Here's the blank 'secret whisper' screenshot:

12/7/2010 10:07:47 AM

Quote :

"The grenade was pretty much them jumping the shark for me, especially his dramatic leap to safety when it detonated"

seriously? they clearly explained where it came from, and yes, he was a little slow getting away from it after pulling the pin, but it is nowhere close to the fonz jumping a shark on water skis.

12/7/2010 10:38:43 AM

Quote :

""Pssst... your wife is pregnant.""

this is probably it. and it's probably shane's.

12/7/2010 10:55:38 AM

Quote :

"^^Is that speculation or a spoiler? I hope it is speculation because it's kind of a shitty thing to post if you got that from the comics. "

Pure speculation. I've never touched the comics.

It's either that or
"Psst... everyone has AIDS."

but seriously, it might be
"Psst... I saw your wife scratch Shane over the security camera."

12/7/2010 11:10:44 AM

I was thinking it might be the pregnant thing or perhaps one of the survivors is infected but somehow their immune system is fighting it better than others. The Andrea girl was puking a lot and seems a little weird.

12/7/2010 11:14:46 AM

The pregnancy thing would be a really interesting twist (and, I'm assuming, a good way to work in a chunk of the comic storyline)...I'm thinking that's probably what was whispered to him.

12/7/2010 11:21:28 AM

yea assumed he either outed shane, or more likely let rick know his wife is preggers.

12/7/2010 11:26:15 AM

I would prolly say it's ok to talk to about the comic book now that it's apparent that is not the direction they are taking in the slightest.

12/7/2010 12:15:34 PM

Quote :

"The pregnancy thing would be a really interesting twist (and, I'm assuming, a good way to work in a chunk of the comic storyline)...I'm thinking that's probably what was whispered to him."

fucking don't talk about the fucking comic fucker.

12/7/2010 12:26:56 PM

What makes this any different from people discussing the Harry Potter book in the movie thread prior to the movie coming out?

12/7/2010 12:39:52 PM

They probably didn't even write a line for that whisper. It was more like them saying:

"How do we open for season 2?"

"Let's just use the generic season transition #4: an important message whispered to someone. We can fill it in later."

12/7/2010 12:59:33 PM

"Psst... you're actually in a tv show. Everybody around you you know is an actor."

12/7/2010 1:21:27 PM

Quote :

""The grenade was pretty much them jumping the shark for me, especially his dramatic leap to safety when it detonated""

Tactical weapons overanalysis... go.

The thing which irritates me about that is that a grenade is an anti personnel fragmentation weapon. It's basically an omnidirectional shotgun with a small bit of explosive power. Assuming that the window is bulletproof, if a close-range shotgun blast couldn't break it out, how is a grenade going to fare much better? Seems like you'd need a shaped charge to really punch that window out.

Oh yeah, and if the CDC was loaded with a MOAB, why wasn't the entire block (or several blocks) destroyed? There's just no way those people could've been so close to that kind of concussive force and lived through it.

Ah well, it is just a TV show...

12/7/2010 2:55:52 PM

because the building was so heavily reinforced it absorbed most of the energy from the blast.

12/7/2010 3:16:21 PM

"Psst... the zombie virus is caused by midichlorians."

12/7/2010 3:25:07 PM

i took the liberty of looking up the various types of hand grenades to see if i could pinpoint exactly what kind was used to blast the window. i came upon this http://www.umass.edu/armyrotc/Training/grenades.pdf

by the looks of the grenade that was used it was indeed a fragmentation grenade. i was thinking at first maybe it was the kind where it had a large blasting effect, "offensive" type according to the PDF. but is it possible that the frag grenade still expends a greater amount of energy upon detonation compared to the shotgun blast? therefore making it capable of breaking that glass?

12/7/2010 3:41:21 PM

i have enjoyed this series...it's delightfully mindless

12/7/2010 3:58:26 PM

Quote :

"and if the CDC was loaded with a MOAB"

It wasn't a MOAB, it was a fuel-air bomb type mechanism.

In any case, as any mythbusters viewer will know, it's unlikely they would have survived that kind of explosion at those distances.

12/7/2010 4:17:21 PM

I do believe the grenade would be much stronger than a shotgun blast, but just the way it was presented irked me. Pretty much the whole angle of him running and dramatically jumping just as the grenade detonated with a huge fireball was entirely too cliche to me. I don't really feel like trying to go all scientific about if a grenade could destroy bullet-resistant glass

12/7/2010 4:44:30 PM

speaking of possibly someone being infected didnt he say "it's just as i expected" when asked how the blood tests went

not exactly everyone in the clear if thats the case

12/7/2010 4:54:33 PM

I guess they were counting more on the shockwave of the hand grenade than the actual shrapnel to break the glass but I still don't know if it would be enough to do it.

12/7/2010 5:13:28 PM

Quote :

"especially his dramatic leap to safety when it detonated"

Haha, maybe I misunderstood, but I got the impression of an "Oh, shit" moment rather than a dramatic one...his long pause, the sudden realization that the thing was going to blow up, and his move away from it all seemed pretty in line with what a guy who had never used a grenade before (myself included) might do. And didn't he say something (along the lines of "Oh, shit," I couldn't actually hear it) during the pause?

Quote :

"fucking don't talk about the fucking comic fucker"

Unless the man has been lying all this time he has no knowledge of the comics, which is why he said "I'm assuming." As in, assuming we've been missing a bunch of shit about Shane knocking up his old lady, this will bring that to the fore.

---

As to the whisper...it seemed to take longer than it should to just say, "Your wife is pregnant," but it may not have been thought out that far. The main reason I don't buy it is that a pregnancy would take several seasons to develop at the rate they're going. Unless the plan is "He kills Shane and his wife" they'd have to deal with her being preggers, and unless they start skipping weeks at a time (and putting undue focus on her belly) that just seems like a terrible idea.

I'm leaning more towards a "Psst, there's this one place at X location that maybe just maybe can protect you guys" theory.

Quote :

"speaking of possibly someone being infected didnt he say "it's just as i expected" when asked how the blood tests went not exactly everyone in the clear if thats the case"

A potentially good point.

If everyone was clear you'd expect him to say as much. At the same time, you wouldn't think he'd expect just one or two members of the group to be sick -- and he pointed out that pretty much every infected person turned after eight hours or so. They were there longer than that.

---

As for the grenade thing --

He's a cop. They could have just as easily shown him getting some sort of breaching charge that would have done a better job of blasting a window. Hell, it would have been easier all around, because my guess is that those are more common (and useful) among police forces than fucking grenades. They went with grenades because everyone will recognize them as a thing that explodes, without any need for explanation.

[Edited on December 7, 2010 at 6:17 PM. Reason : boom]

12/7/2010 6:16:21 PM

Quote :

"by the looks of the grenade that was used it was indeed a fragmentation grenade. i was thinking at first maybe it was the kind where it had a large blasting effect, "offensive" type according to the PDF. but is it possible that the frag grenade still expends a greater amount of energy upon detonation compared to the shotgun blast? therefore making it capable of breaking that glass?"

(Sorry if I'm being overly technical.)

Yes, the grenade would expend more energy but the problem is that the vast majority of that energy would be expended in the direction of least resistance (e.g. everywhere BUT into the bulletproof glass). A shaped charge, on the other hand, is designed to direct the maximum amount of explosive force in one direction. In this case, I feel like since the shotgun's close-range blast is directed fire, it'd have greater potential to break the glass than the grenade. (Of course, we don't know what type of shells were fired. Bird, hell no. Buck... doubtful. Slug? Well, it's the most likely but still not a certainty.) Now, the grenade does have explosive shockwave-generating power but I don't feel like it would be enough to have entirely shattered the glass, Maybe someone currently in the military could better answer this, if they're so inclined. I just feel like of all the ways that the writers could have worked a grenade into the story, this was a really poor way to do it.

12/7/2010 6:18:32 PM

Quote :

"Psst... the zombie virus is caused by midichlorians."

12/7/2010 6:34:28 PM

Quote :

"I got the impression of an "Oh, shit" moment rather than a dramatic one...his long pause, the sudden realization that the thing was going to blow up, and his move away from it all seemed pretty in line with what a guy who had never used a grenade before (myself included) might do. "

that's how i interpreted it too.

12/7/2010 6:38:28 PM

I can see a few month away from the new season, their website will put up a poll on what the whisper should have be.

12/7/2010 8:53:19 PM

i've pretty much thrown out predicting plot from the comic since other than the first 1.5 episodes its been off in its own world

still i'm betting on preggers

[Edited on December 7, 2010 at 9:11 PM. Reason : he had already locked himself in with them, there needs to be some other reason for the blood test]

12/7/2010 9:10:36 PM

Hmm, good point. He knew he was toast either way. Unless he was looking for...

1) Infection, because of a strong desire not to go through what his wife did
2) Infection, because a recently-infected person would have non-necrotic flesh to sample (though this is less credible since the place was going to blow up)
3) Pregnancy, as a sign of hope for the species

12/7/2010 11:29:29 PM

Quote :

"3) Pregnancy, as a sign of hope for the species "

I doubt this was it considering he was going to turn them all into cinders.

12/8/2010 2:33:17 AM

Infidelity is the only scenario that would warrant a secret whisper in his ear as opposed to just blurting it out loud under the circumstances at that moment.

12/8/2010 7:20:28 AM

Quote :

"I'm leaning more towards a "Psst, there's this one place at X location that maybe just maybe can protect you guys" theory."

That's exactly what I was thinking about...but ^ does bring up a good point. Although I somewhat doubt he would been able to do both a blood-based preggers test and paternal matching test in the time he had. I think he just didn't want to deal with a zombie inflicted death, considering how he wanted to die in the fuel-air bomb.

Plus I really doubt he would be all "Hey, its a group of survivors...I wonder if one of them is pregnant and who the baby's daddy is." He was probably doing a normal zombie screen and found she was pregnant during the course of her bloodwork.


[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 8:21 AM. Reason : lkj]

12/8/2010 8:17:14 AM

if the blood test showed she was pregnant, i was thinking that he didn't say "hey lemme test these women for babies", i was thinking more along the lines that he's the CDC and can just tell the computer to test for everything under the sun.

12/8/2010 8:57:25 AM

http://io9.com/5707668/7-scenes-from-the-walking-dead-comic-that-should-have-been-in-the-show

12/8/2010 9:09:43 AM

Quote :

"I can see a few month away from the new season"

Quote :

"put up a poll on what the whisper should have be."

lol wut

12/8/2010 9:45:55 AM

^^pretty good read

12/8/2010 9:50:27 AM

^^^ Wow, I knew the TV show had changed things, but I never realized how much. I like the show, but if I'd read the comics first I think I'd have been pretty disappointed with AMC.

12/8/2010 10:31:55 AM

I could not agree any more with that assessment of differences.

12/8/2010 12:04:36 PM

anyone notice that during the MRI deterioration of ts-19, you can clearly see the gun being held up and firing. isn't an MRI a giant magnet? wouldn't it pull the gun straight out of your hand?

12/8/2010 1:51:40 PM

everyone knows that the CDC has MRI proof pistols.

12/8/2010 1:54:44 PM

haha well that was also the fanciest MRI scan i've ever seen.

12/8/2010 1:58:34 PM

Hitfix has an interview with producer Gale Anne Hurd up that is pretty interesting:
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/the-fien-print/posts/hitfix-interview-gale-anne-hurd-post-mortems-walking-dead-season-1

Quote :

"HitFix: So what can you tell me, then, about all of the reports swirling around about the jettisoning of the writing staff? GH: I don't understand! I don't understand journalism where no one has to check their facts or talk to anybody and something is simply published and people take it as gospel. Because we didn't have a two-season order going in, all of the writers were able to and did sell and set up other projects. That's the way it works in television. Some pilots have gone to script and we have to wait to see if those scripts have been picked up to pilot. That all happens in January and there are some that have chosen to move on to showrun their own projects. But that's typical. And absolutely there will be writers back who were on the first season."

I found that question particularly interesting given all the stuff that's been reported about the writing "shakeup".

12/8/2010 2:31:18 PM

some of that stuff (characters and plot lines) in the first link could still end up in the show. There's no reason to think it won't, simply because it hasn't. Obviously, they can't change anything about the characters who are dead though.

12/8/2010 6:26:19 PM

BigMan157, great post, was a good read and completely agree with what she wrote about the series.

And yes, I too was questioning the MRI scan and the use of a handgun, but there's a lot more wrongs than rights with the series so far. What was the computer program that controlled the complex? KITT... err Viki? whatever. I rolled my eyes when that was introduced. Also, I highly doubt the CDC labs are equipped with industrial grade flamethrowers to enact some sort of security outbreak protocol... Even for a Biosafety Level 4 facility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4

Plus, Dr. Jenner's reaction to swipe the acid from the sample was probably the stupidest move; any grade school student wouldn't do after a simple accident like that, let alone a bonified scientist. And while we are on that, you wouldn't just have a large graduated cylinder of highly corrosive acid laying around, even if you are using it in the lab for small test samples. It would be in some sort of self contained jug, jar, enclosed beaker or just something else, specially considering you'd only need a small sample to pipet out. You fill a much smaller cylinder or a 50ml beaker and then test; then clean up your workspace when idle.

And why introduce yet another character that explains the whole zombie mystery and him being so close to a cure to just go kill himself? And where was his video log being transmitted to from the end of season 5? God, that whole clip was god damn awful with the stupid effects, video badges, video flicks and a red dot? WTF? Really? we are going with a stupid camcorder icon? Why not a battery icon that indicates power is almost dead since we are at it.

/rant (well not really, cause I'll probably have something else to bitch about)


Also, I didn't realize that the CDC headquarters is located in Atlanta, which happens to be only 20 mins away from their camp. HUMMMM...

View Larger Map

12/8/2010 7:30:13 PM

yeah they've been pretty good w/ the geography of it all it seems.

i started reading the comic in booksamillion last night. if i buy it and read ahead of the show, am i going to ruin the show for myself?

12/9/2010 9:27:23 AM

Quote :

" if i buy it and read ahead of the show, am i going to ruin the show for myself?"

How could anyone possibly answer that question

12/9/2010 9:29:33 AM

Quote :

"if i buy it and read ahead of the show, am i going to ruin the show for myself?"

I doubt it; the show has taken enough turns that the comic has it's own ground to stand on. The article posted in the link about is enough to make me want to go back and read it for the differences mentioned.

12/9/2010 9:30:45 AM

well, i was looking for something like opinions on this. obviously no one can know for sure what they're going to do in the show.

12/9/2010 9:30:46 AM

There will be more differences than similarities. Enough to either enjoy the comics on their own separate story line or enough to piss you off even more in regard to the TV show. You decide.

12/9/2010 9:41:04 AM

maybe they should find a super size mall and across the street from a gun store that's fully stocked...

12/9/2010 11:50:01 AM

Quote :

"maybe they should find a super size mall and across the street from a gun store that's fully stocked... "

that would be pretty cool!

i think they should add richard cheese's version of "down with the sickness" to the soundtrack!

12/9/2010 3:00:50 PM