On November 27th, AMC’s survival horror series The Walking Dead aired its midseason finale, “Pretty Much Dead Already,” before going on hiatus until February 2012. According to the show’s Facebook page, The Walking Dead is the most-watched show on cable television (a post that received over 30,000 likes), and 12,000+ people liked the finale episode’s feedback post and left over 10,000 comments. It’s fair to say that the show has generated some buzz, on the Internet at least. But does it deserve it?
Though hardly new to the science fiction or horror genres, zombies have become increasingly popular in the last five years or so with the advent of video game and movie franchises such as Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, Left 4 Dead, and Zombieland, among numerous others. The challenge for AMC’s graphic novel-based series, which first debuted on Halloween in 2010, was to distinguish itself from those franchises in order to become successful on cable. To do that, The Walking Dead inverts the focus of modern zombie fiction (murdering as many zombies in as many creative and disgusting ways as possible), blending the horror/suspense element innate to classic zombie films (such as Romero's Night of the Living Dead, released in 1978) with something comparatively innovative: daily life in a post-apocalyptic world. The Walking Dead asks the question: what do the survivors of the zombie apocalypse do when they aren’t murdering their former-fellow men?
The second season of The Walking Dead has been an exercise in patience for many of its viewers. I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but if you truly want to enjoy the suspense of the series and aren't up to date, you may want to bookmark this review and get caught up. In the second season, the protagonists find themselves quite stationary, tied down to Hershel's farm by Carl's need for medical attention, the search for Sophia, and the appeal of relative safety from the walkers. This also pits them against Hershel and the rest of the farm survivors with their own unique set of values and, of course, secrets. The deficiency of motion and action in general had some viewers concerned that the show was stalling out and losing its narrative momentum, but in light of the excellent midseason finale episode, I think we can cast the previous six episodes in a different light, starting with the show's own title.
When The Walking Dead’s introduction sequence concludes, the title is revealed on screen word by word, displaying first “The,” followed by “Dead” and “Walking” in that order. Perhaps it’s excessive analysis, but that simple graphic fade always makes me ponder one of zombie lore’s essential questions: are the real zombies the infected, or the survivors who have had the misfortune to withstand the early days of the apocalypse? The Walking Dead's second season has forced survivors to confront their conflicting definitions of civility, what is justified and when, and whether honesty or secrets have a place in this new world.
I would be remiss if I did not go more specifically into what made the finale episode so enjoyable. It served as a proper culmination (as anything called “finale” ought to) of numerous minor and major plots, including Shane's increasing craziness (murdering Otis and advocating violent solutions), Andrea's decreasing craziness (the disapperance of her suicidal tendencies, her marksmanship training, and accidentally wounding Darryl), Carl's injury, Sophia's disappearance, Lori's pregnancy, and Glenn's girl-next-door troubles, to name only a few. Because the series has been so quiet and stationary, the writers were able to plant plenty of dramatic plot mines all around their audience, and the moment we stepped outside the boundaries, they started to go off. Every major and minor character converges on one location, one source of tension, and in a series of gasp-inducing moments, the plot, the characters, and the antagonism are all brought to their proverbial (and sometimes literal) knees. Whether you saw the last zombie coming or not, you cannot say to me that you had no reaction when it emerged, and that you didn't spend those thirty seconds of tension running through the various ways it could play out, even though you knew how it would end. It was masterfully done, and I was entirely absorbed into the world of The Walking Dead for the last twenty minutes of the episode; possibly even to the point that I would not have noticed if the actual zombie apocalypse began to occur. To the skeptics: yes, it was that good. To everyone else: I KNOW, RIGHT?!
There still remains an entire second half of this season, and the midseason finale has left viewers with numerous questions. Will new relationships continue or be destroyed? Will we remain geographically rooted, or is that now impossible? When the dust settles on the group's power struggle, will its leader be different? Will Rick's role as leader be more stringently defined hereafter? And all of that without any mention of certain medical concerns.
I for one am looking forward to The Walking Dead's return in February. Any restlessness I felt during the first half of the season I now recognize as the false sense of security that the characters were also feeling. With all of that turned on its head, it's anyone's guess what's next for the genre's latest hit series.
Do you feel that The Walking Dead has stalled out so far this season? Do you disagree that the midseason finale contained some of the series' best moments to date? Do you have other comments about AMC's zombie show? Share your thoughts!
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