Alright, so this blog started off about movies, but I think I'm going to expand into talking about TV and theater, too. Because those 3 things all share part of my IMDB (that's short for internet movie data brain). So I will start this foray in boob tube musings with the "Walking Dead" finale. Some thoughts (SPOILERS ahead, danger...also ZOMBIES ahead).
This show refuses to kill off the most unsympathetic, annoying characters and ends by stranding the only character I do care about...gah. First, a recap. The show opens with shots of the areas surrounding the farm (all the way to Atlanta I think), and someone gets on a megaphone and shouts "Attention zombie shoppers, sale on aisle Hershel's farm." After the zombies all consult their internal gps systems they settle on the simplest straight line path for the farm. What?
But I won't complain too much because we got the zombie human showdown we've been waiting for, even if I firmly believe that that really slow zombie march would have given everyone in the house ample time to sit down for a meal, shower, meticulously pack, load up the cars, and form a leisurely caravan to season 3. And it's an efficient showdown. Lots of really crazy good marksmanship with zombies going down like Whackamole, AND we get rid of the young guy from Hershel's farm who I guess was married to Girl, Interrupted but seemingly could not be bothered by her suicide attempt. We also get rid of the other blonde woman from the farm...and it looked for a second like we'd also get rid of Girl, Interrupted too but Lori gets her in the car with T-Dawg.
Rick and Carl cook some zombies in the barn, jump onto Jimmy Bo Dean's RV while he gets eaten below in a lovely metaphor for the way our merry band of zombie evaders were blessed to happen upon the one farm in this post-apocalyptic zombie universe populated solely by spineless, nameless country folk possessed with nary an inkling for self-preservation. Hershel goes Rambo on the zombies with his lucky Irish self-reloading rifle he found at the end of the rainbow under a pot o gold. Just when you think he's gonna go down with the barn Captain Smith style, Rick gets him in the car.
Alright, who does that leave? Carol and Daryl...who the writers have paired up because their names rhyme, escape on Daryl's motorcycle, while our star-crossed lovers, Glenn and Maggie, are not so star-crossed making a relatively easy get away in the SUV (this new car looks so out of place next to those hip, vintage trucks!).
Of course, Andrea's the only one that gets left behind. The one character I've grown attached to for her ballsy, no nonsense demeanor, calling Lori out on her sh*t, last minute standing up for Dale, randomly being a civil rights lawyer in her past life, and not wasting time with laundry. But this turns out to be a good thing. After running from walkers through the night, she gets saved by a machete wielding, hooded badass with two armless (and I think jawless?) walkers chained to her. Now that was an image worthy of a graphic novel adaptation. It makes me think Andrea's in for a whole lot more fun than our reunited group that ends up around a campfire with Rick monologuing about being a huge cheertator and there's nothing you can do about it cause this is not a democracy, it's a cheer-ocracy.
But the cat is out of the bag: Rick confesses that Jenner told him that they're all infected, which explains why Randall and Shane came back as walkers after they were killed by humans (though doesn't explain why the guys killed in the bar didn't...). Close on a shot of what looks like a vast compound or prison.
This episode, in my mind, bodes very well for the prospects of Season 3. The main problems in my mind with Season 2 were that the characters were so bogged down at Hershel's farm, first, searching for a character no one cared about, and then just running around in circles name-calling. It was so frustrating to realize that, sure, in their world our group has every reason to be invested in trying to stay at the farm, but dramatically, those objectives are so in conflict with making compelling drama. And the dialogue seemed to echo this geographical bogging down. The arguments were circuitous. The same disagreements retread in concentric, idiotic logic circles.
In a vacuum, these characters worst traits come to the fore and these are not antiheroes you root for. It's as if the writers assume that Rick, Lori, and Carl, as the family at the center of the show, have somehow burrowed into our hearts to justify showing them being really frickin annoying. Nope, that has not been earned yet. And now I just would prefer they become walker food. And more frustrating, I get the sense that those 3 are particularly immune from any harm until maybe the series finales. So much weight is given to their story lines at the expense of the peripheral characters, that they seem to be the broken machinery propelling the entire show. So here's my case for shifting the show back to a more ensemble drama. Make me feel no one's safe again.
And make our group more itinerant so they can discover more about this apocalyptic world they're living in. The Walking Dead is curiously free of a mythology, especially this season. We don't know much about the virus that causes the disease, what the world now looks like. And while I can imagine how that was a purposeful decision to mirror the characters own removal from any information source, it's time to expand the mythology. And I think hooded lady and huge prison fortress are the two most promising developments that would suggest we're in for some fleshing out (pun intended) of the Walking Dead-universe.
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