The Best TV is Better Than The Best Film.

With True Detective and now Fargo, TV's the place for top-notch, effective story telling. It used to be that film is where one went to see something interesting, innovative and inspiring-not any more. TV played it mainly safe to appeal to the largest audience. Why do people still watch Two and Half Men? Now films seem to do this and focus on spectacle sans story. Not that spectacle is a bad thing, but it is not interesting storytelling.  I'll take True Detective and Fargo over X-Men or Transformers any day.

Of course, there are some interesting things happening in film, but those are few and far between. This summer (2014) has yet to offer any interesting in film--well, at least those that I  have seen. But TV continues with excellent shows. Indeed, there are so many good ones, it is hard to keep up. I have yet to catch up with Mad Men, for example.

The short anthology and TV series offers its creator much more space to tell his/her story. So here's to the great shows on TV that have used the larger canvass to great effect: Breaking Bad, True Detective and Fargo to name a few that leap to mind. I should include Game of Thrones, too. Imagine if GoT was shoe-horned into three or four or even five films like Harry Potter of The Hunger Games? It simply won't work as well. 

Review of Walking Dead Season Two: Survival of the fittest

There are two persistent complaints about season two of The Walking Dead: Hershel’s farm and a paucity of ‘walkers.’ Neither complaint seems appropriate to me. The main criticism that I level toward season two is the inability of the characters to recognize the threat they are in and do what should be abundantly clear—team up. However, this is not to say the season did not entertain; it did. It is not to suggest that the season failed. It was a good season, and season three promises more success.

The season begins effectively with “What Lies Ahead.” The answer to “what lies ahead” reveals a bleak, harsh world that has little room for compassion, cooperation and essentially civility. The group travels along a clogged highway and eventually is forced to stop. The aftermath of the zombie apocalypse is well established in this scene.  Cars clog the highway and dead bodies, people who have met a terrible death, rot inside.

A herd of ‘walkers’ happens upon the group despite vigilant surveillance by Dale from his RV rooftop. This scene strains believability, but it does lead to an intense situation that propels the second season forward. 

Rick quickly alerts the group to scramble underneath the cars to avoid the ‘walkers.” This plan works until, Sophia, Carol’s 12-year old daughter, scrambles out before the last of the ‘walkers’ have shuffled by.  She is chased into the nearby woods by two ‘walkers’ followed by Rick. The first half of the season focuses on finding her and establishing the harsh, cold reality of this world.  

The situation with Sophia as well as the first scene in the pilot establish that nothing, even innocent children, are safe.  Typically, television shows don’t threaten children; it is simply too unpleasant and distasteful to imperil innocent children. Not so here.  

Another theme emerges with much more import in this episode and continues through Hershel’s world view—religion’s diffidence coupled with one’s reconciliation to this reality. While the group scours the countryside searching for Sophia, they stumble across a church. 

Inside the parishioners, instead of having their prayers answered, have transformed into ‘walkers.’  As they shuffle out of the pews into the nave to eat the fresh human food, Rick, Shane and Daryl, kill them with extreme prejudice. The camera cuts to a crucified Jesus, speckled with blood from his crown of thrones as members viciously hack the skulls of the dead.  The group looks toward the image of Christ and several offer prayers. None of them are answered.  Most notably, Rick’s, as he asks for a sign, some help to lead, and promptly witnesses his son shot in the very next scene. This recurring scenario occurs throughout the season—one’s expectations of hope dashed into abject horror.  

The farmer owner and patriarch Hershel revives the notion of religion still having some import in this world. He essentially sees the ‘walkers’ as sick and confides to Rick that eventually a cure will be developed. He views the current apocalypse as nothing more than nature correcting itself, and that balance will be restored; in short, part of God’s master plan. His is remarkably caviler as he articulates his point. However, Hershel’s faith is disabused by the end of season two. After he narrowly escapes the swarm of ‘walkers’ flooding his farm, he tells Rick, in a state of shock and incredulity, that when Jesus promised a resurrection of the dead, he thought it meant something different.  This is perhaps the best line of the series. Hershel is hardly a religious man as season two ends and given that no one’s prayers are answered, the show has a decidedly agnostic world view—it’s ‘survival of fittest.’

When Sophia stumbles out of the barn a ‘walker’ and Rick steps forward to shoot the child-zombie in the forehead, we clearly understand that with the exception of one character, Rick, no one is safe. The title even seems to mock the idea of Sophia surviving--“Pretty Much Dead Already.”  The scene also destroys Hershel’s faith.  

With some shows, we know that certain characters are not in jeopardy. Take True Blood, for example. While two main characters, Eric and Bill, are threatened with death if they fail a mission in a recent episode, we understand that the threat is idle. They won’t be killed, so we hardly care.  The Walking Dead creates consequences and amps the stakes up. Anyone can die, at any time, including children.

The threat to children is real in The Walking Dead.  So because there’s a serious threat to children then there’s a serious threat to humanity’s survival. Children, you have heard, are our future. Rick and Lori’s only child Carl is shot, and they debate if they should even try to save his life. The debate leads to a discussion about the type of world they think appropriate to live in. She further underscores the threat to humanity’s persistence with her pregnancy.  She contemplates aborting the child, but ultimately decides against it. Why should any couple bring new life into this world? Food for the ‘walkers’? 

The show provides juxtaposing viewpoints through two characters: Shane and Dale.  Dale represents the moral conscience of the show—the quaint notion of maintaining a sense of dignity and humanity in an otherwise stark world.  The group’s members find themselves along the continuum. Each eventually moves in one direction along it—away from Dale’s view and toward Shane’s, including Rick. 

Many found Dale’s position frustrating and hopelessly naive. I found Dale to articulate the most sensible and logical position. He argues throughout the series for civility and compassion—his impassioned defense against killing the interloper Randal demonstrates this.

Dale understands precisely what Rick does: working together with Hershel’s family on the farm is the best chance at not only survival but also ‘normalcy.’ Dale and Rick prefer cooperation with Hershel. But as the season ends, autocracy usurps cooperation—Rick’s in charge. 

Dale’s impassioned plea for Randal’s life falls on deaf hears, sans Andrea. (Andrea understands better than most, perhaps, the value of a second chance, though everyone in the group has had close calls.) And to make sure that Dale’s perspective finds little resonance moving forward, a ‘walker’ promptly eviscerates him shortly after giving his speech for civility. Dale’s position is rejected by the group and consequentially the show’s world view generally. 

On the other hand, Shane embodies ‘survival of the fittest.’ His callous killing of Otis establishes that for Shane, it’s kill or be killed. Shane believes he can do what it takes to survive—this includes killing innocent people. Shane has little patience for Dale and even Rick as they operate from a different paradigm. Shane would likely slay Hershel and commandeer the farm if it were his choice.

It is, however, the disharmony caused by Shane that ultimately spells doom for establishing a family life on Hershel’s farm. The warring alpha males, patrol partners, and life-long friends simply fail work harmoniously. The show then forwards the assumption that humans, especially males, simply can’t get along. One must be in charge and everyone else his submissive. The assumption colors the characters and their choices, but it is a world view that scarcely finds challengers.

Certainly, this idea has merit, as one looks through human history and locates spectacular and cruel conflicts. But one would be negligent not to point out human’s harmonious existence. Humans cooperate with each other and have cooperated with each other forever. In fact, were it not for our ability to cooperate, it is likely we would not have persisted. Why, then, does the show prefer to eschew harmony for survival of the fittest? Narrative conflict? 

When Rick stabs his best friend, Shane, the event for the roaming herd of ‘walkers’ to overwhelm the farm is initiated. The herd would have shuffled by the farm had Rick and Shane been able to work out their differences. There would have been no need for Carl to shoot the zombified Shane drawing the attention of the herd.  

The show kills off both Dale and Shane, and their juxtaposing positions, too. However, as season two concludes, Rick establishes authoritarianism over the group. By killing Shane, Rick becomes more like him in a sense. So while Rick may have a gentler hand in administrating his authority, Shane’s orientation to The Walking Dead world is confirmed.  

It is not all doom and gloom; there is a little sliver of hope.  Lori’s pregnancy offers this—can humanity survive? Of course, we don’t know if the child is healthy and “normal”; in other words, not a ‘walker.’ The other note of hope comes via the helicopter. 

The helicopter has appeared twice in the series: once in season one and once in season two. This suggests that some form of an organized government might still remain. If there is, then perhaps there is a safe and secure life awaiting the group. We’ll have to wait and see, but I think not.

Walking Dead Season One Review

If there is one persistent complaint regarding season one of The Walking Dead, it is truncation.  At only six episodes, the first season felt incomplete.  It does end on an interesting cliffhanger, but it ends just as we are getting to know the characters. 

The first two episodes of season one are the best: “Days Gone By” and “Guts.” Perhaps it was because they were part supposed to be part of one episode-the pilot- but later converted into two episodes to develop the characters.  

 

Glen and Rick Olfactory Camouflage

“Days Gone By” is the title of the pilot and it starts off familiarly, familiar to those who have seen the excellent zombie movie 28 Days Later. Rick Grimes, the main character, awakens in a hospital room to a vastly different world than he knew prior. The beginning echoes 28 Days Later, as that is precisely how the story is introduced. However, this is not a distraction as the series quickly develops its own world and plot. 

What is effective about the pilot is that we are introduced to this world as Rick is. He walks out of his room to a ransacked hospital with a room chained shut at the end of the hallway. A pallid hand pokes through the cracks between the chained doors with the words “Don’t Open. Dead Inside” scrawled across it. Very ominous. 

The sense of foreboding continues as Rick leaves the hospital to find stacks of piled bodies.   He sees the half body of a zombie reaching toward him while lying on the grass. The decay is advance so that it is difficult to determine its gender.  Fans of the Webisodes, which are set during the same time, focus on just what happened to her. Titled “Torn Apart” they show just how bleak and depressing this world is.  If you have not checked them out, you should. The Webisodes are quite good. 

Eventually, Rick finds a father, Morgan, and his son, Duane, who essentially save his life by bringing him up to speed as to what has occurred during Rick’s month-long hospital stay as he fought through coma.  They hold up in their house. 

The episode is often quiet as it allows the tension to build.  The series generally does not rely on cheap gimmicks to generate suspense.  Typically, in horror fiction there are several ‘startling’ scenes.  The scene begins quietly, and then a sudden shrieking noise coupled with something jumping out from off-camera, something we have not been privileged to see, into full screen. This is lazy horror fiction and The Walking Dead does not succumb to it.  

So when Rick, still clinging to a world he used to know, decides to travel to Atlanta finds his wife and son, Morgan’s words portend terrible things: “They may not seem like much at one time, but in a group, all riled up and hungry? Man, you watch your ass.” Rick lacks the complete understanding of the threat. As he and we find out, going anywhere where large populations of people lived is a bad idea. 

The emptiness of a large metropolis, in this case Atlanta, unsettles as he rides a horse into it.  The emptiness is eerie and leads to the pilot’s conclusion.  Suddenly surrounded by a mob of “walkers,” Rick barely escapes. Luckily, he scrambles under a tank and inside before the mob consumes him.  

The pilot ends with someone calling Rick inside the tank.  Someone calls him and asks if he’s okay. We learn that a show regular, Glen, contacts him. He essentially reaches out to assist. Whether one should do the “right” thing and help others is a recurring theme in the series. The idea is repeatedly challenged as helping others threatens the group.  

But Rick is saved and in episode two “Guts” Rick becomes part of the group that he eventually leads.  The group had gone into Atlanta to scavenge for supplies and see Rick. They are held-up in a department store. 

One of the first things Rick needed to do within the group is assert his dominance.  A fight between two group members, between T-Dog and Merle, leads to Rick chaining Merle to a pipe. The scene illustrates that not only can Rick take control over situations, but also that the people who have survived languish in their own stupidity—in this case exemplified by Merle’s racism.

It is hard to understand maintaining racist beliefs in a world such as the group inhabits.  Here the notion that the threat is not just from the zombies but from surviving humans filters into the series. Indeed, as hints of season three suggest and comments from the producer indicate; it is the threat from humans that will take center stage.

The escape from the department store, how they decided to execute the plan, is one of the best scenes in the show. Taking a “terminated walker” the group hacks him up to pieces.  They smear the walker’s guts, and body parts all over Glen and Rick. This gruesome scene suggests just where the show’s producers are willing to go. It has to be one of the most disgusting scenes on television. It is putrid, but awesome too. 

The “guts” covered men then slip out of the store and into the streets where thousands of ‘walkers” mill about looking to eat anything. The conceit here is that live humans smell differently than dead ones and the “walkers” can smell the difference. 

There are several problems with this, like if walkers can smell, can they taste? So they must breath to get oxygen into the bloodstream? So can they be smothered to death or drown? How do their olfactory senses working exactly, if they are dead? But no matter because thinking about the “mechanics” of a “walker” leads to dissonance. 

Of course, the group makes it out, but forgets the chained up racist Merle. Future episodes lead the group to attempt to retrieve him, but he had already severed off his hand to escape the hoard of zombies that had broken through the department store’s doors. 

The episodes that lead to the finale serve to introduce characters and solidify the world that the group find themselves in. Rick, in an unbelievable bout of luck, becomes reunited with his wife, son and best friend, Shane, who had been sleeping with his wife Lori. One can hardly blame them, as they thought Rick was dead. 

Episode four, Vatos, introduces another group of survivors, but does not, at least, in season two, return to them.  These survivors are protecting a nursing home. The scene simply feels random, but perhaps that is the point.  Perhaps, there will be random groups of survivors that the group interfaces with and no more. Rick, still clinging to the notion of helping others, leaves the group some guns.

The rest of the group, hidden in the woods, comes under attack by the ‘walkers.’  Rick and his posse return just in time, but not before several members are killed.  Here we are introduced into how a person turns into a zombie. 

One of the show’s recurring characters, Andrea, faces the reality of watching a family member “turn.” The show never loses focus of the humanity and strain the characters are under and the scene with Andrea and his sister, Amy, illustrate this.

Amy has been killed in the attack, and everyone knows that she will “turn.” The only question is when. While other members want to shoot her again in the head and burn here, Andrea wants to do ‘right’ by her sister.  The show often juxtaposes these ideas.

 

For example, another group member, Jim, is bitten.  His fate is sealed; he will turn into a zombie and threaten the group. What should they do?  Kill him? Live him? Tough decisions.

The finale is effective as Rick leads the group back, incredulously, to Atlanta to the CDC.  Rick’s head is still clearly in the “old world” and believes there must be something still functioning normally.  

While Rick’s leadership here proves correct—one lone scientist—allows them into the seemingly secure CDC facility.  The group showers, gets drunk and eats: a brief moment of pleasure in a series that has been relentlessly bleak.  However, this respite is short lived. 

The scientist eventually tells the group everything he knows and the information is not in any way comforting. Indeed, he has decided to commit suicide by allowing CDC facility to blow-up. He offers the group the same opportunity. The blast will be painless and quick. Who wants to live in this world? This is an interesting question and one not so easily dismissed.  Some stay and others don’t.  We are invited to consider the same. Is living the only thing or does how one lives and in what capacity factor into the choice?