The Walking Dead
Season 2, Episode 3
“Save the Last One“
While it wasn’t as bad as the first episode, I think this one was just “okay.” Similarly to “Bloodletting” last week; it had room for improvement. The flow was still fairly brisk, but that was only because the setting jumped from one group to the next. People even broke up into smaller groups this time around to aid with that, but still I think very little actually happened. And what did happen wasn’t a big deal. I’ll get to why I think that is in a bit, but first I’ll give the busy person’s play-by-play.
Yet another shower scene of Shane. If you include the bottled water bit at the start of this season, that makes it the third. He is shaving his head and has a crazy look in his eye. Oy. Looks like they want to bring the ‘Crazy Shane’ of last season back >.> Bad way to start this off, in my opinion. To put it in polite terms, ’Crazy Shane’ wasn’t the high-point of the first season by any means as he was about as consistent as runny egg yolk. But according to a certain red-head on the third episode of the Talking Dead, he’s hot. So who cares, right? (More on that double standard in tomorrow’s post.)
Carl is getting worse to the point of having seizures and Rick is just about out of cherry koolaid. He, Lori, Hershal and his crew are waiting on Shane and Otis, but Lori wonders if Carl would be better off dying in his sleep instead of surviving. This monologue gets a bit long, but at least Rick is finally acting like his last season self. Lori made him eat up a scene before it, so I guess all it takes is a sandwich to bulk up on confidence and assertiveness. If he downs something from a glass vial labeled “Drink Me” will he shrink down, too? XD
Glenn and T-Dog appear during all this, and I was honestly not sure if they would still show up after Derle gave the ailing T-Dog some much-needed meds. They show their support but ultimately disappear for most of the episode as the other duo’s took center stage.
"Pills here!"
Carol is still a pointless character, but this time around her wailing in the back of the RV paired with Andrea’s incessant tinkering with a loaded weapon (that nearly got her killed in episode one) drives Derle to leave under the guise of looking for the missing girl. Good man. Andrea tags along and they happen upon a zombie hanging from a tree. Andrea feels for the starving zombie, and pleads Derle to shoot him and end his misery. He first nixes the idea, but Andrea answers a question of his, stating she still isn’t sure about if she wants to live or is merely doing so as a habit. Derle still thinks it is a bad answer and a waste of an arrow, but ends the tree zombies ‘life’ anyway.
Dale sets out on his own, but they don’t really say why he opted to walk quite a distance down the road without a flashlight. Either way, he returns to see Andrea and Derle make their way back. While he is happy at the sight, Carol starts crying about not seeing the daughter and dives back into the van. Because it isn’t good enough that they came back safe during an ill-thought search at night. For HER!
/facepalm
If only she had stolen two grenades from Rick so she could swallow one now.
Spoiler Warning
Shane and Otis appear in the school. It isn’t explained how they got in, nor how zombies are less than fifteen feet behind them the entire time. They end up momentarily parting ways and distracting zombies from one another, but in the end Shane injures his foot, falls, and gives up. He tells Otis to leave him behind, but Otis refuses to do so. We’ll get back to this in a sec.
Shane makes it back in time to help Carl who is now stable, but Otis has fallen. Rick breaks the news of the post-mortem Otis with Hershal and Maggie appears to have a thing for Glenn. Nothing physical happens, but it certainly came across to me that Maggie was a wee bit flirty with him. During this, Lori returns to Carl who is sleeping and Shane steps in. Lori says he can stay, and whether she ment in the room or in the group is up for debate. Either way Shane gets clothes from a rather disgruntled Maggie, stating they might be big on him as it was Otis’s attire. We are then once again back with Shane in the shower. Two shower scenes in one episode. New record >.<
Team Jacob, eat your heart out.
Remember when Shane gave up and Otis forced him to carry on? Sadly, Shane didn’t pay it forward and instead shoots Otis in the leg, using him as a distraction. Otis does not go down without a fight and even when getting bludgeoned with a pipe (or something similar) is able to rip off a clump of Shane’s hair. Shane manages to take the supplies Otis was carrying just before the zombies eat him alive, in gory detail. I’m sure that bit unsettled the majority of the fans at home for better or worse ^_^ Anyway, Shane is seen shaving off his hair in an effort to hide the damage that the late Otis inflicted unto him and the credits roll.
All in all, decent episode. Some twists, slight boring bits, some action and some dialog. Nice over-all mix, but eh… there is one thing nagging me. It isn’t a deal breaker, but it could be in future episodes.
The Problem
While the episode was far from bad, it wasn’t great. There is plenty for people to claim and cite as awesome, and I can even provide a list for ‘em. Hordes of zombies, guns that were actually fired, Derle venturing out at night and also firing off a bolt Rambo-style, a gory death scene with close-ups, some plot and character developement, an actual human finally died which was a first this season, and while it isn’t a high point by my standards I know a lotta ladies and a few guys probably enjoyed seeing Shane’s buff physique in the shower. (Again, more on that tomorrow >.>)
The problem that undermines the whole thing is that I was not emotionally invested. I had zero attachment to anyone involved. I didn’t care about Shane’s plight as I knew Carl was important to the story (for some still unknown reason) so he was safe. Otis was not as he was a new addition an episode ago. Add in the “Crazy Shane” intro and you can fill in the rest of the blanks yourself. I do not want this to appear as if the issue is tied to a lack of surprise, as even though I knew more or less what was going to unfold, I did not yet know how. That “How?” is where the crew should have stepped up and made the audience give a darn about people making it away safe and intact.
I’ll even give them credit that they tried to do that, but it didn’t quite work. Carl flailing around on the bed was supposed to be a heart-tugging and raw scene. Instead it was a child that was instructed to flop around for two long minutes in front of the camera. It stunk of “Emmy Award Reel” too much for me to believe it was actually happening. Instead of intrigue I was left with reality; a child actor trying really hard to look like he was spasming or just dancing very badly. I give the kid credit, though. If the scene was cut down to moderate levels and the emphasis and music was not so bombastic and so dominant it might have actually left room for me to care at all instead of them trying to force it on me :/
One final thing that bothered me to the point of getting me angered was during the Talking Dead preview of next week’s episode. If you want to stay completely out of the know, feel free to divert thine eyes now.
Courtesy gap.
This has nothing to do with episode 3. It's from episode 4. For some reason they included it in the third one's gallery, so by golly I'm gonna use it and blow your minds.
So, the group is now at the farm and for some reason they are lowering Glenn down a well. There is a bloated zombie down there, and they all know about it. Suddenly the crank holding the line breaks and juts forward, causing Glenn to fall further than expected and closer to Jobba the Well Zombie than everyone would like.
Suddenly the footage is clipped and Mr. Dynamite is nearly falling off the couch screaming “That’s IT?! It stops THERE?!” and immediately I was repulsed. Why does he care that much? I like Glenn a lot, and it would be a shame to have him go, but the show has not yet given any of us reason to care about anyone. Let alone enough to act as over excited, shocked, and frustrated as he did.
Is he being dishonest?
To what end would that prove to benefit? The audience? How would over-acting help anything? Maybe we’d tune in next week, but if it didn’t pay off or wasn’t handled properly, why would we return? No, it seems like too much work for that scenario to pan out, plus the show has a massive following and has just been signed for a third season. They are far from hurting for ratings.
Is he being honest, then?
Ironically this is the worst option of the two. This provokes the question of why does he honestly care as much as he appeared to after that clip? Has he been watching the same show as us? Is he a long-time fan of the comic and drawing his connections to the characters from there, perhaps? If the next episode is as ‘okay’ as the last two were, or anything near as bad as the first one was, last season was episode for episode far stronger and better off than this one. In that case I have to wonder, if he really did care that much to literally be on the edge of his seat:
Is this how little it takes to impress those in Hollywood? Is this why crap is so often sold to the masses? Is this why our standards for entertainment are so disappointingly low? /coughtwilightfilms
I’ll leave those questions for you, my awesome commentors, to wax philosophic in the comments below.
Furthermore, Andrea should be destroyed ^_^
