Category Archives: The Walking Dead
5-sentence review of ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 3, Episode 9
“The Suicide King”
Original air date: Feb. 10, 2013
5. “The Walking Dead” is not the Book of Job, nor the Book of Revelations, but at times it feels like both.
4. Sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his ragtag band of zombie apocalypse survivors endure their greatest trials not from the innumerable army of monsters which seek to devour their flesh but from their fellow man, whose fear and hatred have consumed them.
3. It makes sense that Rick, who fought so hard to keep his group alive, would let Daryl (Norman Reedus) follow his amoral brother Merle (Michael Rooker) into the woods rather than let Merle into their midst — Daryl, like Rick, has a code that he must not break, especially now, especially at the end.
2. Even further it tracks that Rick would be suspicious of all outsiders — even seeming benign Tyreese (Chad Coleman) and his small group — and that the strain of leadership seemingly would cripple his mind.
1. Hershel (Scott Wilson), dear, gentle, strong in faith Hershel, urges Rick to reconsider turning out his fellow man, because Hershel seems to know what Rick cannot allow himself to see — and what may well be the question of both the series and our times — if we do not have each other, than what do we have?
5-sentence review of ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 3, Episode 8 Midseason Finale
Andrea (Laurie Holden) – The Walking Dead – Season 3, Episode 8 – Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC
5. Craig Ferguson often ends “The Late Late Show” with a segment “What Did We Learn On The Show Tonight?” and that’s a fitting question to ask of “The Walking Dead” midseason finale.
4. We learned Carl (Chandler Riggs) is a bad ass, possibly nuts, but every bit the man his dad, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) is.
3. We learned Michonne (Danai Gurira) really needs to be a part of the group, and her former road trip gal pal, Andrea (Laurie Holden), is going to have to decided once and for all whether she’s a part of our survivors or the looney band in the post-apocalyptic version of “The Stepford Wives.”
2. The Governor (David Morrissey) is a whack job of the first order, which we knew, but now that he’s down to one eye, he looks the part.
1. We also learned to say a phrase that has seldom been uttered from the mouths of Midwesterners and others in cold-weather climates: “I can’t wait until February.”
5-sentence review of ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 3, Episode 7
Maggie’s (Lauren Cohan) suffering is the personal terror that makes cuts through the desensitizing juicy squish on “The Walking Dead.”
“When the Dead Come Knocking”
5. Somebody smarter than me once said that calamities — major disasters or battles with high casualties — are easier to process than the smaller, personal acts of cruelty.
4. This explains how in a show rife with decapitations, dismemberment and disembowelment, the thought of sweet, plucky, lovable Maggie (Lauren Cohan) being raped, or nearly raped, by the Governor (David Morrissey), while Merle (Michael Rooker) savagely beats Glenn (Steven Yeun) in the next room, is perhaps the most terrifying moment in this blood-soaked season of “The Walking Dead.”
3. That evil act reveals the Governor’s true level of depravity, but also gives pause to consider the true psychological brilliance of this fiction.
2. Each week “Dead” manages to tread the difficult storytelling territory between desensitizing its audience to juicy squishes of zombie death while driving home the the terrible individual toll of life after the end of the world.
1. The series has far transcended its source material, which was only an above average comic series that faded quickly in quality after about 40 issues, and has become one of the finest efforts on AMC, a network that has had plenty of success.
5-sentence review of ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 3, Episode 6
Lauren Cohan plays Maggie on AMC-TV’s “The Walking Dead.” Unfortunately, she doesn’t dress like this when fighting the zombies.
“Hounded”
5. “The Walking Dead” continues to explore the ambivalent nature of the human soul, both in fragility and endurance while facing the ugly realities of morality and monsters on earth. .
4. Rick (Andrew Lincoln) takes phone calls from ghosts, Andrea (Laurie Holden) is getting jollies from the Governor’s (David Morrissey) zombie WWE and Merle (Michael Rooker) is more afraid of the Governor than his Michonne (Danai Gurira), but just barely
3. Perhaps more than any other character, Carl (Chandler Riggs) represents the transition of humanity after the apocalypse: He was forced to surrender childhood, become a killer of men and monsters and even to kill his mother before she turned into a zombie.
2. He is but a boy, yet he is also a strong and capable man perhaps ideally suited for survival, yet what is the point of survival if being a monster is all that remains?
1. “Hounded” also ruminates on love — the naive, relatively new connection between Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Glenn (Steven Yeun), the stupid coupling choices of Andrea and the tainted love lost between Rick and Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and whatever the connection is between Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride).
5-sentence review of ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 3, Episode 5
“Say the Word”
5. I live in a bunker without a DVR, so “The Walking Dead” tested my viewing loyalties, playing on AMC while my beloved Chicago Bears on Sunday Night Football on NBC-TV, but given the result of the game, I shifted allegiances with the weather — just like Andrea (Laurie Holden).
4. Boy, there’s a woman who can find a jerk in the midst of a zombie apocalypse: Shane (Jon Bernthal), flirting with Merle (Michael Rooker) and now titillated by the Governor (David Morrissey).
3. In the process, she betrays Michonne (Danai Gurira), who saved her life and kept her alive in the zombie wilds for eight months, but kindness to people who loved her has never been her strength — remember how grateful she was to Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) for preventing her suicide.
2. Speaking of suicide, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) goes on a zombie killing spree after learning Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) died — and finds her corpse has been eaten by another zombie like so much Thanksgiving dinner.
1. Oh yeah, and then the phone rings, which ruins one of the few great benefits of the apocalypse: no damn telephones.
5-sentence review of ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 3, Episode 4
Sarah Wayne Callies departed in this week’s “The Walking Dead.”
5. For the chronically depressed and anxiety prone such as myself, tonight’s episode of “The Walking Dead” was a brutal bummer of Biblical proportions.
4. Prison troublemaker Andrew (Markice Moore) opens gates, turns on the generators and alarms, flooding the prison with zombies as Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) goes into labor.
3. T-Dog (IronE Singleton) gives his life to protect Carol (Melissa McBride), and that may have been in vein.
2. Meanwhile, back at the Governor’s (David Morrissey) compound, Meryl (Michael Rooker) gets information from Andrea (Laurie Holden) about his brother, Daryl (Norman Reedus) and their location at the now-overrun farm, and then Andrea proceeds to flirt with the Governor and go against Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) wishes to leave.
1. Lori dies in childbirth and son Carl (Chandler Riggs) puts her down before she turns into a zombie and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) cries out in agony of his lost wife, and in a way echoes the pains of viewers who truly suffer at this masterful weekly drama that makes Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road” look like an upbeat fairytale.
5-sentence review of ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 3, Episode 3
“Walk with Me”
5. The scariest monsters on “The Walking Dead” are not the zombies, but what people become when faced with their own extinction.
4. This week viewers met the Governor (David Morrissey), a charismatic nut job who runs a seemingly perfect little town in the midst of the zombie apocalypse.
3. Of course he maintains control by murdering a group of National Guard members for their trucks and supplies and keeping a Nazi-style doctor on staff along with bottom-feeder, angry racist Merle (Michael Rooker), now with machete hand, as an enforcer.
2. The Governor takes in Andrea (Laurie Holden), who almost immediately begins flirting with the Governor, and Michonne (Danai Gurira), who would just as soon wander the zombie-filled wilderness than deal with the Governor.
1. The closing shot of the Governor in front of an aquarium full of severed zombie maxed out the creepy scale, but it continued to move the show up the ladder of best things ever.
General Tso’s Revenge Presents PODCAST 182 for week of Oct. 22, 2012
Memphis Paul and Paragraph Dan discuss the week in pop culture. Listen to it here.
Topics:
1. Because the Title Tells Me No: “Surprise with Jenny McCarthy”
2. “The Horror” of Network TV
3. Apparently the still play the WNBA
4. Has Chris Berman had a stroke?
5. Best G.I. Joe: Real American Hero file card.
5-sentence review of ‘The Walking Dead: Sick’
Season 3, Episode 2: “Sick”
5. Humanity continues to slip away from survivors in the wake of the zombie apocalypse.
4. Rick (Andrew Lincoln) dispatches survivors at the prison as dispassionately as he does zombies as his pragmatic, but cold, approach to survival becomes more like the departed Shane (Jon Bernthal).
3. Carl (Chandler Riggs) follows in his father’s footsteps, much to his mother Lori’s (Sarah Wayne Callies) worry, and with a recklessness that could result in him being a walker.
2. The group faces the possibility of Hershel’s (Scott Wilson) death — and subsequent change into a zombie — with Glenn (Steven Yeun) tasked with finishing him if the change comes and his girlfriend, Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Hershel’s daughter, even saying goodbye, while her younger sister, Beth (Emily Kinney), holds out a childlike hope.
1. The way things are going, though, Hershel’s survival — and somewhat too convenient instant forgiveness of Rick for chopping his leg off — makes one wonder if survival is really a blessing or curse.
5-sentence review of ‘The Waling Dead’ Season 3 premier
Season 3, Episode 1: “Seed”
5. The third season premier should have slaked the thirst of both factions of “The Walking Dead” fans — those who want more juicy squish of zombie skull and those who hunger for the deeply spiritual drama.
4. After a cold winter, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) decides to take over a prison that results lots zombies heads being stabbed, shot, crushed and mashed.
3. Andrea (Laurie Holden), left behind after the fall of the farm in Season 2, teams up with sword-slinging Michonne (Danai Gurira), but comes down with an illness that forces the pair to look for safe harbor elsewhere.
2. Guilt-ridden Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) is heavy with child and heavier with worry over the state of her marriage after cheating with the now-dead Shane (Jon Bernthal) and wondering if the baby insider her is a zombie.
1. Then, of course, there’s faithful Hershel (Scott Wilson), bit on the ankle by a zombie and the subject of an on-the-spot amputation via axe as the survivors discover there’s other living among the dead in the prison, so basically there’s a lot of stuff going on.
