The Walking Dead – Speedy Recap o’ Season One!

As season 2 is just about here (less than 24 hours, woot!), I thought it to be wise to give a quick refresher on what the goings on was in the first season.  Both as a reminder for potential plot reasons, as well as a quick run-down to all those unaware of the awesome that is the Walking Dead.

Ironically, I had this whole thang typed out, but upon reviewing my previously typed up stuffs I noticed I already did this before!  XD So, as I found it critically biting while still being a solid outline of the events that happened, I’m just gonna copy/paste it right here.  I would put up a spoiler alert, but if you are going to watch it tonight most of this will be ‘spoiled’ anyway.  If you are unaware of the goings-on in the teaser that was season one, you might be confused.  But in a good way ^_^

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The first episode had Rick escaping the SNAFU’d hospital with one snazzy transitional scene thanks to those wilting flowers.  The flip side of that coin, sadly, was just how lame the intro shot was of Rick shooting the obviously turned teddy bear zombie girl, and how much the hospital bit reeked of 28 Days Later.  Luckily this was left behind without a seconds thought as Rick passed by the Half Biker Girl Zombie torso and he met up with Morgan, who quickly threatened to kill him at least half a dozen times.

Morgan and his son Duane got Rick up to speed and out of town in no time flat.  They even had time for a shower!  Anyone drop the soap?

/crosses fingers!

Duane has a heart wrenching moment where he is unable to put down his unliving wife and Rick puts the barely there Biker Girl Zombie to final rest before ‘borrowing’ a horse and trading it up for a tank and a grenade.  End.

Shane and Lori, spread eagle near a tree.  C-O-U-P-L-I-N-G!

Guts starts off with Glenn helping Rick escape, some crazy old blonde chick puts a gun to Rick’s head, racist southerner gets ‘cuffed to a flimsy and eroded pipe, Rick and Glenn get a deep tissue massage made from deep tissues, and a clumsy black guy drops a key.  Glenn likes him some sports car.  End.

Frogs shows that Shane and Lori might actually be decent characters after two terrible showings in previous episodes.  But!  Oh noes!  Rick’s back!  Lori tells off Shane who immediately reflects this anger and ever-so-mild distemperment into Ed’s skull after Ed is seen slapping his wife.  Racist Redneck decided drilling through his ‘cuffs was too hard, but didn’t think to go through the thin, corroded metal twig, and instead recreated Saw with magically almost no blood loss.  Mighty fine grip you got going on with your belt there, Amos!  End.

Vatos!  Ah, how I’ve missed you.  Rick attempts to snatch his cache of weapons and radio, but in exchange he loses Glenn to a marauding latino gang.  Racist Redneck Jr. gets a butt shot off before they get away though, so so it’s all good.  In the end the Vatos were just posing as tough guys and Granny gives Rick a tour of a medical facility…that Rick never thinks about holing up in with the rest of the people back at camp.  Oh, bother.  And zombies attack the campsite, leading to a very fulfilling chaotic zombie battle, with bats, shovels, shotguns, crossbows, and rifles.  Woot!  End.

Wildfire lingers far too long.  Andrea should be shot.  Jim is the real man’s version of Rick without Main Character Powers.  Black Lady is offensive and does not visibly have a relationship with T-Dog.  Shane wants to shoot Rick for no reason.  Andrea wanted to shoot Rick for no reason.  Mr. CDC hijack’s our TV and takes us by surprise before blowing up his wife’s remains in a botched experiment.  It made me laugh, though.  End.

TS-19 was another great episode, yet it is fairly split on the love/hate-o-meter to the reviewing audience.  Mr. CDC explains to the dum-dum casual audience what zombies are and exactly what we should have known from day one.  He could have said “Watch Shawn of the Dead” for the first half of the episode and saved a lot of exposition.  I still liked it, thought he acted wonderfully, and hope he gets a lot of great work after showing off his abilities here.

Back to super short recap:  Everyone likes wine (‘cept Carl, boo!), Shane is mad in the shower, Rick and Lori are very happy in the shower, Andrea is wasting our time as well as theirs with all that hot water washing down the drain, Shane fails at Surprise Sex, Rick’s drunk, Mr. CDC locks everyone in for no honest reason, and then he lets them go before getting all Lost in Translation with Rick.  Black Lady and Mr. CDC die in a massive explosion that, again, half the reviewership thinks was over done or out of place and fake.  A short sandbag wall blocks the flames from killing Andrea, sadly.

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Wasn’t that great?  Man, I’m awesome. (Misses: “And so modest, too -_^!”)  Speaking of the Misses, it’s our anniversary today.  So how’s that for a nice Anniversary gift, eh?  The Walking Dead is back on AND the Halloween event in WoW starts up tonight.  We still need to level up hardcore to be able to queue for that as we are 78 now with no rested.  I’m hoping we can queue up for it at 81 as 85 just is not in the cards for a handful of hours to play >.<

If you’d like to know more about the episodes or even just what I thought about em, check out the previous posts I did on em!  Have a great day every one, still about… fourish hours till the show starts.  Have a good’in!

Episode One     Episode Two      Episode Three

Episode Four     Episode Five      Episode Six

In-Depth Recap o’ the Season

(FYI, my favorites were four, six, and one.  In that order.)

There’s a Girl in the Garden.

The sixth and final episode of the Walking Dead has come to a close.  Took some time to actually get to start typing this out today as Comcast managed to lose my internet pretty much all day, along with the rest of the midwest.  Add in decking the halls for a few hours, finishing up the tree, then cleaning up the mess in the process, the whole day was spent.  (Would have been nice to know Comcast was to blame, as I spent a good two hours cursing bitterly that I would not be able to enter the Shuffle On zombie role contest once the show started.  Luckily we got it back just before they stopped taking the code, which was NIGHTMARE today.)

But enough about us!  On with the spoilers!

The opening was great!  We got to see familiar scenes way back from the beginning of the series not so long ago, as well as seeing how the hospital ended up the way it did.  The military killing any and all in a full blown slash and burn purge of any contamination was an interesting choice, albeit cliche, but still passable.  Adding in gas masks made them jump for oppressive jar heads to full-on Umbrella Corp, but it was so brief in this scene it is of little consequence.  This scene also had some strong vibes of the original Half-Life:  harsh and dimwitted military willing to kill anything tied to a failed mission.  Which provides a funny mental image…

Warden Freeman. The 'Walker' Atlanta Ranger.

I did enjoy seeing a military person shoot up the ceiling, which explains what caused the wires to sag as Rick walked past.  (Not that I was wondering, but it was a cool detail to see.)  This ‘death hall’ that Rick passed through so long ago (to us, anyway) has a feeling of Metal Gear Solid when Cyber Ninja was fully revealed to the player and Snake.  Guards shooting randomly as they make a failed attempt not to get killed off.  A genius commenter left this message on one of my posts that I thought I should bring up here:

“One idea I like, is that when Shane said the hospital was real bad when Rick regrouped with them; how would he know? Also, Rick living that long with no nurses helping him for up to that whole month is a stretch. …Unless Lori was holed up for a week or so at her house, Shane checked up on Rick and got him new fluids etc, then left him when zombies gained the upper hand, possibly blocking his door off with that gurney that Rick had to push out of the way.

Shane, in that scenario, would have known Rick to be alive when he last saw him, making the lie he told Lori still beneficial to her well being, but damning to Rick in more ways than one.”

-Encrazed Crafts

Oh wait, that was me!  Ha-HA!  I am a mighty prognosticator of prognosticators, my friends!  Ok, ok.  Enough gloating.  While not every letter was mirrored perfectly in the scene, I do take a level of satisfaction calling out several things on the dot.  Shane was there, he did tell Lori Rick died to save her and Carl’s lives, and he put the gurney where Rick had to push it out of the way when he finally came to.  Shane didn’t know that he was still alive, but at least he saved his friend from getting gnawed on.

The way they handled Shane this episode was for the most part flawless. He was a little crazy/rowdy when he first got there, and I can see him being pissy that Rick got his way, but that’s minor.  Once alcohol and seeing him chug a bottle in the shower was shown, a confrontation with a drunken and scantily clad Lori was quite predictable.  This too was handled well, showing Shane wanting what Rick has, showing he did want to keep them safe, and showing that he really did think Rick was dead, and being wrong about that is eating him up.  Being drunk is a perfect excuse for him trying to get another shot at Lori, and allows him to be cast as the ‘poor guy’ next season.  He did right, but it was taken away from him.  I hope they leave the crazy out of him next season as it didn’t really fit and came across as forced every time it showed up.  Shane and that shotgun of his.  Oh, that rascal!

Seeing Rick drunk and candid was a surprise, and actually made me wonder if the CDC guy ran out of water to serve, turning the place into a Pirate ship. (Later we find out it was more of a last hurrah, of course.)  Hearing Rick’s inner thoughts under the influence was a nice admission on his character’s part.  He knows they will most likely die out there, but will not show any signs of weakness around his family and friends.  He takes up that burden to save them even more grief; now that is a courageous thing to do.  Again, this is how to properly show character traits without degrading them in the process (Andrea pointing a gun at Rick [twice], Shane doing the same, Rick nearly openly weeping to the surveillance camera, etc.).

Humor was present this episode, and gladly appreciated.  The sense of dead-pan (no puns, no puns!) timing was pretty tight as well, either based on lights turning off or suggestions the audience at home knows that the characters to not.  Saying the timer ticking down is when the plant is ‘decontaminated’ instantly brought back how the test chamber was explosively ‘decontaminated’ in the previous episode.  This was of course then made blatantly obvious to the viewer at home after seeing about fifty different mechanical objects covered in the explosive logo in the basement section of the CDC building.

Andrea’s ‘infection’ hinted at in the previews last week are a clear example of how editors like to swing controversy into everything possible.  (Just a minor note/gripe.)  Daryle was once again the funny yet overly-aggressive everyday man this episode, and his line about wanting to use a fire axe on the CDC worker was a gem.  Seeing him continue to beat on the door with the axe fruitlessly in the background also provoked a laugh out of me, but that could just be my sadistic tendencies surfacing.

The CDC guy was handled wonderfully, and this man has proved he has quite the acting chops.  (Acting chops being a variant of Slap Chop, I presume?)  He was scientific, but not cold.  Calculated, yet emotional.  Telling Rick everything is going to be ok was a heart-felt scene, a man that is reassuring a stranger he just met (a drunken one to boot) was a nice thing to say.   But there is at the very least a hint of darkness there, as we know later on they were all scheduled to die within 24 hours when the timer finished counting down.  I felt for him, especially after finding out it was his wife that was the person seeing get turned into a zombie, that he put her down, and that she was the source of the flesh he was testing on.  He also turned into GLaDOS at the end when he warned Rick of what was to come next. 

“Are you trying to escape? Hahaha. Things have changed since the last time you left the building. What’s going on out there will make you wish you were back in here. I have an infinite capacity for knowledge and even I’m not sure what’s going on outside. All I know is I’m the only thing standing between us and them.

Well, I was.”

-GLADoS

I think the only real negative thing, at least the most negative scene I can comment on this episode, was showing everyone showering.  I just do not find this to be that big of a draw.  We saw Rick, Morgan, and Duane all showering in the first episode.  Was it merely a throwback to that setting, as the beginning of this episode did as well?  Nothing was really revealed, other than seeing Shane booze-out, which made me both chuckle at his current state, while wag my finger at him for watering down perfectly good spirits.  Seeing people shower didn’t really show anything new, it did not reveal character details we did not already know, and I thought the idea of showering was handled enough back in the first episode.  I dunno.  Could just be me.  Gamer’s are not exactly known for our hygiene, after all…

Killing off the black chick this episode was a bit…I don’t want to say “nice,” but it was at least a sign of atonement for Jim.  Also she apparently is connected to T-dog?  Never really explained that.  (Dale wanted Andrea to come with him as well, but they aren’t dating yet, so can’t really use that a comparison.)  The Misses told me she’d probably prefer to go out that way as well in a zombie situation, but I disagree to a point.  Willingly letting yourself get blow’d up should only even be considered when there are no other alternatives.  They had plenty of ammo, hell they made their own way out.  (Though that nade should have done a lot more than just merely shatter glass, in my opinion.)  If the horde was rushing them and they had only the option of “die fast, fairly painlessly” or “die extremely painfully due to nom-age and then turn into one of them” I’d probably opt for the first one.

Hearing Mr. CDC calmly describe how fast and painless it would be was pretty neat as well.  Locking them in was a little bit forced, though.  If they could not get out up top, why arbitrarily lock them in downstairs as well?  Why not promote the idea of them going to bed and waiting?  Why lock them in at all if you *know* there is no way out?  To funnel the drama into one room and make actors say their lines, of course.  Minor gripe, though the Misses caught me by surprise again:

“If it self-destructed because it ran out of fuel…why not let them out to get more gas?”

Well, dang.  First with Merle’s rusted pipe versus his hand, now this.  You win again, superior logic!  Formidable opponent, indeed.

In terms of episodes…I’d have to say this was a close second to Vatos.  Vatos, this, first, third, second.  That’s my order.  Great show, great season (barring few annoyances/conflicting ideas in the script), and can’t wait until next.  I should probably do an over-all review of this season as a whole, but that will have to wait (till probably this Sunday).  Thanks for readin’, yall!

Don’t Say The Zed Word!

Pardon me as I bandage myself, I just can’t seem to stop gushing.  The undead stars have aligned their massive necromatic balls of gas and produced for us the current best episode of zombacylpse proportions!  Did you see this episode yet?  No?  Why not?  Go watch it, sign a check in my name as finder’s fee laws dictate, and then continue reading.

Here thar be spoilers!

We are treated to a bit of dialog between Amy and An…Angelina?  Andrea!  Amy and Andrea are chatting about their father who taught them how to fish, hoping he is still safe in Florida.  Luckily, I think they are correct in their hopeful optimism, as most people go to die in Florida anyway.  The dead do not come back to life unless killed by Walkers in this universe, so the old folks probably dropped via trampling rushes at the malls or heart issues due to the shock of seeing that guy that always beat them at golf walking around with half of his face falling off like damaged wall paper. 

If you ask me, the worst place to go would have been California.  Based on the movies and actors that come out of that place, it has been taken over by zombies years ago.  As Florida is about as far away from there that you can get from within the States, kudos to them.  Mind those hurricanes.

Jim, who was that Guy With The Beard from last episode is digging graves or looking for gold, and freaking everyone out.  He says he had a dream, and that people shouldn’t worry as it totally was not predicting what was going to happen later on in the episode.  Shane calmly restrains him, even after Jim tries enticing Shane into a confrontation and mentioning Ed, “He Who Hath Been Reduced To Facial Hamburger” last episode.  So they tie Jim up to a tree and beat him.

Well they don’t beat him, but he is stuck to a tree.  Like a zombie offering, of sorts.  He simmers down later, relax guiz.  SETTINGS SWAP!

Glenn gets the bag with guns with Dayrle/Darrel guarding his back and Rick/T-Dog guarding another escape exit.  Suddenly a mexican gang rolls up, beats up Dayrle and takes off without the guns but with Glenn in-tow, though Rambo did get a shot off into one of their keisters with his bow (no scope).  Oh and Merle’s fine, took out two zombies one-handed, then cauterized the stump with a make-shift rig he threw together before jumping out of a window and into the unliving world unknown.

Slightly off topic, but Merle has this Amos Moses thing going on for him now.  He has a stump (one for beating down alligators, the other for lack of a hand), both are southern, both only have one hand, and both have issues with a Sheriff…

Speaking of Rick, I noticed that he got a mighty bit testy this episode, showing a bit more bite than previous episodes while Shane was excessive with kindness (saying “Please,” reassuring Jim several times, and getting everyone back to safety and not running away as soon as excrement hit the exhaust).  It is nice to see in the long run these two guys balance out and Shane is fairly well out of the “guy we hate” and “coward” rut, and Rick too is out of his “pure hero” niche as well due to these additions.  Very nice tweaks to character, rounding them out a lot better while also making them both pretty cool doods.  Sugar cookies to the writer and director!

Also, Amy died.  So there goes the sappy actress pandering for an Emmy performance.  …  Until her sister freaks out about it.  I get that this is a bad time for all when the undead mafia rolled into camp without an appointment, but hell, they took out Ed and several other people I have not even seen on camera before.  Like that one 20ish thin chick that got mauled (not Amy, a long-haired brunette).  Where in the heck was she during all of this?  They weren’t even wearing red shirts.

Well, I mean, their clothing is probably drenched in crimson now…

Oh, and the gang that took Glenn turned out to be defenders of an old folks home that apparently housed predominately hispanic-based residents, based on who came back to check up on them.  Wait.

Dayrle shot that one dude in the buttocks (thanks, Mr. Gump).  With the same dang bolt (it’s only an arrow if shot by a bow.  Crossbows fire bolts.  I should make an Ad for that factoid…)

Bolts. They're not just for quilters anymore.

(And so I DID.)

A.D.D.  setting in.  My bad.

Daryle fired the same dang bolt that he has just shot like five zombies in the eye with.  Unwiped.  Meaning there is still undead goo either on the tip/shaft of the bolt itself, or on the business end of the firing mechanism, and that just impaled that guy’s possibly hairy hiny.  (Not that I’m judging, I would completely stop my booty waxing sessions in times of dire needs of survival as well.  Heck, a month into Zombieville and you could probably braid the stuff goin’ on back there…)

Based on that information (undead goo on bolt, not fur on butt) Darle just probably, accidentally, caused that one dude to get infected, die off, then turn undead from within the Hispanic Eternal Acres compound and wipe out all the survivors.  Good job, Darle!  You geriatricide-inducing-crossbow-wielding-hot-headed-racist-Rambo-istic-dairyqueenbbtheq-mo-fo. 

He also gets a cookie. 

But not oatmeal raisin, those are mine. 

All mine.