The Walking Dead - Season Two

Is the season still split into two halves (7 episodes in October/November and the other 6 in February/March)?

I know virtually nothing about this season's stories but I hope Michonne comes into the show.

I have watched season 1 for the 4th time and I just love this show. Just like last year I will be attending a viewing party at a local Indie cinema for the premiere. The new trailer fro S2 looks amazing!

One question. You see them all driving vehicles that are not protectable (Shane in his open topped Jeep) and the old guy with the RV that keeps breaking down. Civilization has fallen. You can't stop at an RV center and pick up a brand new RV or get a more reliable car???

They probably could, but it's more of a challenge than it sounds. Most of the car and RV dealerships are in populated areas, which means areas that are crawling with zombies. None of the pumps work any more, so that means siphoning the gas out of abandoned vehicles to fuel whatever vehicle you want to steal, which takes time you're left vulnerable. And then you've got to escape with the vehicle without bringing a whole hoarde of zombies following after you.

And given how things went down in Atlanta last summer, I think they'll probably keep to the rural and sparcely populated areas on the way to that military base.

Apparently Season 2 starts off strong, but of course those episodes still had Darabont involved: http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/review-amcs-the-walking-dead-returns-strong-for-season-2

While I'm sure Darabont is a big creative loss, Glen Mazzara did work on The Shield for years so he's been part of a show that knew how to do suspense and surprise. Plus, when in doubt in terms of story, the writers can fall back on the comic book and probably do alright.

in less than a min we will know if it was worth the wait

So far looks like it was worth it!

One thing that is bugging me. In S1 "Guts" they had to cover themselves in Zombie guts so the Zombies couldn't smell them.

Why wouldn't they smell them hiding underneath the cars in the premier?

I liked it and also wondered why the zombies didn't smell them.

I wish they didn't have overly too close for comfort scenes like the woman in the motor home bathroom, the blood went everywhere but in a place that could infect her. Also, they couldn't of found a new motor home off a lot?

An Ok Premiere nothing too exciting, I'd like to see more zombie action but after all it is a mostly character driven comic so its holding to that, and they still seem to be following the comic fairly closely. Still I'm yet to understand the Zombie rules in this universe. The Zombies seem to be slow and shambling, but when the script requires them to be fast ala the chase in the woods they are. It seems to be a virus yet no one seems to mind getting splattered with infected blood so they hack upon the zombies splattering themselves far more than needed. The opening scene where the zombies are just upon them surely Dale would've seen a "Herd" of Walkers of that size from his location on top of the camper. Finally why on the highway are there tons of dead corpses in the cars? Why do some corpses stay dead an others reanimate? Is it strictly thru biting, cause the dead behind the wheels certainly weren't movie around.

As far as the speed of the Zombies that is addressed in one of the special features on the special edition set.

No Zombie can move faster than the first Zombie in Night of the Living Dead.

There doesn't seem to be too many dead people in the cars. Possibly they committed suicide by shooting them selves in the head?

It's interesting that the observation was made that they observed packs of roaming Zombies. The ones that attacked them at the camp and the ones in the ep on the road. It's observed that they were in a type of heard.

I've not read the comics. I want to enjoy the shows as the show without comparing it to the comics. I will at some point go back and read them.

"Ardeth Bey" is the psuedonym used for Frank Darabont's writing credits this season. Whatever settlement was worked out with AMC allowed the network to continue crediting him as a producer and use his name in promotional materials, but apparently not on the writing side.

Wow, what a strong premiere. I wanted to skip ahead at times, because the tension of what happened to Sophia was just killing me. And then, of course, that question isn't resolved but the sheriff's son ends up shot.

I'm wondering if zombies that don't receive any sustenance at all eventually die; perhaps the bodies in the vehicles were zombies too at one point but went "hungry" too long, and died for good.

That's a great point about the Zombies starving.

On the talking dead Kirkman addressed the smell issue. This is not an exact quote:

He says that their sense of smell is rudimentary and is not like that of a dog. They don't identify by smell. It's just enough to differentiate between the living and the dead. Hiding under a car would be enough for them not to smell you.

I enjoyed last nights episode, but there were definitely things that bothered me.

* Andrea splattering blood all over her face while killing that zombie in the rv

* The fact that the zombies went by them and didn't "smell" them hiding under the cars (sorry I don't buy Kirkmans explanation)

* That Dale couldn't spot that Horde of zombies from on top of the RV before it got as close as it did

* Letting Carl go off to search for Sophie (it's the mom in me that hated that part)

* The fact that the group went to search for Sophie to cover more ground, yet never really split up to do so.


I also hated the fact that they kept advertising this as a 90 minute episode when infact it was more commercials than actual episode! Personally I hate commercials ( I understand why they have them, but I still hate them) and wish they would have done a commercial free premiere. All in all I really did enjoy this episode. I love Daryl saving T-dog the way he did. As gross as it was, I even liked the gutting of the zombie. The makeup is amazing and looks so creepy and scares the crap out of me.

That was easily the best episode of this show to date. I love the scene between Andrea and Dale and the group looking for Sofia was well done.

Since there were two directors and two separately credited writers (I know Aredth Bay is Darabont but he and Kirkman have separate credits), I'm guessing this was basically episode 1 and the first chunk of episode 2 combined into one episode. It was probably a good idea because making a cliffhanger out of Carl's shooting works better than having it be the first act break next episode.

And I think you could 'fix' the smelling continuity error by saying that the stench of the dead bodies that had been baking in the cars for a month or so overpowered the smell of the living people and that's why the zombies couldn't smell them.

This bothered me too. I would like them to borrow a page from the Left 4 Dead games and establish that some of the survivors have an immunity to the virus. Otherwise, even if it's only a body fluids-to-body fluids virus like AIDS, more than one of our band of survivors should have been infected by now. I can understand that one. It's a sort of selfish parental instinct; when someone close to you loses their child, even temporarily, you want to keep your own children close to you. The smart call would have definitely been to leave Carl with Dale. This bugged me too. They should have all been in a line across, with about twenty paces or so spread between each of them; close enough to stay in shouting range but spread out enough to make a bigger sweep. I can understand why, psychologically, they wanted to circle the wagons, though. I always DVR any and all AMC programming I want to watch so I can skip through all of the ads. The rumor is that a lot of the footage from what was to be episode 1 came back as nearly unusable, and the footage that Darabont was able to salvage became the first third or so of tonight's premiere. The speculation is that the problems associated with that mess contributed to the falling out between Darabont and AMC. I don't have any idea whether the rumor is true, nor whether it contributed to the situation. But that's the scuttlebutt.

Either way, I think it worked for the premiere, since it told very much one story. The pacing was much more aggressive than last year, for better or worse. Really, there's two cliffhangers, since Sophia wasn't found. I'm guessing she'll turn up at the spoilery place they take Carl to.

This is the one that bugged me as well. They wanted more people, and walked in a straight line one after the other the whole time.

As for the commercials, I guess the actual length of the episode ended up being a little over an hour, which is about right for a 90 minute episode. It felt to me like the commercials were heavily back-ended though, with fewer / shorter ones the first hour, and then a lot in that last half hour, maybe to influence the numbers or something. I could just be making that up, because I didn't actually count, but that's how it felt to me.

The ending was pretty awesome, I didn't see it coming at all, and expected it to end happily, with Rick smiling at his 'sign from God'. I'm glad I was wrong.

A more general criticism aimed toward, I guess, the show:

I don't think there's any middle ground, you either love it (the show) immensely, or don't care for it at all. I have watched all the episodes including last nights, and it's a frustrating viewing experience, so I'm probably going to relegate it to lower priority viewing for now. Now, it feels like the producers are just going for the goriest ways to kill the zombies, it just feels like cheap exploitative tricks to appeal to its fanbase.

I think it's because I just feel bored watching the show, and can't quite stomach how stupidly the characters are being written. Plus, everyone has already dredged all of the blood splatter that doesn't seem to infect the people until the writers decide they are going to die or become zombies. Maybe I just don't like this type of writing, when all the tension is bound in the "will he/she die" question, along with how he/she will be turned or be killed.

"The Walking Dead" Season 2 premiere the highest rated hour of original scripted programming in cable history

EDIT: To put that in perspective, in the demo it beat all scripted programming on ABC and CBS and last night. It even beat the final game of the NLCS on Fox. It only felt short of the NFL on NBC
Edited by Adam Lenhardt - 10/17/11 at 12:59pm

I loved it.  I am reading the graphic novels, but the story lines seem to follow faithfully/diverge wildly from the original source that I don't feel it will destroy my viewing pleasure.

I don't think the walkers were ever meant to be depicted as having a "bloodhound like" sense of smell that would help them find living people that they couldn't otherwise see. When has this been demonstrated to be the case? It hasn't.

Based on the episode GUTS, even before hearing the recent explanation that was given to the "question of smell" I took it that if they SEE someone and are close enough to smell them, then scent would be the deciding factor in whether or not they attacked. If you are "acting like a zombie" and immitating their gait, one that sees you from 30 yards away probably isn't going to charge you. It might move closer out of instinct, and if you have your scent masked then it wil ignore you. But that "scent" is only a factor in it distinguishing between living or dead in something that it can SEE and is right up on. It's not going to "sniff someone out" that it doesn't even know is there in the first place.

I think the varying speed of the zombies is very interesting. They tend to be slow and shambling, but once they begin to pursue prey they can start to move at a pretty good clip. It's like it takes their dead bodies a little while to "amp up" to faster movement. It seems that they can also basically go into a catatonic state at times when there is no real stimulus around. Then once they notice or hear something they slowly start to move about.

As far as the dead bodies, I'm not sure I understand the confusion or question? While they don't understand exactly what the infectious agent is (viral, bacterial, prion, etc...) it's still pretty clear that is a infectious agent. If you die and you weren't infected, then of course you're not going to re-animate. Why would you? And if you are infected, then you get sick and die, and then you reanimate. You're not going "just be infected" (like from the air) and remain healthy and then only when you die from an injury (or starve or something) would you reanimate. People can still die naturally in this world and stay dead. It's only if you die from this infection that you would reanimate.

The infection clearly is transmitted through bites. Now, is that something in the saliva directly breaking your skin that causes transmission, or is it the blood itself, or all "bodily fluids"? I don't that they/we know for sure. So of course they would want to be careful with being exposed to the blood of walkers they are fighting/killing. And they have been shown being careful about that when they have a choice and can plan for it. But when they simply find themselves fighting for thier lives, they don't always have that luxury, and they do get splattered. Seeing as how we have now seen this happen to several people several times and they haven't gotten sick (at least yet), then that is simply more observation/information about how infectious it is. There's no inconsistancey here. They have been worried about being infected by getting blood on them just like I would be worried about it in the same situation. But after seeing that happen several times without causing infection I think they could (and I would ) start to understand that just contacting the skin isn't enough. It would have to go through a break in the skin, and that could happen if you got some on you. But chances are if you just get splattered that you won't get infected. Thank God for that!

^ My thought, kind of horrifying, is that everybody was fleeing Atlanta amidst the horror of the emerging apocalypse when the tractor trailer overturned in the chaos. Traffic backed up, and then the dead swarmed the highway. People couldn't leave their cars because they were surrounded by zombies, and decided dying of dehydration was better than getting bit and turning into that.