In my attempt to catch up on the five seasons
of The Walking Dead before the final
episode of Season 5 airs on AMC, I share my thoughts on the second season of
the zombie drama starring Andrew Lincoln, Jon Berenthal, Sarah Wayne Callies,
Laurie Holden and Jeffrey DeMunn, among others. The Walking Dead borrows its inspiration from Robert Kirkman’s long
running comic series of the same name, and the second season's showrunner is Glen
Mazzara.
I loved The
Walking Dead’s first season. When I finally got around to catching up on
the series I quickly got through it as fast as I could, the six episodes that
were there were devoured and I really enjoyed it indeed. The pilot remains to
this day one of the best first episodes of any television show that I’ve seen,
ever. Yet it took me the best part of last year to get through the entire
second season, and I’m not even joking. I kept putting it off until the last
few months of 2014 and it was only today that I was able to get through the
last two episodes of Season 2. So what happened?
Well for starters, Frank Darabont no longer
is the executive producer on the show and that role falls to Glen Mazzara. And the change in showrunner really shows in the
second season, with it expanding its episode count to thirteen, and becoming
considerably slower as a result, and aside from a few notable episodes, it no
longer has the tense, unpredictable thrill of early Season 1, with the group
spending the majority of Season 2 in one place as opposed to on the run.
The main group of survivors, lead by Rick
Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), and containing the likes of Shane Walsh (Jon
Berenthal), who’s slowly falling apart with his affair with Lori (Sarah Wayne
Callies), Rick’s wife comes to light when Lori is revealed to be pregnant. Rick’s
son, Carl (Chandler Riggs), is facing the prospect of growing up in a world
where there is no longer any prospect of a normal childhood, and Andrea (Laurie
Holden) is still coping over the loss of her sister from the previous season.
Also still around is the group’s main voice of reason, Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn),
fan-favourite hunter/tracker Daryl (Norman Reedus), T-Dog (IronE Singleton) and
Glenn (Steven Yunn). These characters have already gone through hell but Season
1 is only the beginning, because there’s plenty more challenging tasks for them
to go through in the second Season as each member of the group has their
humanity put to the test and nobody will emerge the same at the end of the
Season as they were at the start.
However, it does take a while for things to
get interesting, which is a real shame and it probably would have been better
if the show had kept the shorter episode count for Season 2, much like Season 1.
The majority of the season in this case takes place on a farm, which the group
are granted safe haven at by Hershel Greene (Scott Wilson) and his family,
which includes his two daughters, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Beth (Emily
Kinney). These characters make interesting additions to the cast and allowed
for an interesting new dynamic as it turns out that Hershel may have some
secrets that are best left hidden.
However, much like the rest of the cast, much of this season is spent
giving the characters plenty of development that really helps flesh them out.
In this season the focus on the zombies is pushed largely to the side, with the
safe-haven at the farm instead allowing the group to turn towards more internal
debates and issues, such as who Lori’s unborn baby is, and whether Carl should
be taught to shoot or not, which are driving them apart, as Rick and Shane
consistently clash heads with their different viewpoints over the course of the
season.
There were plenty of problems with character
development this season. Not all of the characters were likable and even though
some storylines started off strongly, they were poorly resolved and didn’t
always work. It’s clear that the main strength of this season lies when it
comes to creating tension, with the episodes with the threat of the
ever-present zombies/walkers allowing for some great, tension filled, high
adrenaline moments that often are a lot more successful than the character centric
episodes. However, that said, there were some good character-centric stories
that we got from Season 2, with the Rick/Shane storyline that came to a head in
the penultimate episode of the Season being really worth investing in.
Because then, of the greater emphasis on
character, which may not always have been successful, The Walking Dead grows somewhat less exciting during the second
season. Yes, there are some great moments, and some shocking twists to be found
here that fans will expect – and unless you’ve been spoiled about it already
like I was, you won’t see it coming. The penultimate episodes of Season 2 are
among the finest, and really worth sticking around to watch as their execution
is great. It also gives me hope that things can improve in Season 3, especially
given the new direction that the season looks to be heading in.
VERDICT:
7.5/10
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