Sorry for the week+ lateness of the review, shamblers and walkers, but I'm back and here it is. Many thanks to David for being the timely and dedicated half of this dynamic duo. So timely, in fact, that his review of last night's Bloodletting is below. Check out his review of this episode, What Lies Ahead, too.
So, what lies ahead for The Walking Dead? Zombies and bad decisions, if this episode is any indication. Before we really get rolling on this review, let me state this: Children in the zombie genre, or even the action genre, do not belong. Or, if they do belong, they need to be more than just devices for the adult characters to work with/off of. Here, I see Sophia and Carl as devices. This episode, the main action revolves around Sophia, the daughter of Carol and the deceased d-bag, Ed, who runs off after a few stragglers in a herd of zombies spot her under a car. How'd she get under a car you ask, to which I wonder why you're reading a spoiler-filled blog! Here's how:
The CDC turned out to be a bust. Rick was wrong and no cure was found. They lost another member of their group, and nearly two more when Dale refused to leave Andrea to be blown to bits. So the gang is on the road again. After a brief stop in Atlanta so Rick can heavy-handedly explain to new viewers what's happened, they head toward's Shane's idea from Season 1: Fort Benning. Along the road, their highway gets congested with abandoned (or maybe not...) cars, and the RV's radiator hose blows out again. As they all search for supplies, food, medicine, water, a wandering herd of zombies passes through the cars. Make no mistake, this is the best sequence thus far in The Walking Dead. The tension is incredible, from watching the feet dragging past the cars, to T-Dog nearly killing himself and Daryl saving him, to Andrea, like T-Dog, almost getting herself devoured. Little Sophia decides to stick her head out after it looks like the danger is gone, so naturally, some zombies spot her. She takes off, followed by two walkers and Rick. He gets to her before they do, tells her to hide, what to do if he doesn't come back, and how to get back to the highway. Then he dispatches the z-words with a big rock. Standard Rick badassery.
Except that he forgot Sophia is a frightened child, and as such, immensely stupid. She takes off into the woods. Rick and Daryl attempt to track her while Shane and the rest keep on gathering supplies. Here we get another great moment, with Daryl gutting a zombie while Rick watches. The sound effects here are excellent and gross—well done to the Foley artists.
They don't find Sophia before dark, and the decision is made to get everyone out looking at first light the next day. Naturally, Carol isn't happy. But then again, maybe that's why you don't let your 10-year-old wander around on their own, within sight or not. It's the gorram zombie apocalypse, friends. Count this towards the bad decisions.
Everyone sets out the next morning, but not before Andrea boils over and gives Dale a great lecture about him "saving her life." She feels he took away her right to choose how to die in their new terrible world, and he feels like he deserves gratitude for keeping her breathing. Both have their valid points, and this is the sort of conversation I want to see more of, not cliché survivor talk. This chat is how characters are built from cut-outs to fully-formed people.
Dale and the injured T-Dog stay behind while the rest set off in search of Sophia. That includes the only other child in the group, Carl (another bad decision). They find nothing but a suicided camper and a church. Rick and Shane opt to stay behind and search the surrounding area, and Carl wants to hang out with the guys. They allow it (I think you can start to see a pattern here). Carl promptly gets shot in the gut while getting close to a buck.
Zombie Kill of the Week: I agree with David, it has to go to the zombie Daryl and Rick tag-teamed for gutting. I liked the simple distraction they used and Daryl's authority when it comes to hunting/surviving.
Final Verdict: 6 out of 10 Headshots. This is how the world ends and these people are THAT careless with the lives of their children? I don't know if that's unrealistic or just stupidity. But you have that countered by the herd in the cars, the gutting, Dale and Andrea's argument, Daryl being the most pragmatic, and Dale's foresight to keep everyone believing the radiator is more trouble than it is so they can stick around for Sophia. There's a fairly even match of bad and good in this season opener, and I'm hoping it gets better from here.
I actually think you are wrong about the children. Ok, maybe you're right about Sophia, who we can assume was abused by her father and is obviously emotionally distraught about the whole zombie apocalypse thing. She is definitely not at the maturity level of a normal twelve year old (I don't know about you guys, but when I was twelve, I was carrying around a lot more glittery make up than
ReplyDeleteI was dolls), so she probably should be a little bit more supervised by the group. But for Carl, the zombie apocalypse has done the opposite, he is matured by it, look at how he fearlessly explores the abandoned cars and brings back weapons, he wants to show the adults he is one of them and they are beginning to understand he almost is. I don't think it was a bad decision for Rick and Shane to take Carl into the woods, this was a freak accident that could have happened to any one of them, it had nothing to do with Carl's age and maturity. Ok, I'm going to stop posting on you and David's blogs and do my work now.
No, keep posting! We need it and love it!
ReplyDeleteNow, I don't disagree about Carl getting shot having anything to do with his maturity level. It has everything to do with the adults making a bad decision. My issue with Carl being out there with Rick and Shane is that he's out there with Rick and Shane. He's off in the woods, which we've seen to be zombie-infested, where an attack can come from behind any tree. We saw in "Bloodletting" what can happen to an adult taken by surprise in the woods, now apply that to a child. Seems to me to be an unnecessary risk.