The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 13

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Simon

SPOILER WARNING – I’M GOING TO TRY AND REVIEW THESE EPISODES AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO THE ORIGINAL U.S. TV BROADCAST. IF YOU’RE IN THE U.K., AND PLANNING TO WATCH THE BROADCAST ON FX THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY, BE AWARE THAT MAJOR PLOT POINTS WILL BE DISCUSSED!

Beside the Dying Fire

So this is it – after thirteen weeks, it’s the culmination of The Walking Dead’s ‘difficult second album’. This has been a patchy season after the compressed, high-octane drama of the first. With more than twice the number of episodes for apparently about half the budget, the first half of the season was frustratingly meandering and slow-paced, with a restrictive claustrophobic setting that worked to the detriment of the drama, and a little too much post-apocalypse soap opera.

The show’s return after its mid-season break found a massive increase in quality. Its settings opened up to take in the town near Hershel’s farm, and most importantly we got a return of the show’s proper USP – zombies. After their near absence for most of the season’s first half, recent episodes have sated the audience with horde after horde of stumbling revenants, reminding us that this is a post-apocalypse scenario far more hazardous than that of, say, Survivors. Not that the character drama has been neglected for zombie action, mind – the two episodes prior to this finale have had some heart in mouth moments of tension with no zombie involvement at all. They’ve also had, it’s fair to say, a number of whopping great plot contrivances that don’t hold up to close scrutiny.

This mostly excellent finale had its share of those too, though I’ll come to those later. But with original comics’ creator Robert Kirkman co-scripting with new showrunner Glen Mazzara, this was for the most part a thrilling, gripping piece of TV that might almost redeem the uneven pacing of the season as a whole.

After last week’s cliffhanger ending of a horde of walkers stumbling towards the farm, this week’s cold open cleverly didn’t pick up right from there. Instead, cleverly, it eked out the tension with an epic sequence of how this previously unanticipated horde came to be there. Starting out in a city (presumably nearby Atlanta), they’d taken to following that helicopter we’d all forgotten about from way back in the first season. As in the behaviour described in the comics, more joined them and they continued to stagger in the same direction, gaining numbers as they went, until long after the object of their initial interest had been forgotten. Until, now numbering in the impressively visualised hundreds, the gunshots from the farm caused them to turn in a new direction. Seeing the end of last week’s episode, this time from their point of view, was an excellent lead in to the credits and the action proper.

And action it certainly was. Taking the climax of most classic zombie movies as an inspiration, the episode showed our heroes’ refuge being overrun by a horde of ghouls so large it was quite simply unstoppable. Most of the episode’s first half was a frenetic melee of chaos as the farm was overrun, with the characters scattered hither and yon across the fields as they took to the cars in an attempt to shoot and then distract the herd.

Rick and Carl, for their part, were left hiding in the barn as they found themselves unable to make it through the hordes to the farmhouse. Everyone else being unaware of this, they had to fend for themselves by setting the barn – and the walkers Rick rather fearlessly let in – ablaze, in a set piece that surely consumed a fair chunk of the season budget.

With all the shooting, burning, and mad driving, the script took the opportunity to kill off those characters who’ve been a complete waste of space since the season began. Jimmy, the mostly mute teenage boy who was on the farm for some reason or other, perished after foolishly forgetting to lock the door of the RV, letting in some hungry corpses; catching light from the barn, the RV – so closely identified with the now-deceased Dale – is now toast. Back at the house, Otis’ wife Patricia, who’s uttered barely a word since her husband died, was dragged away from Beth for some chowing down.

These deaths provided some welcome gore – this is a horror story, after all – but served to underline how badly these characters have been served by all the scripts since the season began. Were they introduced solely with the intention of becoming zombie chow in the last episode? Even if they were, some kind of character description might have made us care, like we did about Dale and even Shane last week. As it was, I simply shrugged and considered the show well rid of them. It might have had more impact to have lost at least one of the main characters; but I suppose having killed off two in as many weeks, the writers didn’t want the action undercut by that kind of trauma.

This elongated sequence provided some memorable moments. Hershel, futilely blasting away at the unstoppable horde approaching the house; Lori, screaming for Carl and being dragged away to the pickup truck; Glenn blasting away out of the Hyundai’s window as Maggie drove like a lunatic. Some excellent direction from Ernest Dickerson gave the whole thing a real sense of urgency and tension; more than once, I found myself pointing at the screen and yelling, “behind you!”

Eventually though, everyone had the good sense to realise that this wasn’t a battle they were going to win, and to get the hell out of there. Along the way, Daryl rekindled the spark he has with Carol by sweeping heroically in on his bike to rescue her from pursuing walkers. Elsewhere, Rick, for a wonder, managed to convince the stubborn Hershel that the farm was lost, and there was no point dying for it. Even T-Dog finally got some actual lines, as he drove Lori and Beth away in that tatty old pickup that shows not all the vehicles in the show are product placements. Having all, independently, made the decision to flee the farm, these separate groups all, independently, decided to head back to the highway, and the place they’d left supplies for the missing Sophia way back in episode 2.

And this is the whopping great plot contrivance I had trouble with. Yes, it might have been annoying to spend the first few episodes of the next season with the group trying to find each other. But for all of them, independently, to have decided to meet up there having made no prior rendezvous arrangement? That, I’m afraid, is just not believable. I could have accepted it if some of them did that; hell, even if most of them did. But all of them? Er, no, I’m not buying that.

A similar thing happened way back in episode 8, when Rick guessed that the missing Hershel was in the town bar (and he was), then Lori, having no knowledge of this, correctly came to the same conclusion when she set out to find him. I appreciate that sometimes you just want to move the plot along to a certain point, but for heaven’s sake do it in a believable way that actually makes sense!

Having ranted about that, I’m bound also to say that the second half of the episode, with the action over, was much more slowly paced. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as our heroes have to pause to take stock, count their losses, apportion blame, and so on. Dramatically it makes sense. But perhaps less so in a season finale, when you’re wanting to stoke the thrills to fever pitch and leave your audience hanging in eager anticipation of the show’s return.

That said, there was some good character drama in this latter part of the episode, as the group’s morale plummeted and Rick began to seem increasingly unhinged in a way that might have made Shane seem preferable. Carol’s all for splitting up; T-Dog just wants to head ‘east’; and Lori, having been told that Rick killed Shane “just to get it over with” finds it hard to even touch her husband.

To add to that, we finally found out what Dr Jenner whispered into Rick’s ear at the CDC last season. As we suspected after the last few episodes, it was, “you’re all infected”. That Rick had known this all along and not told anyone did not go down well; but it looks like, for pragmatic reasons, they’re willing to sullenly accept him as leader. For now. It can’t have helped when he declared that, “this is no longer a democracy”. Having killed Shane, it seems like he’s rejected Dale’s way of thinking and adopted Shane’s anyway.

This is an unusual way of developing your ‘hero’, but it shows that The Walking Dead is not going to make compromises about how nasty even the best of people can be. The Rick in the comics developed along similar lines, his worldview hardening in light of the circumstances. He’s hardly recognisable now from the clean-cut cop at the story’s beginning. The development is unsurprising with comic creator Kirkman on scripting duties, and Andrew Lincoln rose to the challenge well, managing to make us angry with Rick while still sympathising with his viewpoint.

And speaking of the comics (which I’ll try not to spoiler too much), we finally got the much-anticipated arrival of one of their most popular characters. As the abandoned Andrea, finally having run out of bullets after fleeing the walkers all night, was pounced on by a huge ghoul, it looked like the end for her. Until, that is, its head was unexpectedly sliced off by a sword, wielded by a mysterious hooded figure accompanied by two chained, armless, jawless zombies. Without wanting to give too much away, comics readers will know exactly who this is, and may, like me, have punched the air at that point.

Back at the camp, the arguing over, the episode climaxed with an impressive crane shot. As the camera panned up, and across the river, we saw something else familiar from the comics – a massive, fenced prison complex in the near distance. Again, without wanting to give too much away, it’s not hard to guess where this is going, particularly after the group’s discussion about finding a ‘safe place’. And given the major comic villain we now know will feature next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was accompanied by the popular TV character of Merle Dixon too.

The show is back “in the fall”, though I’ve seen no firm date for its return yet. Apparently season 3 will have 16 episodes, giving more scope for storylines. We can only hope that AMC will be generous enough to give it a commensurately higher budget, to reflect its undoubted popularity; and that the showrunner manages to keep up a better balanced pace across the season, with rather less of the endless chit chat that characterised the first half of season 2. Still, uneven though the second season may have been, its second half more than made up for its first, and I’ll certainly be back to watch when it returns.

The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 12

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Simon

Better Angels

With the season end in sight, this week’s Walking Dead suitably ramped up the tension in another gripping episode that seems to demonstrate a show regaining its form. Brilliantly paced, Evan Reilly and Glen Mazzara’s script built from a slow burning character drama to a climax that’s been seemingly waiting in the wings for weeks.

First though, the gang had to mourn Dale after his shock death last week. The show’s cold open nicely intercut Rick’s eulogy at his graveside with an incredibly brutal and graphic zombie hunt. As Rick solemnly intoned that he was going to do things Dale’s way from now on, a close up on Shane showed him looking distinctly unimpressed. The zombie hunt flashed through the ceremony, showing Shane’s preferred method of doing things – brutally, pragmatically and finally. The effects here gave us some top notch gore, as walkers were dispatched in some inventive, non-gunfire ways.

There was some time to take stock, as Rick set about organising the proper fortification of Hershel’s farm – something that they might sensibly have done some time ago. Having resolved to follow Dale’s moral compass, Rick was still set on reviving the plan to release the hapless Randall a long way from the farm, and from his well-armed comrades. He plainly didn’t trust Shane to help him with this, choosing Daryl instead. A sensible choice, but one that Shane saw straight through; as they argued the toss, it was interesting to see Shane as the calm one for once, with Rick acting like an arrogant hothead who knew all the answers. This, surely, was what precipitated the later, tragic events of the story.

First though, Carl confided in Shane that he saw himself as responsible for Dale’s death, by failing to kill the walker he taunted last week. Shane’s advice on this was as pragmatic as ever; it wasn’t Carl’s fault, but he should keep the gun and learn how to protect himself. The grownups wouldn’t always be there to watch out for him. Actually, by the end of this episode I was beginning to wonder whether anyone was keeping an eye on him at all!

Rick having finally taken Shane’s advice on talking to Carl, there was a touching father/son bonding scene, in which Rick almost tenderly outlined the new realities to his son. It was interesting to note that, after having proclaimed he’d do things Dale’s way, the thrust of this was Rick’s firm persuasion that Carl really should be armed. There was much debate after last week’s episode as to whether Dale’s pre-apocalypse, ‘civilised’ approach was the wrong way to go with the way things had become; it looks like Rick has decided that civilisation has to be tempered by the brutal realities of the situation. He continues to develop as a character, much as he does in the comics, and Andrew Lincoln was particularly good this week with some very strong material to work with.

Sarah Wayne Callies got some good stuff too, in a significant scene with Shane in which Lori finally acknowledged her own responsibility for the impossible situation between him and Rick. Lori’s been arguably the most annoying character this year, presumably intentionally; selfish, indecisive and occasionally incompetent at basic self-preservation. Seeing her finally admit some of her own shortcomings was a surprise, and the scene with Shane felt like the beginning of some kind of closure.

In hindsight, a lot of the early part of this episode was indeed building up to closure on Shane. The fuse was lit as he stalked into the barn where Randall was tied up, then began flipping out and smashing himself on the head. After weeks of gradually unravelling, it was plain that he’d finally, completely, lost it, and this made for interestingly tense viewing as I genuinely couldn’t tell which way he was going to jump. As he led Randall through the woods, encouraging him to spill all about his gang, I really believed that Shane might take the step of joining them. So it took me quite by surprise when they disappeared behind a tree and a distinctly nasty, neck-snappingish noise was heard.

And then, as Shane smashed his head against a tree, his plan became clearer – he was faking Randall’s escape. But why? Plainly he was up to no good, but even here it was hard to see what he was hoping to gain.

It all came to a head in one of the tensest scenes the show’s done, as Rick and Shane came to a desolate, moonlit field near the woods. Director Guy Ferland gave the scene some excellent visuals as Rick and Shane stood silhouetted facing each other, the moon high behind them, as if reaching the final showdown in a classic Western. The implication was clear, and Rick, a trained cop after all, figured it out quickly. “So this is where you’re going to do it then?” he asked, knowing that this was Shane’s endgame. “Good a place as any,” Shane replied laconically. The showdown vibe was unmistakeable; that same laid back attitude the antagonists display at the end of every Sergio Leone movie. I fully expected a long, drawn out standoff with increasingly close shots of the actors’ faces interspersed with shots of fingers twitching near triggers.

And what we got, cleverly, was something quite different. Having built up that vibe, the script switched tack as Rick went into classic ‘police negotiator’ mode, trying to persuade Shane that, if he only gave up the gun, all this could be forgotten and they could move on.

This was certainly the ‘Dale-like’ thing to do, and was reminiscent of the more peaceable philosophy of heroes like Jean-Luc Picard or the Doctor. It was also, in light of Shane’s increasing insanity, plainly the absolute wrong thing to do here. This played out for a tense few minutes, until Rick took the step of holding out his gun to Shane. At this point, I was prepared for two outcomes; Rick getting killed (unlikely), or Shane accepting his terms and condemning the viewer to more endless weeks of seething tension between them.

Instead, I was again genuinely surprised that the scriptwriters had the balls for Rick to finally accept what had to be. As Shane reached for the gun, Rick, sobbing, stabbed him through the heart. It was a shocking moment, well-handled by both actors. The look of amazement on Shane’s face as Rick finally bought into his way of doing things was priceless. Mind you, I also wondered whether the whole thing had been engineered by Shane as an elaborate, unhinged way of committing suicide; the scene seemed laced with deliberate ambiguity on this.

Even than, the shocks weren’t over, nor the script’s clever mind games. Carl suddenly popped up, having seen everything (really, does nobody keep an eye on what he’s doing?). And it looked for a moment like he was going to shoot his father. Rick certainly thought so, an indication of how he’s not getting the changes in his son.

But no, as the gunshot rang out, it was the stumbling, now zombified Shane that Carl shot; possibly a clever nod to the comics, in which Carl shot the living Shane much, much earlier. It also served to establish (along with the discovery that the strangled Randall was now a zombie too) something we’d suspected for a few weeks now – you don’t have to be bitten to come back from the dead. This is a potentially interesting development; it means that, if this is caused by some kind of virus, everyone is a carrier, with death waiting to trigger it. I wonder if that’s what Dr Jenner whispered into Rick’s ear at the end of Season One? Still no resolution on that – yet.

As a prelude to the season finale, the episode ended with a swarm of walkers, drawn by all that gunfire, stumbling across the field towards Rick and Carl – and the farm. Clearly, in time-honoured zombie movie tradition, the climax to this season is going to see an invasion of the undead laying siege to our heroes’ refuge. Will they survive? Will they have to move on from the farm? (God, I hope so!) And more importantly, will they have the sense to get guns with silencers?

With the episodes of the last few weeks, The Walking Dead really seems to have got its mojo back after a distinctly patchy, often badly paced season. This was another strong story, and a great sendoff for Shane. Jon Bernthal has been excellent in the role, and will be missed. Zombie stories really need a human villain to work; the zombies are an all-pervading danger, but they’re essentially mindless. For genuine nastiness, you need the living, something George Romero’s movies always remind us of. I gather that another of the comic’s well-known baddies is due to put in an appearance soon to fill the void. First though, our heroes have got what looks like an all out zombie onslaught to contend with. If it can match the quality of the last few episodes, roll on next week…

The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 10

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Simon

18 Miles Out

This week’s close focus on just a few of The Walking Dead’s ensemble cast made for an impressive episode that should be known as ‘The One Where Rick and Shane Have a Long Overdue Punch-up’. Zombie mayhem was present and correct again, with the character drama being threaded through it, and informed by it, better than last week by some margin.

In some ways, it was a very traditional format for series drama; there was an A plot – Rick and Shane’s excursion to dump off teenage bandit Randall – and a B plot – Lori, Maggie and Andrea have to deal with the now-conscious Beth’s apparent desire to commit suicide. If you were missing your favourite character this week, consolation could be taken that the very tight focus on, effectively, just six characters made for a gripping piece, and left nobody with the sort of perfunctory role that T-Dog seems to have every single week. On the whole, if there’s nothing for a character to do, I’d rather not see them at all that episode than have them mill round in the background and occasionally say one line.

The two plot threads were balanced far better than last week’s ‘first half action, second half talking’ approach, and worked better for it. Of the two, it was necessarily the A plot that got the most attention, as alongside some more actual zombie action, the increasingly poisonous nature of Rick and Shane’s relationship came to a head. Rick put his cards on the table, telling Shane that he knew everything – about Lori, about the death of Otis, about Shane’s twisted love for his wife. Shane initially seemed to take this on board, looking chastened for the first time in about ever. But as they found themselves stuck with a dilemma about whether or not to kill Randall, then a swarm of walkers descended, Shane took the opportunity to have his say. And he was pretty firm about it too.

Jon Bernthal’s been pretty impressive as Shane this season, all glowering anger and frightening obsession; by comparison, Rick’s obsession with what may be a now obsolete morality has meant Andrew Lincoln has had far less of a chance to impress. Let’s face it, the goody-goody hero is usually the less interesting part to play. But Rick’s definitely changed over the last few episodes, and this week Lincoln got a chance to impressively show us the extent of that.

His no-nonsense roadside speech to Shane showed us a man to be reckoned with, and also a man who these days won’t shy away from doing what needs to be done, however horrible it might be. It was telling that he accepted Shane’s reasons for sacrificing Otis, and admitted that he might well have done the same thing. But the crucial difference between them, which drove this episode’s conflict, is that Rick will take the time to consider before doing the horrible thing; Shane will just charge in and do it as a first response.

Hence, when they discovered that shifty teenager Randall, pleading not to be left at an abandoned Public Works Depot 18 miles out from the farm, knew Maggie and had therefore known the location all along, Shane’s first instinct was to kill him right there. Rick, typically, didn’t altogether disagree, but wanted to take the boy back to the farm and think on it overnight. But this was what pushed Shane right over the edge, as he came to the conclusion that Rick didn’t have what it took to do the hard thing. The look on his face said it all as he told Rick, “you don’t have what it takes to keep us alive.” And from that moment, the punch up was on.

They weren’t messing about, either. This was a seriously nasty fight, with both parties struggling for possession of the gun. Clearly, Shane meant to use it on Rick; Rick, presumably would have just threatened Shane with it. But if there was any doubt about Shane’s murderous intentions, that went out the window when he flung a giant wrench right at Rick’s head.

Fortunately for both, he missed, though his intention was now in no doubt. Unfortunately, the wrench went sailing through a window into a room full of ghouls, who shuffled out en masse for another tense bit of zombie mayhem. Surrounded by some quite fast-moving walkers, Rick and Shane scarpered in different directions; the fight put on hold, but far from resolved.

We’d seen part of this action sequence in the show’s cold open, but this time I’d say it hadn’t been needed. I like non-linear narratives, but I’m not keen on the practice of grabbing the viewer pre-credits by taking an exciting bit from halfway through the story then rewinding to the start. It smacks of a lack of imagination – what, you couldn’t write an exciting scene at the story’s beginning? Particularly when, I felt, writer Scott Gimple had done so this week. I would have been grabbed quite sufficiently by Rick’s opening speech to Shane, with a zoom in to the latter’s surly face leading to the credits.

Still, at least we knew there was going to be zombie action. While less numerous than last week, it didn’t disappoint, particularly for taking place in daylight where the detail of the impressive make-up could clearly be seen. These were some nasty looking corpses, particularly the big, lipless brute that ended up toppling on Rick – the first of three to fall hungrily on him, pinning him to the ground while he frantically shot them in the head, unable to wriggle out from under.

Shane too had problems as he bolted into a school bus with a door that couldn’t be locked, and tried to knife each zombie in the head as they squeezed through the gap. Randall arguably had it even worse, as his hands and feet were still tied. Even with this stricture, he managed to graphically snap an undead woman’s arm before reaching the knife he needed.

This was some tense stuff, and well done – there was no stinting on the gore, either. But it was also integral to the progression of Rick and Shane’s fight. As Rick managed to grab Randall and run for the car, Randall made the fairly sensible point that it made no sense for Rick to rescue a man who several minutes ago had been trying to bash his brains in. For a minute, it looked like Rick agreed, as he hared away in the opposite direction; like Shane, I was totally taken in by that, so it was a surprise when the car roared up next to the bus, with Rick exhorting Shane to make his escape via the back door.

On the drive back, Shane was more docile, but the look on his face made me think that we’re far from seeing their rivalry resolved. But all the secrets between them are now out in the open, and the field of battle is laid. As a result, I’m now seeing Rick less as a do-gooding moraliser, but as someone whose judgement is more measured and considered than Shane. It looks like he really does have what it takes to survive. But somehow I don’t think Shane will be convinced.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, Beth unexpectedly got a plot thread as it became clear she was hellbent on killing herself. Lori and Maggie, inevitably, were horrified, but Andrea had a more Shane-like pragmatism given her own recent desire for suicide. We’ve not really seen any interaction between Lori and Andrea before, but this week they got an electric face-off in Hershel’s kitchen; neither pulled any verbal punches, and we were left in no doubt as to the contempt they hold for each other. Lori sees Andrea as lazy and not pulling her weight; Andrea, for her part, sees Lori as selfish and spoiled, taking for granted all the good things she has in such a horrible situation.

I have to say, it was Andrea I really sided with. It’s no fault of actor Sarah Wayne Callies, but Lori really is irritating and comes across as always wanting more from everybody. This is now so consistent that it must be an intention on the part of the showrunner – I’m sure her selfishness will lead to much trouble in the upcoming weeks. Andrea, meanwhile, had an uncomfortably sensible pragmatism about the desirability of suicide in the scenario they all face. In the event, she left Beth to make her own decision, and the half-assed attempt she made at slashing her own wrists betrayed her lack of conviction in killing herself. Eventually, even Lori had to concede this had probably been the best approach. Trouble is, I’m betting that, having had this one plotline, the writers will be unable to think of anything to do with Beth afterwards. After all, her boyfriend Jimmy has still barely had more than a handful of lines despite having been in it since the second episode of the season.

This dark philosophising on the attraction of suicide was efficiently threaded through the action with Rick and Shane, so the episode as a whole felt far better balanced than last week. There was also some touching on an issue I mentioned last week – is it only bite victims who rise as zombies, or everyone who dies? This came up as Rick and Shane puzzled over some zombies they’d just killed who seemed to have no bite marks at all. Eventually they concluded that the infection must have got in through scratches on the victims; which should worry them both given the open wounds they both got during their fight, and the amount of zombie blood liberally sprayed about near said wounds later on. It could be that one of them isn’t long for the world of the living – my money would be on Shane.

A gripping, action and character filled episode ended with Rick and Shane back where they started, heading back to the farm with a bound Randall in the trunk. Next week, it looks like they’ll have the unpalatable dilemma of whether to kill him in order to ensure their group’s safety. That could be interesting, and intentionally or not shows yet another resemblance to classic BBC post-apocalypse drama Survivors.

There’s a truly gripping episode in the first series of that in which the settlement of plague survivors debate whether to kill an apparent murderer in their midst; with no judicial system any more, it could be the only way to deal with the situation. Eventually, the ‘murderer’, a man with the mind of a child, is indeed executed. And then the group find out that he was innocent after all. It made for an enthralling moral dilemma, and it looks like Rick’s gang are about to find themselves in a similar situation. This could be the ultimate test of Rick’s considered judgement versus Shane’s bullheaded pragmatism – and could be very interesting indeed.

The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 4

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Simon

Cherokee Rose

After last week’s intense, character driven episode of The Walking Dead, comes… another one. And that’s not a bad thing, as last week got me really interested in the characters again, to the extent that I wouldn’t have minded a comparative lack of zombie action. As it happened, last week didn’t stint on the zombies, but this week did, and I found myself not missing them… too much.

After the extreme darkness the characters were exhibiting last week, with their constant talk of death and ending it all, this week saw them lightening up somewhat. Which was not only a relief but quite plausible; if they’d remained in that kind of mood on an ongoing basis, I’m pretty sure that there would have been a few suicides.

Not that it didn’t start a bit dark, though. The pre-credits sequence showed us Otis’ funeral, a sad cairn in lieu of a body, and focussed very much on Shane’s obvious (to the viewer) guilt. As Hershel eulogised Otis and his wife cried, the camera kept lingering on Shane’s face, and credit to Jon Bernthal for an expression that screamed guilt to the viewer while giving nothing away to the characters onscreen. As if to make things worse, Shane was then called upon to recount Otis’ last ‘heroic’ moments as a memorial, and I found myself grimacing as he told a patently false tale of self-sacrifice cleverly intercut with flashbacks of what actually happened.

As I said last week, keeping Shane as a main character longer than the comics did is one of the best decisions in the TV show. Part of the appeal is that even though he’s a baddie, he’s clearly ended up there with the best of intentions. He really loved Lori, and started an affair with her when he believed her husband was dead; now that he’s back, Shane’s finding it hard to shut off those feelings, and that’s leading him down a very dark path. And I got the impression that he also genuinely loves little Carl, and that his cold-blooded use of Otis as zombie bait was purely to ensure that he managed to get back with the medical supplies needed to save the boy’s life. Not that that makes it any better, of course – you know what they say about the road to hell and its construction methods.

The gang also got back together again at Hershel’s farm this week, which was something of a relief; dramatically, it was all beginning to feel a bit scattershot with various parties heading off in various different directions. Now that they’re back together again, there’s time for some good old fashioned woolgathering as they contemplate the situation they find themselves in. Carl’s out of the woods, but there’s still no sign of little Sophia; and Daryl’s lonely search for her was a key to making his character even more sympathetic.

It would have been easy to portray Daryl, as Merle’s brother, as just another thoughtless, bigoted redneck. What the writers have done with him is far more interesting; he’s a man from a very poor background who may well be somewhat uncivilised, but comes across as genuinely decent. We saw that last week as he bolstered the depressed Andrea’s spirits, and saw it again this week when he comforted Carol as she busied herself tidying up the RV in the hope of her daughter’s return. Norman Reedus made Daryl’s tale of the Cherokee Rose (from which the episode drew its title) genuinely affecting, and you could see how touched Carol was not just by the flower he brought, but also by the hope. In a genre which so easily turns to survivalist wank fiction, it’s nice to see that the backwoodsman who’s so good with the crossbow is also a decent, caring human being.

Also building on the depth he was given last week was Steven Yeun as Glenn. He’s been perfect in the role, and the costume has made him look exactly how you imagined the comic character to be. But up till now,he’s been relatively little used. That’s changed these last couple of weeks as the show gets closer to his pairing up with Hershel’s daughter Maggie. The scene between them in the abandoned pharmacy was both touching and hilarious, as his attempts to disguise what he was really taking by picking up a pack of condoms led to them inevitably having sex. It was sweet, and in keeping with the Glenn the comic fans know, that even confronted with an outright verbal offer to have sex, he still couldn’t keep his foot out of his mouth: “I’d never have sex with you… I mean, of course I would… but…” Later, Maggie tells him it’s a one time thing, but I think the showrunner would be wise to retain their rather charming relationship from the comics.

It wasn’t just free love that Glenn was getting up to this week, though; he was instrumental in dealing with the lone zombie the gang did encounter, a rotted, corpulent thing who’d stumbled down one of Hershel’s wells. Reasoning that shooting it in the head would contaminate the water, an ill-thought-out plan was created to extricate it with a rope by dangling Glenn down as bait. Of course, this all went pear-shaped as the rusty pump they were using as a pulley gave way, leading to a real heart in mouth sequence as Glenn dangled screaming just above the ravenous corpse and the others struggled to drag him out before it bit him.

Thankfully he was fine – I’d hate to lose Glenn, one of the comic’s mainstays, so early in the story, but I didn’t rule it out – and not only that, he had managed to snag the zombie in the rope. It was a big fat one, and quite rotten; you didn’t have to be a genius to predict the result of trying to drag a severely decomposed corpse out of a well with a rope tied tightly round its shoulders. With gruesome inevitability, it happened; the corpse split in half, the lower half tumbling back down the well trailing guts and all manner of organs with it. So much for not contaminating the water – it’s lucky Hershel’s got other wells.

The only zombie sequence in this week’s episode, this was well-directed, going from direct tension to gruesome gore pleasingly for zombie fanboys like me. It also felt a little like an unnecessary subplot tacked on solely to provide a bit of zombie action in an episode light on it. But I’ve got a feeling some of the stuff we saw here is going to pay off later on. Most noticeable was Maggie’s sickened face as T-Dog smashed the zombie’s head in; later, Glenn suggested that this must be the first time she’s seen one of them killed. But last week, she alluded to having lost several relatives to the plague, so there’s something not right there.

I don’t want to go into too much detail for those who haven’t read the comics, but if they’re doing what I think they’re doing, further hints were given by the revealing conversation between Rick and Hershel as they gazed out over the beautiful view from the farm and discussed God. It’s plain that Hershel’s a God-fearing man, but he’s also a vet and committed to relieving suffering. He’s no mad fundamentalist, but his quiet certainty about his faith in the face of recent events seems a little foolhardy. Playing Hershel, Scott Wilson has endowed the character with the same old-fashioned morals (not necessarily a bad thing) as the comic character. But his insistence that Rick and co surrender all their arms seemed odd when they could be surrounded by zombies at any minute, as Shane pointed out. And while he’s obviously considering letting the group stay on at his farm, he wouldn’t hear of them having to sleep in his barn. Good old hospitality? Perhaps…

Andrew Lincoln continued his convincing Georgia accent as Rick got some more bonding done with his family too. After confessing to Hershel that he didn’t have much truck with God any more (interesting to know that he presumably used to), he had to confess to his son that he’d lied earlier about little Sophia being OK. It was a sweet scene, and I’m impressed with young Chandler Riggs as Carl; he perhaps seems a little too sweet for a boy in this situation, but the loving relationship with his father is crucial to the narrative, and this scene really brought that home. Plus, he finally got to inherit Rick’s sheriff’s hat, his trademark in the comics (he’s rarely seen without it). And this version had the added verisimilitude that Rick was going to have to pad the hat out so it would fit!

Rick also symbolically discarded the rest of his police uniform this week, packing it away in a drawer at Hershel’s, presumably not to be seen again. As a piece of symbolism, it was a little heavy handed; the uniform obviously the last representative of a once-secure world now vanished forever. But the look on Rick’s face, and the way Lori sadly embraced him as he closed the drawer, gave it a real dramatic heft.

Lori too was troubled, after sending Glenn with a secret requirement from the pharmacy and insisting on his absolute discretion about it. So much discretion in fact that even he didn’t know what he was looking for; presumably Lori just used a brand name. But she told him to look in the feminine hygiene section, and even if you haven’t read the comics it was fairly obvious what she was after. Of course it was a pregnancy test, and of course it was positive. Even Glenn, who now knows what she wanted, doesn’t yet know that she really is pregnant; but Rick might. I’m still betting that’s what Dr Jenner whispered in his ear just before he left the CDC, based on the blood tests they all had.

Of course, if Lori is pregnant, the question is, who’s the father? She slept with Rick as soon as he found her near Atlanta, but she’d been sleeping with Shane up till then. And Rick may be wondering too. Why else, if Jenner has already told him, hasn’t he mentioned it to Lori himself? It’s another interesting dynamic to add to the tensions in the group, and I’m sure it won’t be the last one.

As I said, after finding its feet with the characters again, the show does this kind of drama well, leaving you wanting eagerly to know what happens next. It’s a mark of the drama’s priorities that this week’s cliffhanger was nothing to do with menacing zombies; rather, it ended with a shaken Lori squatting in the dark holding her positive pregnancy test. Tonally, the show is beginning more and more to remind me of BBC 70s post-apocalypse drama Survivors, with its focus on real, sympathetic characters dealing with the practicalities of life after the end of civilisation. The mainly rural setting is another similarity; it’s lucky for the budget that in a post-apocalypse scenario, cities would be best stayed away from. I’m not sure how many episodes could have been set in the deserted Atlanta without breaking the bank!

A similarity to Survivors is no bad thing (to my mind, it’s the most comprehensive exploration of a post-apocalypse scenario ever shown on TV). But the show’s still not forgetting it’s also a zombie horror, and even the brief encounter with the undead this week was satisfyingly gruesome. Although the ‘looking for Sophia’ plot is beginning to drag somewhat, these last couple of weeks feel like a show finding its feet again after an uncertain start to the season.

The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 3

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Simon

Save the Last One

It was (almost) straight back into the thick of the zombie action in this week’s Walking Dead, but for the first time this season, it felt like the characters had more dramatic heft than the events surrounding them. For the first time this season, this episode felt like a drama punctuated by zombie action, rather than zombie action interrupted by lulls in which characters stated the obvious.

It was dark territory indeed this week, no mean feat for a show that’s set in a post-apocalyptic hell roamed by flesh eating corpses. But it wasn’t the scenario in which our characters found themselves that made it so dark; rather, it was a series of cleverly intertwined musings on the desire for survival versus the choice to opt out and die.

That this seemed more interesting than the zombie shenanigans faced by Shane and Otis at the infested school medical centre was perhaps the first time this season that the characters have felt fully rounded enough to actually care about. The depth of the characters in the first season was one of the reasons the show was part of that group – including Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones – that propelled genre television into the ‘serious drama’ realm. I must confess that, until this week, I hadn’t really felt that season 2 had managed to recapture that; this episode, by show newcomer Scott Gimple, amply made up for it.

The theme of whether it was worth living in a world like this, or better just to give up, was what drove the episode, and was first brought up in a truly intense scene between Rick and Lori. With their son Carl still in critical condition, and Shane’s return with the necessary medical equipment very much in doubt, Lori had started to wonder whether it would be better if Carl didn’t make it after all. Why, she argued, would a child want to live in a world like this, eventually to become nothing more than a hunted animal himself?

This is a theme touched upon in the original comics on several occasions, but the performances of Andrew Lincoln and Sarah Wayne Callies gave it a lot more oomph than just reading it on the page. And as in the comics, you found yourself wondering whether giving up might be the more sensible thing to do. As Lori pointed out, their friend Jackie (who chose to die in the explosion of the CDC) hadn’t had to see any of the terrible things that had happened since. Rick, of course, was more optimistic – he’s the hero, he has to be. But even then, when it looked like Hershel was going to have to take the risk and operate on Carl without equipment, it was Lori he asked to make the choice.

In an episode where death seemed more significant than it has recently, Andrea and Daryl found themselves having a similar heart to heart as they went on a (somewhat inadvisable) trip to the woods by night to continue their search for little Sophia. Darabont regular Laurie Holden (best known to me as Marita Covarrubias in The X Files) has been varying anger and despair in her portrayal of Andrea since Dale persuaded her not to remain in the CDC as well, and this is obviously going to be a running character thread.

As I mentioned last week, of all the characters, Daryl seems best equipped psychologically to deal with the situation, and he countered Andrea’s hopelessness with similar optimism to Rick. He’d been lost in the woods as a child too, and after all, he’d made it ok. But he gave Andrea’s death wish short shrift as they encountered an all too gruesome reminder of the consequences; a man who’d hanged himself from a tree but neglected to shoot himself in the head, leaving his reanimated corpse dangling helpfully while others munched on the flesh from his legs.

This was a nicely gory way of ramming home the point of their argument, as Andrea confessed she wasn’t sure if she still had a death wish. But later, as Dale apologised for taking away her decision and gave her back her gun, you had to wonder. You also had to wonder whether Dale had a death wish of his own as he went on a ramble through the darkened traffic jam in search of cigarettes. I’m a hopelessly addicted smoker myself, but even I would probably rather endure nicotine withdrawal than wander around a dark area that might be full of zombies. Still, nice to see that Dale smokes Morleys; this fictional ‘almost-Marlboro’ brand may be most associated with The X Files, but it’s been a staple of TV shows since at least the early 60s.

In contrast to last week, pretty much all of the characters got a moment in the spotlight here, with none given a raw deal. We got to know Hershel’s daughter Maggie better this week, and I particularly enjoyed the growing intimacy between her and Glenn. Glenn as a character has sometimes got short shrift in the comic, but has sometimes seemed even more perfunctory in the TV version; it was nice to see Steven Yeun given some decent material at last, as he caught the character’s blend of smartassery and adolescent awkwardness. Lauren Cohan as Maggie seemed a lot more ballsy than she does in the comics, which is no bad thing, and it looks like she and Glenn might grow close…

Leaving earlier than he did in the comics, though, was Pruitt Taylor Vince as Otis. Otis in the comics always seemed a bit of a spare part, as though Robert Kirkman introduced him then had no idea what to do with him. Vince’s characterisation actually gave him more depth, but he certainly didn’t outstay his welcome. I may have been concentrating on the character drama this week, but the intervening zombie action was still pretty thrilling as Otis and Shane struggled to get away from the infested school.

There were some well-directed shock moments like when Shane was about to jump from a window and a zombie suddenly reared out and grabbed him; or when a horde of them, previously unseen, lurched into the chain link fence Shane and Otis were resting against. But nothing like the shock moment that was revealed in flashback after Shane returned, alone, to Hershel’s farm. For it transpired that, despite Shane’s tale of heroic sacrifice, Otis had actually been shot by Shane himself to decoy the zombies while he got away.

The moment this happened was a genuine shock, despite previous heavy signs that Shane was a wrong ‘un. Remember last season, when he sighted Rick with his hunting rifle before Dale turned up? Or when he practically tried to rape Lori in the CDC? Shane’s badness came to light fairly early on in the comics and he was duly despatched (though Rick had to dig him up again later to shoot him in the head properly). It’s one of the best decisions of the TV version to change this, as Jon Bernthal’s charismatic performance makes him believable and likeable even though you know what he’s capable of – in this case, not even leaving poor Otis the last bullet to shoot himself before the zombies tore him apart.

As Shane took the opportunity to shave his head back at the farm (to hide the marks Otis had made struggling with him), he looked like the very devil himself in the steamy bathroom mirror. Unfortunately, in one of the few missteps this week, we’d seen this in the pre-credit sequence. It works well as a device causing the viewer to wonder why this was significant, which was revealed at the very end of the episode. But while I can see the intention, I thought it also drastically undercut the tension of Shane and Otis’ deadly mission; after all, we always knew Shane would make it back, because he hadn’t shaved his head yet.

That criticism notwithstanding, this was far and away the best episode since the show’s return. The drama was compelling, the zombie action thrilling, and the dramatic balance between the two far better struck than in previous weeks. The characters too seem finally to be shining the way they did last year. Despite the fact that the overall plot has, technically, barely moved, I was gripped throughout, and hope we can have more episodes of this kind of quality.

The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 1

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Simon

What Lies Ahead

A much-anticipated adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s ongoing comic book series, last year’s debut season of The Walking Dead was a huge success for cable channel AMC. Like many zombie fans, I love Kirkman’s comic series for its breadth; even long zombie movies like the original Dawn of the Dead don’t have the necessary running time for truly fleshed out characters and lengthy, complex plotting. A monthly comic (if written well, as Kirkman’s is) can do that, and so can a TV show.

With an impressive roster of talent – writer/director Frank Darabont, stars Andrew Lincoln, Laurie Holden and Jeffrey DeMunn, plus Bear McCreary on music duties – the TV version of The Walking Dead is an impressive piece of work that’s contributed greatly to the recent trend for genre television being taken seriously as drama. It also helps that cable television is free of the standard and practices imposed on its network equivalent, meaning that the show doesn’t have to stint on the outright gore and violence that’s so essential to the genre.

It’s easy to treat the zombie apocalypse genre less than seriously, and many exploitation movies (notably ones made in Italy) do just that. What Kirkman’s comic, and its TV adaptation, do very well is to create a believable, rounded group of characters within the situation, and make the story as much about them as it is about gory, ravenous walking corpses. In the process, you end up with a piece of work every bit as respectable as the giants of the genre – particularly Romero’s seminal Dawn of the Dead, the movie that really kick started all this.

With a tightly knit six episode first season, The Walking Dead was a great success both with viewers and critics, its validity as drama in no way stinting its real zombie action. A lot of people who normally wouldn’t go near a zombie story were hailing it as impressively watchable. Clearly then, this second season, and its opener in particular, have a lot to live up to.

It doesn’t help that there’ve been some fairly well-publicised ‘creative differences’ behind the scenes between seasons. Frank Darabont, the excellent writer/director who was the driving force behind getting the show on TV in the first place, departed as showrunner under circumstances that vary according to which reports you read. Some say he resigned, others that he was fired, but there’s general consensus that he was none too happy at AMC’s demand for a longer season on a smaller budget. Meanwhile, cast members have reportedly gone in fear that if they disagree with the producers in any way, they’ll be written out – easy enough in a series where violent death is a frequent occurrence.

While I’m sceptical about that last claim – other reports indicate cast members having contracts for multiple seasons – it rarely bodes well for a series to have such ructions in its production team. Thankfully, comic creator Robert Kirkman is still heavily involved with the show, so at least there’s a strong continuity there.

So, there’s a lot riding on this season opener. Penned by Kirkman himself along with Darabont (his final contribution to the show, credited under the pseudonym Ardeth Bey) it had to live up to the excellent first episode of season one, and reintroduce the zombie action that was rather lacking in the previous year’s season finale. It also had to pick up numerous character arcs, notably the one about hero Rick Grimes’ wife Lori having an affair with his best friend Shane, believing Rick to be dead. And a major unresolved point from last year’s finale – just what did CDC scientist Dr Jenner whisper into Rick’s ear shortly before blowing himself up along with his facility?

Thankfully, I can report that this opener acquits itself rather well. Handily opening with a recap of recent events as Rick reports them via walkie talkie to fellow survivor Morgan (yet to reappear after episode 1), it’s intercut with some impressive scenes of various zombies staggering around the deserted Atlanta. Significantly, one of the show’s best assets who’s not been affected by behind the scenes changes is veteran makeup guy Greg Nicotero. Nicotero, who cut his teeth working with Tom Savini on Romero classic Day of the Dead, serves as chief effects bod on the show, and after years of practice is producing some of the best zombies the genre’s ever seen. These are realistically ragged, rotting, mutilated things that look so convincing you can almost smell the rot off them!

The ep really gets going with a superb, lengthy set piece as our heroes get stuck by a broken radiator hose on Dale’s RV, amidst one of mankind’s final great traffic jams. I’ve always found post-apocalyptic drama rather patchy on this whole traffic thing; some show the roads eerily empty, others decide that they’d be clogged with people trying to escape from whatever’s ending the world. I’ve always contended that unless the apocalypse happens in an instant, the latter approach is more believable. Luckily for me, so do the producers of this show, and a sizeable portion of that reduced budget must have been spent on putting together this motley collection of stalled and crashed cars to block our heroes’ way.

And of course, a mammoth herd of zombies turned up to add to the problem. If you’re going to grab viewers with your zombie drama, it’s best to start big, and this episode did. It was a long but heart-poundingly suspenseful set piece as our heroes were forced to hide, mostly underneath the stalled cars. I’d have thought they might be better off inside them, but that was dealt with too as Andrea (Laurie Holden) cowered inside the RV, trying incompetently to reassemble the gun she’d taken apart for cleaning. Of course, if she’d managed, the shot would have brought more zombies running (or staggering, anyway), but she managed to dispose of one curious (and gruesomely made up) zombie that got in by means of a screwdriver handily given to her by Dale, who was hiding on the roof. And thus we got the first (but not the last) bit of real nasty gore in the episode as she rammed the screwdriver into the zombie’s eye socket. Really hard. And repeatedly. Ewww…

Elsewhere, T-Dog and Daryl took an alternative approach to hiding by dragging rotted corpses out of the cars and pulling them on top of themselves, in another nice grossout moment. Actors IronE Singleton and Norman Reedus gave convincing grimaces which conveyed quite how nasty this must have smelled. Indeed, this was a continual motif throughout the episode whenever anyone got near to a zombie, and it’s an aspect that I think has never really been dealt with before in zombie films, so it’s good to see it followed up on here – if you recall the first season, we were shown that zombies don’t chase each other because of the smell of rotting flesh, leading to a really icky sequence where Rick and Glenn had to cover themselves with zombie innards to walk among them undetected.

This whole set piece must have taken up near a third of the episode by itself, and was extremely well-directed. It’s fair to say that the pace slowed a lot after this wound down, as the story concentrated more on the characters. That’s no bad thing (though hardcore zombie fans who just want blood and guts might disagree), as the pared down group left at the end of last season is small enough for some interesting dynamics to be emerging.

Among these is Andrea’s antipathy towards Dale, who last season forced her to flee the impending destruction of the CDC by threatening to remain with her if she didn’t leave. Andrea, it turns out, really resents Dale for this, feeling that he undermined her choice to end her life by guilt tripping her into leaving. Dale, for his part, is worried that her desire to commit suicide is far from gone, and is reluctant to trust her with a gun. This came to a head in a nicely played scene between regular Darabont alumni Laurie Holden and Jeffrey DeMunn, and is clearly far from resolved. What makes it interesting for the reader of the comics is the knowledge that there, Andrea and Dale end up as a couple. But the TV show is taking the wise course of cherry picking certain plot points and set pieces from the comic without being a slavish adaptation, so there’s no guarantee of that happening here.

The group actually splits up too, as Rick and various others head off as two parties to search for little Sophia, who ran off screaming as a zombie spotted her underneath a car. Meanwhile, Dale and T-Dog remained with the RV, with Dale revealing that he’d actually fixed the radiator some time ago, but kept it secret so the others wouldn’t move on without finding Sophia. With the heroes now effectively split into three groups, there’s a lot more scope for subplots about them not being able to find each other while getting into their own, separate jeopardies – a good plan for the season, in my opinion.

While this latter half of the episode is undoubtedly less intense than the traffic jam/zombie herd set piece, there’s still plenty of gore and nastiness to keep the hardcore zombie fans happy. As Rick kills the walkers who’d been chasing Sophia, the camera lingers quite a while as he very graphically bashes one’s head in with a rock. Later, he and Daryl kill another with a crossbow bolt, and in order to ensure that it hasn’t just eaten Sophia, open it up to check its stomach contents. Again, the looks on the actors’ faces conveyed just how gross this must smell, and even I couldn’t restrain myself from saying out loud, “Ewww.”

There’s also some gruesome zombie killing in a local church, as the search for Sophia leads our heroes to holy ground. This also gives some of the characters a chance to reveal themselves via the South’s fractious relationship with religion, as the camera frequently lingers on the crucifix at the altar. Sophia’s mother Carol (Melissa McBride) is, unsurprisingly, very religious, and takes the opportunity to pray fervently for her daughter to be found. Rick, however, is more ambivalent. Andrew Lincoln continues to give a good performance as, wracked by doubt, he prays to a God he’s not sure he even believes in for a sign that he’s doing the right thing. I’ve always liked Lincoln as an actor, so it’s no surprise that he’s good here, but I’m still impressed with his convincing Georgia accent (though if anyone from Georgia is reading this, they will probably know better than I how good it is).

The episode climaxes with another set piece lifted from the comic, and very nicely directed it is too. Seeing a majestic stag in the woods, Rick’s son Carl is entranced, and creeps towards it while Rick motions Shane not to shoot it. It’s a magical moment which, just as in the comic, is brutally interrupted when an unseen shooter blows a hole in both the stag and Carl’s stomach. For those who haven’t read the comic, I won’t speculate on what happens next as it looks to be identical – suffice to say, we’re about to meet some new characters.

A promising start, then, for a show that had a lot to live up to after its first year. Of course, this is also the last episode with any Darabont involvement, so it remains to be seen whether later instalments will be as good. I’d also say that, in its bid to impress from the outset, this opener has probably had a lot more money spent on it than others will have, so the budgetary restrictions that led to Darabont’s departure may become more noticeable too. Nonetheless, we’ve got some seeds here for a very promising season. I’m guessing we’ll see more memorable set pieces and characters from the comic making an appearance, but I’m also hopeful that we might see a return for Michael Rooker’s formidable redneck Merle, a creation of the TV show whose fate remains unknown. And we still don’t know what Dr Jenner whispered to Rick, the script teasingly dancing around the issue as Rick brings Morgan up to speed on the walkie talkie at the start. Whatever happens, new showrunner Glen Mazzara has some big shoes to fill; let’s hope he does it well.

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