The second season of The Walking Dead has been split into two parts, one of seven episodes and the other of six. To be fair, such trickery is more common in the US, with shows often taking a hiatus over the holidays – the zombies are just having a few months off instead of one.

So, will this episode keep us tided over until they return in February? Let’s see.

Mild Spoilers

Ever since the second episode of this batch, the surviving gang have been loitering around the farm of Hershel, playing out their arguments under trees and very slowly moving towards a confrontation with their host based on his attitude to zombies. And Asians.

In fact, this slow revelation that Hershel is not the friendly old Samaritan we might’ve first thought has been well-handled. It also provides us with a useful counter-point to Rick – yes, our stubbly hero is clinging to the old ways, but he could be a lot worse. Look, here’s an example.

Meanwhile, Shane’s tenuous grip on sanity is loosened further by the discovery of Lori’s pregnancy. And I doubt any paternity test infrastructure survived the zompocalypse, so I can see how he might be upset. This continues to be one of the best-handled storylines, so much so that his total snapping towards the end almost seemed plausible.

GIGANTIC SPOILERS

And then, of course, the last scene in which Sophia makes her, um, comeback. It seemed inevitable that she was dead, simply because there were few other endings that would’ve been satisfying after so long, but the barn element, and the execution of the reveal, made it work nonetheless.

On the other hand, little else has been resolved. I hope the next episode does something active about the Hershel/Rick conflict, rather than trailing off to more sitting around in fields.  And people should start treating Shane differently after that outburst, too. Oh, and there were parts of the episode that didn’t work. I think we’re meant to be rooting for Dale against Shane’s lunacy, but his swamp wander just made him look foolish.

Nonetheless, it was a good, resonant ending that finally brought a sluggish run of episodes to a climax. It wasn’t particularly pleasant or cheerful to watch, but I think it’s time to give up getting that from this show. Coming in February: Someone starts eating survivors in the night. People think it’s zombies, but it turns out to be cannibal Merle.

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With the mid-season finale looming, it’s time for everything in The Walking Dead to come to a head, in time for big-but-not-quite-climactic events next week. And with a host of characters keeping stuff from one another, there’s plenty of flames to stoke.

Especially since that Glenn kid just can’t keep his mouth shut.

The Undead Pincer Movement

This is a textbook pre-finale episode, in which everyone’s little secrets come spilling out just in time for confrontations. We also see the return of the zombies, who have been keeping themselves to themselves of late, not indulging in many random attacks.

But they’re back now, ramping up the danger and reminding us that the farm and its flimsy wooden fence may not keep the gang safe forever. Will next week see a full-on attack, in which our heroes are undone by the barn zombies coming at them from behind?

My beloved Daryl was scarce, but after his exposure last week, I cannot rightly complain. Wise old man Dale got most of the good scenes instead, handling the issues with a maturity that Glenn could only dream of. He even diagnoses Shane’s psychopathy based on…. very little. In fact, that was am odd leap.

The Big Crazy Triangle

Shane and his determination to be seen as the hero, no matter who he has to murder in the process, is one of the most fascinating elements, and I’m only sorry that his current path will likely lead to death or banishment from the group. Hopefully that will hold off until the end of the season.

And, yes, the pregnancy storyline coming to the fore means more Rick/Lori, but they weren’t as unbearable as they sometimes are. (Although I’m not sure the morning after pill works that way even if you take the whole packet, but I suppose she isn’t a doctor.) I’m curious whether she really knows it’s Rick’s baby, or is just being optimistic.

All in all, many nice moments, but as a whole, very slow paced. This farm-camping phase of the season has dragged, it would’ve felt more pacey at two episodes rather than three, but then they might have cut the excellent Daryl material last week, so it’s hard to tell what I really want. And next week, after all this, maybe some action. Possibly finding Sophia too, though let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

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Throughout the second season of The Walking Dead, redneck savant Daryl Dixon has been taking the lion’s share of the cool and heroic moments. While alpha chaps Rick and Shane have been angsting and killing their own people, Daryl is stoically searching for a missing girl and battling his inner demons in hallucinatory form.

What a guy! And is there any way this Daryl-heavy episode will get a bad review?

Dixon Family Values

No, it’s pretty unlikely. Or at least, the Dixon-themed parts of it certainly won’t. Norman Reedus continues to turn in a great performance as Daryl, balancing the character’s rough edges with a determined likability. His scenes fighting for his life in the middle of this episode were gripping, made more so by a real sorry that he might have died.

Which, of course, almost came true at the end. And that would’ve been a sick joke of an ending for the character, just as we’re all falling for him, so I’m pleased. However, properly killing Daryl would’ve served Andrea right after her trigger-happy moaning of recent weeks. She’s getting quite annoying.

Oh, and Merle Dixon pops back for a visionary visit. It’s nice to see him again even in this form, reminding us that he’s not forgotten, and the actor is willing to come back. And in the shorter term, it’s a good way to dramatise the conflict between Daryl’s old ways and his rebirth as a new man. Good scenes.

Sophia, Zombie Queen?

The continuance of the hunt for Sophia is giving me mixed feelings, though. On the one hand, it provides a purpose. Without that thread, people would just be sitting on a farm. Still, it builds anticipation for the ending, which had better be good. At this stage, I’m assuming we don’t see Sophia until the mid-series finale in two weeks time.

And although I’m glad Daryl survived, part of me would’ve liked a big kill, to add a shot of drama to the show. Only one character has died in five episodes now, and it was barely-formed Otis.

Oh, and the pre-credits flashback was a nice touch, both in shading out Shane’s weird desire to protect Rick’s family and… just because it was cool, really. A strong episode from The Walking Dead, and hopefully the cliffhanger here means something significant will happen next week, which I think we’re ready for. Things have been fairly sedate since the Shane-murder.

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This week’s Walking Dead is the closest we’ve had so far to a day in the life of a bunch of zombie survivors. They ran errands, took stock of their position and, yes, there was even a few romantic moments or two. Well, in a way. It’s hard to tell.

Of course, this sort of thing could be boring, like Big Brother with zombies. Was it that bad?

OKZombie.Com

I rather enjoyed it, actually. After the relentless misery of the previous episode, I was in the mood for a reminder that these people have lighter moments, and there was plenty of that here. I particularly enjoyed the team’s cack-handed efforts to clean a well, even if it contained a massive logical flaw (would you really want to drink that water anyway?) as well as Glenn’s awkward seduction.

But there was a lot of other hinting too. Are they suggesting something might happen between Daryl and Carol after his single-minded devotion to finding her daughter? I suppose their names rhyme, which is a good start. And there was the ghost of an Andrea/Shane connection too, as the big crazy man came worryingly close to confessing his sins.

Made all the more dramatic by Shane’s involvement in the Big Triangle with Rick and Lori. After this episode’s cliffhanger, it looks like we’re headed for a “Whose baby is it anyway?” storyline, and who could blame them? Of course, if the kid is Shane’s, it’ll probably hack its way out through Lori’s stomach whenever it feels ready. Just to avoid the risk of birth complications.

The Coming Of The Zombie Queen

I alluded to it above, but elsewhere, the missing girl storyline is still humming onwards. I can’t help but wonder where they’re going with this. Is Sophia going to be the Merle Dixon of season 2? She disappears, they eventually give up looking for her, and she reappears as some kind of Zombie Queen? Maybe with Merle as her King?

Who knows? But after all these weeks, the ending ought to be something beyond “oh look there she is”. Aside from that, though, I thought this was a good, well-pitched episode to keep the engine ticking along.

Good to see some lightness in tone, even better to see characters outside the Big Triangle get storylines, now we have to wait and see what happens next week. Because after a quiet episode of The Walking Dead, you just know the following one’s going to be horrific.

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This week on The Walking Dead: utter, crushing misery. I know I shouldn’t expect a show about survival post-zompocalypse to cheer me up, but this entire episode radiated horror. Well, there were a few wisecracks to cheer me up, but for the most part, sadness.

So, was it the good kind of unhappiness? (Customary warning: There is a surprising ending and I will be spoiling it.)

The Grim Haircut

From the grim haircut at the very start, it was clear something bad was coming. And to be honest, if you’ve ever seen a horror/survival story before, you could have taken a stab at the vague gist. Yes, poor Otis shot Carl by accident a few episodes back, and this week he pays the karmic price.

But the nature of the death is the surprising part. There is no heroic sacrifice; instead, Shane, the pragmatic, brutal psychopath of the group, exercises forced natural selection and purges the overweight. I was just murmuring last week that Shane was finally being shown in a more heroic light, and now… I don’t know.

He’s somewhat of a bastard, but as Rick clings hopefully to simplistic black and white morality, is Shane the man you want in your corner in this awful landscape? Well, depends if you’ve eaten too many pies, I guess, or accidentally shot a kid. All credit to the writers, this was a fascinating plot twist. Made me think.

The Dark Soap Opera

Away from Shane’s brutal corner of the plot, things weren’t as fascinating. Lori and Rick had some interesting dialogue about the hopelessness of their situation, then ruined it by cooing about deer. The little girl remains missing, Andrea still semi-suicidal. Someone needs to get them off that highway before they die of our boredom.

Although Darryl Dixon did his best to help, throwing in most of the best lines as ever. If nothing else, The Walking Dead is doing sterling work in raising Redneck Awareness.

Still, hopefully season two will vary a little. We’ve been rather stuck in this pattern of Rick/Shane/Lori having big drama, Darryl getting all the fun dialogue and everyone else… well, they’re just kinda there. Next week, presumably, our heroes settle down on Hershel’s estate and do some farmin’.

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Last week, The Walking Dead opened their season by outdoing themselves, in terms of both zombie-lurching set pieces and horrendous splatterage. So, as one might expect, this week sees consolidation, as they introduce new non-decomposing characters and turn the screws on our existing ones.

So do they keep the momentum going? Or is it a dead stop?

The Uneasy Farm

The first few minutes of the episode aren’t what I expected. We get a welcome flashbacks to pre-apocalyptic times, and they never bother showing us the minutes immediately after last week’s cliffhanger. It was a leap, but retrospectively, would anything have happened that we couldn’t intuit from what we got here?

And then the medical crisis, a few zombie encounters, soap opera and, a Walking Dead staple, the sense of creeping unease. Because surely one or more of the scenarios introduced here has to end in utter disaster?

For example, where’s the little girl? Will she come roaring back as a tiny zombie? And is T-Dog suffering from a “blood infection”, or was there a zom-tooth embedded in that car door? Most crucially of all, and surely a major plot point in the future, surely Hershel’s farm didn’t escape untouched by the undead because they were “lucky”? There must be more to it…

Soap Bubbles

Against all this new material, the same old characters still rage against the dying of… well, everything. I’m pleased Shane’s getting some redemptive material again, as the show is a lot more interesting when the love triangle isn’t as simple as Good Guy vs Bastard.

On a similar theme, we see the less admirable and amazing side of Rick coming through again. Or at least, we’re reminded that it might not always be easy being married to a stoic cowboy action man. More of this ambiguity, please.

Oh, and more material for Glenn. That kid’s lust for life provided some fun moments in the first season, it’ll be a shame if he spends the second one stomping around and complaining.

Nonetheless, another good episode. Signposted promising directions for future stories, and without subjecting us to epic tracts of exposition. Excellent.

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Smash-hit zombie series The Walking Dead disappeared after only six episodes last year, which must have been torture for the Americans and, you know, business as usual for the UK, but now it’s back for a superlong 13 episode run, albeit split into two chunks in Doctor Who style.

So, the first new episode has aired on the UK’s FX channel, and how was it? Are they the walking dead, or just the dead?

Cutting Off The Head

Well, the premiere of Walking Dead season 2 has broken records for a drama series on basic cable (whatever that is) in the States, so it’s looking good. But with rumours of behind the scenes strife, including the abrupt departure of showrunner Frank Darabont, were those people tuning in to see a car crash of mangled body parts?

Well, it could still happen. I imagine these early episodes still had Darabont’s fingerprints, so if it’s going to go to hell without him, that might not be for a few weeks. But for now… yeah, this is pretty good isn’t it?

The soap opera picks right up where it left off, there’s an emotional scene between Andrea and Dale regarding last year’s finale, the sequence in which our heroes hide from zombies among a highway of parked cars was dripping with tension, and even by their own standards, the zombie autopsy moment was gruesome.

Rooting Through The Brains

That first half, for the most part, was reminding us of what’s going on and who the characters are, before the new stories got underway. Well, got hinted at anyway. Aside from a few details in the trailer, it’s tough to tell where they’re going with this.

Admittedly, I think I’ve read the relevant sequence in the comic, but based on certain key changes, such as Shane still being alive, there’s no reason to believe they’re going to do chapter and verse. Shane remains the biggest source of drama, although I thought Laurie was weirdly calm about him being around her family, considering the rape attempt last episode. No?

Still, that aside, this was a strong start. Obviously, it could still all go wrong as season 2 progresses, just look at Heroes, but it feels like they’ve kept running without missing a step so far. Let us know how you feel about the return of the zombies.

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The Walking Dead is over! Well, the first season, and the second is on the way. And with the possible exception of the fourth, I’ve really enjoyed them all. As new series launches go, this must qualify as a successful one, in terms of both fan opinion and cold numbers.

Ratings in the states have trended up with each new episode, so all Darabont and company need do now is bring this in for a landing. Can they make it stick?

Going Underground

Oddly, after an entire season spent out in the open, the finale takes the characters underground for a bit of downtime, before deadly danger once again rears its head. New chap Doctor Jenner reveals why he’s unhinged, and we see the kind of bunker-based action antics you might expect in an episode of 24.

On the one hand, I admire a show that can shift genre so drastically, yet still seem consistent. It bodes well for future episodes, and I look forward to Rick and friends settling down to raise cattle for the bulk of season three. On the more immediate hand, it wasn’t exactly a great episode of 24. The huge explosion which only damaged things that weren’t needed for the plot was the most obvious example.

The appearance of a handy grenade out of nowhere was another lowlight. But I did feel suitably wrenched at the emotional climax, so it wasn’t a complete failure, just seemed more contrived than the earlier, better episodes.

Character Over Substance

The interplay between the characters during their brief spell of calm was enjoyable, especially the chance to see Darryl the redneck not being antagonising, as well as progression in the Rick/Shane/Lori triangle. I loved the opening flashback, as it softened my earlier criticism of the Shane storyline by revealing he might not have lied about believing Rick dead.

And as well as leaving that open, we see no sign of the storyline I expected to tie off the season: Merle Dixon, and his possible role in the camp attack. Toying with our expectations is laudable, but the CDC material was a bit incongruous. Still, it leaves them plenty for next year.

In short, a few wobbles, but I still enjoy the assembled actors, as well as the tone of it. Hopefully we’ll get back to the raw survival vibe in season two, rather than veering into more generic action. And if you need something to scratch your itch during the lengthy wait, why not take Rob Hinchcliffe’s suggestion and read the comics?

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As you’d expect from a series as slow as The Walking Dead, this week is mostly devoted to the aftermath of last week’s sudden zombie attack. The survivors pick up the pieces, and many cast members are dead.

Of course, I wasn’t as in love with last week’s episode as I had been with previous ones, so I was hoping for a return to form here. Did the show deliver, or will it be another shambling disappointment?

Everybody’s Dead, Jim

The original Walking Dead comic book series was never afraid to kill off major characters, and I had wondered whether this element would find its way into the televisual adaptation. After all, would notoriously flighty TV audiences cope with having hardly any regular cast to hold onto?

Based on these episodes, they seem to be keeping it bloodthirsty. A fair few are written out here, more than I expected, and they number most of the characters who had been given spotlight moments in previous weeks. Is it going to be the case that any Walking Dead background characters that get a few big scenes will be knocked off the following week?

I don’t know, but this episode really worked for me, getting back to the survival element, the hard decisions and, yes, the mewling soap opera. Soap with zombies is, basically, this show’s calling card.

Doctor Jenner, Alcoholic

With the exit of a few characters, we get a new one in the form of Doctor Jenner, a character who doesn’t appear in the comics at all. He seems interesting enough so far, a cynical counter-point to the desperation of our existing survivors. We’ll have to see how he develops next week.

Meanwhile, after being stalled a few episodes by Rick running around playing cowboy, he and Shane have terse conversations, with all the undercurrents we’d hoped for. Perhaps this will explode into a big fight next week.

Because, of course, the next episode is the finale of this short series, so there must be some kind of huge drama. Will anyone kill each other? More fatalities? We’ll have to wait and see, but in the meantime, this was a great improvement. Do tell me below whether you agree, and what might be coming next week.

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It seems like The Walking Dead has barely started, and yet we are two thirds into the first season. That already-ordered second season of thirteen is some comfort, but still. God knows how we cope in Britain, where everything only gets six episodes.

Anyway, the incremental, atmospheric advancement continues this week. It’s apparent that we will only get one major story throughout the season, but there’s some detours for world-building, and a bit more zombie action.

Age Concern Survives Zombie Apocalypse

Whilst venturing back into a ravaged city to search for that hick they left behind, our heroes stumble across a gang of scavenging youths. Or so it seems, until they discover said gang are actually the regional division of Age Concern, protecting the nearly-dead from the hungry-dead.

To be honest, this didn’t entirely work for me; I preferred it when they were a pack of ravenous predators. The reveal seems to make little sense when thought through, aside from providing a twist in this particular episode. Why in hell didn’t their kid hostage reveal the truth once he was sure they weren’t zombies?

Oh well. Much of the rest was really good, and the absence of Merle is making me very nervous about how he might wreak his revenge, or perhaps how he might have already done so. (Vague reference to ending of episode.)

Meanwhile, Back At Base Camp

Despite the absence of our cowboy hero, I rather enjoyed the base camp sequences this time, as the characters outside of the Grimes family got some moments. The two sisters in the boat, in particular, was lovely.

And the ending was heart-wrenching, but since I already spoiled that Age Concern thing, I’ll not talk too much about that.

In trivia, this episode was written by Robert Kirkman, writer of the original The Walking Dead graphic novels. I’m not sure whether the gang/nurses twist I criticised above would’ve worked better in comic form; the gaps would surely remain.

Still, the strong bits of this episode are very strong; I remain very much invested in the fate of our survivor’s group. But, I must admit, this was one of the weaker Walking Dead episodes so far. A big part of the appeal has been a post-zombie world that seems human rather than silly, and the gang-protected nursing home was a bit much.

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