What’s this show called … The Walking Dead part 2?

I guess wondering “What’s this show called” isn’t really accurate this time around, considering the fact that I already caught the pilot episode of The Walking Dead. Nevertheless, this week I’m doing a follow-up to my column from two weeks ago with a review of the second episode of the new AMC series.

The long and short of my first experience was this: not a bad show, but the characters didn’t quite grip me, and I found much of the 90 minutes to be gratuitously visually horrifying. I know that doesn’t sound too positive, but I definitely recognized the high quality of the programming. Let’s see how round two went.

Interestingly, the scene I had to turn away from the most wasn’t a zombie moment; the outdoor tryst between Shane (Jon Bernthal) and Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) at the beginning of the episode was gross. I don’t completely blame her for moving on after Rick (Andrew Lincoln) got shot and the virus hit (depending, of course, on how long it was between the two), but Lori and Shane’s interactions feel gross … I can only tell it like I see it.

I didn’t understand the voice on the radio — who turned out to be Glen (Steven Yeun) — when he said that Rick was running out of time in the tank. Not that he should live his life in there, but I imagine Rick was safe being locked in the tank from the inside. The walkers seem to move on once any excitement is over … if he’d given it a day, the loud noises and horse meat would likely have been distant memories, at which point Rick could have safely left the tank, gotten his bag of guns and ammo, and ran without the heightened risk to his life. So why the rush?

The group that Rick joined was boring. None of the new people are of particular interest, although I did find it curious that someone like Merle (Michael Rooker) could still find the time to be racist. With zombies lurking right around the corner, what does one gain by continuing to hate one of the ten people still left alive and not out to eat you? I have enough faith in people to hold out hope that a traumatic experience like a zombie virus outbreak would alter old perceptions and biases. It makes for an interesting question once Merle inevitably catches up to Rick, T-Dog (IronE Singleton), and the group, but why waste your time like that?

The wallet biopsy that Rick conducted on Wayne the guts donor was completely counterproductive — was it supposed to make it easier for Rick to chop Wayne open knowing who he was and what he’d lost?

The moment also helped me gain some clarity on a feeling I was having that I couldn’t quite articulate: The Walking Dead is in many ways a duality of grossness and absurdity. On the one hand there’s the smearing of Wayne’s guts all over Rick’s and Glen’s raincoats. On the other was Rick passionately saying something like “I’m going to find Wayne’s family and blah, blah, blah” … we’re supposed to buy that in that moment Rick was thinking to reach out to Wayne’s family “When all this is over” and comfort them for their loss?

I wondered a lot about how Rick and Glen were acting when they were out in the street. Do the walkers really have the wherewithal to have kept glancing back at the pair when they first walked into the alley, as if double checking what they’d seen to make sure everything was okay? And would zombies really have been evaluating someone who seemed to walk funny? We have a natural “blending in” mentality that we apply in these situations, but would it have mattered to the walkers? To me Glen and Rick seemed foolish — because limping cost them time — rather than prudent.

The getaway was what it was, but one thought for Glen: if sound attracts the walkers, he might have wanted to turn off the car alarm before leaving the city. Any lingering sound might draw the walkers onto the road out of town, which would only lead them back to the camp of survivors. Cutting off that attraction would have left them confused on some random street.

I think I would have been better off just watching the pilot and passing. Because whereas I didn’t see the compelling character development in the premiere, the second episode left me with the impression of a show that was kind of cheesy and was going through the requisite motions of one of these zombie-fests.

As for what happened to humanity … it’s an interesting question to be sure, but do I really have to ride along with this gang of survivors to find out? I pass.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 22, 2010 @ 15:19 EST5EDT