Sadly, I must inform my 3.5 readers there will be no Walking Dead Wrap-Up tonight. The Yeti has once again infiltrated my high tech Bookshelf Battle compound and I must now square off against him in a best 2 out of 3 roundhouse kick competition.
I blame Bookshelf Battle Dog. He’s a lousy security chief. Then again, I get what I pay for.
Bookshelf Q. Battle Dog, Head of Bookshelf Battle Compound Security
Grrr…argh…spoilers!!!
Daryl vs. Zombie
Rick shaved his beard off! Carol’s sporting a sweater and baking casseroles! And the gang have their own mansions!
The group’s been beaten down for awhile now. They’ve gone from one bad settlement to another, facing the likes of Woodbury (where they squared off with the Governor) and Terminus (and almost got eaten by the cannibals).
Deanna the Congresswoman runs the settlement. The place has been up and running since the beginning o the zombie outbreak. In other words, the people are pretty soft. They’ve had heat, electricity, all the trappings of civilization.
They’ve had to do very little fending for themselves and it shows. Rick and the group are skeptical and wary, though it generally seems like the townsfolk are trustworthy.
Still, there are problems. Deanna’s son Aidan claims to be the big tough guy but makes rookie mistakes. He keeps a walker hanging on a tree so he can torture it once in awhile as retribution for killing his friends. Glenn and Tara are aghast. As veteran zombie fighters, they realize it just doesn’t make sense to hold a grudge against a zombie. Kill it to keep it from being a threat and that’s it. The thing doesn’t know what it is doing so you’re only putting yourself at risk by keeping it alive and torturing it.
The viewer is left with the feeling that the town should be more afraid of Rick than anything. Rick shaves his beard and puts on a fresh police officer’s uniform. Eerily at the end, he tells the group that if life in the town doesn’t work, then they’ll just “take over” the town.
Is Rick slowly becoming a bad guy or is he just keenly aware that possible threats are everywhere?
By the way, I hope you like the latest battle on my bookshelf – Daryl vs. a Zombie!
GRRR…ARRRGH…SPOILERS!
“We are the Walking Dead.”
Was Rick’s statement in the barn tonight just a random thought or did it hold greater meaning for the show?
Rick shooting the crap out of zombies on my bookshelf. Keep it down, guys. I’m trying to take a nap.
We all thought “the Walking Dead” referred to the zombies – does it actually refer to the human survivors?
MIND=BLOWN!
Other thoughts:
What did I miss? Discuss!
128 visitors, highest I’ve ever received – this morning alone and the day’s barely started.
Did someone put me on reddit? If so, thank you. I’ll have to look into reddit more.
I guess I should have Rick shoot zombies on my bookshelf more often.
Grr. Argh. Spoilers. Brains.
Sooo, first surprising thing, after five years of wandering through Georgia, they’re suddenly in Virginia now. Oh well. That’s a change of pace anyway.
Most of the episode centered around Tyrese hallucinating after being bitten. And then that nasty scene where Michonne hacks off the infected limb with her samurai sword. This was basically Tyrese’s character building episode. And it almost looked like he was going to make it.
The gang decides to head for Washington, DC.
And what was up with all those zombie torsos in that truck?
Well, who else in Rick’s crew do you want to see on the bookshelf? Michonne? Glenn? Maggie? The Governor? Eugene? Abraham? Abraham beating up Eugene?
And who’s ready for Better Call Saul?
Well, this is getting ridiculous. As my 3.5 regular readers are aware, the theme of this blog is an ongoing “Bookshelf Battle.” I have limited shelf space. Books want it. They fight. And they send soldiers, robots, assassins, ninjas, or whatever to attack each other. Battles are constantly being waged on my bookshelf, and frankly, all the racket is keeping me up at night. So imagine my surprise when I woke up in the middle of the night last night to find none other than Sheriff Rick Grimes blasting away on zombies with his big ole revolver. Conveniently in time for tonight’s midseason premiere! I snapped a few photos of the action. You tell me which one you like the best.
Vote for #1 – Rick blasting one solo walker.
Option 2 – Rick, more zombies, and Merle, who may or may not be a zombie.
Option 3 – Merle on opposite side with zombies
Option 4 – Rick, zombie, random crawling walker
GRR! ARGH! SPOILERS AHEAD! BRAINS!
It was an all Daryl and Carol episode tonight on The Walking Dead. The Bookshelf Battler’s Observations:
1) A lot of flashbacks and shifts around in time. A bit confusing but I figured it out.
2) That van never would have landed like that but I’m glad Daryl and Carol are ok.
3) Did the hospital people hit Carol on purpose? Did she get hit on purpose to find Beth?
4) Why were all those zombies just hanging out in sleeping bags?
5) These people have been walking around for years. Why haven’t they made it out of Georgia yet?
Did you watch tonight’s episode? Do you have any random comments or questions? Feel free to share!
WARNING: GRRR! ARGH! SPOILERS!! BRAINS!
We didn’t get to see what is going on with Carol at the hospital but a major plot bomb was dropped tonight – we learned that Eugene was in fact, full of crap. He was a mullet wearing doofus in shorts who claimed to be on a mission to get to Washington, D.C. to use his scientific mind to bring about a cure to the zombie apocalypse. There was an ongoing question of – is he lying? Is he for real? Does he have a zombie cure? Is he full of crap?
Turns out he was full of crap and ended up getting a severe beat-down by Abraham, so much so that it pretty much looks like he’s dead but we’ll have to find out next week.
We learned more about Abraham’s character – that he lost his family and was about to give it all up when Eugene recruited him for his fake mission (i.e. claiming to be a scientist that needed to get to DC but in reality was just a coward conning people into taking him to DC because he thought that would be the safest location).
It has been a pretty captivating season of The Walking Dead – what thoughts do you have on this zombie-tastic series?
After a hiatus, Beth returned to tonight’s Walking Dead with an all Beth episode.
WARNING – GRR ARGH ZOMBIE SPOILERS AHEAD
Beth wakes up in a hospital in Atlanta. To borrow Talking Dead’s term, she’s been “save-napped.” A hospital operated by police officers and one remaining doctor (he conspires to get another doctor killed for his own job security, so to speak) have saved her but now they expect her to work in indentured servitude until she works off her debt. In other words – there is no safe refuge in the Walking Dead. Woodbury, Terminus, now the Hospital – they’re all run by someone evil and they all abuse their subjects.
Guinea pigs for dinner, a pervert police officer gets his come-uppance, Beth and a fellow captive, Noah (played by that kid from Everybody Hates Chris) make an escape attempt but Beth gets caught.
At the very end of the episode, Carol is admitted as a patient. The history of the show tells us that Carol won’t put up with this crap.
What’s next for The Walking Dead? Bookshelfbattle.com will be discussing the show every Sunday night and check out my Walking Dead Tweets by following @bookshelfbattle
In conclusion, GRR! ARGH! BRAINS!
I love The Walking Dead. If anything else, the show is a weekly one-hour series that gives us the mental challenge to consider how we could live in a world of nothing, scavenging up the basics of survival from the lost, forgotten world all around us. If you think life sucks when your iPhone dies and there’s not a charger in sight, then you won’t last long in Sherriff Rick’s group.
I did worry that maybe it showed signs of “jumping the shark” last week when Carol covered herself with Zombie guts and walked amongst the zombies undetected. I mean, honestly, if outfoxing the zombies is that easy then why hasn’t everyone just been walking around wearing zombie guts all the time? (Besides the obvious hygienic reasons, of course).
The Zombie Genre has rivaled the Vampire Genre in recent years, and yet it has always been a bit problematic. The main crticism of every zombie movie? They are all pretty much the same. Zombie outbreak occurs. Group of survivors ban together. Zombies walk around slowly and sluggishly, grunting “Errgh!” and “Argh!” Survivors must brave their way to some location where they believe they will be safe. Along the way, some member of the group is bitten by a zombie. The bite victim’s close friend and/or relative faces the painful choice of either shooting the zombie bite victim, thus putting him out of his misery and saving the group from the bites that will be forthcoming if he turns, or letting the bite victim stay as is, in hopes that some type of cure is around the corner.
Thus, in a genre where it is all pretty much the same thing, it is impressive that a comic book series and a subsequent TV show has been able to catch the public’s interest for so long. Yes, there is a lot of the “Erghs!” and “Arghs!” but there is also an attempt to look at what the world would become during a zombie outbreak:
1) People Building Communities – There probably would be a lot of people like the Governor who would go from being an avergage schlump to starting his own civilization. And undoubtedly, they would probably become power hungry and mad.
2) Scavenging – Searching through abandoned homes and stores for leftovers would become the modern equivalent of foraging. Only problem is once all the processed food runs out, people would have to do something crazy like – build a farm, raise crops, tend to farm animals, etc.
3) Bad People Would Take Advantage – Free from the constraints of the law and impending jail time for their misdeeds, there would be a lot of bad people to deal with, as the show illustrates sometimes in too graphic detail.
4) People Will Become Shadows of their Former Selves – Just ask former domesticated Mom turned Samurai Warrior Michonne.
5) Your Family Unit Becomes the People You Randomly Meet – You’ll meet people in need of assistance. If they seem trustworthy, they’re yours. You know have to drag those people around with you until the end of time.
In honor of The Walking Dead, here is a list, in no particular order, of Zombie Books:
1) World War Z by Max Brooks – Probably the preminent zombie novel in recent years, it was turned into a pretty decent horror/action flick starring Brad Pitt. It basically follows one man’s quest to stop a zombie outbreak. Plenty of “Erghs!” and “Arghs!”
2) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith – Never read it, but my understanding is that it basically takes Austen’s original text and then adds in something like – “And then after Mr. Darcy drank his cup of tea, he was attacked by a ravenous zombie!!!” You may know Seth Grahame-Smith from such works as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. My hat goes off to him as he has really managed to make a decent living off of taking historical figures and pitting them against supernatural forces.
3) The Zombie Survival Guide – by Max Brooks –Hilarious parody in which the author takes a fun and twisted look at the various ways one can prepare for a zombie apocalypse and use just about anything as a survival tool.
4) I am Legend – by Richard Matheson – Published in 1954, this classic tale tells of one man’s fight against a world of bloodthirsty creatures. Some may call it a vampire book, others might call it a zombie book. However, Matheson deserves some credit for getting the whole “survive in a world of horrible creatures” genre of the ground.
5) Cell – by Steven King – Ok, so this is not a traditional zombie book, but reviewers rave about it. It was published in 2006. You remember the 2000’s right? For those who have forgot, it was a time when society when from viewing cell phones as luxuries to necessities. (Believe it or not, there was once an age when people would say, “Why the hell would I want to carry a phone with me when I’m out of the house? I’m busy! Whoever wants to talk to me can call me when I get home!) So in other words, King took peoples’ newfound interest in phones and weaved a tale around it. Basically, a computer virus infects cell phones and turns their users into zombie-eqsue rage monsters, not unlike what was seen in 28 Days Later. Kind of a silly plot but the Master of Horror Fiction makes it work.
Did I miss any of your favorite zombie books? Feel free to post them below.
Bookshelf Battle 