Zombies and Frozen
I watched two things this weekend, one with my family, the other one without. The first was Frozen, the second was the Walking Dead finale. I’ll let you figure out which was which. I’m going to talk about the Walking Dead first, because there are spoilers for Frozen embedded deep in this post and I’d be more worried if someone read those than any spoilers for the Walking Dead. The finale was…frustrating. It was great the way Darryl rejoined the group and Rick and Michonne slaughtered the Claimed folks. Rick has always been a character that was an extreme badass of the best kind…the type that doesn’t have to constantly prove it. The best moments in the series were when he shot that guy in the bar (Nebraska man…), killed Shane, and last night when he ripped that guy’s throat out with his teeth. Because in the Walking Dead, people…
The Walking Dead: Claimed
This week’s episode was very similar to Cleared, in both theme and quality. Once again, Michonne really proves to be a great character the more she’s fleshed out. My familiarity with the comic ended around the beginning of the prison so I don’t really know what is the show vs the comic, but either way I’ve really enjoyed furthering her back story. Getting her back with Rick and Carl was a great move, especially as her and Grimes the Younger cleared the house. The moment where she walked into the pink room was a special kind of Walking Dead moment, the kind that shows you of the world that was lost. Carl really gets the benefit of these story lines. I remember thinking at the end of last season that they were going to take him down the sociopath route, making him into the next Shane, but he’s really gone…
The Walking Dead is Back
Our Holiday Hiatus is over and the Walking Dead is back! Tonight’s episode was a decent example of what the Walking Dead does really well, that slow burn type stuff, where we take a quick break to let the characters simmer on all that’s been going on. Rick looks like a Walker all by himself and spends most of the episode unconscious. Carl was the majority of the episode and spent most of his time trying to prove he didn’t need his dad. The kid is one of those characters the fans seem to hate, yet he never really got on my nerves. Lori and Andrea, possibly two of the most hated characters in television during their run, had a tendency to do stuff that was out of character. This wasn’t the actresses fault by any means, it was bad writing and I’ve already written about that before. Actually…I wrote…
Smaller Stakes, Smaller Villains, Bigger Impact
Like many people, I have the shows I watch on a regular basis. New ones are constantly popping up, American Horror Story: Coven (which crapped out a bit in the last fifteen minutes but otherwise was great) or Almost Human (which I really want to love but am having trouble) are a couple examples. Then there are my standards, the ones I’ve been watching for years. Breaking Bad was one of those, Walking Dead is another. The one that always sneaks up on me though, and probably gives me the most satisfaction when it comes, is Justified. At first, I just didn’t care for it. Its arcs didn’t make any sense, it meandered and rambled all over the place, and just seemed to be about rednecks with single digits of teeth murdering and coniving over small scale matters. Over the years though, it has gotten much better. The second season…
On Using Distractions
I was reading through some of my blog posts from the old Story Arcs and I saw one about writers block. In particular, it was about how one of the things I did to work through it, cutting through distractions. First, I’d like to say that a lot of people say there’s no such thing, there are just writers not writing, allowing things to get in the way or too afraid of “messing up” to put words on paper. That’s not important, not to my point anyway. It surprised me because things have changed bit since then. Eliminating distractions is often essential to getting things doen, but for a while now I’ve actually been using them. My favorite way to write at the moment is to put Netflix on one side of the screen and Word (or WordPress at the moment) on the other. Then I burn through some TV…