Two New Clips And A Trailer For The Walking Dead, Plus A Review Of The First Half Of Season Two

[BC Blog Poster]

You may remember that we published full reviews of the first four episodes of The Walking Dead Season Two, and the overall impression was that the season had started strong but quickly started to flag. The writing and characterisation for The Walking Dead is still strong enough to make it watchable, but even the best dialogue in the world couldn't make up for the fact that the first half of this season contained only enough story for one, perhaps two episodes maximum. And less than half an episode of The Archers.

The main story arcs were the search for the missing Sophia, Lori's pregnancy and Rick's desperate attempt to find a common ground with Hershel that would secure the group a permanent residence in the safe haven of the farm. But in order to spin these plots out over seven episodes, a substantial amount of padding was required and presented itself quite easily since the show has such an enormous cast of characters.

Amongst the padding was a random encounter with a zombie stuck down a well, a romance between Glenn and Maggie lifted straight from the comics so carelessly that it left any charm behind, Daryl rolling down a hill and climbing back up ... twice, magic flowers, shooting practice, horse riding, a spa break, pottery lessons ... oh no, that's the brochure for a weekend at Butlins.

If I were to characterise the problems with the show - and it's a show that I do still like, despite all the paragraphs I've spent bitching about its flaws - it's that the writers have yet to figure out precisely how to bring a genre that traditionally consists of lots of characters being quickly and brutally killed off to an ongoing series. Not only is it difficult to shake the feeling that the Apocalypse should not contain this many scenes of people sitting around on the grass in the warm sunshine eating peaches, there is also never a feeling that any of the core characters are in any real peril. A prime example of this was Episode 5 - "Chupacabra" - in which Daryl is injured during the neverending search for Sophia and suffers hallucinations of his brother Merle telling him to man up and get back to his redneck roots. It was a long and aimless detour into a predictable sequence where Daryl comes limping out of the woods with his face covered in lizard blood, and thanks to a convenient flare in her sniper rifle's scope Andrea mistakes him for a Walker and shoots him in the head.

Sorry, did I say she shoots him? I mean the bullet gives him a tiny graze, he recovers quickly both from his wounds and the influence of Spirit Warrior Merle, Andrea gets over the guilt within three lines of dialogue, and we managed to pad the series out for another forty minutes! Tea and crumpets all round.

Essentially, it was the climax of Night of the Living Dead if George Romero had decided to wuss out at the last minute and give the movie a happy ending. The rural setting and the minimum-requirements-only appearance of the zombies has drawn the teeth out of this season so far. The "shock" ending of the mid-season finale was well-executed and would have been highly effective had it not been so terribly predictable, but if you didn't see it coming then hopefully you at least got a bit of a thrill out of it.

The good news is that if I recollect the comics accurately the characters should finally be moving on into the bloody, friendless, and hostile terrain of the real world, where everything wants to kill them and we don't have to spend so much time watching them do their laundry. Hurrah!

So, let's take a look at those clips.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOquA822k88[/youtube]





... Or we could stay on the farm and bicker some more.

[Kinnon]

It really doesn't sound like it's a show you do still like. That's not the impression you're giving me at all. From this, I'm kind of at a loss why you're still watching it. Maybe, if you cited some of the reasons why, enthuse just a little about the positives, the stuff that's drawing you back, then I'd get a better feel for your take on it, but this is a tsunami of negativity, it needs a counterpoint, one that I'd be genuinely interested to hear.

[saidestroyer]

Two months is a lot of time to wait for the next episode. I'll re-watch the whole mid-season a couple of days before the episode premieres

[Drew Melbourne]

I know that your opinion is a popular one online, but I really appreciate the slow burn. We got to see Andrea coming into her own, Shane's darkening, Dale's feelings of impotence coming to a head, etc.

And I think the "shock" ending absolutely works. I think I saw it coming about five or ten minutes before it happened, which seems about right to me, and suggests that they're not so precious about everybody living.

If your concern is that the characters spend too much time talking to each other and not enough being eaten by zombies... Well, that's not WALKING DEAD. Just pick up the latest trade (out last week) and you'll see exactly what I mean.

[The Xenos]

The thing is.. Sophia is still alive and kicking in the book. I know Kirkman said he wanted to do things different, but offing a character who's still alive in the book is a bit different from postponing a death or adding characters. Makes me wonder how Glenn and Maggie will develop now that their adopted child is out of the picture. Though I can see how Carol will follow the same path in the book after this, if not sooner.

Plus, that wonderfully sadistic bastard he is, in the issue that came out that week or so, Kirkman has Sophia make this comment.

[cbccagle]

It's pretty easy to see that AMC's budget cuts are really hurting the narrative flow (much cheaper to base three or four episodes on the wrecked interstate than pick up the production crew and move them willy-nilly to another location -- the same holds true for all the episodes based at the farm), and that puts a severe constraint on what kind of stories can be told. Additionally, episodic television viewers are not going to be okay with Kirkman's penchant for killing off main characters every other issue/episode. Could be pretty interesting (from a bemused production point-of-view) to see how Kirkman eventually solves these problems...

[majorjoe23]

The thing is.. Sophia is still alive and kicking in the book. I know Kirkman said he wanted to do things different, but offing a character who's still alive in the book is a bit different from postponing a death or adding characters. Makes me wonder how Glenn and Maggie will develop now that their adopted child is out of the picture. Though I can see how Carol will follow the same path in the book after this, if not sooner.

Plus, that wonderfully sadistic bastard he is, in the issue that came out that week or so, Kirkman has Sophia make this comment.

A big problem confronting the show is that child actors age much more noticeably than adults. The comic has been running for eight years, but only about 14 months of time have passed. That's a luxury the show doesn't have. It's similar to Walt on Lost.

It will be interesting to see how they handle Carl.

[Charles Skaggs]

See, I loved "Chupacabra." Daryl is arguably the breakout character of the TV series and it was great seeing him in a spotlight episode. And who needs romance when Glenn and Maggie the Hot Farmer's Daughter are getting it on in a drug store occasionally frequented by zombies?

[Jay Kay]

I know that your opinion is a popular one online, but I really appreciate the slow burn. We got to see Andrea coming into her own, Shane's darkening, Dale's feelings of impotence coming to a head, etc.

And I think the "shock" ending absolutely works. I think I saw it coming about five or ten minutes before it happened, which seems about right to me, and suggests that they're not so precious about everybody living.

If your concern is that the characters spend too much time talking to each other and not enough being eaten by zombies... Well, that's not WALKING DEAD. Just pick up the latest trade (out last week) and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Yeah, that's the problem I see with the slow burn argument--people are under the assumption that the story is about zombies, when they're really just the catalyst and wild card for this massive human drama.

The thing is.. Sophia is still alive and kicking in the book. I know Kirkman said he wanted to do things different, but offing a character who's still alive in the book is a bit different from postponing a death or adding characters. Makes me wonder how Glenn and Maggie will develop now that their adopted child is out of the picture. Though I can see how Carol will follow the same path in the book after this, if not sooner.

Plus, that wonderfully sadistic bastard he is, in the issue that came out that week or so, Kirkman has Sophia make this comment.

I don't see the problem with this--it just makes the comics and the show their own unique entities. It would be boring as shit if they took the story note by note.

And who needs romance when Glenn and Maggie the Hot Farmer's Daughter are getting it on in a drug store occasionally frequented by zombies?

And I find it odd that fans of the comic are saying that the Glenn and Maggie stuff "lacked charm." I recently reread the whole stuff I have so far, and while they do end up as a very loving couple, their first time was Glenn complaining that no one was interested in him and her saying, "I'll fuck you if you want." Compared to that, the show was very subtle.

[Hannah Shaw-Williams]

It really doesn't sound like it's a show you do still like. That's not the impression you're giving me at all. From this, I'm kind of at a loss why you're still watching it. Maybe, if you cited some of the reasons why, enthuse just a little about the positives, the stuff that's drawing you back, then I'd get a better feel for your take on it, but this is a tsunami of negativity, it needs a counterpoint, one that I'd be genuinely interested to hear.

It is a bit of a negativity storm. I think it's because I do like the show that I find it so frustrating when it faffs about like this. Things I do like ... the characters are well-written and in particular I like the direction they're going with Shane since it justifies the decision to detour from the comics canon by keeping him alive; we're now seeing a more gradual breakdown of his morality and self-control. Greg Nicotero's SFX work, when we get to see it, is still stellar (I'm sure I wasn't the only one who yelled "BOOMER!!" upon seeing the zombie in the well). Not counting mini-series like Dead Set it's the first time we've really seen zombies done in a TV show (as far as I'm aware), and it's a challenge to tackle which makes me more forgiving of weak points.

And finally, I like it because it has Michael Rooker and Norman Reedus, who are both awesome.