A Look at The First Half of Season 2 of The Walking Dead

When the first season of The Walking Dead premiered I was so excited to finally have a zombie themed show on TV. The first season of The Walking Dead was a blood soaked film grain filled rip roaring good time. During this season all the characters were established well and we saw a good range of situations that would probably happen in a post apocalyptic Atlanta, Georgia. Over all the first season felt satisfying and was exactly what I thought the show would be.

So due to the great run on the first season The Walking Dead was renewed for a second season. With a plethora of great story lines in the graphic novel that the show is based on it seemed to there was no way AMC could lose. Well in some ways they didn’t The Walking Dead turned in some super high viewer counts but does that necessarily mean this was a good season or just that the hype was good? Well in my opinion it means the hype was good because the first half of season 2 has just been far to slow and boring.

When the second season kicked off everything looked good the group of survivors were on the road and headed out of Atlanta to continue to purse their hope of finding a safe zombie free place to live. Eventually on the highway they run into an area where there are to many abandoned cars to continue so they stop and see if they can collect any supplies. At this point im still on board and excited to see what the season has in store. So after floods of zombies come through the highway of abandoned cars the little girl of the group gets chased off and sheriff Rick has to go save her. At this point Rick loses the girl while protecting her. It is this fatal mistake that sends the first half of this season of the series down the drain. How could one little thing cause the season to be so bad? Well its because after this girl gets lost the writers cant seem to get over it and instead of the story progressing or letting us see more of post apocalyptic America we get stuck at a farm house just outside Atlanta and look for this girl for the rest of the season.

Now before you jump to conclusions and think I am someone who needs constant action to like a series I am not. Some of my favorite shows are not very fast paced. But what separates the slower shows that I love from this season of The Walking Dead is character development. If you are going to place your characters in a very boring environment then that time should be devoted to developing the characters and their bonds and connections with each other. This is where the writers of The Walking dead fail this season. While the characters are interacting they never give us a pay off worth dealing with such a dull first half of the season.

However things aren’t quite all bad the season has had some good moments like the relationship between Glen and the farmers daughter, and when Ricks son got shot that caused worth while and realist feeling interaction. And of coarse finding a barn full of walkers but these things still don’t make up for an over all boring season.

To me the first season was like being on a cruise ship and constantly seeing new things and new places but the first half of the second season is more like stopping at a crappy motel along the way to a really good vacation and deciding not to leave. I really hope things pick up when The Walking Dead comes back in February but it will take a lot to make up for such a slow first half of the season.

By Jimmy Bishop

(Article has been edited: I realize when I posted this from insomnia that it was not very well written or thought out and I made some major accuracy mistakes that I know better than to do. Sorry for the issue. Thanks for reading.)

Maybe this could be a good new direction.