Series Dissect: The Walking Dead S03E04 - Killer Within

Spoiler Alert

Killer within will destroy all you think you know about TWD

I have only one word to describe TWD’s fourth episode: CARNAGE.

Total fucking carnage.

Finally, the show has its edge back. It’s TWD equivalent of G.R Martian’s A Storm Of Swords book 2, which if you’ve read will know what I mean. It’s TWD at its best. No one is safe; no one is above getting ripped the fuck up.

Pro:

We open before the credits to a mystery person cutting the gates of the prison and placing a bloody heart at the gates to lure walkers in. Who is it? Why are they doing that, we ask the person/imaginary friend sat next to us?

Pro:

For the first time in this season we see some light heartedness. The group are relaxed and are making plans for the future of the prison. Rick wants to grow crops, but doesn’t want to do it on walker rotted soil, so the boys set about disposing of all the walker bodies out of the prison. Happy Happy.

Con:

These people turn up again. I thought we were over this. But apparently they still want in on the Ricktatorship. But, alas, they are denied. T-Dog gets a line too. He feels that by not letting them in the group they’re as good as killing them. Well done T-Dog, keep it up. More of this and we might actually care about your character.

Pro:

More good news for the group, Hershel is back on his feet and seems to be coping well with being a uni-leg. I’m coming to like that he’s a tough old boot, is Hershel. Still be better dead though.

Con:

Over in Woodbury, Andrea’s vagina falls even deeper for the Gov, who, after such a big deal made about how he never reveals his name to anyone, tells her that it’s Phillip. Important.

Pro:

Michonne inspects the tank they brought in last week and sees the bullet holes and the blood that covers it. She subtly tells the Gov that she suspects them of being bandits.

Pro:

Merle wants to go and look for his brother Daryl, after Andrea tells him the location of Hershel’s farm. He wants Andrea for sexy time. 

Pro:

Merle asks the Gov for permission, but is told that the Gov needs him right where he is in Woodbury. What game is he playing? I’ll tell you what game. Zombie golf, that’s what. Four!

Con:

Andrea tells Michonne she wants them to stay in the village a few more days even though Michonne’s super instincts are telling her that they need to leave.

Pro:

Zombie Attack! Ruining the first smile-fucking between Rick and Lori in a long time, walkers burst in from the gate that was opened before the credits. Gore ensues. Uni-leg and daughter girl manage to get to a safe place for some reason.

Pro:

This happens to T-Dog:

Con:

Carol is still wearing this head wrap. Important:

Pro:

T-Dog throws himself to the walkers to save Carol. He's been bitten and knows he's dead anyway. Bye T-Dog, you were a great... I mean, I will miss... anyway, see ya.

Con:

Carol may have died anyway, as the group find her hideous headscarf on the floor next to a half eaten body. Clearly it didn't repel walkers like potential boyfriends, as was her plan.

Pro:

Rick and the boys struggle through their own security to get back inside the prison to help the rest of the gang.

Pro:

Lori starts to get contractions while on the run from walkers with Carl and Maggie. They hide in a boiler room and Maggie prepares to help Lori give birth. But something is wrong and Lori starts to bleed. Lori knows what the problem is and we now know she had a c-section with Carl. She persuades Maggie to cut the baby out of her even though she knows it will kill her.

Pro:

That leads to a very moving moment between Lori and Carl as they say goodbye. Lori tells Carl to always do the right thing, even though it's so easy to do the wrong thing in this world.

Pro:

Maggie cuts along Lori’s c-section scar and within seconds Lori is dead. Maggie pulls the baby from her. There is a second when we don’t know if the baby is alive or dead, but we hear its cries and we know it’s okay.

Pro:

Carl shoots his dead mother in the head to stop her returning as a walker. This is what TWD is about.

Con:

It turns out the prisoner that Rick left outside for the walkers to kill two episodes back didn’t actually die, and it's revealed he was the one who opened the gate to let the walkers in. He and Rick scuffle for reasons. 

Pro:

Replacement black guy kills his fellow prisoner who let in the walkers and then does this. We like replacement black guy now.

Pro:

Rick is about to look for Lori and Carl when Maggie show up with the baby in her blood covered arms. Sidenote: why is she walking like she just gave birth?

Pro:

Rick knows Lori is dead.

The end.

More of this please, TWD. I need to go and cry now. Bye.

Horror Short: No Way Out

I had my own No Way Out experience when I had a friend come to stay with me recently for the weekend. He had just gotten back from a year in India and talked of nothing but his trip. For the WHOLE weekend there was No Way Out.

My trauma was way more horrific than this film portrays, so when you watch it, just imagine me as the main guy (a far more interesting protagonist), and my friend as the squid thing (oddly similar in shape).

If you can watch this short in its entirety without wincing then you’re made of some tough stuff, bitches.

Also, is it me, or does an overweight protagonist just invoke less empathy towards the character than if they were hot like Ryan Gosling, for example? Something to ponder this Monday.

Enjoy

Series Dissect: The Walking Dead S03E03 -- Walk With Me

SPOILER ALERT

Watching zombie porn  seriously fucks you up, kids

The third episode from season 3 of TWD, Walk With Me, Michonne finally gets some screen time. But not just some screen time. The entire episode is dedicated to the blade-swiping adventures of Andrea and Michonne, whom I’ve now dubbed Midrea, which is only befitting of their power couple status.

But enough of that. On with the show.

Pro:

We open with Midrea are taking a stroll; when they witness a helicopter go down. They decide to go investigate, taking Marley and Marne (their pet walkers. Not their names but I thought it was cute) with them, obv. This is important because it’s the first real military presence we’ve seen in the show since the very beginning.

Pro:

While amid the rubble of the helicopter, two cars pull in and they hide, watching the men get out and scavenge the wreck. Also Midrea doesn’t know that when people die they turn into walker regardless of being bitten, so they seem shocked when one of the men we’ll come to know as the Governor, stabs the dead bodies in the head.

Pro: 

Marley and Marne get a little rambunctious in the bushes, which leads Michonne to do this from fear of being discovered by the head stabbing men:

Pro: 

However they are discovered by… guess who… that’s right Merle!!! Merle is back. Hi Merle. Merle is Daryl’s brother, who was left on top of a roof in season 1 handcuffed to a pipe and inevitably had to saw off his own arm to escape (just realised how dark that was. I miss that darkness). Anyway Midrea turn around to see this face:

Pro: 

Obv Merle knows Andrea so they have some catch up time. Merle seems pretty together considering he now has a metal stump where his hand was.

Con: 

Andrea passes out for reasons and both are taken, blindfolded, with the men, where she receives medical attention and both are persuaded to stay the night. This ep is quickly loosing its edge. Come on, people.

Pro: 

Midrea discover they are in a walled town where the people have been living as a community, known as Woodbury. It’s all very calm with lots of vegetable growing. Michonne doesn’t trust these people, which leads to lots of these looks (which I love) but Andrea persuades her to give it a couple of days.

Con:

Andrea's lady parts like the Gov.

Pro:

There’s a lab and science stuff with electrodes and science things. Very important. Milton, the science guy, is impressed with Michonne’s ingenuity with her pet walkers, as she removed their arms and jaws so they cannot eat people. Milton has discovered that if you take away a walker’s ability to eat they become almost sedate. Milton wants to ask Midrea some questions and discovers that Michonne possibly knew her pets before they were walkers. Andrea expresses that she knows almost nothing of Michonne.

Pro:

After talking to a survivor of the helicopter crash the Governor, who no one knows his real name for reasons, goes to where the man said the rest of his military gang are waiting for him. The Gov goes to meet these men and we discover that the men of Woodbury have been killing military for their supplies. They ambush and kill them all. The Gov then lies to the townspeople, telling them they were already dead. How convenient. 

Pro:

That night, the Governor opens a secret door in his room and goes inside, where he sits in a chair and stares at aquarium tanks filled with decapitated heads, one of which belongs to the pilot, implying that the Gov had him murdered as well.

Pro: 

My powers of deduction tell me these people are stuffed full of secrets. How do I know? Merle told me.

The end.

Okay so we’ve seen a complete change of tone in this episode, not to mention not a hint of Rick and the gang. I’m assuming that the two groups will at some point merge together for one big blow-out.

With the Ricktatorship becoming so dark recently it’s good that the show has presented an even worse alternative, or perhaps even a destination of where Rick’s road could lead him, but at least this keeps the audience on the side of Rick and the gang for now.  

Wow, not many cons in this episode so I guess it was a good one. I like that we’re beginning to get a wider sense of what the world now is, instead of just the perspective of one group. Keep it up TWD. More next week, walking dead bitches.

Series Dissect: The Walking Dead S03 E01: Seed

SPOILER ALERT

Moody: is it me, or has The Walking Dead suddenly become sexy?

The first episode the long (well a few months) awaited season 3 of The Walking Dead finally aired earlier this week and with it we revisited a few of our favourite friends: suspense, darkness and gore.

Like everyone with eyes, I was blown away by the first season of TWD, in every respect; the edge, the story, the impeccable effects and the fact that underlying everything was the sense of dread that sooner or later they will all become “walkers”.

Season two, which I’ve dubbed Zombie Farm, took place on… a farm full of herding zombies grazing on the human meat situation that held up there. What pissed me off about season 2 was that they killed off Shane, which was basically fifty percent of its edge.

I didn’t want S3 to become another series about the crusade of keeping “humanity” alive. I wanted a Shane-style kill or be killed attitude to engulf the group. I wanted death to rain down on them and for it to become the norm to slaughter zombies, as one would casually flick dust from one’s jacket.

So did I get what I wanted? Or has TWD S3 done the inevitable thing of laming down to cater to its increasing audience?

I’ll break it down pro and con for ya’ll.

Con:

They changed the title credits. One of the creepiest parts of the show was seeing the photos of people and being reminded of their lives before the dead walked. Now the credits features this, and gives away that the whole season will be heavily set in a prison, which may cause me to name this season’s show Zombie Prison Break.

Pro:

Carl now shoots stuff, and he’s good at it.

Con:

Carl’s new (and only since he's three years old) love interest is Hershel's daughter Beth. Boring.

Pro:

The show is set after a presumably slow winter, since no one died, and Lori is now about to pop with a baby (possibly the now dead Shane’s).

Pro:

This badass needs to feature more than the two seconds they gave her this week. She and Andrea are now BFFs. She has a samurai sword and keeps walkers as pets.

Pro:

The gang perform mass murder on some walkers after finding a prison that could be a safe place for Lori to birth. Not only do they slaughter the walkers but also on occasion you actually think they’re getting off on it.

Pro: 

This face

Pro:

Zombies wearing helmets. This kind of feels like we’ve just entered a new level of a videogame where the zombies are now harder to kill.

Pro:

Rick pulls the face off a walker. Gore. Classic. Faceless chic.

Con:

Rick and Carl are now angry with Lori for reasons that aren’t clear. Either they’re really slow and have just realised the baby may not be Ricks, or something has happened during the winter. Anyway there’s tension.

Pro: 

Lori might have a zombie walker baby inside her that wants to eat its way out. This would be awesome. MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

Con:

Weird back rub time between Daryl and Carol. Obviously there will be some exploration of these two hooking up. Clearly things are desperate.

Pro:

The gang decides to enter the creepy prison for reasons.

Pro:

Hershel gets his leg chewed by a walker. Side note: He makes his girls sing to him and represents wholesomeness. I WANT HIM DEAD.

Pro:

Rick hacks off Hershel's leg with an axe to try and stop the walker infection from spreading. Rick is almost dead inside. I love it.

Con:

Then the gang are trapped in the prison surrounded by walkers. Will they escape? The first two seasons were done in such a way that we just didn’t know whether Rick would survive and it was intense. Now I have no doubt he will survive, which kind of makes this pointless.

Con:

Then these people show up. Prisoners still alive. Not more people with ambiguous intentions, I hope? Also, how have they survived?

The end.

So, darker than the inside of a pig’s belly, but do we care about these people anymore? 

I Can’t wait for next week to see if old man pray-a-lot dies and whether Lori needs to perform a Prometheus style c-section. So I guess I’m hooked already.

Check back for next week's TWD Series Dissect.