
So begins a whole new season of shambling corpses and the sheriff who shoots them. Last night saw the beginning of the second season of AMC’s The Walking Dead, and well, by my estimation of survival instincts, a whole lot of people should be dead at this point.
Last season the group was parked on an overlook outside of Atlanta. The main conflict centered around Sheriff Rick reestablishing a connection with his family, first physically and then emotionally. At the end of the season the group decided to go to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, hoping to find some answers for whatever was going on. Once they got there they found a whole lot of nothing, well not counting the suicidal scientist who blew up the building after a narrow escape by Rick and company. The smell of spoilage isn’t all rotting flesh. Read at your peril!
This season opened with the group on the highway heading to Fort Benning. Why take a drive down an interstate that was bound to be filled with delectable people trapped in cars, you ask? So did I!
T-Dog cuts his arm on a door and has to be saved once again by the “racist,” Daryl, known by the SS stickers on his motorcycle. I like Daryl. I liked his brother too. I’ll be curious to see if he dies saving T-Dog or Glenn, or dies at all. He seems like he could make a good redeemed hard-ass/bad-guy character.
Andrea also has a close call in the RV. Being distraught over the death of her sister, she has developed a bizarre obsession with guns. Instead of searching for needed food and water, she takes the short time on the highway to try and field-dress a pistol. She does manage to hide in the bathroom until Dale gets her a screwdriver that she then uses to give a quarrelsome zombie a frontal lobotomy.
After the main “herd” leaves the area, people start coming out of hiding. However, two straggler zombies see the young Sophia and chase her into the woods. Rick, being one of the only two adults that actually cares about his fellow man, follows suit. He’s able to catch up to Sophia and dispatch the two zombies following her. But does the small child stay in the extremly well chosen hiding spot that good ol’ sheriff Rick picked for her? Of course not, that would only make sense. When Rick returns to the creek where he hid her, she is gone, and this episode’s main plot begins in earnest. That’s right, a sheriff is going to lead a group into the woods to search for a missing girl.
Back on the Highway, Dale reveals to T-Dog that he has been pantomiming RV repairs ever since Sophia went missing in an effort to keep the group from the needs-of-the-many mentality, making him the only other decent person in my book.
After finding a church filled with zombies and no Sophia as of yet, Rick begins
Once far enough away, Rick’s wife, Lori, explains to the other searchers that Rick is pretty close to losing it, and if they think they can do bette,r they should step up and do it. Guess what? No one does. Because Rick is The Man. Meanwhile the sheriff, the deputy, and the boy find a deer. Shane wants to bring the buck down, but Rick stops him after seeing how enthralled Carl is. Carl walks towards the deer and is able almost to touch it when someone else decides to shot the obviously out-of-season 12-point, and bags a little boy in the process.
No word if Carl is dead or not yet. I’m not thinking so. I feel like the church scenes were a bit weak and forced. Not sure why they felt the need to introduce faith this late in the game. This first episode just didn’t have the constant tension that the last season had. I am curious to see where they take this season and if Shane was detached from Carl enough to still leave after he has been shot.
Christopher Morgan works for CriminalElement.com and HeroesandHeartbreakers.com. He lives in New York City, and has been planning for the zombie apocolypse for too long now.