THE WALKING DEAD: 2.01 What Lies Ahead

Seriable’s Robert L. reviews The Walking Dead 2.01 — “What Lies Ahead”

Scary movies usually don’t scare me. They’re usually depressing, sometimes they’ll get me to jump in my seat with a cheap startle sequence, but I’m rarely scared. So, despite the blow to my ego, I’ll be forthright in admitting it: this show scares me.

The other general compliment I’d like to give this show before I get into the heart of the review is that Bear McCreary’s music has improved tenfold since last season. For someone who practically plagiarized (or in industry lingo: used the music from Black Hawk Down as “a template” for) nearly every piece of music he wrote for Battlestar Galactica, he sure has come a long way.

The episode begins with a rather weak scene. Rick is back on his walkie-talkie giving us dialogue that acts as a sort of “recap” to bring us back to the post-apocalyptic world of zombies. It might function as an introduction, of sorts, to any newcomers, but if this is the case, I’d imagine it ineffective. They give us a time frame, and we know that only two days have passed since we last saw our heroes.

The first twenty minutes take place, by and large, on the big highway set piece that’s been advertised in all the promos we’ve been seeing for the past several months. The good news is that this is an exciting bit, and incredibly well done and suspenseful. The bad news is that because of the advertisements we’ve seen, there are no real surprises in this encounter with a big group of zombies.

(Of course, when Shane finds barrels of water, he has to open one up and dump it all over himself, effectively wasting something that I’d imagine they might need in the future.)

The bits with Sophia were quite intense. Knowing the nature of this show, and that it’s not a complete waste of time, I half expected her to die. Personally, I think it would be kind of cool if we just never found out what happened to her … but I’m sure we will, and I’m sure I won’t be disappointed. And even though this became a “looking for the kid” episode, unlike two Spielberg shows that made their debuts this year, it wasn’t a completely boring event, that had no consequences, to be resolved with a neat bow at the end of the episode.

In the meantime, in one of the most difficult bits of drama I’ve seen on TV, the Lori-Shane-Carl relationship is playing out very unhappily. Shane appears to be taking out all of his anger on the kid, and Lori thinks she has a right to tell him to knock it off.

“What was that? The way you blew him off just now — you crushed him.”

Shane‘s resolved to leave the group, as a result of being in love with Lori, having had her, thanks to some stupidity on assuming Rick’s death, and no longer being able to have her. This makes me like his character a whole lot more — if nothing else, it beats the alternative of getting drunk again and going for another rape attempt.

My question is why Lori still hasn’t come clean to Rick. I understand the complexities of the situation. It could cause problems and tensions within the group if the two hotshots are at each other’s throats. Obviously, Rick would be right to be suspicious of Shane. Lori’s gotta be embarrassed about the whole ordeal, but she was told he was dead — that’s not quite an affair. (I do, however, view her as a bit of a sleaze-ball for moving on so quickly, but hey, it was the end of the world. Gotta relieve that tension somehow.)

A good general rule is to proactively admit past sexual relations if there’s a reasonable chance that your partner might find out about it from someone else and get their feelings hurt (I’m not referring to infidelity, just to complex situations that might hurt their feelings for whatever reason). If there’s next to no chance, then fine, but the way they played it last season made it seem like the entire camp knew about Shane and Lori (except for the son, Carl, of course). It’s only a matter of time before Rick finds out, and we all know it.

While this drama unfolds, Daryl and Rick are still off searching for Sophia. Eventually they run into a Walker and cut it open to find out if it ate the child. As cool as the concept is, I’m grateful that they decided to show most of it off-screen. This show can be a bit much sometimes in the gore department. (I’m thinking of Carol chopping up her dead husband, specifically.)

Rick Grimes – difficult choices

Even this episode went above the threshold for what I would consider “TV-14 appropriate.” Granted, if they slapped a TV-MA rating on the show, there would be no reason to put a cap on the language and sex/nudity, which I appreciate.

Now, before you all start calling me a prude (which I’m fine with), let me explain why: profanity destroys suspense. I don’t care whether or not you have a personal taste for such language, it acts as a relief of tension and undoes any level of suspense achieved. Every time someone drops an f-bomb, that’s the new focus of the scene, no longer whatever scary thing may or may not happen. The sex/nude scenes are just something I’d rather not have, especially when they could be translated into valuable story telling minutes (they also sap a show’s shooting schedule — and budget — dry).

Especially since cable channels aren’t regulated by the FCC, they might as well come up with a new rating called “TV-16,” or something to that effect, and slap it on there.

Anyway, when Rick and Daryl come back empty-handed near nightfall, Carol proves her jerkishness by asking Rick, “How could you just leave her out there to begin with?”

“It was the only choice I could make.”

I never found Carol all that sympathetic. Maybe a little bit as the generic white trash abusee of the camp, but after turning her dead, infected husband to mush, I was more than a little freaked out by her.

I guess that’s my problem with the entire episode — I found the first season to be incredibly devastating … but much of that has been lost here. Most of it will be regained as the season progresses, I have every confidence, but sequences like when Andrea and Dale go at it really felt like a “miss” for me.

Again, the ideas are fabulous. Andrea didn’t want Dale’s blood on her hands, but she also wanted to die “her way,” so she’s incredibly resentful. Dale, on the other hand, thinks she should have come to some realization that her life meant something and express gratitude to him for doing what he did.

Obviously, she’s in a deep depression. But I don’t get why Dale is so afraid of letting her have the gun. There are plenty of ways for Andrea to “give up” and kill herself … so I’m not sure why he thinks the gun is the only way for her to do that.

Shane wants out

Even the Shane-Lori-Carl angst is handled poorly. Shane is too much of a bitch to Carl. There are other (more discreet) ways of getting rid of a kid than to freak out at him. Why not just calmly say, “Shh, we gotta be careful. Go catch up to your dad,” or something? Shane’s acting like a very white trash step-dad.

On the other hand, I agree with him when he says, “Just trying to be the good guy, Lori.”

I’m glad that she does, in fact, think it’s for the best that Shane is going away, but why on earth does she want him to tell Rick that he’s leaving? What’s he going to say? “I had sex with your wife all the while you were gone, and now that you’re back, one of us has to go. I choose me … see ya!”

The scene where Lori scolds Andrea and Carol was the best scene of the episode. It was an absolute winner in that it was incredibly satisfying, listening to her telling them off, saying all the things we wish that we could say to them.

“You all look to him and then blame him when he’s not perfect.”

EXACTLY!

But I was a little confused at the final scene of the episode. I had a very hard time figuring out the point of it. Why were they all staring and smiling at the deer? And why were they letting Carl get so close? Deer have been known to charge people, and while those antlers may look nice and fuzzy, they have no problem tearing through a rib cage.

So I was only surprised that Carl got shot instead of impaled by antlers.

Alas, I’ve run out of time to discuss things like the wonderful sequence involving the church — the image of seeing the zombies sitting on the benches, and Rick talking to Jesus — but let me just sum it all up by saying, I thought it was solid, if not as “amazing” as I was hoping. Complaints and nit-picks always stand out the most, so don’t be fooled by my criticisms, this was actually a very good opening to what is certain to be a fabulous second season to one of the best shows to ever grace your television screen.

My final score for “What Lies Ahead” episode is: 8/10 Seriable Stars.