The same sort of thing happened in season one, if I’m not mistaken, with the writers really rising to the challenge for the premiere and the finale, but the stuff in-between falling a little shorter than I would’ve liked (narratively, anyway).
It’s funny: before tonight, the best episodes of season two were the premiere, the mid-season finale, and last week’s next-to-last episode. For me, the episode perfectly captured what The Walking Dead should be on a week-to-week basis: very little sermonizing, high drama, a few great zombie kills, a bunch of blood, and a few genuine-feeling character beats (I loved the scene with Andrea and Glenn, while the latter’s fixing Dale’s RV). The rest of last week’s episode, by the way, was excellent. I remain undecided on the significance (if any) of this sequence, but-for what it’s worth-I’m hoping that the show’s writers take Carl on the same twisted journey that the comics-version of the character has taken (more on this later, specifically my concerns about Chandler Riggs’ ability to handle such material). Some of my viewing-buddies believed that this was Carl’s retribution for having failed to kill the zombie that ended up killing Dale, while others pointed out that the show’s writers could’ve done that with virtually any zombie-kill. Having Carl shoot a human Shane would’ve set him on that same path very clearly, but having him shoot zombie Shane seems to mean something else entirely.
#The walking dead season two episode 1 series#
As readers of the comics will be happy to tell you, Carl killing Shane is just the first step down a very dark path for the Carl character, and I’ve been wondering since the very beginning of AMC’s series if the show’s writers were planning on doing the same thing with the show. This was similar to what happens in the Kirkman comic series, yes, but not quite the same, and it’ll be interesting to see why the show’s writers decided to factor Carl into this sequence. Shane’s death inspired an interesting discussion amongst my Walking Dead-watching friends, specifically the moment where Carl shot zombie-Shane.
I was shoulder-deep in the SXSW Film Festival when last week’s episode aired, and-perhaps in a bit of karmic irony-I had the episode’s “big moment” spoiled for me by some of my loose-lipped Twitter friends long before I had a chance to sit down and watch the episode myself (in fact, I caught up with last week’s episode in the hour before tonight’s season finale aired): Shane was killed, turned into a zombie, and was then promptly shot by Rick’s son, Carl. Now! With that out of the way, let’s first address what happened on last week’s Walking Dead. You should go ahead and assume that all Walking Dead recaps will (by their very nature) be spoiler-fueled, but you can also rest assured that we’d never spoil something serious in the opening paragraph…nor will I ever work a faux-spoiler into said paragraph. Sometimes-and I know this is going to be hard to believe-but even I make really stupid decisions. And so, while I’ve got your ear, allow me to apologize for the lame-ass gag that opened our previous recap.
0 kommentar(er)
