It's never not funny when a vehicle stops and a rooftop passenger goes sliding off.

I've yet to find an episode unenjoyable or a slog, but I do wish there'd be less murder and more private consultation. More Alfredo, too. And what happened to the fella Sherlock was sponsoring?

I was listening to a Guillermo Del Toro interview and he was talking about vampires in the Twilight mold. He gave a sort of defense, but qualified it with, 'it doesn't peel my banana'. And it cracked me up, and I use it occasionally for something I don't dislike, but that doesn't work for me.

"If you didn't get or like either one, then you don't know film psychology."

Christian Bale is awful, isn't he? Please say that's not just me. He's like Calculon to life, with his incredible acting TALENT. He clearly commits to his roles, but all I ever see is Christian Bale ACTING.

Yep. I can't make sense of the physics of it.

If the show were happy just being one about zombies eating people at the end of the world, that would be fine. But it isn't. It wants to be more. Sometimes it succeeds, and sometimes it fails, painfully.

As I understand, the show is essentially our world plus zombies. That's the appeal. It's not a free-for-all, anything-goes situation. The characters are expected to behave like humans, the laws of physics we know are expected to hold there.

Well, it's definitely been better. So maybe that's the problem. It is for me.

The thing is, the show very much wants to be more than a 'shoot-em-up' one.

I want the show to either stop trying to be more than it is, or to actually pull it off. It's when it makes for the big stuff and lands a pratfall that's the problem.

As I recall, the Saviours meeting Daryl and co was shown as a post-credits scene at the end of the mid-season finale. It may even have been in an ad break during Talking Dead. Something like that.

The show needs more random, meaningless deaths. They're used to bring narrative and character meaning/satisfaction. The problem is the show aims for an 'life is brutal and anyone could go' realism but never pays that off. There's a lot of death, yeah, but it's always just at the right moment and so fucking meaningful.

Personally, I'm in the same boat as the reviewer.

Fingers crossed for "we did what we could to save him. I'm afraid to do so I had to cut his hair into a less stupid arrangement, because it's not fair for Chandler Riggs to have to walk around with that hideous 'do between seasons".

It's a structured, fictional world. It's not an unedited livestream from walker world.

What a lovely show.

I never quite caught with his music in a big way, though I had a penpal back in high school who was a huge Bowie fan, and she made me two brilliant D90 mixtapes of his stuff that wove into the soundtrack of my life for some important years. I might have a rummage in the cupboard, see if I can find them and my old…

I agree. I think 'good writing' in dialogue is taken to be something that makes a good quote. That which character is saying it isn't important. That it's about the quip or the 'meaningful' line rather than serving the character or story.

I like to think Pizzolatto will consider the criticism, think 'fuck it' and for the third season go full lit prof. A season of True Detective that features no investigative authority and has only a tangential connection to an actual crime, mentioned in mumbled passing.