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AMC The Walking Dead

October 24, 2011 by · Comments Off on AMC The Walking Dead 

AMC The Walking DeadAMC The Walking Dead, Last week brought AMC The Walking Dead, new zombie series loved the radio, and there was much rejoicing. After an absence of nine months, the former police officer Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), his former partner, Shane (Jon Bernthal), the incredibly wise Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) and the rest of the survivors, finally decided to leave the confines of zombies Atlanta filled, and almost immediately encountered problems: a child out of control, a herd of zombies, a sinister church, and in the final moments of the episode shot in the chest of the son of Rick. Where do things go from there? Find out in The Walking Dead this week’s recap / review, after the jump.

First, let me say this: I think I was a little too easy to AMC The Walking Dead last week. My first reaction to seeing the premiere of the second season was one of almost unalloyed happiness, I am sad not seeing the only zombie TV show centered on television, especially one with so much makeup effects gloriously bloody on the screen, but after spending a few days to digest what he had seen (like a zombie eating a groundhog whole skull), I decided to rewatch the premiere of the season to make a second opinion. Turns out, I thought the season premiere was even weaker in the second viewing. Hmmm.

And so, as we approach this, the second of what will be worth a whole season of AMC summaries of The Walking Dead, I have decided to separate my love zombies inherent in all things from the real entertainment value (and Total Quality) of this series. Although I am nowhere near ready to declare The Walking Dead “bad” series (if you want to assign a number to it, I would give it a 7 out of 10 in his moments of weakness, a 8.5 for their highs), I am interested to see his improvement. Surely we can all agree that there is nothing wrong with wanting a sight-and to be even better, right? No? It has to be “I love him like crazy” or “I hate it with passion”? Oh, Internet. They are incorrigible.

Last week, things had a difficult start, both with critics and with the characters in the heart of the series. On the critical side reaction of things, more than a few people pointed out that the episode really did not need to be as long as it was, while others had trouble getting beyond the “zombies can smell humans or not?” Theme that emerged during the greatest episode of set pieces. In general, the reaction was favorable (and the episode posted some incredibly high scores record), but it would be wrong to suggest that everything was, as some uninformed Jersey Shore cast member might say, “cheese, and margaritas.”

As for the characters themselves, the decision to hightail Atlanta proved to be very dangerous, even more than they had predicted it would be: A few kilometers outside the city, a group of “vagrants” attacked the survivors in an attempt to clear the path for themselves through a huge traffic mess, and after another bad decision (or two) and a chase through the woods, Rick was found guilty of losing track of Sofia, one of the children of survivors . The search for missing girl monopolized this episode, but in its closing moments, we are the premiere real money-shot: Rick’s son, Carl, getting shot in the chest by a hunter off the screen while approached a deer. Ruh-roh.

So, how does the series (and characters) are doing this week? After painfully chatty introduction, I am happy to say “much better” on both fronts.

On the critical side of things, I thought tonight’s episode was a marked improvement of an episode last week (although, as always, I’m still slightly upset with Rick determination to approach each new setback beating himself emotionally, to be fair to the writers, however, that is something that Rick also interested in the comic series), which sometimes felt a bit bloated and redundant. Things were tense, there was very little in the way of speeches, and Jon Bernthal is another handful of opportunities to shine. I would have liked to have seen a little less than Rick lose their sh-t over his gut-shot son, but that would be quibbling. In fact, in general, I was very happy with tonight’s episode. It seems that my decision to take this show is that-will have to wait another week, when it is due (fingers crossed, never arrive).

As for the story: “bleeding” begins with a flashback, which is a very rare thing to see in The Walking Dead. While programs like Lost entire episodes built (and, in fact, stations) around the idea of ??flashbacks, Walking Dead tend to live in the here and now: last season’s flashback Shane visit Rick in hospital immediately after the outbreak of zombies generally regarded as one of the highest points of the entire show so far, and I would say that tonight flashback to the time that Shane had to go tell Rick’s wife, Lori, that her husband had been shot (which we have witnessed in the opening round of the series), was another. Call me crazy, but I get a charge to see these characters through their pre-outbreak of life. I wonder what this all about?

The flashback was there to serve as a parallel to the situation that began at the end of last week’s ep, with Carl getting a cap on the forest for the newcomer-to-the-show Otis (an always welcome Pruitt Taylor Vince -). Rick meets the family shortly after Carl Greene was crowned, running down the door to his property and demanding to see the “doctor” who has heard live there. In short, we find that the doctor, Herschel Greene (Scott Wilson), his daughter Maggie (Lauren Cohan), and the rest of the family. Fans of Robert Kirkman comic book series knows that Maggie and Herschel will play a key role in the near future, and here the two impressions made decent. Could have used a little more than Maggie, but I guess we’ll get to it, and if the show after the same story from the comics, her romance with Glenn in the coming weeks.

Herschel Carl patch will work, while Rick emo does his thing around the Greene family farm. It is a large farm (wonder what’s in the barn …?), And far away from where they left the rest of the survivors. Speaking of which, Lori, Andrea, Daryl and Melissa are still painfully around the forest in search of the daughter of Melissa, while T-Dawg (ugh) and Dale are what the setback in the RV. We learned that T-Dawg has a blood infection very unpleasant, and he and Dale discuss the episode pass its value to the rest of the group while searching the area surrounding the antibiotic (Dale shocked that most people do not have antibiotics in their cars, oddly enough). I liked the fact that the group was-mostly-divided into separate areas in this episode, and I liked the way the director Ernest Dickerson balanced action: do not spend much time in an area.

And so it was Rick, who was accompanied by Lori eventually became Greene’s farm, donating blood to the “Save Carl” campaign, T-Dawg had saved his life (again) by Daryl, who revealed that there were all sitting in a pharmacy bag from his helicopter (including what appeared to be part of Breaking Bad is blue-met), Sofia remained missing, his mother became worried and Andrea remained kind of f-cked up, emotionally . As for Shane and Otis, well, they had their hands full to recover the medical team a nearby high school. And here I want to mention something that I imagine will not be very popular among the masses (but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway).

Jon Bernthal as Shane, is one of the best parts of this series. It may indeed be the best player in the series, turning in more coherent and convincing. There is talk of dead fans Route torn between “Team Shane” and “Team Rick”, and am now firmly on the side of “Team Shane”. Sure, he hit his friend’s wife while he was unconscious in the hospital, and yes, he has a bit of rape, and not the end of last season, but … I do not know what else to say, people: I think Bernthal one more compelling screen presence, and its very obvious flaws only serve to make him a hero tarnished in the eyes.

Beware: spoilers below.

I would like to pose the following question to you, the faithful Walking Dead: what if the creators of this show and showrunners decided to really take the story in a different direction? They have said before television series Walking Dead be your thing, right? Well, how would you feel if you really delivered on that promise? What I’m asking is, what if AMC The Walking Dead Walking Dead rewrote history to a series of Shane? In short, what if Rick is the one who does not survive? Would you be outraged? Want to see? Would you be intrigued? Who do you think is the most attractive player in this series: Jon Bernthal as Shane or Andrew Lincoln as Rick? Who would like to see leaders of the survivors? Personally, I do not know that the show would be smart to rewrite the history of history established by Kirkman that dramatically … Bernthal but I think more interesting is the actor and character, and it’s always fun to play “What if?”

In general, a much stronger episode than last week and I’m very curious to see where things go from here. If I were this classification, and I am totally not-this week’s episode would earn a strong “A-“.

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