REVIEW: The First Two Episodes of THE WALKING DEAD, Season Two

Last week was a good week for zombies here in Casa Zombi: we received DVD screeners of both THE DEAD and the first two episodes of THE WALKING DEAD, Season Two. We’ll cover THE DEAD shortly (see it, see it, see it), but today belongs to THE WALKNG DEAD.

I won’t waste your time: the season premiere of THE WALKING DEAD is the best episode of the series thus far.

This isn’t a great feat, granted, as the first season was hit and miss. It veered wildly from the source material—not a crime at all (the book is hit and miss, too), but it did so in an erratic and inconsistent way. Great moments from the book were jettisoned in favor of oddball diversions, and even Darabont himself didn’t bring his A-game to the pilot, which was as uneven as the season season ended up being. Even at its best (and there are some amazing moments throughout those six episodes), the first season's zombie shenanigans felt a little played out—mostly because zombies have reached a cultural saturation point. It’s getting harder and harder to get them right, make them fresh, and even when you do, you risk contempt-breeding familiarity.

But never mind all of that, because the season opener of THE WALKING DEAD gets just about everything right. Picking up soon after our heroes escaped the CDC –where no answers were given and a few more questions were raised-the premier episode finds our heroes working their cumbersome way down a highway choked with stalled and wrecked vehicles. I suspect that Frank Darabont secretly laments never having gotten to adapt Stephen King’s THE STAND, a work that he once again echoes here (the series premiere was peppered with King references). As they weave between stalled cars and trucks, the tension mounts and thickens—an effect that’s amplified by the simple omission of needless incidental music.

There’s no point in getting too deep into spoiler territory. You can imagine what happens next (herd, herd, herd!), and you’ll be at least partially right. The walking dead show up. The resulting sequence is classic zombie cinema, and our heroes are split up. This diversion takes several unexpected turns, and leads Rick and friends toward an encounter that will make fans of the book very happy. (No—I’m not talking about the business between Shane and Carl—I suspect we’ll get to that mid-season.)

As an FX hound from back in the glory days of FANGORIA, I have to sing the praises of KNB. Their work in George Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD left much to be desired. There, they were trying in some cases to realize Bernie’s Wrightson’s production design, and the results (Big Daddy, The Butcher) were not always successful. This wasn’t a factor in the first season of THE WALKING DEAD, and with the first two episodes of season two, they have delivered, arguably, the greatest zombie makeup of all time. (Winnebago Zombie—you’ll know him when you see him—is a marvel. It’s the single greatest zombie make-up job since Optic Nerve worked magic in Tom Savini’s 1990 remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Hell, it’s a strong contender for the title of Best Zombie Ever. Damned thing looks like an actual walking corpse, and that’s why you came to this party to begin with, right?)

The first episode is not without its problems. Characters do incredibly stupid things simply for the sake of ratcheting up the tension. This will be a problem for some viewers, but I was able to look past it simply because everything else was so damned good—and besides, idiotically splitting up is a time-honored horror trope. Other quibbles: inconsistent zombie rules--they're mostly slow, but some of them come damned close to running; others seem far too smart, even pausing in their actions, as if thoughtfully considering their best course of action; grinning zombie. Church zombies. (They're video-game-level silly looking, but the scene leads to a clever bit from avowed atheist Robert Kirkman, who penned this episode: Rick spends a few screen minutes talking to Jesus, asking Him for help. The next scene ends in blood, and Kirkman tells us by showing us: Ain't nobody listening.)

The second episode is not as breathlessly awesome as the first, but character development throughout both episodes is strong. Daryl shows his usefulness (in an homage to JAWS that is, in its own way, fairly brilliant), and the relationship between Dale and Andrea grows more complicated (it veers away from their relationship in the comic, but may be heading in that direction after all, and Darabont fav Jeffrey DeMunn continues on his way toward an Emmy.) Andrew Lincoln’s fake Southern accent hasn’t gotten any better, but at least the fake beard from the first season is nowhere to be seen.

The first episode ends on a jaw-dropping note, one that pushes the show even further away from Kirkman’s original narrative*, all the while echoing events that are taking place in the comic right now, as the series approaches issue #100, some eight years since Image released the first issue. The result is almost like (to use comic nerd vernacular) an Elseworlds/Earth 2 take on THE WALKING DEAD, and though the events in the television series continue to deviate from the events in the comic, season two –thus far— tonally feels more in line with the best moments from the comic than anything from season one.

Only time will tell where THE WALKING DEAD is going. With the recent drama surrounding Darabont being removed as showrunner (and the rumors that he will stay on as Executive Producer), it can easily go either way. However, if the first two episodes of this new season are any indicator, THE WALKING DEAD is on the right track.

*I was wrong.