Thursday, October 6, 2016

walking dumbasses 1 of 2


WALKING DUMBASSES

I wouldn’t say that I love the cable TV show “The Walking Dead” beyond measure.  It surely is one of the better ones out there, not that you are really presented with that high of a bar to leap, and one of the few I’d pay good money to watch.  You can’t say it is the best post-apocalypse show out there, as I do believe it is the ONLY show, ever, to survive the bean counter ax and thrive.  It surely gives an audience enough of a target every episode.  If you are one of those people who hate shows you have to yell at ( “yo, naked white chick, there’s a guy with a hockey mask and a spear out there!” or “the haunted house is telling you to Get Out!  So, Get Out!” ) then The Walking Dead surely chaps your ass nearly all the time.  I find myself constantly yelling at the characters.  The last season, they have a rocket propelled grenade, a tube and I believe three reloads.  The first time, Greasy Biker Dude ( and that is another thing.  You are living in a semi-civilized outpost, and you never shave?  Never apply soap to your head?  Never get a haircut?  ) uses a round to wipe out a squad of enemy bikers.  Cool.  Then, he uses one to ignite gasoline atop a pond ( to lure zombies in ).  WAAHAT???  You just wasted an RPG on lighting a pool of gas?  How about using it to stop an armored attack next time?  Why didn’t you run a trail of gas up to your position and light it with a match?  What a hump-tard!

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I mean, I don’t even think an RPG would detonate hitting water ( not that I’m positive.  But if I only had two rounds left I wouldn’t use 50% of my supply and take the chance it doesn’t go off ).  I can understand it was far more “cool” that way.  Just like nobody wants to watch a show where nobody talks while on patrol, so for “TV action and excitement” you add these little impossibilities.  I get that.  But other times?  Like in the beginning of the show, when they were living in tents.  Okay, I get you are suburbanites rudely thrust out into the woods.  You have your wives.  Bitches are NOT going to sleep with the bugs.  So you live out of tents.  Then, after a piss poor job of guard duty, the zombies attack.  And nobody can get out of their tents in time and a lot of people get eaten.  You can’t see your surroundings ( although it was odd nobody heard the moaning ).  And how is knifing a skull supposed to be that easy?  At first it was just the gooey soft zombies but now it is just-dead-head-shot-them-before-they-zombify-still-hard-bone-humans.

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There are a TON of these dumbass moments ( hence the mocking title of this article ).  If I listed them as they occurred as I’ve watched the show over the years I could probably write a solid weeks worth of articles on this subject.  Alas, I tried re-watching from the beginning and there hasn’t been enough time gone by ( I didn’t start watching until the third or forth season, buying the DVD’s and binge watching.  Now I binge watch every fall when the new season comes to Netflix ) and I’m too bored to research for an article series.  That is another thing a lot of folks complain about-not much happens over the course of each show.  Well, that should be considered a good thing.  As this is TV, if they spent too much on each show they would stop producing it as soon as ratings took the smallest dip.  Remember “Miami Vice”?  At the time, a million an episode was considered scandalous and the show was canceled soon after.  Less action, more dialog and less elaborate sets and you have a longer running series.

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I personally like the focus on characters rather than action.  I prefer my books that way, also.  And that is why I think the show does so well.  We invest our interest in characters far better than a repeated formula plot ( not that there is much plot here-another new evil dude threatens the group, the group perseveres and overcomes while dodging zombies ).  Don’t get me wrong, most of the characters are REALLY friggin annoying.  Rick’s son, STILL a whiney little hump who needs a damn haircut ( looking at the sullen runt, you can understand how parents felt in the ‘60’s when long hair became fashionable ).  Rick, who is WAY too much of a navel gazer.  The older gal, who osculates between a ninja Zena or a high maintenance princess.  The oriental guy who looks like a lost puppy in-between combat missions.  Okay, I get the premise.  The women viewers probably want their men to be billy badass warriors, AND a modern sensitive partner who shares his feelings.  A lot of the dialog is by necessity going to have to be about their mental conditions.  You can’t go for hours talking about the weather.  

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Accounting for all this, the show is still something I look forward to each year.  It is the closest we come to a taste of the aftermath.  And I have to say, I REALLY liked how the last season ended.  For once, being a dumbass was punished.  I had an actually glow of happiness about me an hour after the last episode was viewed.  Thank goodness, a comeuppance at last!  The show finally acknowledges ( I have no exposure to the original graphic novels the show is based on and have no idea how the two compare ) that there is always someone out there smarter than you, bigger and bad-er than you.  It shows how being a dumbass will get people killed-FINALLY!  We’ll discuss this further tomorrow.

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17 comments:

  1. That Jericho series had a very good premise, but season 1 was plagued with this. They had too much touchy-feely stuff and people kept using their cars fro everything even though a nuclear "war" just happened. They did this because of their audiences: something had to happen all the time, and it has to please women.

    (Season 2 was very well made given it had the massive balls of addressing real political issues, sort of "what would happen if the US military was doing what it did in Irak to its own country", replete with KBR-style corporation profiteering etc.) (of course, once upon a time there were Carpetbaggers in the South, but yeah, it's far away in the past for audiences to understand).

    It seems like nowadays the remote is in the Missus' hand, and if there is not enough womany stuff, she switches straight back to Oprah.

    Ah, where went those gloden years where you could watch straight WW2 movies from the 50's and 60's (especially british ones) with women either completely absent, just barely mentionned or just standing in the way, and lots of dramatic music and action scenes ?

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    1. I had an issue with the end of Jericho, as it was a complete Rawlesian recovery. Riiiight!

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  2. “You just wasted an RPG on lighting a pool of gas?  How about using it to stop an armored attack next time?  Why didn’t you run a trail of gas up to your position and light it with a match?  What a hump-tard!”


    Yeah, it's kind of like they're not even suffering from any sort of resource depletions. Reminds me of what I heard about the latest Mad Max movie (Minion that refuses to see it here). Many years into a hard collapse, and they have more exotic guns and ammo than they did a few years into it? Also, institutional philosophies that can only survive under the framework of huge government, in the form of more feminist heroines than you can shake a lesbians tongue at.

    But it's as you say James, if it were based in actual realism, no one would watch it. It's like these reality survival shows, that are completely scripted and set up. They're kind of fun to watch I suppose, but what ruined them for me was when the one jackass (Dual survival) lit the only lifeboat match that that they had to check the cave they wanted to shelter in for C02, and verified that it didn't when it didn't burn out? Hello! McFly! The frigging things are treated with potassium chlorate so that they will burn in a low oxygen environment, so you just wasted a precious match dumbass! And this was a so called “survival expert” that was teamed up with a special forces guy, that certainly should have known better. I think that these shows rely on a certain level of stupidity from their viewing audience in order to work. Not too much of a challenge for writers writing for today's audiences.

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    1. The last Mad Max was like Terminator 4-strictly action, no PostApoc whatsoever. It was better than most of the last few Die Hard's, however ( Girl Power idiocy excepted of course ).

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  3. OK, that did it. I'm getting it. From amazon, the first series.

    I've heard about it from a couple people but the name has always turned me off - sounds plain goofy. And zombies? Please. Thing is, your post hit me at the right time, we're in a weak place over here.

    We shit canned the dish about 4 years ago and now have only OTA (over the air) which is terrible lousy most of the time, and 4 DVD players (1 is a Sony Blu-Ray with streaming) and we've purchased a number of series over the years that we rotate through. Mostly old stuff. Right now we're waiting for the recently released 12th season of Gunsmoke to drop in price. They divide the season into 2 parts and each part is currently about $32 on amazon and thats pretty steep in my book.

    Our son in FL records the History channel "Vikings" for us and sends us a USB drive with them on it each year but they are few and far between. I highly recommend it for all of the usual reasons - very well done, maybe the best I've ever seen.

    So soon I will add The Walking Dead season 1 to our line up.

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    1. I'm sorry, but I just this week tried to watch Vikings and I couldn't keep going. Taking the wife on a raid? I don't buy it. Nor the complete dictatorship of the duke, with his random executions for minor infractions. Who is going to kill your valuable blacksmith for little reason?

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    2. Swordmaidens, they were real, look it up. But I do agree, the way they were done in Vikings did bother me some. In later episodes that stuff causes them some unnecessary problems.

      I don't recall the killing of the blacksmith.
      Perhaps he dishonored a higherling? Honor was held in very high regard in days of oldt. You respected your betters or you were dead. Remember that the next time you see a young kid crying and arguing successfully with his mother in the grocery store.

      Remember, you have to watch it with historical context, shit was a LOT diff 1400 years ago and what makes sense to you today would not back then, and verse vicea.

      I gotta let you know this part - you're gonna like this.

      I watched the first 3 seasons and something bothered me about it. The show never addressed what I thought was a major issue. The whole aspect of the vikings going to distant shores to steal and kill. The immorality of it. They acted like it was normal. But in todays way of thinking (to me) that's NOT normal.

      Having read every one of your posts in the past +year(s) and you've explained this very thing, from several angles. So I now have a better understanding of the whole *conquest* thing. It's just the way it was, and still is, but today it is hidden better.

      I wish they would have better addressed that aspect in the shows because I think it is pivotal and if you don't already know about it (most people don't) you may find it bothersome.

      So I once again thank you for the education.

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    3. Shield maidans may or may not be real, depending on who you listen to. They seem to be more mythical than historical. The Scandanavian version of Amazons. Ans they were associated with Valkaryes-so one must take it with a grain of salt. At best, I'd guess a few existed, like Joan Of Ark. Episode 1 or 2 of the first season, the blacksmith is killed because he built the anchor for the ship the guys were going to use to sail to the forbidden west. It seems an extreme over reaction-almost like a penalty was needed instead. Blacksmiths were very valuable.

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    4. Ghostsniper, if your internet is decent, get the free months trial of Netflix and watch all the past episodes for free.

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  4. Walking Dead is, as you say, one of the better to watch and have far less to scream about compared to many.

    Some of my pet rants about shows, such as NCIS as well as most cop shows (the spin-offs of NCIS are worse than terrible!), is why the heroes don't shoot out the tires of vehicles coming at them; or vehicles climbing over other vehicles to roll and immediately flame up. Too, as one writer mentioned long ago, he hates watching horror flicks because of their unthinking anti-gun themes. Had either of the heroes or heroines had a single firearm, the vast majority of horror flicks would last no more than five minutes.

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    1. I tried to go back to NCIS on Netflix and couldn't stand it. I suppose it was only great compared to all else on Over The Air.

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    2. I refuse to watch any of that stuff and there seems to be an over abundance of them, all with the same theme:

      bad guys are always retards, and arrogant gov't employees with surly attitudes are always olympic physiqued geniuses and all of their cornicopia of toys purchased with stolen money work perfectly everytime, especially for the plethora of highly skilled wimminz.

      I'm only capable of suspending disbelief so far.

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    3. The only problem with streaming is the binge watching-encourages living in front of the TV. But it sure is nice to be able to afford the more retarded shows-and NO commercials! And, we do need to fill the hours not working which become more and more.

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    4. Binge watching is not all bad Lord Bison. Sometimes a break from life is good. The Ranch is on netflix. Season 2. First season was worthless but entertaining. I havent laughed that hard in years.

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    5. Is The Ranch the one with a Debra Winger who has aged 200 years, thrown off a cliff then had a stick shoved up her ass so as to be a puppet? Terrible show-the laugh track is grinding on my nerves. Perhaps I expected too much. I agree binge watching isn't bad-as long as you don't watch all day. We do it for two hours each night, continuously watching the same show or sets of shows. Sons Of Anarchy was two or three episodes a night, every night until complete.

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    6. One of my favorite NCIS episodes is when the victim is shot, Duckie is doing the autopsy and Gibbs comes in. Ducky says he has no real information from the autopsy, but he suspected the murderer was a hunter because, in Ducky's words, "I could smell the distinct odour of deer scent on the bullet."

      Yah, gimme a break, NCIS. Not worth wasting time on any more. As GS says, there's not much to watch on Off Air broadcasting.

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    7. On NCIS, the thing that sticks in my craw most is the "Gibbs demands miracles and LO, it shall be". One of the worst in ignoring the laws of physics. Perhaps the team can go find unlimited fracking oil.

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