That's part of what I'm talking about,
Everywhere you see signs of prior (now deserted) human holdout positions, you see three things. 1) A few dead soldiers. (Reasonable, the other dead ones got up and wandered away), 2) Sandbag machine-gun/grenade launcher emplacements around previously defended buildings and TANKS, 3) A LIGHT scattering of now-terminated zombies which were cut down during their off-screen approach of the defensive position.
When you put it all together, something just doesn't click. I mean, I'm TOTALLY OK WITH the idea the military (especially with units scattered thinly all over), could get overrun. Especially by the density of zombies that say, Rick ran into on horseback, or that were trying to break into the department store.
What I DON'T get is Darabont essentially saying "U.S combat troops are incapable of taking more than twice their number of slow, mindless, shambling and PREDICTABLE ghouls down before being overrun." I mean c'mon, they had TANKS. They could've just RUN THE DAMNED THINGS OVER. It's not like the zombies are gonna jump out of the way! And again, things like TWD and WWZ *really* underestimate the hideous power of high-caliber automatic weapons at close-range on the human body. There would be at least some corpses in PIECES. NOT maybe 3-5 unable-to-walk Walkers as depicted in all 6 episodes (and 2-3 of those during the Guts episode.)
I don't think it serves ANY collapse-of-society storyline justice when the police/military are depicted as easily-swept-aside straw tigers. I dilutes the "punch" of the impression "It just didn't matter how hard we fought, they took us down and ripped civilization apart while we watched, helpless no matter what lengths we went to."
That's just a general pet peeve though. Like I said before, other than wishing that Jenner's body language and tone had done a better job of being in synch with the absolute certainty-of-despair and hopelessness his words communicated. Some might say "He'd made his decision, and was at peace with what was about to happen." However, if it had just been him I could go with that really well. Yet, here he is, being engaged by people who, despite knowing what the outside world is like far better than HE DOES, still want very much to live and continue fighting to stay alive. We see him attempting to persuade them that they're just holding onto false hope, and it would be better if they just accepted the end, like he had. I just didn't see that ardent certainty in the man, as he talked about the futility of going on. The words were chilling in their content, so the scriptwriting was dead on. This is SQUARELY a criticism of the actor who portrayed Jenner, and HIS inability to lend a completely true-to-life feel to the great material written for his character.
Sentence by sentence, I loved Jenner and Rick's back and forth debate of Hope Vs. Hopelessness, with both convinced they are the one absolutely right. That was great. I felt that his dialog in TS-19 was some of Lincoln's best in the entire series to date, and really showed the wisdom in tapping him to portray such a pivotal character. Despite (or maybe because of) Rick's oft-maddening idealism and rigid do-rightness, the character has been one of my absolute favorite main protagonists in a zombie story, in any media. Right up there with "Adam" from Dunwoody's Empire. (That's a book series I'd LOVE to see make its way into a TV format, BTW.)
Had Jenner turned in an equally powerful performance while playing opposite Rick, it would've done a lot for the scene. Especially in light of the forcibly-locking-group-in plot device, and the sudden decision to commit suicide by the (admittedly superfluous) black woman. The Andrea/Dale exchange/back-and-forth felt much more lifelike than the African-American woman's sudden "I'm staying. Don't want to end up like Amy & the others"...., and I give due props to the actress and actor playing Andrea and Dale. Was REALLY one of Dale's best scenes, even if it was a plot-device I've seen multiple times elsewhere. Was done well, that's all that counts.
Really feel, after careful consideration, that Season 1 ended as strongly as it could, and both left the door flung wide for the plot to go anywhere in Season 2, and didn't leave us hanging for a year with our protagonists in dire/immediate jeopardy.
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Originally Posted by DjfunkmasterG
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