Walking Dead - Mid season climax

If you’re not up to speed with AMC’s Walking Dead then you’d best not read this review as it contains big SPOILERS.

Well the mid season climax turned out be one of the best episodes this season’s yet offered  and  although the big secret was given away by an AMC employee who has since been sacked, it was still a brilliant reveal to see Sophia, now a walker, emerge from Hershel’s barn. And the entire episode that carried us towards this climax was expertly paced and allowed us to see just how fragmented our group of survivors have become. Shane continued to dominate proceedings as one by one all of the major characters came to realise that whilst Rik may be the better man, it is Shane who is better equipped to help them survive in this brutal new world. We got the inevitable soap operatics with Shane confronting Lori, now that Rik has told him she is pregnant, and telling her that the baby is his. When Lori dismisses him and tells him that even if he is the father, the baby will be Rik’s he goes off in a black mood. He goes for the guns, intending on destroying the walkers in Hershal’s barn but finds that Dale expected this move and has gone off to hide the guns,so that Shane can not act before Rik returns from wherever he’s gone. This seems an odd move for Dale, he did after all try to make Hershel realize that the walkers are dangerous and can no longer be considered people,  to make which is perhaps the only weak point in this otherwise excellent episode.

And where is Rik? Out in the swamps that’s where aiding Hershal to capture two walkers who have been trapped in the swam. The plan is to take the walkers back to the farm  for storage in the barn, but by the time he and the old man, not the mention the two new walkers return, Shane has already found Dale, retrieved the guns and is preparing to destroy every single walker in the barn. Cue an action scene that really delivered – it becomes a turkey shoot as Shane and several of the survivors stand there and put each and every walker down while Hershal looks on horrified, but just as the dust settles Sophia shambles out of the barn and it is left to Rik, rather than a stunned Shane, to put her down. Perhaps it is Rik after all, who is the best man for this brutal new world.


A great episode then that displayed much of the action that has thus far been  missing from this season. There were some great character moments but it wasn’t at the expense of the all important zombie apocalyspe elements that have been missing from this season. It certainly did it’s job and it’s going to be a long wait until the season resumes in January.

The second season has been disappointing thus far and has constantly failed to live up to the excellence of the first season – the search for Sophia has gone on too long and has tended to make things a little too draggy, but now that this plot line has been played out  maybe the next section of this season will see some all out zombie action, and that the sense of doom so prevalent in the first season will return. AMC have already announced that there will be a third season, and if the remainder of this second season lives up to the brilliance of this episode then I, for one, will be glad to see it.