Behind the scenes turmoil is never a good indicator of onscreen quality. Usually these problems stem from creative disagreements between the producers and the network. Though most is speculation at this point, what we do know about the second season of The Walking Dead is that creator Frank Darabont and AMC parted ways early into the filming and is was not a very amicable decision. The shakeup really puts the thirteen episode season set for this season in question as will it live up to the promise to the first season.
That is not to saw the first season did not have its flaws even with Darabont in complete control (even Frank may have seen the shortcomings, firing the writing staff in between seasons, starting off all the behinds the scenes gossip surrounding the show). The one minute recap at the start of the episode was so short but comprehensive it makes you wonder why it took seven hours to tell that story.
With the trip to the CDC a dead end (quite literally as it blew up), at the start of the second season, a band of not so merry men are heading out to an army base and naturally hit a road block where a disturbing about of people chose to die in their cars. Naturally a pack of Walkers were not far behind which makes you wonder where there were going. Do they have some natural instinct that is leading them somewhere or did they think they heard something and just went that way and did not stop?
The season premiere also broke down like one from the first; the cast is going nowhere and then they get sidetracked as a plot point, this time around the young girl goes missing in the wood and you really cannot go shouting her names as not to alert the zombies. And after an hour of searching, she is still missing. But we of course get a cliffhanger in that the young boy got shot while looking at a deer in a weird scene. Seriously, who goes up to pet a wild deer? But anyway.
The episode did show possibly the most gruesome scenes to date. Even though I had eaten dinner four hours earlier, opening up of the zombie to see what he had eaten earlier made me quite a bit queasy (and brought back flashbacks of biology class when we had to dissect animals to see what they had eaten). Also high on the creepy-meter was opening up the church to find three Sitters just at the pew staring at Jesus. Also cool and gruesome as these season are, much like season one I find myself wondering when The Walking Dead will kick into high gear.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9:00 on AMC. You can stream episodes over at amc.com. You can also download The Walking Dead on iTunes.
No comments:
Post a Comment