MovieChat Forums > Earth Abides (2024) Discussion > SPOILER: the plot thickens in ep.s 4 & 5

SPOILER: the plot thickens in ep.s 4 & 5

posted 2 months ago by TrentnQuarantino (9443)
7 replies | jump to latest

Seriously, this is a spoiler for episodes 4 & 5, do not read if you have not seen it.

The group after many years sees some new people, who follow them home, and seems to want to be helpful, but their leader Charlie turns out to be a psycho. He wins some affection and confidence by helping to drill a well for the group, but as he rises in status, his poisonous personality is exposed as he assaults Evie.

The setup for this plot twist seems fake. Why would Charlie go out of his way to show he is a criminal who wants to take over the group and abuse everyone, and why would he be so confident that the group would do nothing in response? So, taking that for granted the group talks over what to do about it.

The regretfully unanimously decide Charlie must die. Ish goes out to talk to him ... stupidly armed with a hammer, but backed up by the group with guns. Charlie torments and provokes him more - and Ish kills Charlie by beating him to death, which no one hears or finds out about until the next morning.

My question was, subsequently Ish has conflicts with his conscience that shows up over and over again, he has questions or doubts about executing Charlie who has committed crimes and as much said he is not going to leave and that he will take over the group and do the same thing to Ish's wife.

Do the writers overdo it on the second-guessing and remorse or doubt that Ish has. I try to put myself in that situation and it is frontier justice, it had to be done for the benefit of everyone. If I had had to kill Charlie, after all of the threats he spewed, I would not worry about it for a minute after that. I don't know that I would have even gone down and tried to talk to him, and in fact it might have been necessary to remove the threat from all of the other men in that group. In primal situations seems like you cannot waffle about right and wrong. Probably why in the American West, at least in the movies people are so carefully polite to each other - if one cannot show respect, they deserve to be watched carefully.

So, why do TV and movie writers dwell on this so much?

[–] JoeBlow88 (574) 2 months ago

I would have killed all the men in that group, with out remorse.

The technical writing is poor too, any geologist should know how to drill a water well. You could even do it with a simple nylon rope attached to a sand bailer w/chisel. Not very sophisticated equipment. Rotary bit is faster, but requires more maintenance/energy.

[–] DngnRdr (80) 2 months ago

Maybe not Kori but letting Silas leave was a mistake and could come back to bite them in future. Should have killed him too as guarding the door was hardly much better than if he'd done it himself.

I think Charlie was over confident that he was the predator and the group was prey who wouldn't fight back... possibly due to the group being peaceful and welcoming, previous incidents and his ego.

Ish's guilt was ludicrous IMO; he did the right thing unless he was willing to watch his family and friends be abused too.

And a lot of the series to date seems extremely illogical, even unusual, when it comes to Technical aspects and people's behaviour... makes for some unintentional humour from time to time (at least I don't they meant for those scenes to be funny).

[–] TrentnQuarantino (9443) 2 months ago

In TV land I'd agree that Silas should have logically been executed, but I think it would have been too much. I think we need to know more about Silas that the show provided to judge him.

It is a good question or dynamic to speculate what do we do with someone like Silas. And why just Silas. Everyone else in that groups could have just been better actors or made smarter choices than Silas. This is probably why in a lot of history in a fight the losers had all their men above single digit ages executed. Everyone living today should be happy that we have evolved past that, but a lot of people seem to on either extreme. Many of countries have allowed their societies to become too lax and do not recognize the dangers of what are basically still barbaric people ( Middle East especially )

What would be a sensible protocol for groups meeting up and setting up a society or government as they grow? Not sure there is a lot of known history on that, but they did intermarry and allow hostages to be taken on either side. They should have found a natural barrier like a river or highway and had carefully managed and documented interactions, but they have limited time and resources.

Compared to series like The Walking Dead, I thought Earth Abides showed a more realistic side of society after a collapse. Most people want peaceful easy fair societies,
and would not want to go to war all the time, or have children just to supply the military. I know I could not live under a group run by someone like Charlie. I'd be better off just slipping away in the night.

What should Ish have done when they say the other group? You have to assume the worst. He led them right back to their base. His first order of business should have been to find that sign and destroy it so their address could not be found - and yet if they were burning fires and had lights they might be easily detected.

To just escape from them is not a good idea either, because you don't know your possible enemy and what they are up to. There were red flags from the start with Charlie. But what would one do with a group that either can outman or outgun one's own?

I think it would start with discussions within the group as to how to handle security and why, and get everyone's buy in.

In general I ended up really liking this show for its different and more realistic approach.

[–] TrentnQuarantino (9443) 2 months ago

I don't think Silas would come back. One reason is the humiliation and shame and the understanding that no one wants him there. Another is what can he do to make his own lot better? Not much in San Lupo.

He could just turn bitter and try to last out and kill the group, but that doesn't help him any and it would take a lot of energy.

I think Silas' best bet if he really was apologetic and wanted to prove it would be to go and find things of value and bring them back to the group until he established a trust and some value. Aside from that, he should just make the best of what he can find on his own.

Not much would be out there though after 15 years or so. The gas would be bad, the food in cans would probably not be good. They kept saying that the stores and hospitals would be picked over - but by whom? Seems like most people dies pretty quickly. In a few weeks of says when Ish went back to town there was no one left.

Also, kind of a weird plan to start repopulating the earth right away rather than looking for other people. But this was more realistic than Walking Dead or Road Warrior or the like.

[–] DngnRdr (80) 2 months ago

Guess I predicted that one... at least in general.

[–] TheGutterMonkey (302) 2 months ago

I think the IDEA behind Ish's reaction has merit. For many, it may be emotionally difficult to handle having killed even a bad person. You see this, for instance, from many soldiers. It doesn't matter if who they kill is bad or if it was done in self-defense or the greater good; the weight of having ended human life alone is enough to torment them. Perhaps this feeling would be amplified in a situation like this, where humans are already an endangered species and the loss of any life could significantly affect the survival of humanity. On top of this, there's the scary realization that you're now responsible for setting the ethical precedent for what we do in these situations.

The show has bad and lazy writing, though, and doesn't flesh this stuff out well. So these ideas come off as rushed and awkward.

While the series may technically be more realistic than The Walking Dead — with its cartoonish rival groups and whatnot — I think TWD was more believable on an emotional level. This is because TWD was better with the "show, don't tell" rule of storytelling. Instead of being clumsily told what the characters felt, their motivations, their intentions, etc, we subtly picked up on that info over time in an organic way that felt natural. Earth Abides, though, just smacks us in the face with what it wants us to know when it's convenient to know it. It's as if the series isn't interested in anything but getting points across and hurrying to the next plot beat.

Instead of watching Ish subtly grapple with the moral implications of this stuff over time, we spontaneously have him see ghosts (seemingly after being fine for 3 years) and then all but scream at the audience "I'm haunted by my past!" This is pretty much the same clunky way they handled the character of Charlie, as well. There was no fleshing out of him or his plan. It was just them rushing to tell us "he's a bad guy" in the most simplistic, one-dimensional way possible so they could hurry to this beat with Ish.

[–] TrentnQuarantino (9443) 2 months ago

I'm glad you expressed your opinion. I disagree with you though. Especially -

> I think TWD was more believable on an emotional level.

but, we're talking opinion here so I don't mean to attack you for having a different
opinion.

I would not say Ish should have no emotional reaction or guilt or never think about it, but for me, I would not bat an eyelash over killing Charlie. I agree that it would be nice to see Charlie and the whole world fleshed out better, but they cannot do that, so what they did seemed good enough for me. I've met people like Charlie who cannot help but smash psychotically into other people. Sometimes you can just tell by someone's actions that they will always be a problem to others as long as they live, and in a situation like Ish's in San Lobo one would have to be very conservative in how they interacted with other people.

And in fact this eventuality should have been thought out and discussed with the core adult group over and over, and then even explained clearly to the children past a certain age. The first priority is staying alive, and then defending oneself and being able to foresee danger before it gets out of hand.

The group was far too lax in that ... especially when we consider the series extends over a series of years ... I think like 17. Also, they make a point about Ish's two sons having a Cain and Abel dynamic between them. When the one son got sick my first thought was that the other side might have poisoned him.

The most important thing is the group dynamic. You really cannot have fractured relationships between prominent members of a tribe. It's the same with America now - we have a very fractured group dynamic - there is no clear mission statement that we are all working toward and it is very dangerous.