Lets Talk About The Walking Dead Final Part

The season finally is, in my opinion, what saved the Walking Dead and got it a second season. The last two episodes are a story arc that is not from the book but at the same time is. I'm not saying that these episodes are perfect, but they are way better than the others.

In these episodes the group decides to head to the CDC center 100 miles out of Atlanta. While this did not happen in the books it does slightly resemble the ending of book 1 and beginning of book two, with some slight changes of course. In the books Rick takes a firm stand that the group needs to leave the camp and get as far away from the infected city of Atlanta as they can. Shane on the other hand is the opposite and thinks the group should stay close to the city because when the government comes to help them they will be there. I really liked this argument because it created a lot of tension between the two leaders of the camp. In the show Rick half hearted thinks it would be a good idea to go to the CDC center. Jim got bit by an infected and they think a cure to the infection might be in the CDC. There is a little bit of an argument but for the most part Shane agrees with Rick.

This was one of the biggest changes from the book that they have made thus far. In the book the argument gets very heated to the point that Shane pulls a gun on Rick. Right when Shane is about to shoot, Carl shoots Shane in the neck. I was really looking forward to seeing this in the show because when I read that in the books it was the moment I went, "Whoa, no games here." It's what really got me hooked on this series. Its the same thing that made me like "Lost" so much. Main characters get killed off in a second. It really adds to the feeling that the show is unpredictable and the characters on it are actually in danger. The show however does still have the scene. Instead of Shane getting shot though, he just puts the gun down. It kinda makes me feel like this series is a "what could have been" version of The Walking Dead.

What happened.

What was supposed to happen.

While this change does works on some level it also cuts out future story lines. That actually happens a few times in this episode. In the book after Shane gets shot he gets barred. Since he got shot in the neck is brain is still in one piece. In book 3 Rick realizes that its not just sick people who are getting infected, the dead are also rising. He than goes back to Shane's grave, digs it up, finds him infected and kills him for good. It was another scene from the book I thought was great. Since he didn't die at the camp site Rick won't go back there to do that. I guess the same thing could happen at a different location though.

On the way to the CDC Jim's infection gets worse and worse. Eventually Jim asks to be left behind on the side of the road. This is supposed to be a rather emotional thing. The show has done such a poor job with caricaturization that I straight up did not care. If it wasn't for the sad music playing I wouldn't have even known it was a sad scene. I think the show could really benefit by switching up the show formula and having it be sort of like "Lost." Every episode would tell one persons story. Each episode of the show right now has fallowed Rick who has become a rather shallow character. He is just your classic good guy. I find my self not caring because of that. In the books every choice that Rick makes weighs on him a lot. He is willing to do horrible things to survive. If he has to kill a living person he will. That is not the case in the show. It really is a shame.

The episode begins to get interesting when the doctor working in the CDC labs gets introduced. He has been in the research lab by himself for 104 weeks, he is a little crazy at this point. Everyday he records a video of him giving an update of his research. One day while running experiments he spills a chemical that is considered hazardous on "TS-19" and ruins it. With all of his research destroyed he decides to kill himself. That is when Rick and everyone shows up. He lets them all into the CDC and everyone is happy for a night or so. This is another thing that hurts future plots from the books. The doctor explains how the infection works. This never happened in the books. To be honest I really liked not knowing what the infection is and how it works. I liked whenever Rick met new people they would share theory's on infection. It seems like the writers sort of took away a big draw to the show by explaining this, especially so early on in the series.

The CDC is a government facility with super computers connected to all the over government bases. The Doctor talks about how every other base has shut down and he is the last person working on a cure. This destroys the whole future plot of Rick trying to get to D.C because the government is still alive there. Why go all the way when you already saw a strong evidence that says nothing else is operational? Just saying I think the writers should have read all of the books before starting this show.

At the end of the episode it is reveled that when the CDC's generators run out of fuel the whole station will decontaminate itself. Which actually means the whole place will blow itself up. Of coarse everyone freaks out. The Doctor explains that this is a good thing though. His point being, wouldn't you rather have your death be quick and painless than slow and horrible like living out in the post apocalyptic world? He makes a good enough point that Jackie stays behind with him and they both die. Once again though, not enough characterization. The only thing I took away from watching these people die was that the girls name was Jackie.

I know that all I did was shit on this series, but I really did enjoy the last two episodes. The Doctor was really well acted and brought a tension that the show had been missing the whole time. I can only hope that the show continues this type of quality in season two.

Street Gangs & Nursing; Homes Lets Talk About The Walking Dead Pt. 4

The AMC's adaptation of The Walking Dead has been less than what I would call faithful to its original content. Episode 4 only pushes the craziness of this show further. This blog will not be like the others, instead of following the episode scene by scene, I'm going to talk about a few of the big issues I had with the episode.

In the beginning of the episode Jim is show digging holes in the ground. Dale asks about the holes and why Jim is doing this. Jim just ignores Dale. A few hours go by and Jim is still up there digging, so Dale and a few others go to talk to him. Jim gets angry and trys to attack Shane. Shane knocks him out. When Jim wakes up and is questioned about the holes, he says he can't remember why he was digging them. Turns out he was digging graves for all the people that die later in the episode. While the people did die in the books, Jim did not dig these holes. Just decide to make Jim psychic for a while? Wtf. Just another weird thing to add to this show. Speaking of weird things to add to this show: Latino Street gangs, Yes, they added that.

The plan was Glenn would run for the guns while Darrell waits in one alley and Rick and T-Dog wait in a different alley. While Glenn is running for the guns Darrell gets jumped by 3 gang members. Glenn returns to the alley as the fight is ending. Glenn gets dragged off by two gang members while Rick and T-Dog hold on to the third member.

The ridiculousness is already astounding but the more you think about it the more ridiculous it gets. Glenn got taken by two gang members who pulled him into their car. Yes their car. There working car that they drive through the city. Every shot of Atlanta that I have seen on this show has been infected everywhere. How are they driving through that? Also the gang has a hide out downtown. Infected are already everywhere downtown. Driving a junker car through downtown to the hide out seems like it would draw a lot of unwanted attention to an already obvious hiding spot. Just sayin.

After a very intense meeting with the gang leader, it becomes clear that the only way to get Glenn back is with brute force. Rick, Darrell and T-Dog comes up with a plan to take out the gang. I am excited for this. The Walking Dead is all about tension between people. The infected are just a background thing. Looming as a constant threat that rarely attacks. Rick and the others are in the hide out, guns are being pointed, tension is rising. Than an old lady walks into the room and asks whats going on. Are you ready for this? The gang is actually running a nursing home.


I'm dead serious. This happened. This is so out of left field I feel like the only reason that the writers did this was for shock value. Needless to say the blood bath I was waiting for did not happen. I am left very disappointed.

Now I would like to talk about some of the characters that have been added to this show. Who is T-Dog? Is he a new character or did they just change Tyrse's name and back story? They look very similar and act very similar. If they are the same person why change the name to T-Dog? I don't get it.

The show has too many new people for its own good. At the end of the episode the camp gets attacked by the infected. In the book Amy is the only person who dies. In the show so many people die. The thing is though, I don't know half of these people. Why should I even care that they got killed off? The Hank Hill person got killed off, but I already didn't like him. That black girl died. I don't even know her name so I really don't care. There were 5 graves and I could only name one of the dead people. Just to many people to remember. Also look at how Amy died.

She looks like she just wanted to get bit. She didn't even try to move!

Once again this show has failed to impress me. I am coming up on the season finally, I'm really hoping that it is good.

Lets Talk About The Walking Dead Pt. 3

The Walking Dead, season 1 episode 3 "Tell It To The Frogs" is the first episode to have no plot points from the book in it. This episode is its own thing. And yes, it still sucks. As if you couldn't tell from the last two blogs I have written about the AMC adaptation of The Walking Dead series, I am not a fan.

This episode opens with the racist, Dixson, still hand cuffed to the roof. He is now completely insane and yelling at himself as the infected claw at the door to come get him. Right after that it cuts to Rick and another survivor, not one from the books so I can't recall his name, talking about leaving Dixson on the roof. This is the most awkward way to introduce a new character ever. I even wrote down the dialog from this scene, it was the bad.

Survivor: Don't you feel bad about leaving him up there to die like that?

Rick: No. He was a danger to himself and all of us. I did what I had too.

Survivor: Well you might not be mad but know who will? His brother.
* Dramatic head turn*
Darrell.

Sorry is Darrell supposed to be a threatening name? Am I supposed to already know about Darrell? Why is this name drop so tense? Darrell is not in the books and this is the first I've ever heard of him. This whole scene just made me feel like I was missing something. The awkward line delivery helped too.

After that scene we get to finally see the survivor's camp, and I must say it looked pretty good. Lori, Carl, and Shane talking. Shane is acting very much like a step dad; I have a problem with this. In the books Lori and Shane have a one night thing and that's what causes Lori to have the baby later in the series. Since this plot point needs to be established for later in the series Lori and Shane have to get together. For some reason though in the show there relationship is more like a couple. This is weird because the outbreak happened one about a week ago. Maybe its just me but I would think that I would need more than a week to get over my husband that I had a kid with. Whatever though.

Rick and all the survivors from the city arrive at the camp. This was another weird scene. In the book 10 survivors are living at this camp, that's counting Rick. In the show when Rick arrives there seems to be quite a lot of people.

I can count 14 people in this photo.

All right so we have 14 people in that frame, right after that it cuts to a different shot where we see 6 other people. That's 20 people right there, maybe there is more off camera! There are so many people when it gets dark they actually have two different fires lit! They couldn't all fit around one fire! My point here is that the writers on this show have come up with way to many new people.

Later that night the time comes for Rick to tell Darrell that he left his brother to die on the roof. Darrell freaks out, and some how Rick, T-Dog, Glenn and Darrell decide to go back into the city to save him. Also Rick dropped a bag of guns on his way into the city, that's what makes the trip worthwhile I guess. Another thing I don't quite get. Everyone in the camp is anti-gun. Guns are too loud and draw unneeded attention to the camp. They seem almost pointless to even have. Why even go back for them than? Seems like a stupid way to risk 4 lives.

While Rick and the others go on an awesome adventure into the city, we get to watch Shane teach Carl how to catch frogs. Because that is a skill you are definitely going to use during the zombie apocalypse. It's just a lame way to show that Shane is acting like a step dad to Carl. This was boring to watch, good thing it cuts to all the ladies sitting around the lake talking about there periods and vibrators. No joke. That is actually what they talk about.

This looks like a lower budget version of Sex & The City.

Suddenly out of the blue this guy, who talks just like Hank Hill from King Of The Hill, walks up to them and starts yelling at them. I couldn't really pay much attention to what he was saying; I was too focused on how much like Hank Hill he was. He even says Hanks catch phrase. "I'll tell you hwat". It's not like a one time thing that he says this, almost every other line this guy has is I'll tell you hwat. Anyways the yelling escalates and he eventually slaps one of the women. By the way before he slaps her he says, "You don't tell me hwat! I tell you hwat!" Once again it is hard to take in the seriousness of the scene when all I hear are King Of The Hill lines. Even if he weren't saying these lines I wouldn't care. Who are these people anyways? They are not in the books and this is the first time I've seen them in the show so why should I even care about theirproblems? I just met them.

I'll tell you hwat.

The episode comes to an end with a scene of Rick and the others returning to the roof top only to find a bloody saw and hand where Dixson was. Darrell screams "no" for 2 minutes straight;yes I timed it. And it fades to black. Nothing from this episode happened in the book. We are now half way through the first season of this show and were not even through the first 100-page comic book it's based on yet. Pick up the pace walking dead. I don't care about all these new people, just fallow the books. They are good, what your coming up with on your own is not.

Lets Talk About The Walking Dead Pt. 2

The Walking Dead extra long premiere episode covered about 35 pages of the already short comic book, I was really hoping that the series would pick up the pace of the show and cover about a book an episode. Its now very clear that won't happen. Episode 2, "Guts" is more or less a throw away episode. It covers almost nothing that happened in the book and introduces a bunch of new survivors that I could really care less about.

Just sayin, for being in a zombie apocalypse those are some nice jeans.

The episode starts with Glenn helping Rick escape from downtown Atlanta. While Rick is running. he is also shooting his gun at pretty much everything that moves. Alerting everyone in a few mile range. Rick makes it to the roof tops and meets a group of survivors. May I first point out that this whole encounter did not happen in the books; half of these survivors are not in the book; and I'm glad they were left out of the books. T-Dog? For real? That's what your going to call your black character? Come on Walking Dead, you can do better than that.

It becomes clear that Rick's gunfire has drawn a lot of infected to the building that the survivors were staying, trapping them in the building they are in. While trying to find a way out it becomes clear that one of the survivors is a hardcore racist who starts bashing on T-Dog, god I hate even writing that name, Rick sucker punched the him and handcuffed him to a pipe on the roof. He is left up there while the others look for a way to escape. Of course someone needs to keep watch on the racist, better leave the black guy. For real? Your going to leave the black guy to watch the racist? It seems like the only reason this was done was to create more tension between these two characters. It might have worked, maybe even could have been cool, if the acting and dialog wasn't so bad! This is my favorite example of this guys horrible dialog.

"Hey baby doll, how bout you get me the key to these cuffs and we go bump uglies?"

I wish this wasn't a school project so I could post some of the stupid racist stuff he said, this guy should be a meme.

Meanwhile with the other survivors came up with the plan that they will steal a moving van that is parked out side the building they are in at drive back to the camp they have outside of Atlanta. The van is parked quite far away so they decided that if they cover them self's in chopped up pieces of the dead they won't notice. This is something that happens, but way later in the book, and instead of going to get a van they are going back for the guns Rick dropped earlier. All covered in guts and feet they head out towards the van. Not even 50 feet into the walk it starts to rain and wash the smell off of them. Of course right? It's got to start raining right when they leave, Rick and Glenn begin to sprint towards the van that conveniently has the keys still in the ignition and drive off.

With all the infected around Rick and Glenn decide that they need a good destruction to get the others into the van. This is when the writers bring in my all time most hated cliche, driving the sports car through the abandon city. Why does this always happen? I've been to Atlanta. There is not a mustang parked on every street. Did they find the mustang in Atlanta? Well good job to them. They steal and hot wire the car with the alarm still going off and proceed to drive around Atlanta as a distraction. I'm not even going to to tell you if that was in the books or not. Take a guess. I'll give you a clue. Its not in the books.

Always gotta be a sports car scene.

Rick pulls the van up to the building and the survivors all jump in. This is the worst part of the episode, maybe even the whole series. As T-Dog is leaving Dixson, the racist, starts yelling that he can't leave him up on the roof to die, its just not right. T-Dog turns back to give him the key but in the process trips and the key falls down the smallest hole possible. This scene was also slowed down to increase the dramatic effect. Instead it just came off as cheesy and bad.

It's things like this that make me hate this show.

Like I said in part one, I really do want to like this show. The books are so great that it seems like it would be hard to mess up the show. By barely fallowing the books, poor acting, bad dialog, cheesy effects and an incredibly slow pace AMC has managed to make this show down right terrible. It has become a chore to watch this show each night.

Lets Talk About The Walking Dead

For the last 3 months The Walking Dead books are all that I have been reading. I have read every book available, from 1 to 14, I've even started to re-read the series. It's that good. So when I found out that the books was going to be turned into a AMC tv series I was nothing but excited. Sadly though, this show sucks. Hard. I'm not just saying that to disagree with its popularity, I will now talk about what went wrong with this starting in this blog about episode 1, Days Gone Bye.

The show opens with Rick and Shane talking in a police car about problems with there wife. This was the first thing that bothered me about the show. When I read I usually don't read with an accent so I guess I just didn't pick up that both of these characters have incredibly thick southern accents. I guess I can get around that, seeing as they are living in the south, but still I honestly don't care about it and the only reason that this scene is in the show is to show that Rick and Lori are having marital troubles and I guess this is to help give more reason to Lori hooking up with Shane, but the scene has some pretty pore dialog and goes on way too long.

Next thing that happens is Shane and Rick get a called to a car chase out on the highway. This is were things changed quite drastically. Everyone has at least one friend who exaggerates storeys, this show exaggerates more or less everything in the books. In the books there is no car chase, its two rednecks shooting at cops from there beater truck, one ends up shooting Rick. That would not be enough though, so they changed the beater truck to a sports car that's flying down the road, hits a spike strip does about 3 flips in the air, blows up, than a gun fight between the cops and the people driving the car. Rick gets shot twice in slow motion in the most dramatic pose you could imagine. Rick than awakes weeks later in the hospital about a week after the zombie apocalypse. I must say, for a man waking up out of a coma in a completely dead world, Rick is VERY relaxed by the whole thing. At best I would say he's mildly surprised by the whole thing.

Just saw a bloody walking dead girl. Terrified. Seriously.

Lets ignore this dudes acting and pretend es actually doing really awesome. Maybe his character is just a hardcore bad ass? So he stumbles through the hospital and eventually finds a way outside. Here is another pretty major change from the book. In the book the whole town is empty, no dead bodys no walking dead people, just Rick. Know what would be really scare though? If when Rick walks out of the hospital there was like a mountain of dead bodys! Like they'll be everywhere! And he has to walk past them! That would be scary right? Yeah that could have been an awesome idea, but like almost everything they changed from the books it didn't work out so well.

The issue with this idea is that instead of leaving it at that they kept the scene from the book where Rick sees the dead girl next to the bike and begins to cry. It sorta defeats the sadness of seeing the single dead girl when you had to walk past the holocaustesque body count to get to her.

See what i'm saying here?

Moving on past that part, Rick heads to his old house in search of his family when a kid hits him in the face with a shovel, Rick passes out and wakes up in there house hours later. That does happen in the book but after hitting him in the face with a shovel they treat him a little nicer. In the show he wakes up to the dad saying he will kill him and not think twice about it. Is that really anyway to treat a coma victim that you just hit in the face with a shovel? It's just seemed like a weird personality thing to change.

"I will kill you and don't you even think that I wont"
Once again, See what i'm sayin here?

In the book Rick stays with this family for a maximum of 5 pages, this show really drags Ricks stay with these people out. Also adding in a smaller sub story about how the family's mom is infected and they have to put her down. Maybe i'm just a dick about this sorta stuff but i just don't care. Even after Rick leaves it fallows these peoples mommy issues. Maybe it's to build up Morgan as a character a little more because he does make a return in the books somewhere around book 10 or 11, but at the speed this show is going that episode will be so far away everyone will have forgotten about this guy.

Rick eventually leaves this family and heads to Atlanta to find his family. He just wonders into the city and gets overwhelmed by the swarms of the dead. Finding refuge in a perfectly placed tank it looks like Rick is about to die. When suddenly over a perfectly placed walkie talkie Glenns voice comes through offering help. The episode ends here. Just a question I have, how did Glenn get ahold of the other walkie talkie in the tank? Was he just randomly surfing channels yelling into them hoping Rick would hear it? How did he know that there even was a walkie talkie in the tank for Rick to hear? That just bugged me a bit.

So that is the end of the premiere episode of The Walking Dead. If your reading this hoping that the show gets better in later episodes let me just tell you now, it doesn't.