Give me the ax…we need more guts.
Ah, yes, the second episode of Walking Dead opens with the
further salacious activities of Rick’s wife and his best friend; it’s nice to
know Rick’s safety and well being are of such concern to both of them. Ugh.
***
Walking Dead establishes here that the undead are capable of using weapons and mobile enough to climb fences and give chase when the thirst of blood and yearning taste for flesh excites them. Still, the undead are relatively easy to fool and have very little in the degree of intelligence besides the motivation to eat spurned by the urge existing strongly in their warped brains.
A number of characters are developed slightly more here within the camp of survivors outside the city of Atlanta, such as Jeffrey DeMun’s fatherly Dale, constantly-worried but vocally firm Amy (Emma Bell), and the already mentioned, Rick’s wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), Rick’s son, Carl (Chandler Riggs), and his cop partner, Shane (Jon Bernthal). The show, thus far, plants the seed of conflict that will for sure inflict Rick, Lori, and Shane; the fact the show has allowed us to see such little remorse for Rick while Lori and Shane make whoopee is rather unsettling to me. When Lori tosses aside the heart necklace (most obvious, Rick gave it to her at some point; how easily she is able to discard it, to just toss it aside, may just represent how she feels about him), it seems to say that her feelings for Rick had deteriorated to such a degree that his possible demise had caused little mourning. Right here, I think, it is pointed out that once these characters reunite, sparks will ignite and tempers will flare. A supposed great friendship will crumble as will a marriage, I’m guessing.
Of the bunch in Atlanta, Laurie Holden’s Andrea is the character that kind of stands out in the second episode. Andrea is the sister to Amy, taking a mermaid necklace from the department store because she’s likes mermaids and greets Rick with a gun to his face for placing the group in the predicament of entrapment.
I caught a random episode not but a few weeks ago and she’s with “the governor”, but my heart and mind wasn’t into it so I can’t imagine anything much was spoiled besides her still being alive much into the series. The jury’s still out in regards to what I think about her, though. This episode sets up an obvious “revenge angle” where Dixon is left handcuffed to a pipe on the roof of the department store building, so I’d be hard-pressed not to believe he will see that *they pay*.
Remember, I’m watching this for the first time so you who know the answers already are one leg up on me.
***
Well, it is only one episode in and we already have
introduced to us a racist, sexist, unpleasant, thuggish, unstable scumbag,
performed as only the ever-intense Michael Rooker can. From the very first
moment we see him, Rooker’s Merle Dixon is set to be a sickening, repulsive, appalling
jerk, demanding to be leader of a small band of survivors holed up momentarily
in a department store building in zombie-ridden Atlanta where Rick meets them,
not exactly welcomed with open arms due to his gunshots gaining the attention
of the walking undead towards their location.
Rick, however, doesn’t take long before he’s appointed himself (subtly, which I found to my liking; he just sort of takes command, because this group is in dire need of someone who can guide them through the dark terrain of fear and the unpredictable onslaught of entrapment that comes when hordes of the undead seem to encompass them roundabout.) as their leader, and formulates a plan after an idea regarding traveling through the sewers underneath the city goes bust (a walker is seen eating a rat from the other side of a grate). The plan is to hack up a body, smear the blood and wear its guts to mask their smell and walk among the undead in order to commandeer vehicles to drive out of Atlanta and to a much safer place to refuge elsewhere. But with a storm on the horizon, time to move through the crowd of the walking dead and get to the outpost holding the transport vehicle needed will be tight, and a diversion will be needed to the get the legion of zombies’ attention in order to secure the group and get them out of harm’s way. Rick and Glenn (Steven Yuen, who helped navigate Rick from his tank to an alley, eventually leading to the department store) will go on this mission while the others wait nervously, trapped within their building, but safety is certainly threatened as the horde are using hands and stones to shatter the protective glass keeping them concealed from danger.
Rick, however, doesn’t take long before he’s appointed himself (subtly, which I found to my liking; he just sort of takes command, because this group is in dire need of someone who can guide them through the dark terrain of fear and the unpredictable onslaught of entrapment that comes when hordes of the undead seem to encompass them roundabout.) as their leader, and formulates a plan after an idea regarding traveling through the sewers underneath the city goes bust (a walker is seen eating a rat from the other side of a grate). The plan is to hack up a body, smear the blood and wear its guts to mask their smell and walk among the undead in order to commandeer vehicles to drive out of Atlanta and to a much safer place to refuge elsewhere. But with a storm on the horizon, time to move through the crowd of the walking dead and get to the outpost holding the transport vehicle needed will be tight, and a diversion will be needed to the get the legion of zombies’ attention in order to secure the group and get them out of harm’s way. Rick and Glenn (Steven Yuen, who helped navigate Rick from his tank to an alley, eventually leading to the department store) will go on this mission while the others wait nervously, trapped within their building, but safety is certainly threatened as the horde are using hands and stones to shatter the protective glass keeping them concealed from danger.
Walking Dead establishes here that the undead are capable of using weapons and mobile enough to climb fences and give chase when the thirst of blood and yearning taste for flesh excites them. Still, the undead are relatively easy to fool and have very little in the degree of intelligence besides the motivation to eat spurned by the urge existing strongly in their warped brains.
A number of characters are developed slightly more here within the camp of survivors outside the city of Atlanta, such as Jeffrey DeMun’s fatherly Dale, constantly-worried but vocally firm Amy (Emma Bell), and the already mentioned, Rick’s wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), Rick’s son, Carl (Chandler Riggs), and his cop partner, Shane (Jon Bernthal). The show, thus far, plants the seed of conflict that will for sure inflict Rick, Lori, and Shane; the fact the show has allowed us to see such little remorse for Rick while Lori and Shane make whoopee is rather unsettling to me. When Lori tosses aside the heart necklace (most obvious, Rick gave it to her at some point; how easily she is able to discard it, to just toss it aside, may just represent how she feels about him), it seems to say that her feelings for Rick had deteriorated to such a degree that his possible demise had caused little mourning. Right here, I think, it is pointed out that once these characters reunite, sparks will ignite and tempers will flare. A supposed great friendship will crumble as will a marriage, I’m guessing.
Of the bunch in Atlanta, Laurie Holden’s Andrea is the character that kind of stands out in the second episode. Andrea is the sister to Amy, taking a mermaid necklace from the department store because she’s likes mermaids and greets Rick with a gun to his face for placing the group in the predicament of entrapment.
I caught a random episode not but a few weeks ago and she’s with “the governor”, but my heart and mind wasn’t into it so I can’t imagine anything much was spoiled besides her still being alive much into the series. The jury’s still out in regards to what I think about her, though. This episode sets up an obvious “revenge angle” where Dixon is left handcuffed to a pipe on the roof of the department store building, so I’d be hard-pressed not to believe he will see that *they pay*.
Remember, I’m watching this for the first time so you who know the answers already are one leg up on me.
That first screencap above made me laugh.
ReplyDeleteHaving seen the pilot, you've already experienced the high-point of the series. Season 1 offers a somewhat problematic show that had a lot of potential. I like a lot of the character interactions in these early eps (the quality of the dialogue plummets in season 2). What you note about Rick being a take-charge kind of guy is significant. That's how he's always written in season 1 (if you continue through to season 2, you'll find yourself wondering "who is this new character Andrew Lincoln is playing?").
I don't like the way the zombies are done, here. In this ep, you get a good look at many of them. I believe Greg Nicotero won an Emmy for his make-up effects on this season, and his creatures are wonderfully ghoulish, to be sure, but I don't like the idea of piling on the prosthetics and inhuman contacts in the eyes, and robbing the walking dead of their former humanity. This isn't a TWD-specific gripe, because it's pretty much standard in most zombie flicks in recent years. Still a gripe, though. I think zombies are the most versatile movie monsters ever devised; if they're made so utterly inhuman, they lose their power as metaphors, and may as well be creatures from Mars.
The "smell" thing introduced here seems, to me, quite silly, and ill-advised. How is a zombie to tell you don't stink like a rotting corpse when he, himself, is a rotting corpse, and would, if he had a nose for scents, be overwhelmed by his own stink, and by the stink of those around him?
That is an excellent point about the smell. I hadn't really contemplated too much on this, but now it does kind of seem silly. But it does build some suspense to the scenario, so I guess in that regard it is tolerable. I thought is was fun to see them walking gingerly among the undead.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit on why this series reminded me of Day of the Dead. The undead do seem rather like those in Day.
I'm a bit nervous after your telling me the opening episodes were the *best* part of the series. Because I'm still not quite bought on the series yet. I try, though, to look at the characters and plot overall, as you do, and decide what works and doesn't for me.
The development of Rick has been my favorite part of the show--I like this character as of now--but you telling me that he changes leaves me rather disappointed.
When it gets to season 3, it starts ripping off the original DAY OF THE DEAD really hard, including even a piece of music (which they barely changed--just enough to avoid a lawsuit, I suppose).
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I like a lot of the character interactions in those early eps. "Tell It To The Frogs" and "Vatos" (which, as I recall, are your next two) have some good dialogue. I really could have done without the fence-climbing zombies in this one, and it would have been better to leave the matter of how zombies tell the living from the dead as a mystery. The smell thing, to be fair, comes from the comic. The series should have been an opportunity to get right things that weren't really right in the comic--instead, every change, in an unbroken line from beginning to end, was for the worse.
Nicotero was one of Savini's assistants on DAY. The zombies in it are plenty gnarly and rotten, but they're still recognizably human, and they have the creepy, glassy human eyes proper zombies should have, rather than the Martian contacts.
When it comes to the quality of the series, the pilot towers over everything else that has been done with it in its entire run like a god over ants. That it's also an almost slavish recreation of the first few issues of the comic is not coincidental to this.
I had mentioned in the pilot review, that I had spent some time in Walmart reading from the compendium which had the comics early in a volume form and I read to about when Rick met the black man and his son. I just didn't have the money, or I would have dropped some cash as a means to follow it and the episodes to see where changes occur and similarities remain. I never understood the contacts but Nicotero had mentioned he studied anatomy and knows the human body after death so perhaps the eyes go into that creepy color..you think?
ReplyDeleteI'm certainly not an expert. I have seen a lot of post-mortem eyes. My understanding is that it takes a few hours for them to begin to cloud up. I've never seen anything as extreme as what we see on TWD (and in most other zombie movies). Whatever zombie-ism entails would have to have some preservative effect on the eyes, or most of the dead would be blind. My objection to the way they're done is more from the perspective of storytelling--Romero's glassy, blank-eyed zombies are much more evocative of the things zombies should evoke (broadly, that they are ex-people). I also think they're creepier.
ReplyDeleteThe comic is very good, and I'd strongly recommend you read it, if money allows. Besides being very entertaining, thoughtful, and intelligent, it will also give you a glimpse of what the series could have been.
I really liked the technique of the comic. It was like reading and viewing a really talented storyboard artist's film from beginning and through this intense journey. That was really how it appealed to me. I knew I could just sit and read through it for hours...that is as great a compliment I could give anyone, I think.
ReplyDelete