To respond:
1) Reinforcement of the fence doesn't necessarily equate to "Impregnable Castle." A mountain of junk would've prevented the CURRENT # of Walkers/Current level of Walker-density from breaching the fence, but we've already seen that the largest herd the group has yet seen is in the area. They could easily have done something like this: The fence reinforcement via piling heavy junk more than 2/3 of the way to the top of the fence reinforces the fence sure, but it ALSO makes eliminating Walkers THROUGH the fence far more difficult. This could easily have explained how the Walkers built up to such an extent they breached the fence, accomplishing the writers objective of bringing the fence down, while at the same time preserving a sense of realism that would've cost nothing more than the low men on the set-design totem pole piling up assorted Prison-type junk along the outer fence's inside.
2) The group has already lost one dwelling place they (foolishly, as it turns out) PRESUMED safe, mainly due to the herd wandering nearby being drawn in by the sound of gunshots when the Shane Vs Rick thing went down. So Rick in PARTICULAR has EVERY REASON to seek any and all alternatives that don't involve popping off several hundred rounds in short order. Rick and Carl directly witnessed the almost-immediate repercussions of shooting Shane, and then the Shane-Walker, as Walkers began flooding out of the treeline within SECONDS of the shots.
3) If you've already established that someone who isn't right in the head is attracting Walkers to the fence feeding them live mice/rats, and you've established the Governor's return, there was a preexisting basis for human-based sabotage of the fence. Here's a simple example: They rely on wiring shut the cuts they've made in the fence to use as entrances/exits to keep the Walkers from entering via those cut areas of the fence. Whatever the fence-reinforcement effort had consisted of, they've been using that system for moving inside and outside the fence for over a full Season now...so it almost goes without saying that they WOULDN'T pile junk in front of their fence-access-points, or if they did it would probably be one single heavy object, like say, a washer or dryer from the Prison Laundry. Either the "Walker Feeder" or the Governor could easily have been depicted as simply unwiring one of their holes in the fence, and doing something to widen/keep the gap open so that Walkers could easily penetrate the outer fence.
4) The whole wooden pole reinforcement plan drives me bonkers. They kept setting the poles against the bottom 25% of the fence, which allowed the force the Walkers were exerting with their pushing to be conveyed nonstop to the mid-points of each wooden pole. Just angling them higher would've made them more effective.
5) The Inner Fence: The group lost people, including Rick's loss of Lori due to an internal Walker-breach. The Governor left a large truck where Farmer Rick is now growing peas (the one with the .50 machinegun they disabled, before also disabling the truck. We KNOW they moved it a great distance, because it's nowhere to be seen in the "farm-area" so why not pushing it through the inner fence's gate, and leave it parked as dead weight in front of that very small section of movable inner fence that the Walkers took down so easily. With that truck in position those Walkers could've beat on that fence-gate until there wasn't any flesh left on their hands and arms and it never would've come down.
Some may call this stuff nitpicking, but the story included these significant events. (Like the disabled "Machinegun Truck" being moved completely out of the farming area.) If you include something in your story, your audience is going to have questions about that inclusion. Such as: "If they went to the trouble of moving that big disabled truck completely out of the inner grassy area that's become their farmland, why leave that multi-ton chunk of metal just sitting somewhere uselessly. You're already spending time and manpower on moving it, why not double your benefits and get more out of the move than just freeing up the farmland?" Or: "Given that the overnight population surging of Fence-Walkers has become commonplace for at LEAST the last month, why was there no sign they had any other plan than just keeping the Cold Crews busy stabbing Walker heads through the fence? Again, the survivors of the Herschel-farm downfall are nightmarishly familiar with how everything can seem safe as houses one day, but be on the run from a tidal wave of Walkers by nightfall. There were many, MANY ways they still could've had the fence-breach to serve the story they wanted to tell, WITHOUT making it seem like the group simply doesn't learn from near-death errors.
Want a badass scene? Remember how I mentioned it would be far more difficult to eliminate Walkers through the fence the way the Cold Crews were doing it if they'd piled a ton of junk inside the fence to reinforce it? That ever-increasing # of Walkers could've been depicted as overturning the disabled truck in front of the inner fence, and then scrambling over and around it like ants pouring over an obstacle. Wouldn't that have been an even more chilling opener to the Carl/Rick side-by-side Walker slaughtering scene? It would've fit perfectly with the "zombie theme" of "pitifully weak when alone, unstoppable as a tidal wave as a huge mass."
Just because the writers decide the story calls for a setback to the protagonist efforts, it doesn't necessarily follow that the characters need to make a critical error they've already had an intense life-or-death learning experience with. Smart fence reinforcement doesn't HAVE to mean the Walkers become impotent in their efforts to breach the fence(s). If you want simpler, they could've just CGI-added a bunch more Walkers coming out of the treeline, and then narrowed the focus of the shot to depict matters as if this huge mass of Walkers simply overwhelmed even the prudent efforts at fence-reinforcement.
Finally, think back to great "Zombie Overrun Scenes"...like the zombies busting through every boarded up window and door within seconds of each other, and pouring into the house in Night. The zombies relentlessness was underscored to a greater degree by the intelligently constructed barricades they had to overwhelm. When you as a viewer see a relatively imposing defensive measure in a zombie flick, and the zombies STILL overwhelm it, doesn't the very fact that the barrier which up until now had been holding them at bay was imposing make the zombies seem even more like an unstoppable crescendo of rotting flesh and singleminded focus?
All I'm saying is that an already enjoyable scene would have been even better had the Walkers needed to overwhelm fence-reinforcement that was better implemented than the simpleminded nonsense with the low-angled logs. Seeing them pour over and around the overturned truck where they were met with a hail of desperate gunfire by Rick & Carl working as a well-oiled machine of zombie termination could only have heightened an already tense scene, at no more cost than the changing of a few set pieces when it came to fence-reinforcement and the addition of a truck.
NOT saying the episode was bad. FAR from it. Just saying that a few more refinements could've tied things together even better, at little cost to the crew.
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Originally Posted by shootemindehead
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