 Originally Posted by Philly_SWAT
My thoughts on the ending of TWD "The Obliged" episode...
As a general thought, a problem that a lot of television shows suffer from is that the writers make a firm decision of how they want a storyline to go, and then have the characters engage in discussions and actions that get from point A to point B in the story regardless of how logical and/or true to the characters those discussions or actions are. Also, the writers have random events happen that are just TOO convenient to be believable. TWD is more guilty over the entirety of its existence than a lot of other shows in this regard. I understand that writing for a television show is incredibly difficult, and both time and budget constraints can hamper even the best of writers. And I believe that it is also possible/likely that in a television series, even if the series is excellent, a few episodes here and there may not be up to the same quality level, and that even in an excellent episode of a series, there could be one or more things that are less then excellent. To state and acknowledge this does not mean I hate a show or think it sucks, it is just accepting the imperfection that most all shows have. When I think of the small list of "greatest TV shows ever", a big factor for me is how few of these inconsistencies they have that I am supposed to overlook as a viewer.
A couple of TV shows come to mind, "The Americans" and "The Wire", where there is very little opportunity to find things to nitpick about. Almost everything makes sense within the universe the TV show has created, and the actions of the characters ring true. I count those two shows on my personal list of "the greatest TV shows ever". I do not include TWD on that list, even though I have watched the show from the beginning, enjoyed the comics before there was a TV show, and the "zombie genre' is one of my personal favorites. There has been a lot to enjoy about TWD during its run, and a lot of things that, to me, were worthy of criticism. That doesnt mean that I am trolling others by pointing out things that I think could have been done better...they are just my honest opinion about things. One of my biggest gripes in TWD universe is the TV show "The Talking Dead". No one on that show EVER points out an obvious logic problem, a sloppy storyline, etc. It would be a more enjoyable show if it actually presented HONEST discussion about the shows, pointing out both good and bad, rather than only looking at everything though rose colored glasses.
As far as the episode at hand, there was some good conversations between characters on the show. The plight of Daryl and Rick fighting out of the pit was an interesting one. It still remains to be seen exactly how the Rick story will end, but I have no problem with a random accident being the cause of his ultimate demise. Certainly right now, in real life, unfortunate accidents cause the death of people every day. It only adds to the realism that such a random event could befall a TWD character. My main issue with the last scene of this episode was the way it was filmed. Watching it live, as soon as the camera moves up and zooms out I said to my girlfriend something like " what the fuck, there was all kinds of room there!" I am sure the writers made the decision to have two herds coming together and Rick gets thrown off the horse and falling on the rebar, and then they filmed that scene as best they could. It would have made more sense if it was a path up against a mountain or with an impenetrable thicket of forest blocking an avenue of escape for Rick, but that would make it harder to get cameras in good positions to get good shots for a tv show. Interesting camera angles and movements can add a lot to a tv show or a movie, and the ending of this episode was exactly that. Start close on Rick, impaled and unable to move,then pan up and show two herds moving in on him from two different directions. That is textbook good and interesting camera movement.
The problem is, to me, when that camera movement shows how much room there was available in areas where there were no zombies for Rick to move to. Rule number one...if there is a bunch of zombies in your vicinity, move quickly to a different vicinity where there are no zombies. Once safely out of range, if need be, take a second to come up with a plan of action of what to do next. Do not just mill around and wait for disaster to happen. But if there is no other vicinity to move to, and youre surrounded, Ok, youre toast. But when the camera pans out, it clearly shows an abundance of room for Rick to move out of the general vicinity. In fact, that was a fair amount of room right there near the rebar...at least move a couple of feet away from that potential danger, just in case. Rick falling exactly as needed to get impaled is already right at the edge of plausibility...oh right,he would fall RIGHT THERE?!?! But it is a tv show and SOMETHING has to happen, otherwise we are staring at a blank screen. So if you are going to do that, DO NOT right afterwards go to a wide shot showing how much room he had to get out of there. Me feeling this way does not mean I hate this new season..I dont. I think it has shown improvement over recent seasons (as easy as someone might be inclined to think that is to do). It doesnt mean I hate this episode, or that Rick's demise might be attributed to something as simple as an unfortunate fall. I dont. However, I do think that the way the scene was presented on screen could have been handled in a different, better way.
Nicely written. Indeed, you and I have no problem seeing that this scene was shot in a way that is just too forceful on the viewer. They are asking us to make too many concessions: Rick doesn't see the obvious plenty of possible escape routes, Rick turns the horse in the direction of one of the oncoming zombie herds instead of all the other empty spaces he has available, Rick gets thrown off very "coincidentally" on the rebars, of all places... Overall, the somewhat similar thrown-off-the-horse scene in the pilot episode was better executed. There we could see that Rick could not have maneuvered the horse out of that situation. He and the horse were truly trapped by the oncoming zombies.
Having said that: the show-makers likely need for Rick to have at least one escape route, otherwise his end will be to be killed and devoured by the zombies. They probably want a different ending for him. So Rick must somehow escape this situation in the end, albeit badly -possibly even mortally- wounded. So they probably needed to leave one exit left for him. But they could have done this in a better manner, one that makes us believe that Rick did not have many options, just one, and which he was reluctant to take: going to the bridge. We know from the previous exchanges between Rick and Daryl that this is the only thing in Rick's mind that is totally straight regarding the oncoming zombies: he does not want to take them to the bridge. Daryl tells him that "there is no other way", but Rick answers "I will find another way". This means that Rick is willing to improvise what he will do with the zombies. With such a mindset, it is obvious that Rick is willing to consider any of the other roads other than the one that leads to the bridge. We can clearly see, then, that he had two other roads to take, plus an open field to his right. There is no reason for him to go all bonkers and not know what to do when the other zombies show up in one of these available roads. He still had two very obvious options left to lead all those zombies to besides the bridge.
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