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.

'The Walking Dead' Opening Credits: Recut to the 'Growing Pains' Theme Song

The internet has a long history of mixing up different video and audio clips for parody.  My all-time favorite is probably the re-cut trailer for 'The Shining' set to Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill", and played as a romantic comedy.

Anyway, MovieWeb has decided to do the same thing with 'The Walking Dead'.  This time the opening credit sequence has been set to the theme song from 'Growing Pains', and shot in a way to make the show seem like a family program.  

The whole thing has a perfectly late 80's/ early 90's vibe, right down to the typeface and the starwipe title at the end.  And I love the guest stars they list.  And while this is a funny take on them, my favorite opening credits version of the show remains the animated fan-made version.  

The parody almost makes up for this crushing moment from the end of season 1:

Walking Dead Alternate Season 2 Plot Leaked

So with the title of my blog, I'd feel remiss if I didn't have the occasional post about zombies.  With that, one of the major zombie pop culture touchstones lately has been AMC's The Walking Dead.  Based on the long-running comic series, the tv show just ended the first half of it's second season, which is set to return February 12th.

I have to say, the very first episode of this show was fantastic.  Absolutely fantastic.  Unfortunately, it seemed like the rest of season 1 after that was a bit of a let down.  Not necessarily because it was bad, just because the premiere was that good.  Season 2 on the other hand, so far, has been bad.

I believe part of the reason for this was ongoing budget disputes between the showrunners and AMC, which led to Frank Darabont leaving the show.  The money issue seems to have been keyed on Mad Men getting new contracts, and the AMC execs subsequently tightening their belts through the rest of the network.  Darabont, if you don't know, is primarily a film director best known for helming the best Stephen King adaptations (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist).  He really brought a cinematic eye to the small screen, evident in the 2-part premiere.  When he left, many of the other core writers from season 1 were let go.  The results in season 2 so far have been fewer locations, fewer zombies, and an agonizingly long arc involving searching for a missing girl, Sophia.  There was a payoff at the midseason finale, but somewhat dampened by the fact that every viewer just wanted the group to find the girl dead by about the 3rd episode in.

Now I say that the second season has only been bad so far.  Maybe the producers have backloaded the budget to the second half of the season, so we can get a different exciting location.  (I'm really tired of the farm and the woods).  For the show's sake I hope this is the case, otherwise I might bail on the show entirely.

But I recently saw this article which described Darabont's plans for the season 2 opener ( a little long but worth the read):
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/52526

Here's a video interview from the article with Sam Witwer (most recently, SciFi's[refuse to call it SyFy] Being Human):

Now this really is a shame because that idea sounds awesome.  So if want to find out how to ruin a great show and slowly kill its viewership, take notes from AMC.

But keep watching for now... I guess... maybe... It can't get any worse right?

Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare: Zombie DLC for the PS3 and Xbox 360

How do you make a great game even better?  That's right, add zombies.

Now I haven't gotten any of the other DLCs for RDR, but this one will be a must buy.  I'm not a guy who spends a ton of time on video games, and I normally don't like paying extra for a game I already spent $60 on, but this one just looks like too much win to pass up.



I really did enjoy RDR by itself.  An Old West sandbox game in the vein of GTA?  Sign me up.  It helped that I loved Red Dead Revolver for the ps2 too (Really underrated multiplayer).  Like most things zombie, this DLC is set to release the week of Halloween.

Maybe now I'll have an excuse to shoot that grave-robbing pervert Seth.