The Last Man on Earth is very stupid and annoying, but somehow I can't stop watching. I guess it's a lot like the TV we grew up with.
Posted on 04/12/2016 3:13:48 AM PDT by raybbr
One of the things about writing a book about zombies is that it becomes kind of necessary to keep up on the genre. In the five years since “Theories of International Politics and Zombies” came out, this wasn’t too much of a burden: Read the occasional prestige zombie novel, watch the occasional bastardized film version of a zombie novel and watch “The Walking Dead” on AMC.
As that show’s ratings have exploded, however, there has been the inevitable proliferation of spin-offs and homages, including AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead” and the CW’s “iZombie.” And, well, it’s getting a little more taxing to keep up on it all.
Fortunately, I think I’ve discovered a significant zombie life hack to cope with these rising demands: Stop watching the “Walking Dead” franchise.
The problem is not that either “The Walking Dead” (TWD) or “Fear the Walking Dead” (FtWD) is entirely without merit. The former has produced some interesting characters, particularly Melissa McBride’s Carol. The latter also has some talented actors, particularly Kim Dickens, Ruben Blades and Colman Domingo.
The problem with these shows is that they seem unable to escape a single, unrelenting theme: The post-apocalyptic world is a Hobbesian nightmare that forces surviving humans to evolve into nihilistic killing machines.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
No, you have to KEEP killing the right people. You preserve the society you've built by eliminating the threats to that society. It started as the zombies. Then it was the Terminites. Then it was the Goobner. Now it's Negan. It will always be somebody.
But you don't have to agonize over it every freaking episode!
Okay. Can you explain the balloon goes up thing to me? That military commercial with the red balloon always drives me to distraction because I know they always use things right out of our consciousness level to market to everyone.
I like your be Carol advice. Will definitely do that. What is a trench knife? Is it the jagged multi blade that makes a wound that won’t close?
Yeah, I agree Billions is awesome. Did you like Damien’s character in the showtime series Homeland? It was terrific. I love to hate him on Billions. But I hate the Attorney General too. Such a good show.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but when did it ever become necessary for such intelligent, ostensibly well-educated people to drop so many f-bombs?
They should merge the Marvel shows with the Vampire franchise.
All the way down till it's just you, right? LOL
At some point you have to look in the mirror though. That’s a big part of what happened this season. Alexandria gave them a chance to rest, and reflect. And during that reflection a lot of them thought “damn I’ve killed a lot of people, and I’m not 100% convinced every single kill was necessary”. That’s where the doubts came in, because if you’re going to build a society you don’t want it’s foundation to be moral rot. Remember when the prison was stable and they developed the 3 questions:
how many zombies have you killed
how many people have you killed
why
They started asking themselves why, because good people do that. And they started not liking the answers. Except for Rick, Rick’s gotten a little severe, volunteering to take out Negan with ZERO information (didn’t know where they were, who they were, how strong they were, why they were doing these things, IF they’d actually done these things). Which is part of this build up, at this point there’s no functional difference between Rick and Negan, they’ve both decided they’re strength is killing and they’re both willing to kill to get half your stuff.
And yeah, you kind of have to agonize over it every episode. Because that’s what morally healthy people forced to kill do. They don’t like it, it bothers them.
Part of what you’re missing is what he show is actually about. The show was NEVER about zombies. It was always about people. What do people do to survive this situation, and how does it affect them, and then how do they deal with those repercussion, and how does THAT affect them, etc etc. The comic, and the show, is about repercussions. And yes, there will always be somebody, because out here in reality there IS always somebody, but how you DEAL with that somebody declares who you are as a society and what your situation is. We didn’t deal with the British the same way in 1812 we did in 1776, because we’d changed as a society. WWII was fought differently than WWI, change. There’s 4 distinctive eras to Viet Nam because we were a different people.
PROBABLE SPOILERS (because who knows how closely they’ll follow the books)
In the comics Negan is a serious game changer, because they’re in a different world. In Alexandria our survivors have the largest society they’ve had since the outbreak, with the largest number of serious non-combatants they’ve ever had. This makes them need to deal with Negan differently. Plus they have allies in Hilltop. And a 3rd set of allies we just barely met in the TV show called The Kingdom. But of course they have the lessons learned from dealing with the Governor, they know half measures don’t work. But they also have more people to protect than ever before. And they have allies.
In the books they don’t kill Negan. They take him prisoner. Rick decides that to proceed on the path to civilization they need to get away from all crimes being punished by execution, eventually all societies figure out non-permanent punishment. Also I think Rick realizes just how close to being Negan he came, and that Negan’s pretty smart, so he wants to keep him around both as a reminder and as a confidant. The war with Negan included a multi-year (real world issues shipped year, not internal to the story) stretch with no zombies killing anybody, which only ended because Rick’s strategy for defeating Negan included herding zombies to overrun a couple of Negan’s positions.
Then they have a period of peace. They by and large settle the land between the 4 places (they “resettle” the Saviors area), they even start having commerce by boat with other places. Then a new and really twisted enemy shows up. And now (like really now, a couple issues ago) Rick has realized that while they are by and large at peace, there’s always somebody (because, there’s always somebody, remember when we thought the end of the Cold War meant we had no more enemies) and while this mild patrol thing might work sometimes over the long haul they still need a fighting force, a dedicated fighting force. So now they’re mustering up a standing military.
END PROBABLE SPOILERS
It’s an evolving story. But it’s about people. Not zombies. Zombies are just the stressor that caused the first couple of decision, and after that they’re just background situation. Like putting the story in the desert, or on the moon.
Season 2 was filmed on “the Farm” because AMC made a financial decision to pour money into “Mad Men” then “TWD”. That irritated a lot of viewers because the show characters were just kind of going through the motions.
During that time frame AMC realized that they were losing a ton of money they shifted focus and now TWD is big budget. It has developed into a Man vs. Man show and the zombies are only there to keep everyone on their toes.
A trench knife is brass knuckles with a blade, I do believe.
In the Air Force, the saying “the balloon goes up” was used in place of “if the shit hits the fan” or something similar. I always took the “balloon” to be a nuke fireball but instead it traces back to World War One.
When enemy observation balloons went up, it usually signalled imminent enemy artillery and subsequent attack. In the Second World War, barrage balloons were hoisted to ward off dive bombers, who feared damage from the steel cables attached to the balloons.
Bottom line ... nothing good happens when the balloon goes up.
Second, the Rickites -- and all the other survivors -- need to stop sitting on their hands waiting for the zombies. They need to mount a systematic offensive against them and eliminate them completely. Set a goal of 1,000 a day and slowly clean the planet of them.
Third, start making your settlement self-sufficient, so that instead of having to scrounge for leftover supplies, you can build, create, or grow your own.
Then, once you have your own needs met, start putting out feelers for other settlements who might want to trade. If they seem aggressive, infiltrate, recon them, and if they can't be trusted, make plans to wipe them out. Or at least anticipate that they are planning the same fate for you.
But I for one do not want to watch episode after episode of Morgan yammering his Taoist blather or Carol sniveling because she can no longer kill to protect the people she loves.
The Rickites keep getting surprised by these predators because they're careless. They should know every blade of grass and every breathing human being within a hundred miles of their settlement. If they're friendlies, they should be invited in and incorporated into the group. If they're hostiles, they should be destroyed when it's safest to do so.
First - people need food, shelter, medicine and lots of other stuff. So working on the defenses has to be one of many projects. Also there’s no such thing as impenetrable, just ask the French. And of course all the projects includes people leaving the compound, which means they’re vulnerable then, so even if you get “impenetrable” for the compound the group is still vulnerable.
Second - the zombies aren’t that big a threat. There’s a whole host of better uses for their time, energy and ammunition than the zombies. One of my favorite Negan moments in the comics was when he came up to Alexandria to collect his tribute and found them shooting zombies. He was incredulous that they waste ammo on the dead, he said the dead aren’t a big enough threat for that, save the ammo for the real danger, people.
Third - you can’t put self sufficiency third. Your first and second require calories to be burned. Remember that’s part of why they took the trip to Hilltop, Alexandria was starving to death.
How in the hell are they supposed to know every blade of grass within 100 miles?! Here we have proof that you’re just basically talking out of your ass. You want them to know every blade of grass in an areas that’s 31 THOUSAND square miles ( https://www.google.com/search?q=area+of+circle+with+100+mile+radius&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 ), in a world that’s mostly traveled on foot, with no radios, no air coverage, and all with less than 50 people?! Really, think it through. Basically your entire post is a festival of “sounds bold and exciting, couldn’t possibly work in the real world”... basically you’re making election promises.
Well, no. Six seasons is a long time. You're lucky if anything on TV survives that long and is as good as TWD still is.
It's just a TV show -- entertainment of a sort -- and it still works as something to pass the time. If you expect more than that from the show, naturally, you'll be disappointed.
I gotta say, though, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's speech went on way, way too long.
Meh. I have to wonder how a stupid comedy show like The Last Man on Earth could scoop the whole post-apocalyptic genre by pointing out that gasoline decays or degrades over time, so all the Road Warrior type fantasies are just ... fantasies.
Yes, I was exaggerating when I said every blade of grass in 100 miles. My point -- hyperbolically made -- was that they needed to be situationally aware well beyond their walls. That way they can't be surprised, not only by attacks on their compound but ambushes when they're out on "missions."
Nobody said they had to waste ammunition on the dead. They have non-combustible methods for dispatching the walkers. With 50 people, they could each take out 20 a days and clear 1,000 from the vicinity. That eliminates one threat to the compound.
And yes, they'll have to eat while they're building their defenses, so not every resource will be devoted exclusively to defense. But it has to be Priority 1. It doesn't do any good to be well fed if you're dead.
I didn't say "impenetrable." I said VIRTUALLY impenetrable. The idea is to make penetration of the compound so costly any aggressor will consider other options.
As to the vulnerability of the outside missions, that can be reduced by recon and eliminating the walkers. If you have a good idea who's in your area and what their intentions are, you can either avoid them, defend against them, or eliminate them.
I frankly don't care if the whole stinking compound gets overrun by zombies with bad breath. I'm so sick of Rick and his band of boo-hoos that I'm cheering for Negan.
Duly noted and thanks.
It’s fiction, but they still need to stay smart and have some reflection of reality. And in this case reflection of reality provides a source of drama.
When you get down to it they’re in a 4X video game, “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate”, and as any veteran of those video games knows when you have more needs than ability to get those needs when you start. The old joke is there’s 8 things you absolutely positively have to get done in the first 10 minutes of the game and it’s not possible to get more than 3 of them. So you have to leap frog. Would they like to get the walls better? Sure. But they need food. Would they like to explore further? Sure. But you need to improve the wall.
I you’ve got your 50 people wandering around killing 20 zombies a day who’s building that wall? How are they getting food? That’s extra important since you’re making them burn calories wandering around hacking zombies? And because zombies move around you never really eliminate the threat. They’re in suburban DC, with a pre-zompoc area population of a little over 9 million people, even killing 1000 a day it’ll still take 24 years to kill all those zombies.
Priority 1 always has to be food. If you have the best defenses and no food you die and leave a really nice compound for the next band of survivors, maybe they’ll write nice things on your tombstones.
Of course the easiest “other option” is siege. You’ve gotta leave the compound eventually. That’s what Negan’s crew does to Hilltop, they started with great defenses, but eventually some of them go out, and Negan captures them.
Here again, how are you going to have all that recon? Especially when you’re reduced to basically 19th century technology. Sure somebody reconnoitered that area yesterday, but with no form of surveillance cameras or aerial views you’ve got no idea what happened after your folks left. And you never know who’s just beyond your reconnoiter. Another lesson from the 4X gaming world, what’s in the dark part of the map (unexplored) and what have they done to the grey part of the map (explored but none of your people there currently) while you’re busy elsewhere.
All your complaints are the conundrums that Sid Meier built a legend (and entire genre of gaming) out of. Tiny resource management is a conundrum where you are stuck ALWAYS making the wrong move and just hoping you get a chance to fix it before it bites you.
I know. I think it goes to people being dumbed down with a worthless vocabulary.
What do you think about ol’ Skidmark’s new look?
The Last Man on Earth is very stupid and annoying, but somehow I can't stop watching. I guess it's a lot like the TV we grew up with.
I love it. And I’d spend half a season looking like a fool to get into Melissa’s bed. ;) Dang that Todd.
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