The walking dead 2 mid-season review
The walking dead series is my favourite graphic novel series. Its intense, has good drama, great character development and it focuses more on survival of the humans than the zombies itself. The TV show is no exception. It has all of these things and its even more intense because it can use sound and moving image to get through to the viewer! The first series was great but this is a review of the 2nd series so far and as a fan of the comic I expected to be very unsurprised as I knew where it was all headed. Let’s just say I was VERY surprised with everything! This is why I love the show; the producers don’t want to make the exact same story as the graphic novels. It wouldn’t have the “wtf” factor for the people that read the graphic novel’s and it’s a brilliant marketing scheme.
The series is focused around the exact same location of the 2nd graphic novel with all the major plot points in there but everything that happens in between and most of the plot twists are just in the show. There are even characters in the show that aren’t in the graphic novels and characters dead that should be alive and vice versa. The most interesting plot twist to happen in the first 7 episodes for this season had to have been a little girl going missing. This didn’t happen in the graphic novels; in fact she has an important role in the graphic novels! So I was surprised when it happened and even more surprised that they kept it running for 7 straight episodes. It was starting to lose its intensity and I even thought that they weren’t going to have an explanation to where she was but they did and it blew my mind. Seeing as this is a review however I’m not going to ruin it!
This season has given us a chance to see more of characters we saw very little of in the first season. With this being 13 episodes long instead of 6 its giving the writers a very good chance to explore characters a lot better than the previous season. We are seeing them grow and seeing them act under more intense situations.
However though with more episodes there are more episodes that generally aren’t very intense and lose the feel of the show. Every show needs a few filler episodes to fill the gap in between each important plot point and the story’s are still very interesting so I can’t criticize this much.
The show itself is going more into the zombies than the novels do but it’s not a bad thing! They still have it mostly about the survivors trying to survive than the zombies which are what a zombie show and movie needs to be about! The one thing I’m not happy about though is the fact that they seem to be putting in “special infected” such as a horde of zombies or a big bloated zombie that has gills. This special infected was something taken straight out of dead island! The charm the graphic novels have are that they don’t mutate they don’t change they’re normal infected zombies!...well…not normal zombies…but I’m NOT spoiling that part!
The best episode of the series by far has to be the mid season finale with the best plot twist the shows had. It blew my mind.
With the departure of Frank Darabont from the show I’m a bit worried but I believe that Glen Mazzara will do the show justice! After all everyone else is staying put so its all good!
Overall the walking dead is an amazing show with a few problems here and there but it already has a 3rd season announced, so I don’t have to start a petition to bring it back just yet!
The walking dead returns February of 2012.
Kieran.
