The Walking Dead - Season 2- Ep. 1-4 Recap (Spoof)

The Walken Dead

Making the rounds this week: Get psyched for your Sunday dose of THE WALKING DEAD with Comedy Troupe POYKPAC's spoof short "The Walken Dead".

Off topic from the undead, but worth mentioning: comedywise, POYKPAC may just be one to watch. You might remember their "Mario: Game Over" mature-themes parody from a few years back. Their "Prank My Dad" series is the most committed Tim & Eric aping I've ever seen. I haven't checked out much of the rest - looks hit or miss, but who am I to prejudge? - however, troupe member Jenn Lyon featured in the finale of season 2 of Louie. Good enough for Louis is good enough for me.

Zombie$: Worth Over Five BILLION Dead Presidents?

That's what this article says, anyway.

I suspect that some of their numbers are off (their Walking Dead numbers certainly are--given how popular the trade-paperbacks are, their total should be significantly higher than 10 million, since the series debut in 2003) and the time period over which this five billion was generated is not always clear, but there's no question about it: the zombie sub-genre has peaked in a way no horror icon born of folklore has done since the vampire. They're huge.

So do your part and buy one of our books today!

ZOMBIELAND: The Television Series

Last night's WALKING DEAD premiere was watched by 7.3 million sets of eyes, so it would seem that this sometimes shambling/sometimes sprinting sub-genre still has a little juice left in its creaky, reanimated bones.

Case in point: ZOMBIELAND is coming to television.

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that the highest-grossing zombie film of all time will serve as the springboard for a new half-hour comedy series from producer Gavin Palone. The ZOMBIELAND series will be written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the duo who penned the film.

With a previously-announced 3D sequel to the Atlanta-lensed ZOMBIELAND being dropped in favor of a the television show, there is no word whether or not the series will follow the characters from the film (recast, naturally) or if the focus will instead be on a new group of survivors.

Either way, one can only wonder how they'll emulate ZOMBIELAND's now-classic cameo. If I may, a suggestion:

Spoiler-iffic WALKING DEAD Review Addendum

I've read THE WALKING DEAD since the very first issue premiered in 2003. Because of this, it's been a long time since I've read the issues from which the television series is currently being drawn.

When I said that the end of the season two premiere was a major departure from the comics, it's because I totally forgot that Carl got shot by Otis in the books. Considering how things panned out in the NO WAY OUT arc, it's becoming clear that Image's top-selling book is spinning its wheels just a bit by this point, and that Carl is well on his way to becoming the Aunt May to Rick's Peter Parker...

And they'll do it all again every eight to ten years...

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.

Walking Dead Season 2, Trailer Number 2...

Well, there's a farmhouse and a prison, but I don't see anybody showing up with katanas, yet.

WALKING DEAD NEWS: Things Get Ugly

AMC fired Frank Darabont.

He didn't step down graciously after getting the WALKING DEAD machine up an running, as those optimists among us assumed may have been the case. Nope--he was canned.

So what happened? The Hollywood Reporter sheds some light on the situation right here, but I came away from that article not wholly satisfied. Maybe he was fired because he tried to fix an episode that wasn't up to the show's standards, and maybe that incident was merely an excuse to fire Darabont, who wasn't too keen on proposed budget cuts.

Right now, it's all speculation and leaked anonymous insider news kernels. When asked, my contacts at AMC offered no comment.

Darabont has issued no response, but I suspect we'll get one eventually. This is the guy who told George Lucas he was insane after his Indiana Jones script was rejected by the Bearded One--Frank Darabont is not one to hold his tongue.

Why AMC would intentionally sabotage their biggest show remains a mystery.

For more on this puzzling series of events, check out Devin Faraci's take on the matter over at Badass Digest.

WALKING DEAD NEWS: Mazzara Succeeds Darabont

Though it's not clear at this point whether or not Frank Darabont will remain attached in some capacity to AMC's THE WALKING DEAD, he has officially been replaced by Glen Mazzara. The Shield veteran was brought aboard as Darabon't No. 2 at the beginning of Season 2. "We consider him our head writer," Darabont told Deadline last month, "and he’s just a fantastic asset."

In addition to his work on The Shield, Mazzara was showrunner on the STARZ L.A. drama, Crash. He was replaced for the second season. I have no idea what this says about his showrunning abilities, but I'll defer to Darabont, who knows what he's doing (expect for that ridiculous hospital bed POV from the first episode of THE WALKING DEAD).

Online fanboy negative response notwithstanding, there's absolutely no reason to declare this the end of THE WALKING DEAD. Darabont is a filmmaker, not a showrunner, and now that he's gotten THE WALKING DEAD off the ground, after five years of trying to bring zombies to prime time, it makes sense that he'd move on to other things. (Like maybe a film version of Stephen King's THE LONG WALK.)

This changing of the guard has not affected the production of season two of THE WALKING DEAD, which is set to premiere on October 16th.

Frank Darabont Walks From the DEAD?

I think that last trailer I posted was a fake. I haven't looked into it, but it felt... wrong. Whatever the case, there's a new trailer, and it's very real, but it's not even news anymore--it's been eclipsed:

Frank Darabont has stepped down as showrunner on AMC's wildly successful series, THE WALKING DEAD.

As no official statement has been made (we're trying to get one), we're left only with speculation: was the strain of overseeing thirteen episodes too much for Darabont? I have no idea. Some have suggested as much, but what of the talk that AMC was threatening to cut the show's budget?

Two months ago, Darabont told The Hollywood Reporter that he feared budget cuts would hurt the show:

“Creatively I have no complaints thus far, but I believe if they do move ahead with what they’re talking about, it will affect the show creatively ... in a negative way. Which just strikes me as odd. If you have an asset, why would you punish it?”

Darabont's departure comes as a surprise. Just last week, he appeared at the San Diego Comic-Con and gave no indication that things were amiss. Recently, when asked if he'd be directing any episodes of the second season of THE WALKING DEAD, he said:

"I'm hoping to. You know, being the boss is kinda like being the kid who has to stay in and do homework. Everyone gets to play outside. Yeah, it's hot and miserable, but my God it's fantastic. And I'm just going, 'Aww, I've got to go home to L.A. I'm cramming for finals, I guess. While you guys get to play zombies, I'm doing homework.'"

Hindsight prompts me to read between the lines here. Was Darabont already distancing himself from the production? Is this a natural and expected thing--Darabont getting the machine rolling along and then passing the wheel to another, perhaps one with more showrunning experience? I don't know. Someone does, and I expect we'll get a real answer soon enough.

Meantime, how about that trailer?

The Walking Dead: Season Two, But Not Yet!

A few days ago, word broke that Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston told New York Magazine that Season two of The Walking Dead would premiere this month, not in October, as originally announced:

"And I believe they're going to put Walking Dead in July as well. I think it's just a sensible thing — they want to attract as many eyeballs as possible, away from the heavy competition of the September, November, January start."

Exciting, right? New Walking Dead any day now!

Settle, settle--it's not happening. I asked someone at AMC, and the response I received was simple:

"The Walking Dead will premiere around Halloween. It is not premiering now."

So there. Makes sense, considering that the season two promotion machine did not rumble into motion until tonight, with the release of this teaser trailer:



It's more stylized than I'd expect, but it does what it's supposed to do: let you know that a new season of The Walking Dead is right around the corner. Excited?