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Ok I can honestly say an American made TV series just made me slap my hand over my mouth while gasping in utter and complete shock. For once I did not see a swerve ending and it was a helluva gut punch. I loved every second of it!
This season has been so amazing that I almost don't know how to put it into words. I mean I loved the first season, don't get me wrong, but it was pretty much all the Lori/Shane/Rick show. It was ok but honestly the three of them are about the least compelling characters to me.
So what's different this season? In big part it's a matter of expansion. Instead of the narrow perspective we got in the first season the second has focused on really delving into the other characters in the group. In addition to that they started with a zombie attack that served two purposes. One, it showed us how each of the characters reacted and survived it, which gave us a window into their psyches. The big ones were Andrea, her battle with the walker who kind of reminded her that she really did want to live, and Daryl who had been under the shadow of his psycho racist brother Merle for most of the first season but by saving T-Dogg at incredible risk to himself. The lone wolf had somehow become a part of the pack, and that one sequence showed you that he'd dropped the racist nonsense.
What else did the sequence do? It separated one of the two kids from the group, put her in peril of a different sort, off on her own without the support of the rest. And this is the key, this subplot that impelled the season, what the hell happened to Sophia? The search parties and their adventures, Carl getting shot and finding Hershel's farm with its relative safety and secrets, Shane's ill-fated adventure at the aid station, all of it hinged on the mystery of what happened to Sophia.
What else did that mystery do that was incredibly cool? It gave the relatively one-dimensional character, Daryl, a way to expand and become the fan favorite of the season. The quest to find Sophia became his sole driving goal, and I think it did several very important things for his character:
1. We got several glimpses into his childhood and what life was like in the Dixon household. His story to Andrea about being lost in the woods and knowing no one would come looking for him so he'd have to learn to survive on his own. He's a survivor because he doesn't expect anyone or anything to help him, he expects no quarter, no mercy.
2. Which leads to the amazing character study that is "Chupacabra", where we see Daryl insecure about his own intelligence (the dumb redneck teasing he gets from the others clearly rankles him), then out in his element and falling prey to a series of profoundly unfortunate events. When he gets thrown from the horse, falls down the cliff and lands on one of his own crossbow bolts you can't help but think, if I were in that situation I'd probably just lay there and die or maybe scream for help. But Daryl climbs the cliff...falls down it again, gets knocked out, hallucinates about his brother (and my god what a magnificent expository device was hallucinatory Merle), wakes to find a walker chewing on his boot. He grimly beats the hell out of one then pulls the bolt out of his side and takes out the other one...and of course climbs the damn cliff one last time. He drags himself back to camp with, of course, Sophia's doll.
3. And my god the Cherokee Rose sequence where he offers Sophia's mom a sliver of hope by telling her the story about the flower, the Trail of Tears, and the lost Cherokee children... Good god, I defy anyone to watch that without absolutely melting. There's not just a brain beneath that hard-bitten, survivalist front, there's a soul there too. A decent, good soul, possibly one of the best of all of the characters.
4. In the finale, Daryl still in bad shape after the whole "Chupacabra" episode, prepares to head out to search for Sophia again and Carol tries to stop him not wanting to lose him. His response was so damn perfect that I nearly cried. I know some folks were reading a relationship vibe between him and Carol but all I could see was an intense need on his part to a) save the little girl (and in some sense himself when he was her age) and b) putting the mother up on a pedestal (where I expect his own mom existed before her demise). I think the search for Sophia gave him a bigger purpose, a way to be something better than he'd ever been...maybe better than he'd ever believed he could be. The expression on his face when Carol tells him he'd done more for her little girl than the girl's own father ever did, and that he's as good as Rick or Shane...well again, if that doesn't get under your skin you'd better check your pulse.
On the Andrea front I'll admit she's been all over the map this season but I have to say I rather like her now that she's worked out a way to survive in this world. I was also vastly amused when I commented to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tersa, "Oh she and Shane are going to have angry, angry sex in the not too distant future" and by the end of the episode they certainly did. The fact that she's starting to emulate Shane because she sees him as a survivor, is disturbing in the extreme.
And of course there's Shane's downward spiral that is going to not only drive the party from the relative safety of the farm, but will undoubtedly destroy the group to a greater or lesser degree in the coming episodes. He's a ticking time bomb and I doubt that the explosion we saw at the end of this particular episode is going to be the worst of it. That finale where Shane goes ballistic and releases the walkers from the barn where Hershel's been keeping them under the mistaken impression that they can somehow be cured...wow. I think I forgot to breathe during that whole sequence as the bodies keep coming out and the bullets keep taking them down. Then you hear one more shuffling in the darkness and I knew, I just knew who else was in the barn.
Oh god, Sophia with the bite on her shoulder, shuffling out with dead eyes as Carol screamed and screamed.... I just kept moaning, "Oh no, oh no." And that's what television should do to you from time to time, good television anyway. All that time, all those struggles, all for nothing, she was right there in the barn the whole time. God that just rings so true, so real, so right.
How the fallout will effect the rest of the characters, where they will go from here is just a mystery to me. Will Hershel force them to leave? Can he at this point? Will Maggie leave with them? Will she and Glenn remain a couple? I'd like to think so, they're awfully cute together. Will Shane turn on Dale, will he take on Rick himself? Will Carol find a reason to keep going? What's Daryl going to do with himself now? Will Dale let the other know what he knows about Shane, particularly when it comes to shooting Otis?
Argh, so many questions and no answers until February!
This season has been so amazing that I almost don't know how to put it into words. I mean I loved the first season, don't get me wrong, but it was pretty much all the Lori/Shane/Rick show. It was ok but honestly the three of them are about the least compelling characters to me.
So what's different this season? In big part it's a matter of expansion. Instead of the narrow perspective we got in the first season the second has focused on really delving into the other characters in the group. In addition to that they started with a zombie attack that served two purposes. One, it showed us how each of the characters reacted and survived it, which gave us a window into their psyches. The big ones were Andrea, her battle with the walker who kind of reminded her that she really did want to live, and Daryl who had been under the shadow of his psycho racist brother Merle for most of the first season but by saving T-Dogg at incredible risk to himself. The lone wolf had somehow become a part of the pack, and that one sequence showed you that he'd dropped the racist nonsense.
What else did the sequence do? It separated one of the two kids from the group, put her in peril of a different sort, off on her own without the support of the rest. And this is the key, this subplot that impelled the season, what the hell happened to Sophia? The search parties and their adventures, Carl getting shot and finding Hershel's farm with its relative safety and secrets, Shane's ill-fated adventure at the aid station, all of it hinged on the mystery of what happened to Sophia.
What else did that mystery do that was incredibly cool? It gave the relatively one-dimensional character, Daryl, a way to expand and become the fan favorite of the season. The quest to find Sophia became his sole driving goal, and I think it did several very important things for his character:
1. We got several glimpses into his childhood and what life was like in the Dixon household. His story to Andrea about being lost in the woods and knowing no one would come looking for him so he'd have to learn to survive on his own. He's a survivor because he doesn't expect anyone or anything to help him, he expects no quarter, no mercy.
2. Which leads to the amazing character study that is "Chupacabra", where we see Daryl insecure about his own intelligence (the dumb redneck teasing he gets from the others clearly rankles him), then out in his element and falling prey to a series of profoundly unfortunate events. When he gets thrown from the horse, falls down the cliff and lands on one of his own crossbow bolts you can't help but think, if I were in that situation I'd probably just lay there and die or maybe scream for help. But Daryl climbs the cliff...falls down it again, gets knocked out, hallucinates about his brother (and my god what a magnificent expository device was hallucinatory Merle), wakes to find a walker chewing on his boot. He grimly beats the hell out of one then pulls the bolt out of his side and takes out the other one...and of course climbs the damn cliff one last time. He drags himself back to camp with, of course, Sophia's doll.
3. And my god the Cherokee Rose sequence where he offers Sophia's mom a sliver of hope by telling her the story about the flower, the Trail of Tears, and the lost Cherokee children... Good god, I defy anyone to watch that without absolutely melting. There's not just a brain beneath that hard-bitten, survivalist front, there's a soul there too. A decent, good soul, possibly one of the best of all of the characters.
4. In the finale, Daryl still in bad shape after the whole "Chupacabra" episode, prepares to head out to search for Sophia again and Carol tries to stop him not wanting to lose him. His response was so damn perfect that I nearly cried. I know some folks were reading a relationship vibe between him and Carol but all I could see was an intense need on his part to a) save the little girl (and in some sense himself when he was her age) and b) putting the mother up on a pedestal (where I expect his own mom existed before her demise). I think the search for Sophia gave him a bigger purpose, a way to be something better than he'd ever been...maybe better than he'd ever believed he could be. The expression on his face when Carol tells him he'd done more for her little girl than the girl's own father ever did, and that he's as good as Rick or Shane...well again, if that doesn't get under your skin you'd better check your pulse.
On the Andrea front I'll admit she's been all over the map this season but I have to say I rather like her now that she's worked out a way to survive in this world. I was also vastly amused when I commented to
tersa, "Oh she and Shane are going to have angry, angry sex in the not too distant future" and by the end of the episode they certainly did. The fact that she's starting to emulate Shane because she sees him as a survivor, is disturbing in the extreme.And of course there's Shane's downward spiral that is going to not only drive the party from the relative safety of the farm, but will undoubtedly destroy the group to a greater or lesser degree in the coming episodes. He's a ticking time bomb and I doubt that the explosion we saw at the end of this particular episode is going to be the worst of it. That finale where Shane goes ballistic and releases the walkers from the barn where Hershel's been keeping them under the mistaken impression that they can somehow be cured...wow. I think I forgot to breathe during that whole sequence as the bodies keep coming out and the bullets keep taking them down. Then you hear one more shuffling in the darkness and I knew, I just knew who else was in the barn.
Oh god, Sophia with the bite on her shoulder, shuffling out with dead eyes as Carol screamed and screamed.... I just kept moaning, "Oh no, oh no." And that's what television should do to you from time to time, good television anyway. All that time, all those struggles, all for nothing, she was right there in the barn the whole time. God that just rings so true, so real, so right.
How the fallout will effect the rest of the characters, where they will go from here is just a mystery to me. Will Hershel force them to leave? Can he at this point? Will Maggie leave with them? Will she and Glenn remain a couple? I'd like to think so, they're awfully cute together. Will Shane turn on Dale, will he take on Rick himself? Will Carol find a reason to keep going? What's Daryl going to do with himself now? Will Dale let the other know what he knows about Shane, particularly when it comes to shooting Otis?
Argh, so many questions and no answers until February!