The Walking Dead Season 2 Ep 2
Tillie
Sunday night's episode of The Walking Dead may have been the most difficult to watch of the entire series. I've been dreading even writing this review. Rarely have I felt so emotionally drained after an episode of television.
Only Game of Thrones has ever hit me this hard, and at least there I knew most of the deaths from reading the books. I have deliberately chosen to not read The Walking Dead comics to come at the reviews of the show from a clean slate.
Even still, I knew Glenn's death was in the cards. The show changes things from time to time, but they usually stick to some semblance of parity, and I'd had plenty of spoilers from readers in past posts. But I didn't expect it so soon, and a part of me was in denial that it would happen at all.
Glenn is one of my favorite characters by a landslide. He's brave, kind, clever, and has learned to survive without sacrificing his humanity. He deserved better than to fall off a dumpster thanks to the cowardice of the man he tried to redeem. Then again, there's a bit of brutal irony that after sparing his life, Nicholas would still be the death of Glenn.
The last time a Season 1 survivor died was in Season 3, when both Merle and Andrea shuffled off this mortal coil. Merle had a nice moment of redemption, but he was a seriously awful human being and his departure wasn't a big deal (he had recently tortured Glenn, as a matter of fact.)
Glenn, on the other hand, has been here since the very beginning as one of the show's most beloved characters. A part of me recognizes that the impact I'm feeling means that the show is actually affecting and surprising me with good drama; another part of me thinks killing off main characters is a bit of a cheap shot, especially in a situation like this. I'm so torn.
Of those five, Rick often drives me crazy with his reckless leadership decisions (which have now led to Glenn's death) and both Daryl and Michonne are often too tight-lipped and "cool" for lack of a better term. Carol is awesome, but she can be just as hot-headed as Rick. (See, e.g, killing patients at the prison.) Glenn was the only among these with a deep well of humanity even in the face of all this misery and danger, and the only one who had truly found love in the apocalypse.
I'll recap very briefly here. Essentially, we are switching back and forth each episode between Team Rick out with the zombie horde and Team Carol back at Alexandria. This episode takes place concurrently with last week's. So as Alexandria comes under attack, we see Rick and company racing back toward the town to find some way to A) survive and B) either redirect the zombies or at least warn the town.
Rick splits off from the group to go get the RV which he plans to use to redirect the horde. Glenn and Michonne take lead the rag-tag group of survivors back toward Alexandria. Meanwhile Abraham, Sasha, and Daryl lead the part of the horde that didn't break off when the horn sounded toward the drop-off point. Not much happens with those three in this episode.
Rick runs to the RV and gets into a scrap with some walkers on the way. His hand is wounded in the process, and I can't tell if it's been bitten or just cut. The way he almost says something on the walkie-talkie to Daryl makes me think his hand is bitten and we're going to see an amputated Rick in the near future. But I could be imaging things. Just as he's about to tell Daryl something, the RV is attacked by the Wolves that Morgan let escape from the town.
Rick kills all five attackers, and good riddance. It's a super tense fight scene. When he kills the first two, all I could think is "There's three more!" But he makes short work of them through the RV wall.
But then the RV won't start. It's like earlier in the show---way earlier, when Dale was still with us---or Breaking Bad. Only, right now there's a horde of zombies descending on the possibly-bitten Rick. That's where the episode ends, damn it. Credits roll and we're left to wonder.
In the other storyline, Glenn and Michonne lead an increasingly wounded band of survivors back toward Alexandria. The Alexandrians, outside of Heath, are pretty worthless (though for a moment I thought maybe Nicholas would prove his worth and find redemption. Boy was I wrong!)
So with two wounded, one runaway, one bitten and one dead (the whiniest one, of course, who gets ambushed by one of the slow, noisy creatures because apparently in this show nobody has ears or basic perception skills) they decide to stop and very slowly bandage people up.
Michonne guesses that they're half an hour ahead of the herd at this point, but boy oh boy is she wrong. Within minutes, the slow, shuffling zombies have caught up with them and flooded the town. And this is where I start to feel like Glenn's death is sort of unfair and crappy. Every alley they turn down is a dead-end, even though realistically, how many alleyways are actually dead-ends in this world?
I suppose there's a nod here to Rick and Glenn's first meeting in the second episode of the entire show, "Guts." The first time Glenn acted the hero, but not the last. That episode's title is almost a gruesome foreshadowing of Glenn's death.
How does someone like Glenn, a hardened survivor, get caught like this? How do these ridiculously slow zombies ever surround anyone, even with wounded? Even with limping Alexandrians, the living move faster than the dead. Why is this particular town so full of dead-ends? The great drama is chipped away by the contrived obstacles.
It reminds me of when Daryl and Carol got surrounded on a bridge in Atlanta and had to take that van off the side. We're really supposed to believe those two are going to get themselves surrounded like that?
Anyways, it's a very near thing for Michonne also, but ultimately she and Heath and one of the wounded survivors make it back to safety, and to the smoldering fiasco that is Alexandria. Of the entire group of fleet-footed people who can easily outrun molasses-paced walkers, only three make it back. Rick is out about to be surrounded and Daryl and Sasha and Abraham are all doing okay but in a fairly precarious situation themselves, what with the hundreds of walkers following them.
However upset I am about Glenn's death, and whatever complaints I have about the various zombie ambushes that don't make any sense, I still can't help but give The Walking Dead credit where credit is due. This season, even though it's been just three short episodes, is easily the best the show has been in a long, long time.
I don't remember the last time I was so glued to the screen, teetering on the edge of my seat, or shouting "NO!" as things spiral out of control. I don't recall the last time I felt this emotionally invested.
This is great television in a way The Walking Dead really hasn't been great in a long while. I'm not sure where the rest of this season will go, but I can't wait to find out. I didn't think they could top the tension and action of last week's assault on Alexandria, but I was wrong. And I have a nagging suspicion that things are only going to get worse for our struggling band of survivors. And who knows, maybe Carl will finally get a haircut.
So a lot of people are saying Glenn isn't actually dead. At first this seemed like wishful thinking, but between photos of Glenn on the set in costume, to the fact that actor Steven Yeun wasn't on the Talking Dead and Glenn isn't listed with the other dead on that show, it's starting to look like the impossible is possible and Glenn is alive (for now!)
The Walking Dead is an American post-apocalyptic horror drama television series developed by Frank Darabont, based on the comic book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. Together, the show and the comic book series form the core of The Walking Dead franchise. The series features a large ensemble cast as survivors of a zombie apocalypse trying to stay alive under near-constant threat of attacks from zombies known as "walkers". With the collapse of modern civilization, these survivors must confront other human survivors who have formed groups and communities with their own sets of laws and morals, sometimes leading to open conflict between them. The series is the first television series within The Walking Dead franchise.
The Walking Dead premiered on October 31, 2010. It was exclusively broadcast on cable channel AMC in the United States and internationally through the Fox Networks Group and Disney+. The series concluded on November 20, 2022, after eleven seasons and 177 episodes. Andrew Lincoln played the lead character of Rick Grimes until his departure from the show in the ninth season. Other long-standing cast members included Norman Reedus, Steven Yeun, Chandler Riggs, Melissa McBride, Lauren Cohan, Danai Gurira, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The Walking Dead was produced by AMC Studios in the state of Georgia, with most filming having taken place in the outdoor spaces of Riverwood Studios near Senoia, Georgia.
The Walking Dead takes place after the onset of a worldwide zombie apocalypse. The zombies, referred to as "walkers", shamble towards living humans and other creatures to eat them. They are attracted to noise and to scents, including the scent of humans. Humans who are bitten or scratched by walkers die and become walkers themselves. Early in the series, it is suggested that, because any human who dies will reanimate as a walker regardless of cause of death, all living humans carry a pathogen responsible for the mutation that turns humans into walkers. No pathogen is ever confirmed, however. The mutation is activated after the death of the host. The only way to permanently kill a walker is to damage its brain or to destroy the body entirely (e.g. via cremation).
Initially, the series centers on sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who wakes up from a coma in the first episode of the series. While Rick was comatose, the world was taken over by walkers. Rick becomes the leader of a group of survivors from the Atlanta, Georgia region who attempt to sustain and protect themselves against attacks by walkers and against other groups of survivors willing to use any means necessary to stay alive.
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