Clem never thanks Kenny for his "sacrifice"
mattthefire
Banned
This is my second post on this forum, I'm hoping to start using it more often. 
Did anybody else feel a little bothered by the fact that clem was never given the option to thank kenny for giving himself up to carver? I mean, of course, in the scene where carver beats him with the walkie-talkie. Because, he ended up losing his eye, and was conscious the entire beating, which must have been unthinkably painful. I consider that quite the sacrifice just to keep clementine safe, because who knows what carver would have done if he didn't do it?
Anyway, so, she never actually expresses gratitude for this, which I found quite...odd. She can express contrition, sure, and that makes sense! But shouldn't she have been given the choice to say "Hey kenny, thanks for giving yourself up to carver and losing your eye to protect me"? I don't understand why it was never implemented!
In fact, in episode 5, when she's cleaning his wound with the antiseptic, he fidgets from the stinging, to which Clementine replies "you need to stop squirming" as if she thinks he's acting like a baby, (And keep in mind that this is non-determinant dialogue) despite the fact that he received the injury while protecting her. It just seemed kind of...insulting to treat him that way considering he's only in that situation because he was trying to protect her. I would have liked the chance to thank him for his sacrifice, but sadly, the option was never given.
What do you all think?
Comments
Ahem.
Some may argue that it was his fault for getting a beating from Carver, since it was his improvised plan to give Clem the other walkie-talkie, but I believe that's bull-crap (bad shit just happens). I am hoping that the hug you give Kenny or asking him if he's good to go can be interpreted that "I'm sorry for that all shit you've been through and I hope you're okay."
True, but in that scene she says "I'm sorry kenny" and he says it wasn't her fault. That was more like sorrow and guilt more than gratitude.
Nah, it wasn't his fault. Everyone agreed on the plan, if it was anyone's fault, it was luke's, for sneaking out and getting caught. But that's besides the point. Even if it was his fault, he didn't need to take the initiative to knowingly sacrifice himself to keep Clementine safe! That was his choice and his sacrifice for her. Nobody else was going to do it.
I agree with what you say, but I was specifically talking about the part where Mike and Kenny are kinda arguing who should give the walkie-talkie to and take it to Luke. No matter what Kenny gives the walkie-talkie to Clem, but as I said it was an improvised plan at the last possible moment and nobody would how known how bad it could've gotten.
I don´t think she needed to. He knows.
I can understand this IF you offered to take the radio, but if it's the situation where he gives it to you against your will there is no need to thank him, since that was his fault.
I didn't agree with the plan, so he forced the radio onto me. So no thank you to him, all he did was take the blame for what he did.
That's only because you didn't agree with the plan. But I did, so I would have liked the option to thank him.
That's why I said there should be an option, I didn't say it should happen regardless of your choices!
True. Actions speak louder than words.
I feel the hug is enough, that's a sign of thanks as well as a, "Glad to see you're okay," hug.
Maybe the option would have been okay. Certainly shouldn't have been forced: Kenny made my clem take the walkie talkie and its his fault she was at risk.
I was actually pissed off at Kenny for this. He made the decision, imagine how Clementine must of felt. She was about to speak up, and Kenny snatches the radio from her, putting whatever happened to Kenny on Clementine. She doesn't want Kenny to be hurt, so when he is, she feels like it her fault in a way. I felt that was extremely selfish of him, and he didn't really think about the unintended consequences of his decision.
WHo knows how Carver would of reacted if Clementine turned in the Radio. Personally i believe he wouldn't of beat her like Kenny, i think the most she would of received was a slap or two and that would of been the end of it. Kenny unfortunately doesn't know when to keep his stupid mouth shut, you just don't piss off a guy with obvious anger issues intentionally.
You just don't.
I still don't understand this. Why did people refuse to take the radio? Did you all of a sudden decide you were less capable of getting the job done compared to either Kenny or Mike? As the protagonist of the story, were you seriously content to twiddle your thumbs and have the action carried out by others? I can understand not wanting to get Clementine hurt, but completely opting out of helping to escape from the camp (when given the option) seems a little odd.
Kenny: "Clem, I need you to help me out here"
Clementine: "Nahhh dude, you got this. I'm gonna sit this one out I think." (Despite the fact that she had already previously agreed to the plan)
Again, as the protagonist, this just seems kind of silly to me. I can't help but wonder that the sudden drop in initiative among players who refused to take the radio stemmed from an anti Kenny bias.
I remember playing this scene like this.
Here is my logic.
Did anyone really think, Omg we are going to get away with these Radios?
I think the hug is good thank you if you're looking for one.
I refused to take it because the entire plan was stupid.
Carver was psychotic. There was no way of knowing, period. He might have harboured some admiration for Clementine as a fellow survivor, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't have killed her if she crossed him one too many times.
Alright, so you were assuming the plan was going to fail? I guess I can understand that. It just seems odd and unfair to Kenny to pull that, when the night beforehand everyone hashes this plan out together with pretty much everything set in stone, and then all of a sudden Clementine decides that she will have no part of it? Hell, the night beforehand Clementine single handedly went on a far more dangerous mission to obtain those radios in the first place, with zero objection. Walking from point A to point B with a stolen radio does not seem that big of a deal to me, considering she had personally met with Luke already.
Also, I would assume that most people understood that the stolen radios would not go unnoticed forever. I personally would have liked to have not taken the radios at all as I didn't really think they were necessary, but there wasn't really anything to be done about it, and it only made sense for me to make the most of it.
No but based on his past behavior could give you a indication on what would happen. He beat the crap out of Luke, Clementine would probably get the same treatment.
When you saw Clementine steal the radios, did you think this was going to work?
Yeah it was obvious to me, it wouldn't work. How would they not know 2/6 radios went missing. Where do they think they would go? Who would they suspect? Would they suspect the members of Carver's group or the "new" arrivals. It was completely illogical to think this would work.
I agree , it should of been a choice. At least it would of been a choice that could impact the story. Does Kenny lose a eye or not.
That isn't true: Clem can openly disagree and refuse to take the walky talky, and Kenny forces her to take it.
Considering he forces the radio on Clem regardless of whether she wants to take it or not, it kind of is his fault.
Or at least, we shouldn't have to feel grateful.
It's not Clem saying 'Nahhhh dude im not really into this' it's her saying 'Please can Mike or you take it instead? I'm scared of what will happen if we get caught' (which was a very real possibility: it seemed fairly obvious, as george says, that he would notice that two walkie talkies his guards use all the damn time have gone missing).
The fact that she's the protagonist does not mean that she should be forced to do stupid stuff. The events of the failed plan would work perfectly well if Clem didn't have the radio. She goes off with Bonnie and continues to build their relationships, as before, and she gets herded into the yard to discover that Luke was caught.
I am not sure Kenny would have been ok with Carver even laying a finger on Clem.
I agree, I personally just like to assume it was said during those 9 days Clementine and Kenny were traveling.
Sir, I like the way you think!
I'm not sure that I thought it was going to work, but I didn't take up the "Oh shit, we're totally screwed" mentality. Realistically that would be entirely counterproductive to the group, especially in the face of the adversity that they were potentially looking at.
I think the plan minus the radios was a good one. Since the radios were already added into the mix though, there really wasn't any going back. The plan had to move forward, unless you were content with throwing everyone else under the bus/ botching what opportunity for success that the group had in escaping the compound at that point in time. Regardless of whether or not stealing the radios was a good idea, the group had to stay the course. The group had already seen Carver's madness in action, and had seen him murder group members. Clementine herself had seen him toss a man off a building because of his failure to pick berries in a timely manner. Rolling over really didn't seem like a viable option to me..
Anyway though, if that's why you refused to take the radio from Kenny then it is what it is. All in all though it doesn't seem fair to blame the guy for forcing it on Clementine when all he was doing was sticking to the plan. As I said before, just the night beforehand, the group had sent Clementine on a far more dangerous mission to obtain the radios in the first place. Compared to Kenny asking her to simply carry a single concealed radio from point A to point B, the mission of the previous night was absolutely ridiculous... and yet Clementine carried it out with no qualms. So it seems rather odd that Clementine would all of a sudden have objections to the plan. Also, there wasn't even time for a debate on the matter. As Clementine all you can do is raise the possibility of Mike taking the radio instead, and then the conversation drops right there because Troy enters the room and Kenny needs to take action in either direction. There was no discussion to be had. All Kenny did was stick to the plan, and Clementine apparently had her part to play in that plan (as the protagonist this is only reasonable).
No matter whether or not Kenny "forced" the radio on Clementine, he had a moral obligation to cover for her, to protect her. Even if taking that beating from Carver is only fair, that doesn't change the fact that the guy did a good deed, and Clementine should be grateful that he was willing to die for her.
(Sorry, that ended up being somewhat lengthy.)
You're taking what I said way too literally. I was more or less saying the same thing. Basically I was showing that when you choose to not help Kenny out, you're not being a team player... for whatever particular reasoning you may have had.
Anyway though, if that was your reasoning for doing what you did, then fine. It seems like really odd reasoning to me, but I'm not really looking to debate the point. I was only curious to know what your thought process was, as it seems like there is a lot of anti Kenny bias involved in people making this particular decision. It just seems that every anti Kenny individual that I have had this particular discussion with has made the same decision making in choosing to not be a team player and not willingly take the radio from Kenny. It makes me think that these people say these things because they want to avoid giving credit where credit is due. Whether or not Kenny was only doing what was fair, taking that beating from Carver was a good deed, and Clementine should be grateful that he had her safety in mind/ was willing to sacrifice his own well-being to ensure that she did not meet a similar fate.
Within reason of course. Regardless of you personally finding the situation stupid, you're basically asking that the protagonist abstain from the primary conflict at hand, and that is just not typically realistic to story telling. The plan was the plan, and it was going to go forward no matter how you felt about it. Surely Telltale could have had Clementine skip out and essentially remove herself from the central issue of that episode (as in actively trying to help escape Carver's camp)... but it's just not something that is done very often. She is the protagonist for a reason. She is going to be in the center of the action. Obviously in hindsight Clem's initiative during this particular issue is actually irrelevant to what transpires, but that doesn't change the point. As the single and only protagonist of the story, If you had the option to just duck out of any situation that you personally didn't care for, what would ever be accomplished? For example, I thought the idea of trying to talk to Kenny at the start of Episode Four was stupid and I really didn't want to do it, but I understand that it needed to happen as it was part of the story that needed to be told. In the context of the radio situation, while Clem taking the radio didn't have any sort of differentiating outcome to what would have happened had she not taken said radio, it is still a difference in the story telling, and choosing to move away from the given path could cause a loss of the particular sort of tension that Telltale was specifically trying to build with those scenes.
@mattthefire I just sent you a PM. Please respond.
We need to remember that Kenny would have a very different impression of Carver than we do. We got the one-on-one scenes with him that let us look a little deeper into his character, that allowed us to make inferences such as this; Kenny did not. His full impression of Carver would basically amount to "that crazy fucking lunatic that barged into our lodge, tortured a guy, killed another guy, then took us prisoner". He never got to see Carver in any other light besides that.
From his point of view, he has no reason to believe Carver would go easy on Clementine (or anyone, for that matter.)
It was still a pretty selfish thing to do.
It was a bad plan from the start, only Kenny would think it would be logical to attract a heard of walkers to walk right through them. How many people were killed when trying to escape. They spent maybe 10 minutes on planning the escape attempt.
I was more annoyed when Kenny took the radios from Clementines hand when she was about to speak up. You could tell she was scared, then when Kenny pisses off a violent man with a temper, he puts ALL that on Clementine. Now she feels responsible, because of what happened. That is what pissed me off, when he put that much on a child. He should of never taken the radio back, at that point.
Yeah, I can understand if you weren't a fan of the plan. I'm just saying it's kind of unfair to Kenny to blame him for enacting the agreed upon plan (as in him giving Clementine the radio), especially when Clementine had been a huge part of that plan just the prior night, and seemingly had no issue with being involved. When you add in the fact that there wasn't actually any time to discuss the issue, it only makes sense that the plan would continue on as planned. Clementine doesn't even have the ability to flat out refuse the radio, she only has the ability to raise the idea of Mike doing it instead.
Well he kind of had to make sure that Clementine didn't get hurt, right? I think putting himself on the line to make sure an eleven year old girl didn't get seriously hurt or even killed is kind of only the right thing to do. It was selfless.
Why did Kenny have to provoke Carver? He should of known that Clementine would feel responsible for whatever happened to him. He calls him a bad word. As soon as he does that, Carver goes from in control, to gorked. Anything else really didn't matter to me, like him making Clementine take the radios, that doesn't matter to me.
I think Clementine would of come forward, she may have received a few Sarah Slaps but that is about it, she got worse, determinately if you try to rescue Kenny,
Oh, you're talking about when Kenny says "Heh, fucker..."? He had said that because Carver was going to punish him regardless of the fact that he came forward. Kenny didn't just randomly decide to insult the guy out of the blue.
I always figured the hug you could give him counted.
I would have liked there to have been an option to thank Kenny as well. But I'm content with Clem being able to tell Kenny she was sorry and then hugging him. Though I think Clem was more upset that Kenny had gotten brutally beaten into a near coma, along with the fact that his plan was so close to succeeding until Luke got caught stealing food. I like to think the hug was a wordless thank you for taking the fall for her.