Walking Dead- Season Two (Probably will be spoilers)

[Tyndmyr]

Really the military failing is a conceit that's pretty much required for zombie movies/shows. Otherwise you have no movie/show. Kinda like how faster-than-light travel is mostly required for Sci-fi.

I get the military failing conceit...but like all conceits, you should draw attention away from them, rather than to them, and try to make them sound plausible whenever you need to cover them. So, most start wars with FTL make at least a slight attempt to explain it away via wormholes or hyperspace or whatever. And most people not being physicists, that's good enough to get on with things.

When you see them air striking Atlanta, you're forced to go "hmm, that's quite practical. It should cut down on the zombies quite a lot." It explicitly points out that the military still is operating with notable power after the cities fell, and makes you wonder why that stopped being a thing.

L4D did approach this fairly well. If survivors are selected by random immunity to the zombie virus, well...military/ex military people are .8% of the population. Fairly few survivors will be military. Good, solid explanation.

Walking Dead can't use this one, though. Survivors are apparently survivors due to skill and/or luck and/or available weapons/etc. In such a scenario, the military is composed of people who are very plausible survivors, especially compared to our cast. The question of their absence is one I'd love to see addressed.

This is not someone who is ready to be carrying a scoped rifle. She might have been trying to prove she was useful, yes -- she failed, because while she's a pretty good shot, she's unreliable and didn't even try to determine whether she should fire or not.

And honestly, that last one is the single biggest determinant of if she should be holding a gun. It's the biggest single reason why Rick is nervous about giving untrained people weapons(it's a summary of all the subreasons given so far about possible worries they've expressed). Such a dramatic demonstration that she's not ready to have a gun should lead to taking it from her.

Disobeying orders and endangering others over a need to prove something is a wildly huge warning sign. The ability to hit your target is meaningless if you're engaging the wrong targets.

I mean, if I were in a bad scenario, and someone is exhibiting this wildly erratic behavior with a weapon, I'd be...concerned. I certainly wouldn't be arming her.

*re-watches scene*

Ah, he did have his crossbow dragging. Which is a bit tough to make out and could easily be something caught on the walker. Also, Rick didn't even want Shane and T-dog going out with the melee weapons because Herschel wanted to handle the walkers, and only went out himself after they ignored him. So everyone who's name was not Dale wasn't listening to Rick at that moment. At that point, Rick took a pistol and was ready to shoot Daryl himself.

Yes, as a leader, Rick is not doing great atm.

Regardless, there's no compelling reason why she needs to fire, and a number of fairly good ones why she shouldn't. Anyone exhibiting that kind of notably poor decision making should not be handed a gun.

If anything, I would imagine Daryl would be rather unhappy about being shot. I would hope her continuing to carry a firearm becomes an issue in the next episode.

I also hope they finally wrap up the missing kid thing. Unfortunately, I rather suspect it'll be a lot of arguing over the zombies in the barn, and probably a side order of failing to hide the pregnancy. Probably lots of talking, and very little interaction with actual zombies.

It's a shame. I love zombie stuff, and I really want this to be good(hence the continuing to watch), but I've only got the three chars I empathize with at all(the same three already listed by another poster, unsurprisingly enough), and it just keeps dragging and being so ridiculously dumb...