And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Heads

I am in the minority, this episode was boring with a capital B. Considering how last season ended, this one was all filler and zombie kills. The other thing was I felt like I was getting smacked in the head over and over again that new people are in charge of this show. Countless interviews said "more zombies, less talking" and that pretty much happened at every turn. I also think jumping the story ahead that much also leaves us wondering what happened inbetween...which will certainly aggravate a ton of people later.

Hopefully this is just setup and things will pick up from here. But this did not meet my expectations. (Full disclosure, I have read the comic and continue to read, so there are times I shout at the TV for something to happen, since I know it is coming).

Both Qwertee and NowhereBad have Walking Dead shirts today.

As does Ript.

My aunt started watching this show with the premiere (well, she did say she caught a bit of s02 during the marathon prior to this episode). On Facebook throughout the airing she would ask me questions about the "zombie rules", but nothing about the characters. Kinda funny bringing her up to speed on zombie lore. I wonder how many non-fans of the genre the show is picking up because of the buzz.

Anyone think those two armless and jawless zombies chained to that black girl maybe be related? Could they both be her brothers or cousins?

I would think that amputating a limb wouldn't be the best way to slow the blood loss from a bite.

Lori: "I got a paper cut!"

Rick: "We need to stop the bleeding! I'll get a machete!"

I know it's been beaten to death, but the comics' pacing is extremely slow, and now they're just taking the best parts. Thank Jebus.

Awesome.

I'm glad to see Carl stepping up. Nice turn with what was getting to be a bit annoying.

Okay, I guess that explained it a bit. Thank.

I'm glad theyve killed off a lot of the group. There were way too many characters, most of them annoying. Its good to weed them out.

He even has a special lady friend!

Awesome premiere, even though it didn't look like it was in HD. Little pissed at AMC/Directv for that.

I think picking up after a few months was a good way to go. Carl is now kind of a badass and way less annoying. Lori has acknowledged that she was a total bitch, even if she doesn't know how to fix it.

I thought the zombie "sleeping" until Hershel walked by alone was hella lame. They needed a better way to pull that off. That felt totally false in that universe. Other than that, pretty great ep. The amount of gore/zombie killing was crazy.

Generally, I think it's been established that a zombie bite will cause a massive infection that kills you. Then, you turn once you're dead. So by hacking off the leg, they hope to save Hershel from an infection that would kill him. That's the way I took it, anyway. And I assume the guards got bitten, died, turned.

I thought it was odd that they had Hershel go with them to clear the prison. Why risk your only doctor (not to mention he's old), especially when your extremely pregnant wife is close to her due date? Seemed like he was only there to get bitten.

I noticed the same. Had a feeling that was going to happen base don the guide not picking up the HD recording. Maybe they couldn't get the HD version ready in time? The Friday broadcast shows as HD.

At least it wasn't windowboxed.

So do we know what happens to these zombies if they don't feed for X amount of time? I know in the WD universe zombies haven't been around really long yet, but I'm thinking maybe zombies go into almost a dormant state when they don't feed, but can "come out of it" when something walks by then? Just trying to throw throw the writers a bone.

In an early issue of the comic Rick noticed that some zombies were roamers and some just kind of hung out. They haven't really touched on that for a while, but I could see sort of fitting this.

That tank zombie in the first episode was sort of similar in his seeming dead but then waking up activities.

But really, zombies will just serve whatever purpose the writers need them to.

There were two instances in the first episode that "sleeping" walkers exist in this world. The first was the bus walker. As Rick rode by on his horse in downtown Atlanta, the bus walker just woke up and got off the bus and started walking towards Rick. The second was the tank walker. He was "sleeping" a bit longer with Rick right by his side before he woke up. The people in charge of the show are taking great freedom in doing things that don't need explaining in terms of the walkers.

What is disturbing is how much AMC has control of this show. There are rumors that they want to sell it, scale it back, spend less, change the creative crew, all sorts of things. I believe this is why Season 2 was not as walker filled as fans wanted and why the prequel of Atlanta isn't and may never be done. This reminds me of the AOL/Time Warner merger and its' effect on WCW. This show is so hot right now and they just announced a few months ago that it was renewed for a fourth season.

Yea that seems pretty stupid becuse if you are viewing it on TV you don't have Dish.

Maybe it's for all the folks torrenting who one day will go legit - that way they know who not to pick.

Making sure you don't switch to Dish. "Look at all stations you won't have if you leave us."

Its all an elaborate set up that gets him out of the way so Carl can start banging his daughter. Its time he became a real man.

Pretty good ep though I wondered about the silencers Rcik and Carl had. I suppose Rick could have found his somewhere along the way, but Carl's looked homemade. I thought homemade silencers are usually only good for a couple of shots.

Love the new horny, bad ass Carl though.

Might have been a little more authentic if they opted for the oil filter suppressors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haiqFcIXTqs