The Walking Dead - What Lies Ahead, S02E01 - Premiere

How I missed my zombie action! A mostly great start to the season, although I would have liked to see somebody fall victim to the horde, but I suppose I will accept the shocking ending of the episode as a decent reminder that the stakes are and remain high. No one is safe.

I really liked where this episode took place - travelling along a highway, somewhere in the country but who can really say where, with all these signs of disaster. Why did all these cars get stuck here? Why are there so many dead bodies in the cars who never arose as zombies? What happened here? And yet none of that matters anymore; it's all about what will happen here, what still can happen here.

Our heroes continue to try to find a balance between humanity and survival. The road is a graveyard, a battleground riddled with corpses. It has been so long since it was normal to remove the boots from a dead body simply because they were too good quality to waste. For centuries, need required us to give little respect to the dead we did not know, but in North America, that need is no longer prevalent. Yet, post-zombie apocalypse, that need has returned. To survive, no qualms can be suffered regarding robbing the dead - after all, the dead have no qualms about eating our flesh.

As I said, I was disappointed that no one died when that massive horde of zombies passed through. Lucky, weren't they, that no zombies noticed Sophia (Madison Lintz) until most had gone. Had the horde come after here, they would know where she is at this moment, and feel far worse about it. T-dog (IronE Singleton) got off easy with that extremely ugly cut he gave himself. It was nasty, and bleeding, and SO gross. Good thing there was so much death around that the zombies could not smell the fresh meat through it. Daryl (Norman Reedus) may be my favourite character. Sure, I love Rick (Andrew Lincoln), and I think he is awesome too, but Daryl is so badass. Stabbing a zombie in the back of the head with a crossbow bolt, then throwing corpses on T-Dog and himself...I loved it.

My favourite scene, of course, was when Rick and Daryl dissected that zombie to be certain it had not eaten Sophia. Disgusting. I was practically gagging, but it was so wonderfully done. Exactly the kind of thing that keeps me watching this show.

After that, the episode did get a little monologue-y. There are other ways to do exposition, guys. But I suppose we needed to get some of that info out there.

So now we wait until next week to see what's going to happen next. Are Shane (Jon Bernthal) and Andrea (Laurie Holden) going to leave the group together? Will they find Sophia? Will Karl (Chandler Riggs) survive being shot? And will zombies eat somebody soon, please?

The Walking Dead - Guts, S01E02

Compassion. When the world has gone to Hell, and the dead are coming back to life to try and eat us, survival becomes the primary focus. We must continue to live, not as individuals, but as a species. The good of the whole becomes so much more important than the good of one man, but to be human, truly human, means that we still value each and every one of those individuals. Even those who are now are enemy were once our friends, and we cannot forget that, or there is no point in us surviving.

Rick (Andrew Lincoln) is a good, compassionate, and loving man. Yes, he ended up chopping up the corpse of a zombie so that he could cover himself and his new friend, Glenn (Steven Yeun), in the rotting guts and cover the smell of living meat, but before he could compel himself to dismember the body of what was once a man, he had to give tribute. Reading the information on the wallet, knowing who the man was before he died, and that he was loved and that his memory should be treasured, these are things which allow us to believe that we, as a species, actually deserve to survive an apocalypse it is likely we brought on ourselves.

But the need to survive sometimes has to overrule compassion. Merle (Michael Rooker) is clearly quite insane. His hatred of black people has clearly not been stopped by the presence of zombies, his desire to keep the whole safe does not even feature. And yet, when T-Dog (IronE Singleton) dropped the key to the handcuffs Rick had put on Merle to protect the group, and Merle was left behind, with only a locked door between him and zombies, T-Dog certainly felt a whole lot of guilt for leaving the man behind. Should he have? Would staying behind himself have saved Merle? Would both their deaths have been worth anything? And if Merle had survived, what could his contributions be, if not to bring more danger to the other survivors.

In the encampment, Shane (Jon Bernthal) seems to be a real ass, and yet he is truly focused on the goal of keeping his group alive. No unnecessary risks, no trying to help those who cannot be helped. He may seem heartless, and perhaps he is, but those who are with him are far more likely to survive because of his vigilance and his refusal to compromise safety for anything and anyone. We'll see how he behaves when Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) is the one who is in unknown danger, but, much as I am compelled to dislike him, I cannot blame him for his attitude.

And it looks like Rick will soon be reunited with his wife and son, as well as his former partner. How the drama of that will play out when there are zombies who might interrupt any moment, I cannot say, but I can't wait to find out.

The Walking Dead - Days Gone Bye, Pilot, S01E01

Of all the scary monsters that exist in supernatural stories, the modern zombie is, in fact, the most possible. Although the notion of a disease which brings dead tissue back to life, and renders it ravenous for human flesh, is quite far fetched, when compared to vampires, werewolves, and magic-users, the possibility becomes far more probable. And so we have a hero, walking up after being unconscious for more than a month, who finds the world completely changed and zombies a part of every day existence.

Although I knew that the lead character was not going to die in the pilot episode, this did not stop me from constantly being on edge as I watched him discover a new and terrifying world, or, worse, whenever he encountered a walker (as the dead who come back are called). This show is extremely creepy, and the details are both disgusting and disturbing.

Within the first few minutes, after watching a scene which clearly would take place in the future, we learned quite a few things. 1. Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), our hero, is a cop. Or at least, he was before the zombie apocalypse hit. 2. Finding campsites which are abandoned and have a fair number of corpses about them is something he has become quite used to seeing. 3. The walkers retain some sense of instinct from their previous lives (the little dead girl picked up a stuffed bear). 4. The dead want to attack the living with a terrifying intensity. 5. A shot to the head will, indeed, bring them down.

And then the actually story starts. The quick conversation between Rick and his partner, Shane, did an excellent job of establishing what their mundane, every day lives were. We never saw Rich with his family, never even saw the two men off the job, but we had a sense of who they were as friends to each other and as lovers to their women. We also quickly understood their attack style: Rick was not afraid to take point, and when he went down, getting shot in his bullet proof vest, his main concern was that his wife never know the danger he was in.

Because of Shane's concern for his friend and because of Rick's concern for his wife, both had their guards down which allowed one of the criminals to get a shot past the vest.

As someone who has never read the Walking Dead graphic novel series upon which the show is based, the thing I am most curious about is how long it will take Rick to find his family again. Shane, apparently, managed to get Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and her and Rick's son away from the more infected areas, but he also seems to have gotten into Lori's pants. I suppose you can hardly blame her, given the stress she is currently under, nor the difficulties she and Rick were having in their marriage. I, however, dislike seeing her with another man when I know that Rick is doing everything in his power to get to her.

I don't want Shane and Lori to get so close that her choice is too complicated.

As for the grossness factor, man, are the blood and guts gross or what? It's absolutely stunning in its vividness, but I could do with a little less. I don't actually want less, as I think that would detract from the point, but I don't always need to be quite so grossed out. Also, it is not something I am planning on watching alone because I definitely feel the need to cling on to someone who ought to be protecting me from the horrors I am seeing on the screen.

I am hooked, there is no doubt about that. And I have no concerns about getting to see as much as I want as AMC has already greenlit the second season of the show. The Walking Dead is going to have a long life (hehehe, I made a pun).