The Walking Dead - Season 2

After 2 years of “The Walking Dead” on AMC we now have nearly 20 hours of a zombie story that has no definitive ending. It is just the story of people trying to survive. It’s amazing that we are able to have a show like this on the air. It’s even more amazing that a show like this is so popular. The 2nd season had the difficult task of keeping the momentum of the first season, developing these characters into people and not just zombie bait and keeping fans of the comic book happy.

Throughout the 2nd season if you went onto any internet message board you could see that people were generally getting upset about how the group stayed at Hershel’s Farm for the entire season. These are the people that are watching the show just for pure zombie action. I on the other hand am interested in the characters and how they will deal with the pressure brought on by a Zombie apocalypse. And I realize that these characters don’t really want to leave. Where are they going to go? Their goal is to find someplace safe to live. The farm could have been that place.

Several things in this season worked. The continued evolution of Darryl was great to see, then to see him completely torn down after the death of Sophia was fantastic. We also got a lot of change with Rick as he more and more accepts the world that he lives in. Juxtaposed against the fall of Shane this was really good. The addition of Herschel as a character was a welcome addition as a man who held onto hope and still clings to it after all that he has seen. The handling of the farm was well done. It made sense about why they would try to stay there and why they had to leave. For those that thought they stayed there to long, wait to they get to the next location, if they follow the comics they will be there even longer.

There were a lot of things that didn’t work though. The final episode with Dale was just way to repetitive. Seeing him make the same argument to everyone if someone would have responded differently. Lori became a shrieking shrew by the end of the season and made me think that Rick should have just let Shane have her. And what the hell does T-Dawg do exactly? He doesn’t seem to serve any purpose except to show that a black guy is still alive.

It was a good season, but not as strong as it could be. Hopefully the show will be able to be more focused next year with some of the behind the scenes drama having been resolved. Still good TV is good TV and the second season gets 4 out of 5 stars.