Monday, March 31, 2014

1976 - The Walking Dead: season four - part 2


It should go without saying, but read this at your own risk of SPOILERS.  Walking Dead is a funny show for me.  There are few I anticipate watching as much as this when it comes to new episodes - but it’s also the kind of show where once I’ve seen it, I don’t really feel the need to revisit.  It’s very much popcorn and guilty pleasure for me.  I like that it’s nuanced in areas, but again - I get everything out of it the first time.  This isn’t a terrible thing - and I imagine once it’s completely over I’ll go back and marathon the entire thing, but outside of a few touchstone episodes, I haven’t done that.
So this half-season was a different feel than what we’ve seen before but I think it worked well.  We’re dealing with the aftermath of their major battle, and we needed time with each of these characters to regroup.  If the first half of the season was about “Can we come back from what we’ve done.” the second half answers it by asking “Can we come to terms with who we are now given what we’ve had to do?”
I love how this show adapts the comics for their own, often richer, purposes.  Having the young girls and Carol get the murder storyline that belonged to the twins and Carl in the comics worked quite well here.  Having the group that attacks Rick and Carl on the road be the ones Daryl finds himself with was clever as well.  And I can only assume that the folks at Terminus are the series version of The Hunters.  I imagine that’ll be the entire focus of the first half of the next season - I’d be surprised if they milked it any longer.  

I think this is the kind of show that gets better the longer it goes - and what’s really fun is now that we’ve lived in this post-zombie world for a while we’re starting to come across other people and filling in their history and stories is equally interesting.  I can’t wait to see what Terminus is all about.  Fall can’t come some enough…

No comments: