TWD 2x13 "Beside The Dying Fire" episode discussion... **SPOILERS WITHIN**

[krisvds]

Enjoyable episode as always but not without faults; The 'siege' felt rushed and was devoid of suspense The yee-haw shoot-out, driving bit felt ridiculous. What the hell is up with the characterisation in this series? Most female characters come across as being written by a bunch of teenagers; Lori especially feels like a cold hearted bitch, Andrea is the sexy shooter, Carol is a weak shell of a woman, Michonne runs the risk of being a samourai zombie killer and nothing else,... all very 2D. For every fault there is a great scene as well luckily. Rick's speech at the end was my personal highlight; well written, great acting. And the zombie FX are brilliant as always.

[Neil]

The 'siege' felt rushed and was devoid of suspense Not devoid, but definately less than it could have been! The yee-haw shoot-out, driving bit felt ridiculous. Yep! Why not use the trucks to mow the ghouls down?

[Moon Knight]

Enjoyable episode as always but not without faults; The 'siege' felt rushed and was devoid of suspense The yee-haw shoot-out, driving bit felt ridiculous. What the hell is up with the characterisation in this series? Most female characters come across as being written by a bunch of teenagers; Lori especially feels like a cold hearted bitch, Andrea is the sexy shooter, Carol is a weak shell of a woman, Michonne runs the risk of being a samourai zombie killer and nothing else,... all very 2D. For every fault there is a great scene as well luckily. Rick's speech at the end was my personal highlight; well written, great acting. And the zombie FX are brilliant as always. Yeah, Lori aint the best character in the book but I never really had an issue with her. However, on the show, she is not likeable at all and if she were to die I don't think anyone would care. They need to fix that early in season 3.

[darth los]

In short, one is necessary, the other is not. To have a drama set in a zombie infested world, we need to make the leap of faith of zombies existing. We don't need to give everyone super human shooting abilities I must admit everyone being super crack shots from moving/bouncing vehicles annoyed me a bit! But that's my point exactly. Just because you suspend your disbelief about the dead rising thing it doesn't mean that one can't question anything. It's like "no way should herchel be firing a pump action shotgun 30 times without reloading". The first answer you would get is: " Dude the dead are rising from the grave give it a rest".

[Neil]

It's like "no way should herchel be firing a pump action shotgun 30 times without reloading". Yeh, even I wondered what was going on there too! And I'm a Brit who knows sod all about gun! Seems unnecessarily poor continuity/planning!

[bassman]

Seriously though....it's common. Every action movie has those little flaws. It's like cars having to shift gears even though they're running 80+....

[babomb]

Shows a lack of creative insight on the part of the creative consultants.

[bassman]

Or that its just a tv show and its about twelve-to-thirteen hours worth of footage shot in only three months under harsh conditions?

[Eat Flesh]

Or that its just a tv show and its about twelve-to-thirteen hours worth of footage shot in only three months under harsh conditions? Yeah exactly. They could have shown Hershel reloading more but there was so much shit going on. I think they did show him filling his pockets with extra shells at one point didn't they? Too bad the final ep could not have been a 90 minute affair. But I also got the feeling they filmed just tons of shit in that siege sequence alone and had to cut that all in. Mezzara mentioned that great shot of the zombies walking away from the flaming barn that was about to collapse was because someone said they think it is about ready to go so they rushed some walkers in there for the shot of it coming down. Great episode and and a few nitpicky things were not enough to tarnish it all for me personally. Amazing second half of the season all around IMO.

[Knighty]

I think at the end of the day you have a finite amount of time in an episode, you either fill that showing someone miss a shot/reload a gun or you show a zombie being hit or similar action shot. It's nothing new from any film or tv show and really when watching anything you have to suspend your disbelief or end up not enjoying things. After all I'm still trying to work out just when Egg from This Life went off to live in America ! Just thought I'd add this interesting interview with Mazzara. Admitting he gave T-Dog a bit of a crap role but is going to make up for it. Beware of comic spoilers inside!! http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/03/19/wa...ra-showrunner/

[shootemindehead]

[IMG]Seriously though....it's common. Every action movie has those little flaws. It's like cars having to shift gears even though they're running 80+.... Those kinds of things are just movie tropes that anyone watching needs to ignore. Like the cops using chalk outlines at a murder scene. Never happens. It's pure TV. I do take issue with characters defying the laws of physics in films though. That does get my goat and it's becoming more and more prevalent with the use of CGI.

[MinionZombie]

I think at the end of the day you have a finite amount of time in an episode, you either fill that showing someone miss a shot/reload a gun or you show a zombie being hit or similar action shot. It's nothing new from any film or tv show and really when watching anything you have to suspend your disbelief or end up not enjoying things. After all I'm still trying to work out just when Egg from This Life went off to live in America ! Just thought I'd add this interesting interview with Mazzara. Admitting he gave T-Dog a bit of a crap role but is going to make up for it. Beware of comic spoilers inside!! http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/03/19/wa...ra-showrunner/ Well said. Time is an expensive commodity in TV and you've got to be as efficient as possible. Showing Hershel constantly reloading would be filler - we know he has to reload, so why do we need to see it every however-many-shells the shotgun can hold? You see him reload after the momentum of that sequence is breaking down a bit, but during the 'infinite ammo' portion it's all chaos all-the-time, so you can't break the flow of the action to show that really. You'd be taking time away from something you need to show, like where one character is in all this chaos and what they're up to, otherwise you'd lose track of where people were, and that's more important to keep a track of than how many shells are in a shotgun. Glad to see they're going to give T-Dog some more to do. He's not a favourite character by any means, but then again he's not really had much to do to earn much interest yet, so I'm glad they're going to give him more stuff to do in the third season. Can't wait to see what Daryl gets up to in the next season, too. Oh boy, methinks he's gonna have some fun!

[Neil]

Well said. Time is an expensive commodity in TV and you've got to be as efficient as possible. Showing Hershel constantly reloading would be filler - we know he has to reload, so why do we need to see it every however-many-shells the shotgun can hold? Because he shoots like twenty odd rounds in a row with zombies never more than about 10-20ft away. If he stopped to reload... he'd be dead... But let's not let common sense or reality get in the way shall we Better the scene is simply reworked to circumvent such nonsense. ie: He brings out 3-4 pre-loaded shotguns and simply works through them. There - Same scene, but with added common sense. Voila!

[Knighty]

Then you have to add in scenes of him preparing the shotguns , explaining they are all loaded, picking each one up after another has gone empty Instead you have him shooting round after round like he's discovered an unlimited ammo cheat and annoy probably 1% of an audience but get to show two zombies having their heads blown off. Everyone's a winner Also to answer a question from earlier in the thread apparently they were not allowed walkers in the house.

[Neil]

Then you have to add in scenes of him preparing the shotguns , explaining they are all loaded, picking each one up after another has gone empty Ummm... Can't agree with that! You see him walking out with a bag of shotguns and dropping them on the ground... Picks one up and begins to shoot... Later, while he's blasting away, and in a NICE INTELLIGENT SEQUENCE, he fires dry so drops the shotgun to the ground, picks another up from the bag and commences shooting again. Now, the suggested alterations there were:- 1) Him walking out with a bag of guns instead of just one. Shall we add 1 extra second for that extra information/sequence? NOTE: This change also suggest the groups have at least done some preparation, and live in some fear. ie: They have bags of pre-prepared weapons etc! 2) Him firing dry, dropping the gun to the ground, leaning down, and picking another up. Shall we add 2 seconds extra for that information/sequence? You need never show another such occurence, unless you want to... So, a couple of seconds to completely rationalise the infinitely shooting shotgun, add some depth to the scene, and more importantly some believability. I'm sure they could have cut one of the ye-haw super shooting from a moving vehicle head shots if those 2-3 seconds were required from elsewhere in the episode!? Now, in all honesty, would you rather see the never ending shotun, or the suggestion above... Honestly? Which adds more realism, depth and interest to the scene(s)? As it stands the sequence(s) comes across a bit cheap and lazy IMHO! All for the sake of a few seconds of screen time and some decent forethought and writing!