The Walking Dead: Season Two (2011)


Am I the Only One Zen Around Here?

The Walking Dead: Season 2 (2011)Season one of The Walking Dead was so good, I couldn’t help but continue.  Especially since I knew that season four was starting.  Truth be told, season four has already started by this point, and I’ve already caught up and readied myself to start the fourth season, but I’ve resolved to finish putting out the reviews before I start watching.  So let’s rush through this, shall we?  I had a little bit of trepidation before starting season two even though season one was so good because I had heard this was slow and more about human interaction than zombies.  Let’s see what I thought as I review The Walking Dead: Season Two, based on the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, developed for TV by Frank Darabont, and starring Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Scott Wilson, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan, Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn, Emily Kinney, Chandler Riggs, Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, IronE Singleton, Madison Lintz, Pruitt Taylor Vince, and Michael Zegen.

After the CDC turned out to be a bust, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his group set off for Fort Benning.  On the way, the group gets stuck in dead car traffic and must hide while a large group of walkers passes through the area like a herd.  In the confusion, Carol (Melissa McBride)’s daughter, Sophia (Madison Lintz), is chased into the woods by walkers.  While searching for her, Rick’s son, Carl (Chandler Riggs) is accidently shot by a local farmer named Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince).  Otis hurries them back to the farm of Hershel Greene (Scott Wilson), a former veterinarian, who attempts to fix Carl up.  Lacking the necessary supplies, Rick’s former partner Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal) sets off to find them with Otis while the rest of the group continues their search for Sophia.

Y’all people be trippin’!  This season didn’t seem to suffer in my opinion at all.  I guess people complained that there wasn’t enough action in this season and that it was too much about interpersonal relationships.  …Who cares?  The show is awesome BECAUSE of that stuff, not in spite of it!  I don’t think I’d be that into this show if it was all mindless action and zombie killing.  They need some of that (and they get plenty enough for me) but I like it better because it’s more about the human interactions than just the zombies.  So anyone that told me that is a stupid jerk and I hate you.  The Sophia situation kind of slowed things down in the lives of the survivors, but I liked it on a human level.  It probably would’ve been more effective if I hadn’t watched Chris Hardwick’s All-Star Celebrity Bowling before I saw this season, enabling me to put a few things together with a joke that he made to figure out exactly what the outcome of the situation would be about five episodes before it happened, but that’s really my fault for not having watched a great show earlier.  I was still able to get angry early on when that dumb little bitch ran off in the first place.  I don’t want to sound harsh or anything, but maybe she deserves to die in order to punish Carol for not raising her daughter to listen to what adults tell her while trying to save her life, or for running off in the first place when the herd of zombies were about to pass by.  And speaking of bad parenting, why the hell did Rick let Carl approach that reindeer?  Even if he didn’t get shot while trying to pet it, that thing could have gored or kicked him to death pretty easily.

There were lots of very effective moments in this season as well.  The entire scene of the zombie migration was intense and aptly handled.  I also found myself crying, “OH NO!” out loud while Andrea pointed the rifle at Daryl.  My love affair with this show could have ended right there if one of my least favorite characters on the show had killed my favorite character in her stupidity.  I also really liked Daryl’s story about the Cherokee Rose.  Later on, Beth drops a pretty heavy argument in favor of suicide.  Her logic was strong on that one.  It was also effective when Rick admitted he had killed Shane and that if anyone stuck around, it was going to be his way or the highway.  It was like the “This is not a cheerocracy; this is a cheertatorship” speech from Not Another Teen Movie.  I wish he had said it was now a zombtatorship and not a zombocracy.  There were also a couple of moments that were less than effective.  I was not at all surprised by the results of the pregnancy test.  They wouldn’t even have included it if it was negative.  That would’ve just been a giant waste of time.  I think the reveal of what was in the barn wasn’t that much of a surprise either.  Maybe when they got more specific about what was in the barn it was a surprise, but the general contents were not.  The reason for locking them up in the barn seemed much stupider than was typical for Hershel, but I guess he wasn’t in his right mind about it.

I can’t really say much about the look of this show.  Still great.  That swimmer in the well was exactly as disgusting as it should’ve been, and the part where the walker was peeling off his face while trying to stick it through the hole in a windshield was pretty awesome.

All of the performances in the show remain fantastic.  About half of the characters remain assholes.  I didn’t have many thoughts about Rick this season.  He may have spent too much time whining around his unconscious kid.  I couldn’t really get behind how quickly he let Lori off the hook for cheating on him.  Sure, she thought he was dead, but maybe take more than a month to mourn before moving on.  Now that I think about it, that’s more of a complaint about Lori.  And here’s a couple more!  I hate that bitch so much!  Not that I was on board with Shane through most of this season, but this bitch could have stopped dragging him along.  Do you want him or not?  “Stay away from my son!”  “I’m so happy you risked your life for my son!”  You don’t know what you want so much it’s like you’re a woman or something.  Speaking of which, she’s also terrible at driving!  She crashes a car and almost gets killed by walkers because she’s full on reading a map while driving.  I assume she was on her way to pick up makeup that she could put on while driving on the way back.  I got mad at her again when she was shitting on Hershel because he was trying to save her sons life and he was just a veterinarian.  Alright, bitch.  Go pick from one of the thousands of human doctors you have at your disposal.  Animals basically function in the same manner as humans do, and you don’t have a whole lot of choices.  The worst thing she did was getting pissy when Rick killed Shane.  He was trying to kill him!  Are you just mad because he narrowed down your options of men to cheat on him with?  Now you have to start considering Hershel?  I also don’t understand her logic in not wanting to let Carl learn how to shoot.  I’m not saying let him carry around a gun all the time, but would you rather he get killed by walkers because he can’t hit shit?  Speaking of which, Carl was a bit of a little shit in this season.  Most of the time I couldn’t tell if he was gravitating more towards his dad or Shane.  There’s even a point where we’re not sure if he’s going to shoot his dad or Shane.  It was a good shot when he finally made it though.  Of course, the little asshole is the cause of one of the nicer people on the show dying because this little asshole had to go and pester a trapped walker until it was able to free itself.  Never really got on board with the Andrea character either.  First off, she shot Daryl.  She also sucked with a gun for most of the season, and she fucked Shane.  I don’t think I disliked her enough to just forget she existed when abandoning the farm as the other survivors did, however.  I don’t know what the kid’s name was, but I also thought the young kid that lived on the farm was a dumbass.  Why didn’t he start driving off once Carl and Rick jumped onto the RV?  Fuck letting them climb down while you wait so you can get eaten by walkers!

I do like a lot of the people in the show, however.  Daryl is the best.  He seems like such a nice guy under his gruff exterior, and he’s the most useful person in the group.  He can track, his weapon can be used at any time, and he carries around a giant baggy of useful drugs.  I loved how dedicated he was to finding Sophia, and I kind of hope he winds up with Carol.  She looks like she needs a little lovin’.  Glenn is also great, but I think my favorite thing about him is Maggie Greene.  It’s about damned time I got to see some of that sexy ass Lauren Cohan!  I also liked Otis, and I was pretty sad to see what happened to it.  I wasn’t surprised by it because that Shane is a piece of shit, but I was sad.  Hershel was also very likeable, especially since he was supportive of Glenn’s relationship with Maggie.  I wasn’t expecting that conversation to go that way.  She wasn’t named in this season, but the lady with the samurai sword seems like she’s gonna be my jams.  That’s exactly how I’d roll in the zombie apocalypse.

Season two of The Walking Dead was every bit as enjoyable to me as the first season.  I suppose if all you want out of a series is random glory shots of zombie’s heads exploding then you might find the human drama a little boring.  I would also find you a little boring.  The only problems I’ve had with this series so far are that some of the characters are assholes and idiots.  But I only hate those characters, not the performers.  They are also awesome.  And I suppose the show wouldn’t be as interesting if there weren’t some assholes for me to want dead.  Check this season out on Netflix.  I already purchased it.  Moving on to season three as soon as possible.  The Walking Dead season two gets “Merle Dixon’s clap is the best thing that ever happened to you” out of “If I hadn’t done what I did, you would be dead now.”

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The Walking Dead: Season One (2010)


You Just Rang the Dinner Bell.

The Walking Dead: Season One (2012)I believe I intended to write a review for this TV show last October but I must’ve forgotten.  This year I would not make the same mistake.  The October Horrothon has given me the excuse to watch the Blu-ray that I purchased when it released in 2011.  It sat on my shelf for 2 years, forgotten.  It was not intentional on my part.  I’ve heard nothing but great things about this show, but it got filed away with the other shows like Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad that I subconsciously refuse to watch because they’re supposedly so good.  Maybe I’m afraid that these shows can’t possibly live up to the expectations that the world has set for me for them.  But it’s October, season four is about to start, and I need to find out if I wasted money on The Walking Dead Season One, based on the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, developed for TV by Frank Darabont, and starring Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Emma Bell, Steven Yeun, Jeffrey DeMunn, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, IronE Singleton, Jeryl Prescott Sales, Melissa McBride, Adam Minarovich, Andrew Rothenberg, Michael Rooker, and Noah Emmerich.

Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is shot in an altercation with some criminals and slips into a coma.  After an undetermined amount of time, he awakens to find the hospital torn apart, with blood and bullet holes lining the walls.  He returns home to find it deserted, his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and son Carl (Chandler Riggs) apparently having escaped.  While trying to wrap his mind around the situation, a young boy named Duane (Adrian Kali Turner) hits him in the head with a shovel.  When he wakes up, Duane’s father Morgan (Lennie James) explains that while Rick was unconscious the world was overrun by zombies, or “walkers.”  Rick gets them into the police station where they get stocked up on guns and ammunition, and then Rick sets off alone to Atlanta, where it’s said there is a safe zone.

This show gets a mighty “Hell Yeah!” from me.  And I’m told this isn’t even the best season!  I can only hope that’s true because this season was fantastic.  It’s awesome because it’s equal parts zombie horror and human drama, and both of them work fantastically.  The show opens very effectively, giving the audience the zombie stuff that we need because that’s what brought us in before giving us the backstory we also require.  And it gives us so much in that small amount of time.  It shows how long things have been like this, how bad they’ve gotten, and the scene with the little girl zombie shows us that Rick is a good guy.  He tries to save her until he realizes half her face his missing.  The length of time was well-illustrated by the deserted cars at the gas station, but poorly illustrated by the mail overflowing from the mailbox.  How does that make sense?  It was bad enough for Lori to abandon her home but the mail service continued for a week?  But that first episode doesn’t only open strong; it also closes with a bang.  The reveal of the picture at the end of the episode was harsh.  The second episode taught me a couple of things.  The first is that women really do like to fuck in dangerous situations.  I thought that was just a thing they did in bad horror movies because they wanted to get some boobies in their movie.  But when this show does it I believe them.  The second thing I learned is that this show is good enough that they can make me feel bad for a racist dick like Merle Dixon.  When they reached episode four, I was surprised to see that the Vatos Locos from Blood in, Blood out apparently survive the apocalypse.  They weren’t kidding when they said “Forever” were they?  Then they started making me angry because they were acting like Rick’s crew started the fight.  You guys jumped them!  And if you’re going to argue that those guns could’ve belonged to everyone since they were just left in the street, then you’re right.  So it’s a good thing that the first people that came across them were the actual owners, I suppose.  Then they take a rather interesting and unexpected turn with the Vatos, catching me off guard yet again.  I was also expecting some huge reveal near the end of the season that Merle brought the walkers to the camp.  That’s not the way they went, but what they did was still very emotional.

I can’t really say a whole lot about the look of this show.  It’s fantastic.  There’s not much more to say than that.  The corpses are amazing, the walking corpses are amazing, everything is amazing.  I specifically use the term amazing because I think about how amazed the people that inspired these stories would be if they realized what was possible now.  On TV no less!  Romero’s first movie couldn’t even imagine this level of zombie effects.  All they did was white face paint!

Every actor in this deserves the accolades they’ve been given.  They’re all amazing.  I was especially impressed with Andrew Lincoln when I watched the Behind the Scenes stuff.  That dude’s from England!  He has an English accent!  Never would have guessed that from the show though.  And beyond that, he’s still one hell of an actor.  Lennie James was also fantastic, particularly in scene in the when he was about to shoot his wife.  I would’ve liked a little resolution with his story, but the story is so well-written that I have to imagine they will pay it off at some point.  They did with the grenade and I was all but sure they forgot they had that.  I did get irritated with his son though.  I understand the reason for him crying when he sees his mom as a zombie, but do you have to be so fucking loud about it?  I know people can cry without screaming; I’ve seen it happen.  I might have smothered him with that pillow instead of getting him to cry in it.  I would have to say I never really got on board with this Lori Grimes lady.  Sarah Wayne Callies does a great job playing her, but that woman works my nerves something fierce.  Much more in season two, but she did her part here too.  I could say it was because she fucked Shane, but I don’t really blame her for that.  Now when she fucked Rick in the same tent where her young son was sleeping, I can blame her for that ickiness.  How do you know he won’t wake up?  Did you test that theory out with Shane a few times?  I kept going back and forth on my feelings about Laurie Holden’s Andrea character.  I hated her when I was first introduced to her, when she got all up on Rick’s jock for getting them into the situation with the walkers.  He didn’t do shit to you!  He got HIMSELF into the situation.  Glen got you all into the situation by choosing to rescue Rick.  Rick owes you a thanks, but you can go ahead and shut the fuck up.  Then I got a little confused by her when she started complaining about having to do the laundry, but mainly because it was an instant before it cut to four of the menfolk risking their lives to save Merle.  But you’re right: rubbing clothes against a washboard is tough stuff.  I did get back on board when I thought she might make a critical (and cliché) zombie survival mistake involving her sister, but thankfully she did not.  I also found myself quite fond of Steven Yeun as Glenn, especially since we meet him as he’s dressed like a grown up version of Short Round or Data from Goonies.

I’m done wasting time on season one of The Walking Dead.  I’m almost done with season two by the time I’m finishing writing this.  Season one is real good.  I was not disappointed, and that says a lot with the level of praise I had heard for this series.  Season two seems to be turning out well also, but we’ll get to that later.  For now, I will recommend you find a way to watch this series.  I had already purchased season one, and season one caused me to purchase season two.  I’m told it’s on Netflix.  Do it whichever way you like.  Season four is not far away, as I have been told.  GET INTO IT!!  Season one of The Walking Dead gets “I remember my dream now; why I dug the holes…” out of “We’re going to need more guts.”

WATCH REVIEWS HERE!  YouTube  OTHER JOKES HERE!  Twitter  BE A FAN HERE!  Facebook  If you like these reviews so much, spread the word.  Keep me motivated!  Also, if you like them so much, why don’t you marry them?!

The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)


Trust No One, Mr. Mulder.

Today’s review was requested by my friend Tiffany, and I was more than happy to oblige.  It had been years since I last saw this movie, and it may even have been when it was still in theaters that I last saw it.  I had been a fan of the show that this movie spun off from since day one.  So much so that one of my fondest memories from my youth was going to a convention for the TV show with my mother.  So when I decided that I would review this movie, I went over to my shelf to grab my DVD until my heart sank.  I don’t own this movie.  I have the second movie, but not the first one.  Whatever could that mean?  When I originally saw this movie, did I hate it?  Did I hate it so much that I could overcome my OCD and only own one movie in the series?  I didn’t remember!  There was only one way to find out.  I immediately put the movie on my Netflix queue and, when it came in, set about watching it.  Let’s see what happened in my review of The X-Files: Fight the Future, written by series creator Chris Carter, directed by Rob Bowman, and starring David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Martin Landau, William B. Davis, John Neville, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mitch Pileggi, Blythe Danner, Jeffrey DeMunn, Terry O’Quinn, Dean Haglund, Bruce Harwood, Tom Braidwood, Glenne Headly, and Lucas Black.

The film opens on the icy tundra known as North Texas, about 35,000 years ago.  We watch as two cavemen enter a cave and fight with some kind of green monster, the blood of which oozes towards the caveman and infects him with something.  We’ll find out about that later.  About 35,000 years later, when Texas has thawed out nicely.  Here and now, a little kid (Lucas Black) falls through a hole and finds a human skull, and then he finds a black oil that crawls through his skin and turn his eyes black.  When his friends get the firemen to rescue him, the three that go down after him go missing as well.  But to hell with that noise; let’s see what FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are up to!  They’re messing around on the roof of a building in Dallas, investigating a bomb threat.  Finding nothing, they go back downstairs and Mulder goes off to get a soda from the vending machine, only to find that the delicious soda goodness in the machine has been replaced with C4.  Special Agent in Charge Darius Michaud (Terry O’Quinn) orders everyone to evacuate the building as he disarms the bomb.  As Mulder and Scully begrudgingly leave, the building explodes, killing Michaud as well as a young boy and three firemen.  Why does that sound familiar?

In much the same way as Tiffany loves me; I love the X-Files.  And that is with all my heart and equally as sexually because the X-Files has Gillian Anderson in it.  But I still really liked this movie and have no good reason to not have it in my collection yet.  The story of the movie is really tight and keeps your attention all the way through, but I can’t say I really expected anything else.  This movie was set into motion after the X-Files already had five successful seasons.  They knew how to make a great story.  And their shows were an hour a piece, and some were two or three part stories.  So how would they have a difficult time translating that into a story that would last 114 minutes?  They wouldn’t!  They also have a fairly unique ability to have the story of their movie continue on through their TV show.  The story is the same kind of thing that you’d find in the TV show: government cover ups and aliens.  They allow the mystery to unfold nice and slowly, and end it with a great climax that gives the audience most of what they want, but they don’t give you everything you want.  I did wonder about one thing from the story, though.  It’s when the people are talking about how to stop Mulder.  One suggests killing him, but they write that off because it would make him a martyr.  They then decide they should take from him something he loves most, and that turns out to be Scully.  But how would taking Scully away stop Mulder?  I mean, you’ve seen what happens to this guy when he gets an idea in his head about something.  That would just lead to him being a man on a mission the likes of which you’ve never seen before.  Then Mulder proves that for me later in the movie.  I think most of the people watching the TV show always hoped that Mulder and Scully would end up together, but they never really did it.  It usually just got as far as having Mulder make flirty comments to Scully.  In this movie, after an emotional confession by Mulder, the two almost kiss before a bee stings Scully and interrupts it as a nice, calculated “Fuck you” to the audience.  You’ll get your love story eventually, but not just yet.  I also wondered if the scene where Mulder was pissing on a poster of the movie Independence Day was another little “Fuck you”.  I like all of the dialogue in the movie as well, particularly the lines from Mulder.  He always has a nice little joke on deck, like when he said that the two strange, round buildings in the middle of the cornfield were Jiffy Pop poppers.

The performances are also totally great, but the characters also had the luxury of at least five or six years to settle into their characters.  The new people that were added to the equation were also just top notch actors, so they really could do no wrong.  I love David Duchovny.  He’s vaguely serious, but usually more snarky.  He doesn’t try too hard to be funny, usually getting there with more of a dry wit, but I like dry wit.  Gillian Anderson is ever present to be the straight man to Mulder, occasionally breaking her serious façade, but usually being all business.  Also, she’s fuckin’ sexy.  Remember a time when a beautiful woman could be noticed as being gorgeous and sexy while constantly wearing a suit?  How did she ever manage to become a sex symbol without showing up on camera with electrical tape over her nipples and nothing else?  However it is done, she pulls it off.  It leaves it all to the imagination, and I like that.  And my imagination does go wild.  Like when Mulder is rescuing her near the end of the movie and he comes across her clothes lying in the chamber they used to transport her there.  Mulder wraps her in his jacket and they make their way out of the facility through a vent.  My imagination envied Mulder for what he must’ve been seeing; crawling through the vent behind Gillian Anderson dressed only in a jacket over her nakedness.  But then they get out of the facility and she’s suddenly wearing pants!  Where’s the verisimilitude?!  I also got to wondering what Gillian Anderson has been up to recently.  The last time I saw her was the second X-Files movie.  Well, wherever she is and whatever she’s doing, I like to think that she’s doing it naked.

The X-Files was awesome, and the first movie they made from the already awesome series had not lost any of its quality.  The story works very well, capturing everything we loved about the TV show, from the mystery, the government cover ups, the paranormal, and the sometimes flirty relationship between Mulder and Scully, who continue to bring their characters to life amongst a slew of other great performances.  Great movie, and one that I need to purchase as soon as possible.  The X-Files: Fight for Future gets “After all you’ve seen you can just walk away?” out of “Look, if I quit now, they win.”

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