Directed by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado and set for limited USA release on January 17, 2014, BIG BAD WOLVES comes highly recommended by none other than QUENTIN TARANTINO himself who has publicly double thumbed up the movie.
Plot synopsis: A series of brutal murders puts the lives of three men on a collision course: The father of the latest victim now out for revenge, a vigilante police detective operating outside the boundaries of law, and the main suspect in the killings – a religious studies teacher arrested and released due to a police blunder.
SPOILER ALERT for THE WALKING DEAD fans – If you have NOT seen the mid season finale “TOO FAR GONE” then READ NO FURTHER..
Now then – THRALL WORLD is so completely disappointed in the mid season finale – where to start..
After giving us one of the top 3 best shows of the entire series EVER with the hour long return of The Governor in “LIVE BAIT,” THE WALKING DEAD presents it mid season finale which turns out to be possibly the WORST episode of the entire series. No – I’m not a reader of the comic book. I couldn’t care less about how they’ve changed a thing or two or made adjustments to different characters and their deaths.
For the most part “TOO FAR GONE” was a solid episode overall – until the shooting began. The dialogue showdown between Rick and The Governor was a believable excahnge. Rick knows he’s up against it and makes an offer to The Governor that maybe they can all stay at the prison together. A long shot to be sure but these are desperate times. We already know the Governor is starting to show his old ways and that Rick and Co. are going to have their hands full and that it might not be possible to let things from the past stay in the past. We expect some ugly in a world populated by a zombie ratio of 100 to 1. In this episode it arrives early with a zombie biting and condemning to death The Governors second chance daughter which was the primary motivation for his rebirth.
So here we go:
1) Why didn’t The Governor kill Rick from the get go? Because he wanted to get talked into a corner by Rick’s personal philosophy of Goodness? Because he wanted to allow Rick to be able to make a personal appeal to Team Governor – possibly confusing them on their motives and methods? The Governor’s team is a bunch of itchy on the trigger fingered newbs as far as I was aware. They were content to flounder out in the open and tow the line between decent folk trapped in a world gone zombie and becoming a gang of thieves who preyed on other survivor groups. At least ONE of them should have fired off a round or two and with Rick caught in the middle.. NO logical explanation other than horrible plot device for Rick to be in the middle of HUNDREDS of flying bullets and surviving with a paltry gunshot wound to the leg.
And did The Governor just get the ENTIRE camp he was taking control of wiped out? If so – amazing. I wasn’t under the impression the entire Governor camp were a bunch of bad guy thugs. I thought they were more in the middle and filled with gray as many in Rick’s camp were.
THE WALKING DEAD: The Governor and a tank.. Big trouble headed for Rick and Co.?
Which brings us to
2) Why the hell did The Governor waste his time by killing Herschel first? Because he had other plans for Michonne? Really dopey move on the part of the WRITER’s who actually thought this was believable. What – we’re supposed to believe that The scheming and battle hardended Governor who had already led many missions with his previous community (Woodbury) and who came back from the dead with a new reason to live would what – kill an old man who poses little to no threat rather than behead his most hated enemy and one of Team Rick’s best and most resilient fighters?
3) Michonne scrambling away in the middle of the firefight.. Really..? That looked about as awkward as it sounds. From the center of attention and the chopping block back to her sword and then ultimately killing The Governor. Not a scratch. Nothing to see here! Not to mention we were DENIED one of the more interesting encounters between The Governor and Michonne. There were so many places to take a confrontation between the two of them up to and including picking the scab that was Andreas murder that The Governor enabled at the end of the previous season. I guess that scene got deleted and we’ll see it on the DVD box set. Huge missed opportunity there.
THE WALKING DEAD: Michonne
4) Rick jumps The Governor during the assault. Why the hell didn’t he just shoot him? He didn’t have time to reload? Was he out of bullets? What about a fukking knife to the jugular..? What – did Rick want to TALK to The Governor some MORE..? EVERYBODY is shooting the hell out of each other EXCEPT for Rick and The Governor. Awful or ridiculous – you decide.
5) Daryl The Untouchable (lest the viewers riot) sheilded by a zombie body as he is being fired upon by body piercing machine guns. Lame. Even one of Rick’s main camp members whose name escapes me – the African American with the drinking problem – ends up getting shot and asking if the bullet went all the way through him. An “exit wound” I believe he called it. Bullets can apparently go through a regular human – but a corroded zombie body? No chance of that in this episode. And so Daryl is SAVED by the impenetrable magic zombie. How convenient.
The entire show should have ENDED tonight like a Shakespearean tragedy – every single element was there to make that happen – but I guess the hot ratings wouldn’t allow it. It could have been a GREAT spring board for the new spin-off show they have been talking about making with the handful of survivors that remained.
But the only reason I even waste my time writing this is because I was so completely blown away by the episode “Live Bait.” I told all of my friends that the producers of THE WALKING DEAD showed an INCREDIBLE amount of RESPECT to its audience with the “LIVE BAIT” episode which added depth and complexity to The Governor and was a bright spot in the first half of the fourth season – heck – the entire series as a whole second only to the pilot perhaps. But with this poorly executed mid season finale “LIVE BAIT” was cheapened and very nearly pointless. They may as well just skipped that episode entirely and just had The boogeyman Governor show up and be a jackass again because that’s pretty much what just happened.
And by the way, the baby missing from the carrier only meant that one of the other kids probably grabbed the baby. I certainly didn’t get the impression that the baby had been eaten. If you don’t see it on the screen then it didn’t happen. Remember when Carole went missing and Daryl found here in one of the isolation units a season and a half ago? Same plot device here.
But anyways – that’s the last we’ll probably see of the prison.
It's A Thrall World 