Well said. It occurs to me to be more fair than I've been and look at the physicality of characters. That got lost in the first half of 4.1 with a few exceptions. Farmer Rick wasn't terribly interesting, but he was physically acting out the character's desire to change. Carl in 4.9, walking ahead of Rick, trying to…

Could not agree less, my friend. You're mistaking the literal endpoint of Season 2 for the culmination of every theme and aspect. It was not.

Yes! And how about that key scene, where Shane at the beginning of 2.4 ends up at Otis' memorial *wearing Otis's clothes*. That was cruel and unusual (but nifty) writing. It helped shove Shane towards the edge. So did a lot of other things, like Lori misguidedly telling Shane she loved him, but that one, with Shane in…

Yeesh. Not to be grotesque, but I'm hard pressed to think that a gang of men mentally ill enough to go cannibal in a world that still has canned goods and animals aplenty is going to cut up and eat an attractive young woman. (That assumes my recollection of the Hunters is accurate.) TWD is dark, but largely along the…

"That said, I agree. Some characters are pretty one dimensional. They're working on that…How? By having the characters talk and revealing more of their character."

Did they really? Internment was very strong. Scott Walker can act—weren't his first two films Oscar winners? No way that one wasn't better than this (and I enjoyed 4.13 quite a bit. I was relieved as much as anything that I didn't groan much during the ep. Like 4.12 the cold open was very solid, but 4.13 sustained my…

And use stones for bashing, and doorknobs, apparently. I think the show really should have decided on what they can and can't do early, and stuck with it. Making them primitive tool users makes for a much more interesting show.

Fair enough. To each their own. I'm happy to suspend my disbelief, and I do get that in the 'real' ZA we'd end up with survivors barricaded somewhere food is manufactured, living on beef stew, and that would be pretty much that. I've just found the errors in 4.9-4.12 too gross to let me continue to usefully suspend…

Huh. Good question. I don't think so. I think you guarantee your mainstays x dollars per season regardless. I suppose if you know you're having andrew lincoln in 13 and not 16 eps, and can shoot him in 10 weeks instead of 13 that might affect how you negotiate his salary with his agent, but I don't think prior to…

And the lovely stench of many rotting corpses.

There are a ton of complaints on Nerds of Color. It was over Michonne as the stereotypical angry black woman last season; this season they describe her as shucking and jiving as in 'what does she have to smile about'. There's not much recognition that ALL characters in TWD except perhaps Rick, Lori, and Shane, are…

I wasn't impressed by his acting before, but the actor is growing on me.

I'm guessing not. I mean, this is the net and I'm sure the comics-as-bible people are out there, but I have yet to hear anyone comment other than they find it interesting that the show is deviating from the comics. I think most find even the more extreme departures welcome.

So you opened it, at least?

I think the implication was because he'd lost his stuff, not because he'd gone all Jeffy Dahmer on his people.

Bah, humbug. You're all wrong and have handily proven my point. The Gov saw them entirely in their capacity to cause damage. The bar group saw them in mocking, derisive terms. It means something. Why gloss over it? It's called worldbuilding for good reason.

Mad Men paid a cool quarter of a million to play *one* song off of Rubber Soul. That was the budget for a season 2 ep of Walking Dead.

Not many—that's for sure.

I dunno. I'm not sure Bob Odenkirk is more than a very good supporting player. If he doesn't start to vary his line delivery the show's going to get old very quickly.

*Any*thing would be an improvement. Gimpel can actually write (Clear, 18 Miles Out), so a lot of the crap of this season is probably attributable to Kirkman's heavy hand, or to Gimpel realizing the Peter Principle by being promoted past his level of competence.