Mike and Bonnie Defense Thread
CrazyGeorge
Banned
Put yourself in their situation, you see a old man beating the hell out of a cripple kid, what would you do? I think these characters get WAY too much hate for what they did. I don't believe Mike is a bad guy, i think he was forced into helping Arvo, because Kenny was probably going to kill him. Arvo i feel also manipulated mike/bonnie because who wouldn't feel bad for Arvo after he got beaten up by Kenny.
I don't care that bonnie yelled at Clementine. She blamed "Clementine." for not making the choice she wanted, that to me is 100 percent natural reasoning, i mean if, I tell you , do this and you don't do it that way, and you mess something up. Obviously i'm going to say, if you would have listened to me , you would of done it correctly, its easy to point the finger after the fact. People do it all the time. I feel like most people are hardwired to avoid accountability, its a self defense mechanism.
No one wants to feel responsible for someone else's life, subconsciously i feel most people shift the blame away from them so they don't have to deal with the guilt of what they have done or what actions they have taken.
Comments
I take the baby, the child and make a run for it. Not go with some random ass Russian guy I met yesterday. Either way though, even if they left with Arvo, at least leave some supplies instead of taking everything we have.
I wouldn't worry about the supplies, i think that was just the "writing."
So you would do basically the same thing as Mike/Bonnie.
Ugh, please don't. I've said this a million times and I'll say it again. If you can't think of a better excuse to defend someone other than "writing" then there probably isn't anything else to defend them for.
You want to know something funny. I just was on metacritic, and noticed that the Metascore for each TTG is getting progressively worse. I didn't check out Borderlands. Game of Thrones got a metascore in the sixties for their last episode.
As for my comment, i don't see any reason to change my response. It was the "someone wrote the idea of them taking both bags." Right?
Mike and Bonie still took all their food and left an 11 year old girl and a little baby boy to starve; I'm not forgiving that. I get Kenny was getting violent and heck I'd probably felt like getting out of there too if I was in their place. The thing is I might've forgiven them if they'd just left them one bag of food for Clem's group or even left a few cans of stupid chili, but they didn't even do that, they took everything with the intent of thinking of only themselves and condemning those kids to death by stranding them out there when attempting to take the truck.
If Mike or Bonnie ever show up Season 3, they'll get no forgiveness or trust from me, because they'd probably do the same thing again. They're not bad people, but what they did is wrong.
Luke was the glue that held them all together. His death snapped Kenny into a rage fit, Mike didn't like the guy from previous incidents and this just sealed the deal for him. Bonnie looked like she just gave up after Luke died and went back to what she always does, move to another group while sabotaging her previous one. At first maybe they thought the group could work, but when shit hit the fan and saw how bad things could really get, Bonnie and Mike couldn't take it, saw a chance and took it. It was Mike's idea to take Arvo along, not fully understanding that he may have been upset over the shoot-out, but incredibly angry as well.
They could leave, but taking the supplies and ditching Clementine when they thought Kenny was a danger is what pissed players off. I can understand leaving AJ since Kenny was so damn attached to the baby, but Clementine actually bonded with these people. Maybe they were scared that Kenny would still go after them if they took Clem, since no matter what Kenny still likes Clem even if the player does not like Kenny. Still just not a cool thing to do when things are so damn desperate.
Lol reviews
Well tbf they don't know kenny that well and they don't wanna be around when he goes off . I would of been outta there too
Nah, Tales from the Borderlands is doing as well as the other games on Metacritic. Don't know why Game of Thrones is getting lower reviews it's good as well, I guess it's facing a tougher crowd.
I thought Bonnie and Mike were inconsistent plot-driven characters who were only there to do whatever the writers needed for the story, and that makes it a lot harder for me to actually hate them. They were shown to be reasonable people in Amid the Ruins because the episode needed some comic relief, but then once No Going Back rolled around they needed a betrayal scene for drama so they put Bonnie and Mike into that role as well.
Personally I don't hate them at all, and I don't hate Arvo either, mostly because I have complaints about how those three were written. However, Clementine cannot blame their actions on bad writing because she is an actual character in the game, so if I see them again while playing as Clementine, she will never forgive them or go near them again.
Actually, I think bad writing is a totally valid excuse in this case to not hate Mike and Bonnie. Their actions here made no sense at all and were completely inconsistent with their previous characterization and it was obvious the writers just wanted to make contrived drama to force us into the Kenny/Jane choice.
Remember that time Bonnie tried to protect Sarah and Clem in the herd with a machine gun, or the time Mike saved Clem from getting her arm chomped off? Yeah, neither did the writers. Or all those times Bonnie tried to bond to with Clem? Nope, never happened. Or how Mike was literally the only adult in Episode 3 that realized Clem was a kid and was rightfully concerned for her safety? Nope! Or how Bonnie clearly cared about keeping AJ safe and then magically forgot he existed? Lol!
I also see people claiming it was completely in character for Bonnie to have betrayed Clem since she's apparently a "chronic traitor", yet forget that her "disloyalty" was always a matter of naivety rather than maliciousness. She lied at the ski lodge because she genuinely thought Carver was a good man and that she was doing the right thing. She betrayed Carver after realizing he was evil in order to save the group. It was not in character for her to have committed a betrayal for selfish reasons.
If Sarah did a complete 180 and suddenly decided to murder Clem, I'd have an issue with the writing rather than hate Sarah for doing something completely out of character for no reason. There's a point when the writers, and not the characters, deserve the blame.
We literally know nothing about Mike other than he wants to eat the shit out of a raccoon. And Bonnie, out of character? A person who's been known to betray people who have been good to her on more than one occasion? Yeah, ok.
Ok so you edited your post with this. You say earlier that she betrayed Carver because she realized he was evil, did you ever think that was the reason she left the group that Kenny was in? It wasn't an entirely selfish decision, that was the entire point of them leaving, because Kenny was going insane.
Lets be real Bonnie and Mike were there for whatever the plot needed them to do, a few extra faces to give the group some size, they were the effective chuck, christa and omid of season 2 who did next to nothing and actions varied in there appearance that was too notable, really Kenny should have been pissy at least with Bonnie but her actions get ignored
Is it really that hard to believe people will think "Fuck it" and act selfishly in TWD? Especially after everything Bonnie has been through. Plus the plan was to get away from Kenny right? If she brought Clem and AJ with her then Kenny would just come after them and start a whole new mess of problems.
We know that Mike is concerned about kids to the point that he sympathized with Arvo. Apparently Mike suffers from short-term memory loss since he completely forgot Clem and AJ existed afterwards. As I said, all of Bonnie's "betrayals" have always been out of good intent. She "betrayed" the ski lodge group because she thought Carver really wasn't going to hurt them, she betrayed Carver because she wanted to help the group.
And yes, her betrayal in No Going Back was portrayed as selfish, which was inconsistent with her character. She and Mike took ALL of the supplies (which literally makes no sense; do they really need to take that much fucking food when they know they're leaving behind two kids?). If the betrayal wasn't meant to be "entirely selfish" the writers wouldn't have had them leave Clem with absolutely nothing. Also, even the reason you gave is rather selfish, in that Bonnie left to save her own skin rather than staying behind to look out for Clem and AJ. Also, why not ask Clem to come along in the first place? Oh right, because the script says she's Kenny's best friend.
No, it's because the script says Kenny's a crazy ass psycho, and if they were to try to escape, they shouldn't take Clem or AJ with them.
You'd think that Arvo shooting Clem would make Kenny summarily blow the trio's brains out. If characterization was consistent, anyway.
Anyway:
I like Mike and Bonnie, and I can't hate them simply because they do something that makes absolutely no sense. I hate blatant emotional manipulation like that.
That's very uncharacteristically selfish of Bonnie, the person who nearly got herself killed trying to save Luke, to go "fuck those kids! I gotta get the fuck away from this crazy ass psycho and save my own ass!"
They left because they felt that their lives were in danger, and they took Arvo because they knew his life was as well. If I was in that situation, Clem and AJ would be the last people I'd consider trying to take away from Kenny, because it is obvious that Kenny cares only about those two, and not even about anyone else's opinions which is what he said to their faces while they argued over where to go with the truck. So it makes perfect sense for them to leave. That's not the part that's hard to believe, the fact that they stole every bit of food there was and left none for the others is the part I take issue with, because it makes no sense.
That's basically what she did at Howes though, except she took the main group with her and forgot about all her friends at the Howes (including a child named Becca)
Even them leaving Clem and AJ was uncharacteristically selfish of them, since they obviously thought that going to Wellington would be suicide. But whatever, apparently Mike and Bonnie are completely fine with letting Clem and AJ go off to the northern wilderness with Kenny to freeze to death.
It makes sense because in the zombie apocalypse you need to take everything you can get. That means all food and supplies. If they leave Clem and AJ with Kenny, they are not coming back. So why leave any food or supplies with them? Just take it all. Mike and Bonnie are selfish people now with no good reason to be "nice" anymore. This is the reason why it is okay to hate them.
Kenny couldn't "blow their brains out" since you know they ran away in the woods due to fear of getting their brains blown out. As much as I would love to see them get hunted down for what they've done, Kenny had to take care of an injured Clem.
Yet the 400 Days group were never portrayed as her friends. She clearly hated Becca, and I don't blame her for leaving the others based on the little we saw of them in Episode 3. Wyatt, Vince and Russel clearly seemed indoctrinated by Carver by that point.
Let's not forget that everyone seemed to forget that escaping Howe's would lead to the death of dozens of likely innocent people. Clem or Luke or Sarah never stop to think about the community they're destroying. Bonnie wasn't being "selfish" here, it's pretty clear the writers just didn't consider the moral weight of the characters' actions in this episode. If they had, the question of whether the group did the right thing, indirectly causing dozens of deaths, would've been brought up at some point rather than being completely glossed over.
The same could be said with Clem's group. She only really got along with Luke. Clem too (although Clem could be a real you-know-what to her), but when he died Bonnie wanted out.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtagonistCenteredMorality
What? How would you even know that? I'm pretty sure they had like 3 lines of dialogue towards each other at the end of 400 days.
Except maybe Clementine thought the people there were bad people? Lol, she didn't know any of them, if I was in that position I'd also make a safe bet they're all assholes with how Troy treated Clem.
All of them hostile. Not that I blame Bonnie, Becca was mean-spiritedly taunting her over how she lost Leland.
So did Clem just forget Reggie existed? Or Bonnie? If there were two completely decent people in the compound, surely it would be reasonable to assume there were more she never met. I suppose short-term memory loss runs in the Season 2 cast.
Since he's already been proven in the episode to have more fun beating up helpless people than HELPING CLEM, I'm sure he'd kill them immediately. Hell, considering that people in this setting are likely to sleep with guns in their hands, why wouldn't he have just ran after them and blown their brains out?
Bonnie betraying a community she spent years living in makes her even more fickle than the writers likely intended.
Over how many lines of dialogue you figured this out again? I think it's a safer bet to make that they were friends considering they all ended up with each other or at the very least didn't hate each other.
Well surely if there were more nicer people there, they would've found there way over to Clementine or Bonnie and there way out of Howes.
K. It seems like with every post you create a new line to shit on season 2 just for the sake of shitting on it.
So not wanting to side with a crazy, unreasonable self-imposed leader automatically makes you 'selfish.' Nice logic there.
Did the writers even think things through?
Reggie was brain-washed by Craver's bull-shit. He wanted everyone to stay imprisoned and do the slave work, I wouldn't count that as a good guy imo, a nice person because he was putting on a face for Carver. Bonnie lied to Clem when they first met, until later she wanted to betray Carver was she considered a person on Clem's side.
Vince's wary "That's enough Becca!" when she's taunting Bonnie implies this was a regular occurrence.
Let's be honest, the real reason Bonnie didn't try to find other decent people to escape with them was because TT didn't have the resources to make more characters (models,voice actors...). They thought the players would be too focused on escaping to notice the bizarre lack of people in the compound, or the improbability that literally everyone in the compound was pure evil.
This is a big issue with the season though. Rebecca forgetting about the blackmail, Carlos forgetting he doesn't trust Clem, Bonnie and Mike forgetting AJ existed.
Stockholm syndrome? The guy's lost his arm, and it's quite possible that Carver actually cut it off. Being forced to rely on your captors tends to breed dependency.
Reggie's a nice guy based off his behavior towards the girls in the greenhouse. He frickin' tries to pat Clem on the head (why did that offend her?!) and his last words are "thanks for the help, girls."
It is selfish to take all of the food and supplies and leave none for the kids that you're leaving behind. They were thinking about their survival, that's it, and so yes that is selfish, duh.
So Clem thought the people in the compound who were like Reggie, completely nice but brainwashed, deserved to die horribly? I suppose that must've been it, since she nevers even seems to think about what happened to Howes, or seem all that disturbed when she returns there in Jane's ending.
No it doesn't, it shows that Vince was telling Becca to stop. I don't know where you get the feeling that it's a regular occurrence over just that.
That's not improbable at all, there have been multiple times in TWD universe where an entire group or the majority of it's members are pure evil.
No. "Kenny's a crazy ass psycho, and if they were to try to escape, they shouldn't take Clem or AJ with them."
It's not forgetting lol. They probably realized they were being stupid about it the entire time. After Clem came running back to the cabin after Pete got bit, they would have no reason to distrust her or be mean to her after that since she could have just cut and run at that point.
Because these people have legs and will use them to run very fast from danger.
I don't blame them for leaving or stealing all the stuff I would have done the same thing if I were in that position. I don't like that Arvo gets trigger happy at the end but I did rob and try to get Jane to kill him and later killed his sister the only person he cared about. I think this put him in a I better not see him again category. I don't hate him but I will do what I think I need to and I can't bring myself to trust him.