By: Mark Julian Now usually I try to keep these reviews spoiler free but it’s rather difficult to discuss these episodes while tip-toeing around what just occurred or rather what didn’t occur, so I’m going to loosen this restriction for this review and see if this format works better. We start with our usual cold opener from The Walking Dead and this time it focuses on the group’s escape from Atlanta just before the military flies in and bombs the city. The cold openers on The Walking Dead usually serve a purpose by either providing insightful peeks into the past of one of the show’s characters or foreshadows a future conflict that will later unfold in that particular episode. This one does neither and instead highlights Shane and Lori’s relationship during the time that everyone believed Rick to be deceased. While I suppose this was done to play up the drama surrounding Lori’s pregnancy this was honestly one of the weaker cold openings of the show, thus far. Not a particularly good start to the episode.
If you’re anything like me, you’re becoming increasingly frustrated with the slow pacing of Season Two. I‘ll cut AMC some slack though for the simple reason that Season One was only 6 episodes and they obviously can’t maintain that breakneck pace across 13 episodes, they’d burn through the source material so fast, they’d catch up to what Robert Kirkman's doing in the comic after a couple of more seasons. Still, that’s no excuse to move the show along at such a snail crawling pace that the characters remain locked in the same emotional, psychological, and physical states week after week. Luckily, the baby daddy drama surrounding this season takes a backseat to everyone’s favorite redneck Rambo, Darryl Dixon. Fans were buzzing from last week’s preview of the episode which teased the return of Michael Rooker’s Merle Dixon. Sadly, this wasn’t the return that everyone was hoping for as Merle proved to simply be just a figment of Darryl’s imagination. Still, this device provided a nice zombie killing sequence that showed off Darryl's badassery. However zombie face smashing aside, the question remains, where is Merle? Operating in the background of the hallucinogenic Dixon family reunion is the mounting tension between Shane and Rick, Rick and Hershel and the budding romance between Glenn and Maggie. And oh yeah, they found Sophia's doll but no one really seemed to care about that too much. Of course, the episode culminates in another Walking Dead staple, the cliffhanger. Why is Hershel keeping his barn full of zombies? Are they relatives? Does he really believe, as previously stated in a prior episode, that this is all just a disease, one that will eventually be cured? I’m sure we’ll get these questions answered in say, another 5 -10 episodes.
Thankfully, the dialogue is absolutely fantastic, as it is in just about every episode of The Walking Dead. Without David Johnson’s writing talents and ability to craft tense verbal altercations, it would be plainly obvious that nothing is really happening. This is a bit of speculation here but Frank Darabont’s departure from the show may indeed be having the impact that fans feared. Where the first season was a true struggle for the group to survive and cast members were steadily dropping from episode to episode, this season put the physical struggle on the back burner and focuses on the mental toll that the zombie apocalypse is waging on each character. While there’s nothing wrong with this, the danger that was always lurking in season one is just not there this season. The zombies are being dispatched with such ease that instead of expecting someone to die when the undead appear on screen you’re wondering in what inventively gruesome way will they be dispatched. Without that zombie tension running parallel to the intergroup dysfunction it’s simply just not the same show from Season One. Hopefully, the show will seriously pick up the pace and finish strong or the groans that fans are voicing may start to impact ratings (Who am I kidding, what else is there to watch on Sunday night?).
I rate episode 5 of
The Walking Dead:
7.5/10
Episode Zombie Kill Count: 2, for a total of 32 this season.
Here's an inside look at Episode 205 courtesy of AMC:
The Walking Dead is an American post-apocalyptic horror television series developed for television by Frank Darabont and based on the ongoing comic book series, The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard. The series centers on a small group of survivors led by Sheriff's Deputy Rick Grimes and his family.
The series premiered on October 31, 2010, and is broadcast on the cable television channel AMC in the United States.
The first season premiered to universal acclaim and was nominated for several awards, including the Best Television Series Drama at the 68th Golden Globe Awards. Based on its reception, AMC renewed the series for a second season of 13 episodes which premiered on October 16, 2011.
The pilot received 5.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched premiere episode of any AMC television series The first season finale received 6 million viewers, a series high; with 4 million viewers in the 18–49 demographic, making it the most watched basic cable series for the demographic.
In the United Kingdom, it premiered one week after it did in the United States, on November 5, 2010 on cable channel, FX. The premiere had 579,000 viewers, almost double for any other show on FX that week. The viewership dipped during the season then rose to 522,000 viewers for the final episode. The terrestrial premiere on Channel 5 on April 10, 2011, averaged 1.46 million viewers.