You can be a victim and still be a rotten person. I know a lot of people use victimization as a excuse for bad or stupid behavior...but I wasn't using that as an excuse.

Victimization and wickedness aren't mutually exclusive.

You and I both know that Travis is a big softie; a softie like him coddling a child like that? Come on, man. Who really expected that to work?! Rick was in the same position with Carl but...look at Carl now.

Without Rick stepping up, Carl would have become a sociopath. Actually, in fact, if you ask people like Enid and Negan, they would tell you that Carl is a sociopath. Just one of the nicer ones.

I'm not excusing Chris for his behavior. But he's not too far gone like everyone thinks. Not only is he far too young but the boy has a good heart deep down.

As for Travis and Liza's parenting skills? Yes, they were weak parents. But for every person who has weak parents and don't turn into a sociopath, you look deep enough below the surface you will see that they (or their children) will have some serious issues. Believe it or not, that kind of garbage can be passed down from generation to generation.

I'm not saying it's genetic. But the eyes and ears of children are always on their parents.

 

Strand did not adapt the quickest. The only reason Strand and the rest of the crew made it out of LA was because Strand already had the means and ability PRE-APOCALYPSE.

That's like saying Rick adapted the quickest because he was an great shot and Daryl adapted the quickest because he could hunt and track and was comfortable out in the wilderness.

If they already had the attitude, means and capability before the apocalypse, then it's not adaptation.

 

I didn't say all war veterans are mentally adapted to it. And we clearly saw that in the second half of the first season.

Daniel is not your average simple war veteran.

He was a Salvadorian KGB agent of the highest order. From what I've heard about the war in El Salvador, they were scary people.

Heroin junkies live on the fringe of society. They know how to scavenge for resources, they are selfish, the ones that can survive on their own are relatively clever, they are familiar with struggling, and they aggressively flirt with death. Heroin is one of the worst drugs to be addicted to...

Besides, Nick also is very friendly and charismatic. Charisma is an sorely underrated talent.

And Chris did not start off as a punk.

 

The Walking Dead has been on-air for years and the writers of that show have a lot of help from the comics.

Give FTWD time to grow.

 

I totally see Chris as someone who obviously would have become a sociopath with or without the ZA. As quickly as he became who he is now tells me it was always there. There was no snowball of different circumstances or situations that formed him into what he is now. It was already there. He just has the wide ZA playground in which to act on it under the excuse that "this is how we survive".

Bullshit, you just want any excuse to be a murdering, narcissistic punk.

 

Agreed. I think the IDEA of having a core member of the group become the villain is awesome. It is the EXECUTION of that idea that needs to be damn near flawless.

As [MENTION=72581]Camilleyun[/MENTION] stated

.

 

The "they look at me different" portion of his quick evolution was SO annoying. Wtf do you expect? Brat. With a gun. lol

 

The problem with the show, and I hate to be frank but, they hired sub-par writers. There is a little depth in character interaction at times and dialogue...But not in the directing or plots

but overall the show has not developed any soul...The character's resumes are built for depth.. but they didn't manifest that potential on screen.

In fact the show has too much social/psychological drama, and not enough gritty, basic instinct survival scenes/fighting

 

I have compared Chris to James Holmes. Both of them had brain cells that just went spastic.
I think if the world would not have become infected, Chris would have been the next high school shooter.

 

Yes, but he's no more a "victim" than anybody else in the ZA. Everybody's a victim here and a victim of the circumstances, what I am suggesting is nothing he's experienced stands out to the degree to justify his behavior. Now, it can explain parts of his behavior, but it cannot wholly justify it. I know you're not totally justifying it, but you're more on that side of the fence of thinking when it comes to this analysis.

Nobody expected it to work. Travis is soft and deluded, everyone agree's. My point was he didn't have his group against him in the manner Shane and others have had, they were even trying to coddle him.

The kid is lost and the outside circumstances, like many others in TWD, happened to trigger his true inner self.

Debatable on both counts. Rick certainly looks like a sociopath at this point(not an evil one though), but even that's debatable depending on how in depth you want to go on the definition being adapted to the ZA.

I don't see any version of Carl ever wanting to harm his own family like Chris wanted too.

I don't see any version of Carl taking other innocent people hostage.

Carl shot an enemy who was lowering his weapon and didn't feel remorse for it, but it still was an enemy hostile that was attacking them from his vantage point. Other than that the kid has been a stand up guy, he has a better parent to thank for it, but Chris even with the best parent in the world is going to be a piece of shit.

Totally disagree. He was a bratty asshole in S1, which is forgivable because he's a kid. His evolution in S2 is not forgivable.

Weak parents typically raise dysfunctional people - truth.

But ordinarily, dysfunctional doesn't mean murderous psycho brat, it just means really insecure and self destructive(and all of the negative traits that come with that).

 

Strand did not adapt the quickest? Strand's intro speech in the cell and first conversations with Nick showed his mind was totally adapted to the situation. Perhaps you should revisit it.

Strand's former career as a business associate to his lover and gay prostitute certainly did not provide the basis to being mentally adapted to the apocalypse. The guy is just quite bright and adaptable by nature.

Well, Daryl did adapt among the quickest in the original Atlanta group. As did Merle. Discounting them because of their background is like saying the only people that would qualify as "adapting fast" would be ordinary suburbanite people. There's reasons why people adapt quicker than others, including background of course, but to discount them is saying that only certain types of people would be fair to consider it "adapting".

But I completely disagree that any sort of pre-Apocalypse lifestyle or career background makes you automatically adapted to something as crazy as the ZA.

It HELPS - if you're good with woods survival, firearms and have calm nerves in high intensity situations then you have tools others don't have, but nothing really is going to be an automatic base line preparedness for something this crazy.

So if they have a disposition that is icey, some resources, some skills..... then they're already adapted to total societal meltdown and flesh eating corpses and anarchy among other violent surviving humans.

I disagree. You still would to adapt to that. More prepared doesn't = adapted, it = more prepared.

 

Correct. Many instances in TWD as well. It helps, but it is not a catch all solution for adapting to he ZA.

I don't see how being a war interrogator would discount him from the "who adapted to the ZA" quickest conversation. He saw the rawest nature of humans, but others have as well, including Cops. Daniel saw it to a higher degree because yes, the Central American wars were some crazy shit, but it doesn't discount him.

None of that = total anarchy, destruction and flesh eating corpses around every corner to where you can't even rest without walls to protect you and prepared for flesh eating corpses around every corner by default.

None of that = prepared for flesh eating corpses around every corner by default.

Charisma and social skills are useful tools, but do not equate to preparedness for flesh eating corpses around every corner and very little resources or places to take up refuge.

Chris did start out as a punk.

 

Where oh where did the 'Chris is a victim' meme come from! The kid is a lot of things, but victim is not one of them.

But I don't understand what the show is trying to show with Chris. Yes he's always had a chip on his shoulder. But the direction they have taken with the character doesn't make sense to me. He got all morose on the boat after they buried his mother at sea. Then for some reason he started carrying around a knife. But when caught he kept claiming it wasn't what it seemed. Then he got with caught with the knife out while Maddie & Alicia were asleep.

What was his intentions with the knife? Did he want to kill Alicia? Did he want to kill Maddie? Did he want to kill both? I see no clear mental path between up till and at that time. Except that he is actually completely losing it and going psycho.

Then all the rest with his dad, culminating with him shooting that guy cause it felt good?

If there is a causal string threading all these weird actions together I am not seeing it. He's just going more and more off the deep end because that is what the writers wrote. If they had some grand ark for Chris, it would have been really helpful for them to have given us some hints of that the last two seasons.

With all that has happened, there is still time for Chris to redeem himself. As I commented earlier, he is balanced on the edge right now. He could completely go to the dark side. Or he could have some traumatic event that snaps him out of psycho mode. If the latter is the case, the show is going to have to do a much better job of showing it than they have up till now.

But the worst eventuality, and please dear gods above and below I hope they don't do this, is for him to return with the same basic psycho personality he has at the moment. Either he gets better or he gets worse. I couldn't stand it if he shows back up and just does more of the same. If they do that it is time for them to put him out of our misery!

 

The problem with Chris is that he doesn't have remorse over it. Carol was able to kill anyone as well but it's clear she built up remorse each time she did it.

 

That's true, but I imagine the soldier in the midst of battle is not too concerned about remorse. If it's survival instincts we're talking about, Chris definitely has an advantage over Travis. Who has time to be digging graves for everyone who dies? I think Travis is more like the Dale/Henschel kind of person, but a little too soft to survive long term.


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Well, the soldier does it without thinking/hesitating because it's his duty, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel bad about it when he goes to bed at night.

Chris may be better at surviving in terms of being willing to do what it takes to survive, but he doesn't know how to fix stuff, wastes food (eating the chickens instead of the eggs) doesn't know how to hunt, etc. He doesn't actually have any survival instincts besides killing. So I don't think he's all that equipped to survive either, just in a different way than Travis. Characters like Rick and Daryl are willing to kill and also have real survival skills, Chris doesn't have the second part.

 

That's a good point, amigo. Plus it helps to have some empathy for at least the people who are part of your team.


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Chris just eats chicken.

 

Yeah but the issue at this point is.....he didn't have to kill ANYONE he has killed so far "to survive". He's only doing it to quench his thirst.

 

I don't disagree with you. My post, discussing how Chris got the way he did (in which I had some sympathy for him) was not meant to convey I view that as an excuse for becoming the evil creature he has become. He could definitely make different choices.