alicia should have driven away as soon as the zombies were released. She may have even been able to blast the horn to lead them away from the stadium. They already established earlier in this episode that they knew of multiple roads to the stadium that they could have circled back after getting far enough ahead of the hoard. They also had a radio to let Madison and company know what they were doing. There's no reason that they should have let their car be overtaken and surrounded by the zombies.

Agreed. It was a suspenseful ep, but not very suspenseful. I mean, Nick, Alicia and Mel have to survive the zombies outside of the stadium, so that they can make it to the present timeline where Alicia kills Mel. And also, concerning Al, John, Morgan and Naomi, all they really have to do is lure the zombies to the right side of the van/truck/vehicle, and fire those machine guns at them until they're dog meat....

Still, I liked the ep.

Agreed on all points. I am liking the dual timelines, unlike most on this board.

@jonnieblack said:

Agreed on all points. I am liking the dual timelines, unlike most on this board.

The dual timelines are still working for me, all in all. For awhile, I was tired of them, esp. since they aren't revealing in them whatever happened to Salazar, Taqa, and Taqa's friend. But I do want to know how they got to their present day state, and the flashbacks are nicer to look at than the present timeline is. However, I do prefer linear progression.

I don't know if I can keep watching this stupid drivel. This group attacks them, tries to kill them all. They save one because the little traitor girl likes him. Then they let him go. Traitor girl talks to him on the walkie, and then pleads with them to go help him. Then off they go after him again.

Sorry, but the bastard had ambushed and tried to kill them earlier in the day. I would not have saved him in the first place. Plus I wouldn't give a damn if traitor girl pleaded with puppy dog eyes for me to help him. She looked at them that way when she was setting them up in the first place.

Of course this show is all about people showing the worst character traits, and then being redeemed later in some way. But I am getting sick of it. The others keep acting as if they can't hold anything against anyone, have to forgive their enemies for everything, believe the best about them, etc. And like you said, their inactions are frustrating to watch. I am just about sick of watching them.

I'll say this; if they show any mercy to those guys after these attacks then they deserve to die. I am sick of their stupidity.

That kid called her mom on the walkie saying:

"Mom, I'm sorry. We had to come out here."

[No. They didn't.]

"We had to try and save him."

[No. They didn't.]

"We couldn't just...hide."

[They weren't hiding. They were building defenses at the stadium.]

"We didn't mean to do this to you. But it was the right thing to do."

[Bullshit. It was the wrong thing to do. In fact, every damned thing this kid said was wrong. And her mom just stands there listening to that crap and never once corrects her kid. She should have told her "Every damned thing you just said is wrong!", but she didn't. That is probably why the kid is so messed up. Her mother never corrects her when she says and does stupid stuff. ]

MORE STUPIDITY

In the preview for next week, the videographer chick with the weaponized Wells Fargo type truck brags "this thing is built like a tank in a bank vault". Just then a walker rips the door off the vehicle. BULLSHIT. A billion of those walkers pawing at the door for a year couldn't rip it loose like that.

This show is so absurd it is beyond laughable.

I was rather irritated when the brother and sister went after Mel, simply because the lil' girl wanted them to. But I didn't make a big deal out of it on these boards. In spite of dumb stuff like that, I found myself liking the ep. It was engaging through and through, I think, and not as dumb as what you would've caught on TWD last season. As for the walker tearing the vehicle's door off its hinges, I didn't see that. However, it sounds like a really stupid thing to happen.

To enjoy these shows, you have to let certain stuff just slide, like the fact that the survivors can puncture a zombie's hard skull with a knife or an axe with relative ease, or the simple fact that zombies exist.

@Satch_the_man said:

I was rather irritated when the brother and sister went after Mel, simply because the lil' girl wanted them to. But I didn't make a big deal out of it on these boards. In spite of dumb stuff like that, I found myself liking the ep. It was engaging through and through, I think, and not as dumb as what you would've caught on TWD last season. As for the walker tearing the vehicle's door off its hinges, I didn't see that. However, it sounds like a really stupid thing to happen.

To enjoy these shows, you have to let certain stuff just slide, like the fact that the survivors can puncture a zombie's hard skull with a knife or an axe with relative ease, or the simple fact that zombies exist.

Sure, suspension of disbelief is necessary to watch most fictions. (Most action films have unrealistic scenes in them, and we have to let them slide. Some are included simply to heighten the tension, create crises, and so on. For instance, it is very common to see people in close proximity to a bomb of some sort when it explodes. Often they dive headlong away from the blast, just barely ahead of the flames from the explosion. They get up, dust themselves off, ask each other if they're alright, etc., and carry on none the worse for wear. Thankfully most people never have to deal with explosives in real life, because such scenes would teach them some dangerously wrong ideas about them. It isn't the flames or heat from the blast which kills most people. It is the primary blast wave, a pressure wave that turns their insides to mush. Basically anyone within the primary blast wave is dead. I am so used to this that I hardly notice these scenes anymore.)

The premise that there are zombies is an essential plot element that you have to accept in order to watch the show. I think we're all so used to this need to suspend disbelief that we rarely even give it a conscious thought. But there ought to be consistency within the framework of the show, the premises we are asked to buy into. For example, we are told certain things about the zombies, that they are attracted to noise, their bites transmit the virus, they are relatively slow moving, they possess only ordinary strength, etc. If a group of zombies in the next episode reacted differently to a loud noise, like if they were startled and scared and suddenly ran in the opposite direction, the viewers would cry foul. There would have to be a good reason for this. So if I saw correctly what I thought I saw in that preview, a zombie pulling the door off of that armored vehicle, then it represents a drastic departure from what we've been led to understand about the zombies. Of course, it could be that the preview had different scenes spliced together and it only appeared that a zombie ripped off the door. Perhaps there is some other explanation which will be easier to accept.

There is something in literature called verisimilitude, which is basically the appearance of being true. Even within science fiction films or fantasy films, viewers expect certain things about the people and other elements to correlate to their own experience of real life, unless that element is specifically different for plot purposes. We expect people to act in ways which correspond to the normal range of responses and behaviors which we are familiar with in real life. Anything too far outside of what we know to be within the known range of human behaviors strikes us as not appearing to be true.

I admit that my criticisms of how some of these characters act sounds like I am nit picking, being overly critical. And perhaps I am. But sometimes that's just the way I react to the show. These people act as though they have no distrust of that little girl, even though she played them all for fools. She befriended them, sabotaged their camp, and betrayed them to the group of people who just tried to kill them all, and did kill some of them. Still they took her in almost as though none of that had happened. Sure the kid is young, and she was following the orders of the murdering bastards she ran with. But she was old enough to understand what she was doing and to pull it off. And she still feels loyal to those murdering bastards.

So when the lil girl pleaded for them to go save that injured jerk with puppy dog eyes, it made me sick that they were moved to put themselves and the rest of their camp at risk by agreeing to help. It doesn't seem real to me that anyone could be so easily manipulated by a child they knew had played them for fools to go help a guy who had been trying to kill them just hours previously.

Modern shows are all about emotive rhetoric, and little to do with reasoning.

@write2topcat said:

So if I saw correctly what I thought I saw in that preview, a zombie pulling the door off of that armored vehicle, then it represents a drastic departure from what we've been led to understand about the zombies. Of course, it could be that the preview had different scenes spliced together and it only appeared that a zombie ripped off the door. Perhaps there is some other explanation which will be easier to accept.

I didn't comment on your initial reply, but the trailer I saw doesn't look like a zombie ripping the door off its hinges. My initial interpretation of this moment in the trailer was that Maggie Grace was a commenting about some sort of attack from Alicia, Strand, and Luciana. I slowed down the trailer to 25% speed and the only zombies visible are lying on the ground in the distance. In full speed, I could possibly see the door hinges being confused for fingers from a zombie hand. The door falling off seems to be an attempt at humor in that it is a delayed reaction to whatever Maggie Grace's character was commenting on.

Here is a link to that moment in the trailer: https://youtu.be/hGXYgNdeyTo?t=21

Oh, OK. Well that makes more sense. thanks for the clip. It was humorous. Kind of a 'famous last words' type moment.

@write2topcat said:

@Satch_the_man said:

I was rather irritated when the brother and sister went after Mel, simply because the lil' girl wanted them to. But I didn't make a big deal out of it on these boards. In spite of dumb stuff like that, I found myself liking the ep. It was engaging through and through, I think, and not as dumb as what you would've caught on TWD last season. As for the walker tearing the vehicle's door off its hinges, I didn't see that. However, it sounds like a really stupid thing to happen.

To enjoy these shows, you have to let certain stuff just slide, like the fact that the survivors can puncture a zombie's hard skull with a knife or an axe with relative ease, or the simple fact that zombies exist.

Sure, suspension of disbelief is necessary to watch most fictions. (Most action films have unrealistic scenes in them, and we have to let them slide. Some are included simply to heighten the tension, create crises, and so on. For instance, it is very common to see people in close proximity to a bomb of some sort when it explodes. Often they dive headlong away from the blast, just barely ahead of the flames from the explosion. They get up, dust themselves off, ask each other if they're alright, etc., and carry on none the worse for wear. Thankfully most people never have to deal with explosives in real life, because such scenes would teach them some dangerously wrong ideas about them. It isn't the flames or heat from the blast which kills most people. It is the primary blast wave, a pressure wave that turns their insides to mush. Basically anyone within the primary blast wave is dead. I am so used to this that I hardly notice these scenes anymore.)

The premise that there are zombies is an essential plot element that you have to accept in order to watch the show. I think we're all so used to this need to suspend disbelief that we rarely even give it a conscious thought. But there ought to be consistency within the framework of the show, the premises we are asked to buy into. For example, we are told certain things about the zombies, that they are attracted to noise, their bites transmit the virus, they are relatively slow moving, they possess only ordinary strength, etc. If a group of zombies in the next episode reacted differently to a loud noise, like if they were startled and scared and suddenly ran in the opposite direction, the viewers would cry foul. There would have to be a good reason for this. So if I saw correctly what I thought I saw in that preview, a zombie pulling the door off of that armored vehicle, then it represents a drastic departure from what we've been led to understand about the zombies. Of course, it could be that the preview had different scenes spliced together and it only appeared that a zombie ripped off the door. Perhaps there is some other explanation which will be easier to accept.

There is something in literature called verisimilitude, which is basically the appearance of being true. Even within science fiction films or fantasy films, viewers expect certain things about the people and other elements to correlate to their own experience of real life, unless that element is specifically different for plot purposes. We expect people to act in ways which correspond to the normal range of responses and behaviors which we are familiar with in real life. Anything too far outside of what we know to be within the known range of human behaviors strikes us as not appearing to be true.

I admit that my criticisms of how some of these characters act sounds like I am nit picking, being overly critical. And perhaps I am. But sometimes that's just the way I react to the show. These people act as though they have no distrust of that little girl, even though she played them all for fools. She befriended them, sabotaged their camp, and betrayed them to the group of people who just tried to kill them all, and did kill some of them. Still they took her in almost as though none of that had happened. Sure the kid is young, and she was following the orders of the murdering bastards she ran with. But she was old enough to understand what she was doing and to pull it off. And she still feels loyal to those murdering bastards.

So when the lil girl pleaded for them to go save that injured jerk with puppy dog eyes, it made me sick that they were moved to put themselves and the rest of their camp at risk by agreeing to help. It doesn't seem real to me that anyone could be so easily manipulated by a child they knew had played them for fools to go help a guy who had been trying to kill them just hours previously.

Modern shows are all about emotive rhetoric, and little to do with reasoning.

Right, I knew about verisimilitude before today, but thanks anyway. My thinking about mentioning letting some things slide when watching FTWD is that you are doing the exact opposite of that, which is, as you pointed out, nitpicking.

I am willing to , and do, suspend disbelief on those plot elements which require it. But regarding verisimilitude, there needs to be some. Perhaps it is nit picking, but that is a matter of opinion.

@write2topcat said:

I am willing to , and do, suspend disbelief on those plot elements which require it. But regarding verisimilitude, there needs to be some. Perhaps it is nit picking, but that is a matter of opinion.

That's fine with me, topcat. There's no one way of watching a TV show. Some of us watch them to ease back and simply be entertained, and I suppose some of us like to hold them to very high standards while we take them in.

@Satch_the_man said:

@poit57 said:

The actions, or inaction, of the stadium residents were very frustrating to watch. They already knew that Ennis's group had gathered up all the zombies, so they would have known by that point what was contained in all the trucks. Why, then, did they never open fire to try to prevent the trucks from being opened in the first place. Also, there was nothing to prevent Alicia from simply driving away instead of sitting in the middle of an obvious trap. The oil had not yet been lit, and even after it was, I'm not convinced that it would have been a sufficient barricade for the car.

If not before, Alicia should have driven away as soon as the zombies were released. She may have even been able to blast the horn to lead them away from the stadium. They already established earlier in this episode that they knew of multiple roads to the stadium that they could have circled back after getting far enough ahead of the hoard. They also had a radio to let Madison and company know what they were doing. There's no reason that they should have let their car be overtaken and surrounded by the zombies.

Agreed. It was a suspenseful ep, but not very suspenseful. I mean, Nick, Alicia and Mel have to survive the zombies outside of the stadium, so that they can make it to the present timeline where Alicia kills Mel. And also, concerning Al, John, Morgan and Naomi, all they really have to do is lure the zombies to the right side of the van/truck/vehicle, and fire those machine guns at them until they're dog meat....

Still, I liked the ep. Agree with you, but not the OP. But only that I did not get that Madison and Co. knew about the zombies in the trucks. I'm not sure they knew, and I'm not interested enough to watch again😁

@Satch_the_man said:

@jonnieblack said:

Agreed on all points. I am liking the dual timelines, unlike most on this board.

The dual timelines are still working for me, all in all. For awhile, I was tired of them, esp. since they aren't revealing in them whatever happened to Salazar, Taqa, and Taqa's friend. But I do want to know how they got to their present day state, and the flashbacks are nicer to look at than the present timeline is. However, I do prefer linear progression.

I prefer a linear progression. The back and forth annoys the hell outta me!

@Satch_the_man said:

That's fine with me, topcat. There's no one way of watching a TV show. Some of us watch them to ease back and simply be entertained, and I suppose some of us like to hold them to very high standards while we take them in.

I'm all about being entertained for the most part. However, there are some shows or movies that I've watched where I've had to say to myself ...are you fuching kidding me?! But I find that entertaining too. Oh well.

I do wish that chronic complainers or nitpickers would sometimes go away and create their own damn show so that chronic complainers and nitpickers can complain and nitpick about their sh*it.

@Nubyan said:

@Satch_the_man said:

That's fine with me, topcat. There's no one way of watching a TV show. Some of us watch them to ease back and simply be entertained, and I suppose some of us like to hold them to very high standards while we take them in.

I'm all about being entertained for the most part. However, there are some shows or movies that I've watched where I've had to say to myself ...are you fuching kidding me?! But I find that entertaining too. Oh well.

I do wish that chronic complainers or nitpickers would sometimes go away and create their own damn show so that chronic complainers and nitpickers can complain and nitpick about their sh*it.

It's all good. That's what I like about the group of people here. I liked IMDB but there were some people there who just could not tolerate it if someone didn't like an actor's performance or something about a show which they liked. They would report them to the moderators sometimes. Other times people responded to my posts with personal insults and such. All because I was critical of something about a show they felt loyal to, or something like that.

I mean, come on. Who says everyone has to agree? That's just silly. To me one of the great things about discussion boards is the back and forth, different points of view, etc. I learn things from people, I sometimes see things in a way I had not before, and so on. Other times I don't change my mind. But either way it doesn't bother me if someone else sees it differently. And it's alright if someone thinks my opinion is nuts or whatever. The good thing about the people on this site is that nobody has taken to making personal insults or stuff like that.

[I think that is what killed IMDB. The moderators over there were getting hassled by the snowflakes who demanded they banish people they disagreed with. It was almost funny, but not really. I heard from people over there who became very ugly all because I didn't like something about an actor's performance or about a show. It's one thing to say "I disagree with that opinion, and here is why...". That is fine. But some of those people simply launched into personal attacks and messages to the moderators. I believe the moderators finally got fed up with dealing with that stuff. I think it's a reflection of a cultural current which has been written about a great deal, especially regarding the educational system. Group think, group conformity is highly valued by educators now, whereas individualism is discounted or denigrated, according to several books on the subject. Peer pressure and other tactics are reportedly brought to bear upon students who resist adopting the suggested viewpoints and attitudes. Behavioral conditioning is thus used to impart beliefs rather than critical thinking processes. I think that is a terrible thing. Students should not be censored or punished for having their own opinions.]

Anyway, I appreciate the mature attitudes of the people I have interacted with on this site. And I like hearing what others think.