The Walking Dead

[Diddly]

Good episode tonight. Didn't quite care for the flashbacks combined with the "live" events but I'll probably like it better on a rewatch.

SO much better than Fear TWD.

[Morgbug]

So who caused the distraction at the end?

Carl's "girlfriend"?

The Wolves?

The son of the dude Rick shot last season?

[Scockery]

Wolves is the easy guess, but it's probably the wrong one, because I'm not sure the Wolves would know what was going on unless they had a spy inside...if they had a spy, they already would've known about Alexandria.

Father Gabriel?
Enid?
CORAL?
Deanna?
The Governor's Ghost?
Madison from Fear the Walking Dead?

I think the whole plan was a bad idea, it may have been the only workable idea...but it was still a bad idea. My idea was to roll rocks down on the dead. Or find some dynamite or something to blow them up. The one semi falling off the dry run day was awfully convenient. But I'm more surprised they got the one semi moving after it's been there for 2 years or something?

Why's Abraham so glum...did Rosita die and we just not see it? No? Because he's got the hottest gal in town...dude needs to cheer up.

[Matt_Fury]

So who caused the distraction at the end?

Carl's "girlfriend"?

The Wolves?

The son of the dude Rick shot last season?

The Wolves was my first thought.  I think they found out about Alexandria towards the end of the season 5 finale IIRC.

[GrandMoffNick]

I really enjoyed the episode. I liked the flashbacks. I hope the horn at the end wasn't some moron from Alexandria dooming the whole town just to retaliate against Rick.

[McMetal]

Now that's what I'm talking about!

I liked the B/W time jumps if for no other reason than the juxtaposition of Rick saying Carter would die no matter what to dude getting his face eaten off.

LOL @ Rick asking Carter "do you know who you're talking to?"

I'm more curious about who taught Morgan to Bo Staff than who honked the horn at the end. I'm sure that was the Wolves since otherwise there was no point to putting those scenes with them from last season in the opening crawl. Or maybe it's just a big misdirect.

I think the only problem with the plan was that eventually they would have to stop the Pied Piper thing and they would all just spread out again.

Great to have it back!

[BillCable]

Seems like it'd be a pretty rough endurance test leading a shambling hoard for 20 miles.  That's like a full day of non-stop driving.

It's amazing just how much better this show is written than Fear was.  Sure, there was the convenient "truck falling while we're watching" thing, but for the most part things made sense.  Real personal motivations.  Real characters.  I think one of the best moments was when Morgan spoke to Carol.  Shows how Morgan isn't blind like the rest of the residents, and Carol caught off-guard.  I think "Aren't you sweet" was code for "I'm gonna have to pop a cap off in your ass at some point."

I agree the plan wasn't the best plan.  They may not have explosives, but they have fire at least.  They also had those frontloaders parked at the place Glenn cleared out.  Those things are impervious to anything flesh-and-blood zombies could do, even in the tens of thousands.  Just go for a joy ride.

[jedipurge]

my idea was to burn em, I mean there has to be some sort of fuel truck packed full of gas that never got delivered. there was time to line up a bunch of cars along the road to coral them surely there was enough time to find a fuel truck or even pump some gas into barrels or something. and u don't have to dump a whole truck load of fuel either, a control burn would've at least disabled them, if not burned their brain,  to the point they couldn't walk around and cause harm. BAD idea too me.

[Matt_Fury]

The only thing worse than having to fight off a horde of thousands of zombies is trying to fight off a horde of thousands of zombies that are on fire.

[Jesse James]

I don't think there's any good solution short of trying to take out the roads they used to get out of the pit...  Obviously you can't shoot them, it's not even a good idea if you THOUGHT you had enough ammo.  You can't seemingly burn them because gas is in short supply as ammo would be (gas doesn't do well over time to boot), and zombies survive fire as we've seen.  Military-grade explosives would be like ammo, a rarity.  Explosives for places like a quarry become unstable if not stored properly, and who even knows how much you'd need.

I think farming equipment and/or some kind of heavy machinery would do well enough...  It should've at least been considered and should be considered even if this problem didn't arise.  Having things like harvesters around would be quite useful.  Heavy duty military trucks even, welded with low-cutting blades would be useful and should be available somewhere nearby I'd think.  Humvees even wouldn't get stuck on the piles like a car did a while back, but surely there's caterpillar dozers around someone could get and use well enough to just mash and destroy a controlled release of them?

Funny all the Fear the Walking Dead hate, when I was just thinking how the people in Rick's town are all about as dumb as the people in Fear The Walking Dead...  Seemed like a pretty interesting parallel.  Lots of ignorance, and bad ideas seem like something no group is immune to, on either show. 

[JediJman]

I finally watched it last night and thought the whole episode was awesome.  "Carter" plays a chump on Once as well, so loved seeing him get his dues towards the end.  I'm not sure what else they could have done with the zombies.  Leaving them there as the hoard grows wasn't ideal, and they can't really kill that many of them off.  I was thinking back to the prison and how they had fencing up to just kill them one at a time, but that would take forever.  The comic eventually has them luring herds off away from civilization, so cool to see that on the show already. 

Obviously they went this way to support the plot, but I think maybe they could have diverted the hoard sooner or immediately got them moving in another direction.  They had a car, so why not just use that horn as the noisemaker instead of all the gunshots and flares?  In fact, why not use the horn to offset that other noisemaker at the end?  They should have just used all that construction equipment to make a big pit and lured them all in there.  I didn't really understand the big rush, but it was all fun and exciting.

As for Morgan and the Bo Staff, that was a really interesting, deliberate question from Rick on who trained him.  I wonder if Morgan is really on his own or scouting for some other group.  This might be how they bring in *SPOILER* Jesus, who could have found and trained Morgan.  Interested in seeing how that one plays out.  As for the horn, my money's on the Wolves.  They made a point of showing that Wolves Are Near sign at the beginning and those guys are obviously well experienced with controlling/redirecting zombies.

[Scockery]

The Big Rush was because the episode required there be one. Just like it required Carter being out there to die.

Chris Hardwick on Talking Dead said "The quarry of trapped Walkers answers what I've wondered, how Alexandria has survived so long"

Yet, Deanna alluded to the fact that area was mostly evacuated early on...less people = less undead. It was already answered.

Another solution to the horde, fire trucks, high pressure hoses...blast them apart. Eugene figured it out last season.

[Jesse James]

The high pressure hose would work if you had enough water, but pumper trucks have only so much and I doubt even Alexandria would have enough water in its systems (assuming they're somehow independent?) to get THAT many blown apart like you'd hope...

I really lean to crushing them with armored-up heavy equipment as the only safe way to go, but I'd not want to be out in a sea of them driving a dozer around myself for sure.  I'd want as many of those things as you could get, going all at once...  They're not terribly hard to drive, wouldn't get stuck, theoretically, if you were able to get them all on a fairly stable surface...  I dunno.  Nothing seems very "good" about any of it.  Zombie herds just blow. 

[Matt_Fury]

Chris Hardwick on Talking Dead said "The quarry of trapped Walkers answers what I've wondered, how Alexandria has survived so long"

Yet, Deanna alluded to the fact that area was mostly evacuated early on...less people = less undead. It was already answered.

I think it's more than that.  Remember when Rick was talking to Morgan how these people have just been living since the Zombie Apocalypse started and that haven't had to survive.  Unlike Woobdury, there hasn't been a lot of Walkers showing up at Alexandria...mainly because they've been getting trapped at the quarry.  Guiding a herd of zombies is what they are doing in the comics, so it made sense to me for them to start doing it in the show at some point.

[Scockery]

Now that they decided it was more than that.
It wasn't a mystery, more ignorance on the part of the Alexandrians.

The people haven't had to survive because only some go on supply runs, which is where people end up dead...seemingly mostly newbies (that's the impression from Deanna's son and his still living buddy). The system insulated most of the inhabitants from the horrors outside.

Now they have Rick. Rick knows who should like and die...like that red backpacker in season 3....Rick knew that guy was a goner.