The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is a spinoff of the original The Walking Dead, which I stopped watching in season 9 when Rick left the show. This new iteration, the third of which I have watched following Dead City and Daryl Dixon feels a lot like The Walking Dead I remembered. But a lot of it doesn't make sense (probably) because maybe I missed something by skipping out on how The Walking Dead ended. However, everything I read about The Ones Who Live explicitly stated that the series would stand on its own, and that I wouldn't need to know anything from the prior series to understand the events in this series. But just so I can kind of see it all written down, I'm going to go through the things that I don't understand that are in this show as of just three episodes. This is your spoiler warning:
1) There are three cities I guess in the former United States that decided to draw boundaries and keep out the dead. They enacted a form of martial law, built barriers, educated their populace, and essentially became military states. And somehow, this allowed up to 200,000 individuals per metropolis to basically exist as if it was the times before the big event that made the zombie apocalypse. How is it that we are just now hearing of this? Especially when they have helicopters flying everywhere, munitions, and other things like electricity and water treatment and sewage treatment plants. One of the cities in like episode two finally collapsed. So this is like...ten years into the zombie apocalypse (still a hell of a record I think). We don't know all of the details, but it sounds like it just got overwhelmed by a dead army or something weird. I wonder if this has more to it...kinda like maybe they are exploring intelligent forms of undead and there was maybe a leader or something that whipped up all of the zombies. It's easily the most supernatural and interesting lead that this series has dropped, but there hasn't been any more exploration of the potential of that in the remaining episode I watched.
2) Rick cut off his own damn hand. This was...I dunno...unnecessary? Rick was on a tight leash to prevent his escape, and he was doing his job, which is to cull zombies. This particular branch of zombies was on fire for some reason--it wasn't explained. But in order for him to get off the leash, he needed to cut his hand off. It's a parallel to an event that happened in the Daryl Dixon show, because a tertiary character was handcuffed and in order to escape, needed to cut his hand off to get out of the bond. When Rick did it by choice, it just seemed so unnecessary. What was his plan exactly? To run into a forest of burning zombies with no food or water and in pain and dripping blood from a hastily done amputation? It was easily the dumbest thing I've seen, and I just can't imagine why Rick would do this as he's an intelligent character. But he did get a cool prosthetic out of it with a switchblade, and I suppose it also demonstrated how desperate he was to get away from the people in this "secret city." But in the end, this particular thing fell flat with me, and I have questions/don't understand why it happened.
3) There was a whole lot of exposition about the kinds of people they want in the city of 200,000 (referred to as CRM in the series). For one, I guess they don't want any "alphas." They don't want any leader types, and those kinds of people just end up dead. They just want "betas" or people who are relatively good at being sheep to follow whatever shepherds that they have running the government. This is really weird to me. Why is being a person who wants to be in charge a bad thing? People who are driven and don't need someone to take care of them are exactly the kinds of people I think you'd want in an apocalypse. Things are tough already, and these...let's call them "type A" personalities are the kinds of personalities that I think would end up being the most valuable in an apocalyptic scenario.
4) There's a character who is already dead in the show who was named "Okafor." His whole background, which seems kind of pointless at this time since he's dead, was that he was in the military, and that his own wife wanted him NOT to bomb Philadelphia. So, he killed her, but then he refused to bomb the city anyway? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but maybe I missed an important detail somewhere? However, since the character has already kicked the bucket, I'm not sure I can justify a rewatch since it's apparent that none of it mattered anyway other than to say that there are people in the CRM who don't follow orders. And maybe that's the point. If there are people who are in leadership positions (like Okafor) who want to bring the whole government structure down, it sets the ground for some chaotic grasps at power for Rick and Michonne to make in the new world of the Walking Dead.
All that being said though...I'm still going to watch this thing. It's Rick and Michonne, and those two are characters I love and feel like I know after being with them for so long. I'm excited to see what unfolds and what those two decide to do in their post apocalyptic lives.
Those are the things that drive me nuts. I wonder about the show runners and if they were paying attention to what they were doing.
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