The Walking Dead Season 2 Mid-Season Premiere (Spoilers)

Spoilers


Right, so 'The Walking Dead' came back last night with its midseason premiere.  I have to say it seems like the show is gearing up for some action finally, at least more than the first half of season 2.  I was really almost ready to walk away after the first half of the season.  Just... ugh.  But the premiere renewed my interest a little. Looks like we may see some real conflict, get away from the farm.

A couple points:

So Herschel gets drunk after the barn slaughter.  Gets out the flask, heads into town to a bar to have some drinks.  I think, "ok cool, Herschel is gonna go back on the wagon (off the wagon?) and go nuts... shed the religious thing."  Nope... drunk Herschel apparently acts exactly the same as sober Herschel.

Lori

Lori goes off on an empty road, and hits the lone walker in the middle of the road, subsequently flipping her car into a ditch.  Wow.  I've seen cars hit deer.  Now, I'm going to argue a deer is much more solid than a rotting corpse.  A deer impact on a car wrecks the car for sure, but usually the car maintains some control and can come to a stop.  I would think that a walker, much like the one whose arm fell off on the truck earlier in the episode, would be in such a state of decay that it would more likely splat on a car rather than cause a major crash.

So now Lori's hurt/lost.  First, I really hope this doesn't become a search for Lori like there was a search for Sophia.  Second, the big question will become "did the baby make it?  will this cause a miscarriage?"  I hope it doesn't, at least in the comics I think it caused Rick to become a little more extreme in his protective behavior.  I think that would make for better tv plot-lines.  At the same time, if you've read the comic, you know how the baby storyline eventually plays out.  I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work for tv.

Despite sober drunk Herschel, I did like that scene and how it was filmed.  Herschel was in white and had a good amount of light on him.  Rick was wearing black and had much darker lighting in the scene.  In the conversation, despite the "death" of his walker wife and step-daughter, Herschel remained hopeful.  Rick seemed to have changed to a generally darker outlook and realization of how the world had changed for the worse.

Which led into the ending scene, very suspenseful.  At first I thought, "O hey, it's the actor from True Blood and Terriers.  I'm glad he landed on another show.  Terriers got a raw deal".  Nope, dead by the end of the scene.  I think at the beginning of the show, Rick might have welcomed those people... or at least tried to help them.  Now new badass Rick sees the potential threat to his group's and family's welfare.  He's willing to make the hard choices and accept the new world he lives in, where he can't be the cop anymore.

Hopefully this new season will bring on more of these conflicts with other groups.  It would sort of match with the Governor storyline from the comics, although in the show lore, I'm not sure enough time has passed for that kind of thing to have cropped up.  But at least it should be more entertaining.

Maybe we'll even get Michonne.

Because I still don't buy commando Andrea (Amy Smart's mom), she's just not believable for me as that kind of character.

At the very least AMC has hooked me for a few more episodes.