Well last night was the premier of the second season of "The Walking Dead." Frankly, it left me a bit worried. I was already concerned because I heard they fired their number one guy, Frank Darabont, because he was upset over basically doing twice the number of episodes for half the price. Well last night show did seem to keep up the production values, but their other indications that show the ship has lost its captain.
First, there was pure and simply a lot of bloat last night. They padded the premier by an extra thirty minutes but seemed to have forgotten to add an extra thirty minutes of story. The result was an absolutely killer beginning that then meandered into long stretches of nothing. Now sometimes a quiet lull can be used to build tension, but this was not one of those times. Quite frankly, they seemed lost and were treading water till the end scene.
Even the first part when the crew had to face a flock of zombies (flock, herd?) had a part that was less than stellar. The scene in the RV with the zombie just felt wrong. First the zombie's make up was off, you could practically smell the grease paint. Secondly, there was something in the actor's performance that threw that zombie off from the rest. Most of the zombies in this series are aggressive in a way like an alligator. It has a primal brainlessness to it. Here there was just too much glint in the eye, almost as if it was personal. Finally, when the zombie finally got killed there sure was a lot of screaming going on. Now dramatically that makes a certain amount of sense, but by the rules of zombies in this series that should have drawn every walker into the RV like flies to honey. It just didn't work.
There's still a lot of promise here in this series, but it needs to tighten things up. It also needs to make the characters a bit more interesting. I understand they want a naturalistic feel, and to be quite honest a few of these characters are on the low side of the grade curve, but that's no excuse for dull dialog. Overall, I feel this was an opportunity wasted and I can only hope things pick up from here.
STRANGE SPANNERS being an accounting of strangeness of the warp and woof of my mind For those of you new here, think of this as 1/2 "Night Gallery" Our Motto: Nos somnium quisnam es futurus fatum quod insolitus tutus vos!
First off, I am outraged that any tv employee would consider 6 episodes to be a "series"! Crazy.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I agree that they have probably lost something a little more important than their way.
But maybe it can be salvaged. I did love the point our strong lady made in that she had made a choice to go how she wanted to, but he took it from her! Who doesn't want the choice, especally in such a horrific situation?