The Walking Dead finale

[maystone]

Because you can't do spoiler cuts on freakin' FaceBook. I'm just going to paste something I wrote to my brother earlier. He thought the Rick/Joe ending was unrealistic. So my response follows. Feel free to jump in and comment. And I hope I do this right. It's been years since I've done a cut.

Comments

[maystone]

See, I never found morally-conflicted Rick to be boring. Annoying? Hell yes. But they've been showing this dark side since he killed Shane. I was really taken by how he started yelling at Shane's corpse, "This is you! This isn't me! This is on you!" He was rationalizing it to himself immediately. And later he blamed it on Lori, of course. He beat the shit out Tyreese (and rightfully so), and he went waaaay the hell overboard in his reaction to Carol. Now that's the reunion I want to see. I want him to see that it was Carol who kept Judith alive, and it was Carol who did the unimaginably hard thing of killing Lizzie - because it had to be done. I think Rick bansihed Carol because she scared the hell out of him by reflecting back to him the brutal reality he was hiding from.

So yes - I really, really, really want Carol to save his ass. I cannot see her just walking into Terminus, either.

I was horrified by Joe and his gang, and I felt guilty as hell for kind of liking him earlier. I thought they (the Marauders) were mostly talk. Like you, I was thinking "holy shit, they're really going to rape Carl!" That was a terrible few minutes to watch. I imagine it was no fun for Chandler Riggs to film, either. And what are the consequences going to be for that? if anything, I think that Carl is more of a badass than Rick is by a factor of 10. The looks he and Rick were exchanging near the end there - absolutely chilling. Like they both knew they were going to rain destruction down on those Terminus assholes just given the chance.

Hey, I don't consider myself to be particularly bloodthirsty, but I was cheering on Rick, too. Now I have to wait for October, and that is going to be very, very hard to do.

[travestine]

What I really loved about AL on TD was how deeply he thinks about his character, the storylines and the WD world. He is sooo into it. I think it's great that he (and I imagine the others) are so into their characters - who they are, the changes they are going through, how the changes in their world are affecting them and their relationships.

I think Rick banished Carol because he saw in Carol what he didn't want to face about the world they are living in - the part that had to do the impossibly difficult things that had to be done for the greater good. I really didn't like the Rick that thought he had the moral imperative to banish Carol without consulting the Council - he wasn't even ON the Council. It wasn't his call. And Carol did the right thing. She was trying to stop a contagion that was turning people INSIDE THE PRISON into walkers. They were going to die and they were infecting people - it was a tough call and she had to make it. Just like with Lizzie - in the post zombie apocalypse, you have to think of the greater good. Shane wasn't going to last either. He was always going to challenge Rick at some point. He fundamentally disagreed with Rick over everything - his family, his leadership, the baby. It was bound to happen eventually. He was a danger not only to Rick, but to the others.

I thought Daryl was a bit disingenuous when he told Rick that he didn't know what they were capable of. He'd seen whathisname's body after they beat him to death for putting the second half of the rabbit in Daryl's bag and trying to call him out for stealing, so he knew that they were capable of extreme violence. I want to know where Beth is - I hope she turns up. She finally came into her own as a character, so it would suck if they pulled a Sophia on her.

October is a loooong way away ....

[maystone]

I can see where Daryl was coming from, though. He was brought up with that kind of casual violence. Remember the story he told Beth about almost getting killed by the meth-head? And the scars on his back from his dad beating the crap out of him? Before he hooked up with Rick, that was what he would consider normal: someone crosses you, you take him down. But these guys weren't just mean; they were depraved. I don't believe Daryl saw that in them until it was too late.

[budclare]

And Carol did the right thing. She was trying to stop a contagion that was turning people INSIDE THE PRISON into walkers.

Carol killed them after they were quarantined, after the damage had already been done. And even if you handwave that away, she still got the girl with the limp and the boy with the recently dislocated shoulder killed for no good reason. They did not need to "pull their own weight" right that minute or in that particular way. They have people more able-bodied than those two who pull their weight in ways other than making supply runs.

Carol panicked, period. She had the lives of two girls roughly Sophia's age dropped in her lap, and she panicked and overreacted at the first sign of trouble. Prior to inheriting the girls, she was making tough but sensible decisions. Her first few decisions afterward were tough but with only a veneer of logic...which is why that kind of panic is so hideously dangerous.

And Rick's banning her would have been unfair...had she cared in the slightest that she caused the deaths of two injured teenagers. I still don't entirely approve because everyone does stupid things when they're panicking; the ideal solution is to keep them out of trouble until you can talk them down. But Rick had no experience with that kind of panic, so he didn't understand what was happening. He could have handled it better, but his solution wasn't completely irrational (despite the fact that he was pissed at the time), unlike killing people in quarantine.

(As an aside, I love the subtlety of what they did with Carol's behavior...but that just throws into sharp relief how shitty the writers are most of the time. Crusading Survivalist Carol didn't bother patching up the holes in their evacuation plan, like establishing rendezvous points, or track down latex gloves, surgical masks, and hand sanitizer so they'd be ready for the inevitable epidemic? (The gloves and, I assume, the hand sanitizer would have expiration dates, but they shouldn't be that far out already.) I guess the writers think she's too badass to solve any problems that don't involve killing someone?)

As for Daryl, he had no way to know they were rapists beyond the ominous implications of "claiming", which I can mostly forgive him missing.

[travestine]

There was no way they were going to survive - they had no drugs that could respond to that kind of sickness, they were clearly getting sicker and they all knew that when people died, they turned. Did Carole act too quickly? Maybe. But Carole made a lot of tough calls that others wouldn't make - like teaching kids to survive instead of reading them happy puppy stories. She wasn't panicking - nothing indicated panic in her behavour. Clearly, whatever the contagion was - it was spreading. She was trying to contain it. What characters are you talking about that she 'got killed'?

Rick still didn't have the right to make that call - he was Farmer Rick at the time - he had no power in the prison. He wasn't on the council. He acted entirely arbitrarily. For all he knew, he was killing Carole just as he thought Carole had killed Karen and David - without consulting anyone. He was no different than she was.

How was Carole responsible for preparing for an entire epidemic on her own? There were still quite a few people (many already coughing and wheezing) in the prison at the time. As I recall, she had quite a bit on her hands, what with cooking for the prison, babysitting all the kids, preparing the 'hospital ward', etc.

Nice rape-apology. Daryl had a pretty good sense how bad they were. No, he didn't know at least one was a rapist, but once they spotted Rick, he knew what they were capable of. BTW, you're pretty quick to forgive the men on this program, but not the women? Just sayin' ...

If you think the writing is so shitty, why are you watching? A lot of us (12 million+ in the States watched the finale) happen to think the writing is mostly pretty spot on.