Walking Dead Season Two Premiere Coverage: Watch Your Children

Episode Commentary: What Lies Ahead

After they escaped the center for disease control last season, you’d think the characters in AMC’s “The Walking Dead” would have at least a second of euphoria.

That’s how the comic book has been over the years, as writer Robert Kirkman has done an amazing job of forcing the characters to grow through immense pain and sometimes-beautiful pleasure.

On the television show however, the group’s struggle has only begun.

They haven’t gotten an ounce of real happiness yet.

As their emotional and physical fortitude was challenged as they lost Sofia, their mettle continues to be tested every second.

Rick, of course is at the forefront of that challenge. In the middle of a transformation from a straight arrow sheriff to more of a leader and man of action, Grimes’ character is developing into something much tougher. Andrew Lincoln’s portrayal of Rick Grimes has been solid since the beginning, but it’s easy to see he has more baggage on his shoulders this season. It’s making for a show that never lets up and is constantly growing.

His talk in the beginning of the episode to Morgan and his later chat with god lend themselves to the Kirkman style. This is a man torn. He wants to keep his friends and family safe.

Other characters have problems too. The drama between Shane and Laurie, as well as Dale and Andrea is interesting; it takes the show in a completely different direction. At this point in the comic, Shane was dead and Andrea was a completely different character. The same thing goes for Laurie, who is far more supportive of her husband than she ever was in the comic.

Some may think this hurts the show, but it actually separates it from the source material enough to open up a whole league of possibilities.

From here on out, it’s up to the writers to truly scare and entertain. While the characters and scenes are somewhat similar, sometimes enough to make us think of exact moments, this cannot be compared to the comic book anymore.

The cinematography was fantastic as well, as the wide-open roads and horde of zombies early on set the scene, while the closed-in chase scenes in the forest put knots in your stomach. The intro segments scenes where the group was stuck on the road were simply chilling.

It was hard to escape the impatient feeling this episode induced; more needed to happen; safe the build up for a later episode.

The cliffhanger ending involving Rick, Shane and Carl made up for much of that though, but the tempo needs to be kicked up a notch next week.

The drama was good and it was gory, but there needs to be more action.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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