CHECKING IN, WALKING DEAD SEASON TWO
Zombies are the bacon of entertainment, they make everything better, just imagine Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, or Sex and the City 2 without them. What would those movies be about instead? Just dorks, Woody, and four troglodytes wandering a blighted world with only their angst. Thus far season two of The Walking Dead provides the angst along with plenty of zombie action.
I really should not be writing this. There’s absolutely no way I can write an impersonal review for a show that explores humanity in its most desperate and graphically savage, using zombies as the impetus for our downward spiral. Such a great twist on an already interesting social exercise. Anyways, here is my completely biased glowing review.
We left season one with the CDC in Atlanta a smoldering ruin as the remaining survivors in their convoy make their way through a vehicular graveyard on the highway. When one of their vehicles becomes disabled, they start to spread out searching the wrecks for supplies when suddenly a ‘herd’ of zombies appears out of nowhere and the group must hide. After some cacophony, a few zombies gets what’s coming to them but one of the party members becomes lost in the surrounding wilderness and the search begins.
They eventually find a safe haven, but not their missing party member, and tensions start to rise within the group as some want to keep moving, some want to split off completely, and one is fighting for his life. My favorite moments of this show are the stark humanity faced with impossible decisions about other people’s lives, and the writers have done a great job this season building on this within the already strained dynamics of the main cast.
I was a bit worried after Frank Darabont was duplicitously dumped days after AMC paraded him around at comic-con, and the show’s overall integrity remains dubious, but thus far I am pleased. Andrea still questions her desire to live following her near suicide at the CDC, Shane continues to give in to the darkness in his own soul, and Rick attempts to keep the overstretched tensile of people from breaking.
AMC is a growing network, thanks to hits like these, and right now judging by the very public rifts with Matthew Weiner of Mad Men and the aforementioned debacle with Frank Darabont, the network is like a 13-year old girl with a new set of b-cups. She just doesn’t know how to feel about herself and she has been warned by her parents to not let the newfound popularity allow her to be taken advantage of… Hopefully she does not get too full of herself and forgets how she got there in the first place!
What’s the formula to protect a show from a network with growing pains? Just add more zombie.
