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.

The Walking Dead episode 5

This is the penultimate episode of what has been a truly remarkable series and leaves the way open for a massive show down to take place in the season climax. This was a slower paced episode than usual but the suspense was racked all the way up. The aftermath of the zombie attack have left our dwindling band of survivors bruised and battered and much time is spent exploring this.

The scenes where we are waiting for Amy to turn into one of the walking dead are masterful - this viewer was on the edge of the seat waiting for Amy to attack her sister but a neat twist was all the more shocking for it being totally unexpected.

The show ended on a mysterious point with a shot that could have come directly from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and leaves us in anticipation of finding out just what the hell is going on when we return next week. A friend of mine recently said, this is a good time to be a geek and judging by the quality of this show he's not wrong there.

Excellent

Next week the series ends for a year which is a bit of  major downer but the news that the next series will be a full length of at least thirteen episodes is some consolation. This is a great series and got me reading the original comics from which the series takes its inspiration. And for anyone interested there is a great podcast about the show, HERE

The Walking Dead episode 4

Episode 4 of this remarkable series may be the best to air so far - this time there are more character moments than usual and the makers still find time for a kick ass zombie attack to end the episode. An attack which is bound to have consequences for our rag tag bunch of survivors.

By slowing things down slightly and allowing for the characters to grow, the viewer is sucked further into the story. It starts off with the two sisters in a small boat,enjoying a fishing expedition and talking about the father they may or may not have lost.

'Perhaps Florida wasn't hit as hard.' One says to the other but it is obvious they are clutching at straws.

And from there we are straight to Rik's misson in Atlanta which goes seriously wrong. There is a great scene here in a hospital filled with aged people and the relatives who protect the people from the zombie population.

The episode ends in a bloodbath  While Rick and the others find another pocket of humanity, so do the undead, as they break through the camp's defences and mount a gory assault. Unlike other series, this shows how the threat is the same for a young attractive woman as it is for a tubby, unlikeable wife-beater, as Amy all but has her throat torn out. As does the tubby, unlikeable wife-beater.
It's a bold and shocking move, but if you're going to portray the end of civilization, it's unlikely that just all the good looking ones will survive.

Personally I'm not much of a TV viewer, preferring to watch DVD's and I tend to catch up on classic shows in one bite on the full season box sets, but this is one show that I'm not going to miss.  Bring on episode five.

Shuffling along the small screen

The Walking Dead TV series is tucked away on the FX channel on these shores. A pity really because it's one of the most innovative and cinematic looking TV series ever shown. Mind you The Shield also started on FX and look where that one went, so it seems a safe bet that The Walking Dead will get a mainstream screening.

It's bloody good. Bloody being the operative word. You'd expect the constraints of TV to mean that the story would be considerably tamed down visually but that's not the case here and the show is every bit as gory as any Romero zombie flick.

When this series was initially announced it was rumoured that it would be filmed in black and white to more closely mirror the style of comic, but thankfully the makers went for full gross out colour. It would have worked in black and white but it wouldn't have looked so awesome in HD.

The TV show seems to be following the plot of the bestselling comic very closely, even if events are switched around. Some of the more memorable scenes from the early issues of the comic crop up in the pilot episode - even the gory ones in which the horse is torn apart by a horde of zombies in a feeding frenzy.

It's also really well acted all round with a diverse and interesting bunch of survivors to keep the viewer engrossed- the show follows Rick Grimes a police officer who is shot and falls into a coma. When he awakens he finds himself in a deserted hospital, his beard has grown but strangely his hair is the same length, and as he stumbles about aimlessly be starts to realise that something strange has happened and now the town is populated by zombies.

He escapes the hospital and eventually find his way home only to discover that his wife and son are gone. He still believes them alive and figures they would have gone to Atlanta where the army are protecting people from the horrors. However when Rick gets there he finds the city swarming with the undead but he ends up with a group of survivors who eventually lead him to their camp where he finds his wife and son very much alive.

Is that it? Hell no - this is just the start of a great survivor adventure with some cool and gross looking zombies. It's all carried off seriously and there are some genuine scares waiting the viewer. I've seen the first two episodes of what is a six part series and I'm eager to catch next week's show.

 The second episode wears its Romero influences in full view when the survivors are trapped building which pays homage to the shopping mall storyline of Day of the Dead. The rooftop scenes looking down on a city full of the walking dead are breathtaking.

The hugely popular comic book

A second series has already been commissioned which will come as no surprise after watching an episode - it really is that good.