Sunday, December 1, 2013

When Is PD Not Prisoners' Dilemma

When the dilemma is about a prison instead?  See below the break for Walking Dead spoilers as zombies smell bad enough even before they spoil:


So, Governor vs. Rick.  Ug.  Anyway, as they bargained, Rick laid it out quite clearly (this is not the first time that the two seemed to be playing prisoners' dilemma) that cooperation would be very good, better than a conflict that would destroy the prison with casualties, making DD (mutual conflict) worse than cooperation.  Rick didn't go into the possibility of cheating (DC) vs being the sucker and the problem of distrust.  Why not?  Well, it didn't really matter since Rick kind of knew and then Governor then demonstrated that he didn't see this as a Prisoners' Dilemma or even a Prison Dilemma but as Deadlock.  Poor Herschel.  Anyhow, Governor Brian wanted war and he got his war.  Everyone on his side died, it seems to me (did any of his "team" survive other than his lover?).

We have been down this road before.  The only real purpose of the Governor seemed to be to end the Prison Experiment (more social science references!).  That is, the prison is not habitable, and that was really the primary purpose of the return of the Governor.  I guess the place being a disease factory was not sufficient.  So, we wasted 2.5 episodes of time on the Governor, time I spent on my ipad since I had no interest at all in this thread, to get to this outcome.

Oh, and as Alan Sepinwall noted, the death of Rick's baby girl was quite consequential.  I guess this means more emotional turmoil, but what was the purpose behind this?  I kind of get the kiddie death squad thing--speaks to child soldiers and more--although it was still so very stupid.

Indeed, the stupidity was so rampant, I had to just think about all of the genes being selected out of the system .... just dumb people acting dumb.  Woot? And, yes, the followers of the Governor also fit in the category of dumb people that perhaps deserved their deaths. 

So, why do we watch?  Sepinwall suggests: "our collective love of zombies trumps our collective interest in good storytelling." Apparently.

1 comment:

Mrs. Spew said...

Baby Judith isn't dead, silly.