The Walking Dead: Chupacabra (205) Reviewer: RC Murphy
This episode had a lot going for it. A. Lot. So much so that I had to sleep on an idea on how to tackle this review. Which, by the way, didn’t help one dang bit. My head is still spinning. The writers for TWD are mean, mean people. I’m just going to jump right in and hope this makes sense.
Carol broached the subject of an internal power ranking system for the original group of survivors. For Hershel’s family, it is obvious who is in charge. With the other group it gets fuzzy because there are so many males vying for that top spot. You have to look at them like a pack of wolves. As Carol sees it, and others as well, Rick and Lori are the Alpha mating pair. Where it gets murky is trying to rank the rest of the group. Who is the Omega member? That one person left to fend for them self until they prove their worth, takes the brunt of everyone’s aggression, but also is there to ease tension in their own way. Can you guys figure it out?
Glenn and Maggie get a lot of grief this episode as people begin to connect the dots and see something brewing between the two. Maggie is treated like a child, scolded for making the decision to get close to someone not approved by Hershel. He has such a tight grip on everyone who lives on that farm that the idea of one of his slipping free to interact with the newcomers tweaks his nose big time. She’s lonely and wants to reach out to feel alive again after god knows how long of simply existing. Glenn flat out admits to Dale his reason behind wanting Maggie. Any day could be his last. In a world where the dead don’t stay dead nothing is certain, least of all tomorrow. That being said, poor Glenn needs lessons in wooing a lady. Maybe Shane, the ladies man that he is, can teach him a few things. Or not. Shane can gather notches on his headboard, but none of them are meaningful relationships. I don’t think he’s capable of that.
Speaking of, Shane makes a very telling statement about the passage of time after the zombie outbreak:
“It’s like we’re old folks, the people in our story are all dead.”
They’ve been living on the run for less than a year, from what I can tell. In that time everyone they knew, except for the family and friends traveling with them, have probably been eaten, turned to walkers, or just died. A year for your life to flip completely upside down and turn “I know her” to “I knew her”. It’s really a hard concept to grasp. This also means that time is not measured in days, but resources. Rick’s guilt over leaving Sophia doesn’t cause Shane to lash out about time wasted, but people injured or killed during the hunt. Yes, people are resources, especially after you’ve established a camp and everyone has their separate duties to uphold.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the Dixon brothers. Honestly, when I heard Merle would be back I could not figure out how the heck the writers were going to make that one work. A lot of far-fetched things happen on the show, but the long-lost brother walking out of the shrubbery? Impossible.
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[Slight spoiler below. If you haven’t watched, turn away now.]
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That being said, how messed up does your family have to make you in order for your subconscious to kick up the image of your abusive, druggie brother to play cheerleader? I mean, it is very obvious that Merle never did anything to help Daryl, even when he was a child. Daryl has been left to fend for himself over and over again by his brother. So what the heck? Leaning on personal experience, I know how far one will go to prove to their sibling that they aren’t needed any more. Everything is moving on just fine without them there to muck up the gears. Even in the end of that scene, Daryl did not reach for Merle. He got himself out of the bad situation. Only to walk into another one that he has no control over. No Merle cheerleader to provoke him into action that time.
Normally I’m all about women fighting against gender roles and branching out to do “manly things”. Unfortunately, Andrea goes about it all wrong. She is very fragile emotionally, I get that. The last few weeks of her life have been spent planning how to opt out of existence so she can join her dead. Then Daryl pops some sense into her head, but she is still torn. If she can’t leave then she wants a bigger role; she wants to move up within the “pack”, so-to-speak. Her drive to be more nearly costs someone their life. Where is that line between challenging the “norm” and knowing when to fall back and follow orders? Andrea crossed it, no doubt about that. Will this incident throw her back into where she was or can she press on with her reforming backbone?
One last note… Who the heck is in the barn?! I want to hear your theories about the barn’s occupants. Next week we’ll see if any of us were correct.
In the last two months we’ve held some pretty epic contests. However, zombie bunnies chewed through the computer cables in the Command center and we couldn’t announce the winners… until now. We’ve banished the zombie bunnies to an empty supply closet (with plenty of, uhm, food). So now without further delay, your ZSC commanders will reveal the Be InSightful and Welcome Back-The Walking Dead contest winners!
The winner of our Be InSightful crime scene photo contest is:
Congratulations, Amy! Your prize is a Zombie Survival Crew t-shirt signed by the following The Walking Dead cast/crew members: Greg Nicotero, Norman Reedus, Anthony Guajardo, IronE Singleton, Jon Bernthal, Chandler Riggs, Neil Brown Jr., Steven Yeun, and more!
Amy had some good insight into what may happen in season 2 of TWD:
“My favorite moment… omigosh there were so many! But I have to go with Merle’s monologue on the rooftop at the beginning of episode 4. He cycled through such a huge range of emotions in such a short period of time, I was almost in shock when the scene ended. Amazing. Rooker nailed that scene perfectly.
For Season 2 – confrontations.
Rick, Shane, Lori.. not sure where they’re going with the love triangle from hell. I certainly expect one hell of an explosive confrontation at one point, maybe a nasty splintering of Rick and Shane’s friendship.
Andrea will confront Dale for ruining her suicide plan. Daryl will probably confront everyone, it’s kind of his thing. But waiting for the Daryl / Merle confrontation is killing me. It will come. It HAS to!
And I’m worried about Sophie.”
Congratulations again to our winners. Keep your eyes peeled, I’ve heard from the zombie bunnies that there may be another contest coming up sooner thank you think.
And a brief, but heartfelt thank you to all the soldiers and veterans out there on Veteran’s Day. ::Crossbow Salute:: from the Command of the Zombie Survival Crew!
It has to be said, Greg Nicotero and his crew really, really, really outdid themselves for this episode. If you haven’t watched yet, just be prepared for a scene worse than Rick taking an ax to a decomposing walker in season one’s “Guts” episode. Oh, and don’t even think about eating. I had to leave a bowl of ice cream to melt on my side table.
With the nod to outstanding and epic grossness out of the way, lets dig into the meat of the episode. (Did you just gag a little? So did I. Promise that’s the last intestinal pun in this review.)
Can we address the Shane problem? Last week’s review lit off a small debate in the ZSC command center about whether or not Shane acted within reason given the circumstances he was in. I was hoping this week he’d give us a clear direction his head is going, but it became impossible to tell if the guilt eating him alive stems from using a good man as zombie bait or because he feels that he failed Otis in some way by leaving him behind. Later in the episode he tells Andrea that in order to kill you basically have to turn off everything that makes you human and act on instinct. The need to survive is a strong instinct, I’ll give him that. But… wasn’t there another way? A humane way at least?
This episode brought our core group of survivors back together. Once they were all gathered two people stood out, T-Dog and Daryl. T-Dog had a bad patch in the last episode, meaning he lost his ever-loving mind while burning up with a fever. Some of what he told Dale made sense in a way and that is what haunts him. The idea that because the group may see him as weak, it could cost him his spot with them. How rough would things have to get for any of them to look at T-Dog and, essentially, vote him off the “island”? He could simply be paranoid with a bit of brain fry from the infection… or maybe he’s got every right to fear being left behind.
Then you’ve got Daryl who seems from the get-go to want nothing to do with anyone on the farm, whether they are original survivors or part of the new group living there. As soon as they parked he was off into the woods alone. All of that progress he made being a decent man around Andrea vanished. Only thing I can think of is he fears opening up, at least until the Cherokee Rose. Daryl gave Carol a deeper look into himself than he has with anyone. Again he knew exactly what she needed to hear and gave it to her in this wonderfully sad story about the flower. He knows that crying won’t bring him Merle back, but also understands that Carol needs the tears to voice her grief, worry, and the sliver of hope that Sophia will come back.
Seeing where everyone ended up this episode has me rethinking what I said about Glenn last week. I assumed that he would likely jump at the chance to ride at Rick’s side again when he resumes the hero role. Only… Glenn became his own hero this week. Sure there was a lot of awkward moments where he became really goofy and cute, however you’ve got to give the man a hand at lassoing a bloated zombie like that. We know he’s not exactly a smooth talker with the ladies, but Glenn is growing out of the sidekick role if he keeps this up. Go, Glenn, go!
I’ll wrap this up with a quick thought on something Hershel said to Rick. Faith seems to play a huge part in how Hershel approaches life. He sees God’s hand in everything around him. If a rainbow forms after a storm, God sent it. A car hits a man on his way to dinner with his wife; God decided it was his time to go “home”. But, you see, I cannot fathom how his faith holds up when faced with the animated corpse of someone he knew. Is Jesus cleverly disguised in the blood splatter and we just can’t see it because the need to survive has blinded us to faith? Or is Hershel clinging to the one thing he has left to give him hope for his family? That’s got to be it. Mankind will tell themselves anything to maintain hope, even if it means believing in a miracle cure that’ll never come, from God or mankind.
The only warning I got before tuning into a replay of this week’s “The Walking Dead” came from my mother, of all people. I told her I needed to catch up, she replied, “All I’ll say is, when Daryl is the sane one, you know things got bad.” With that statement in mind I tuned in… and quickly realized how right she’d been.
I’ll get back to Daryl in a moment, but we’ve gotta talk about Shane. This man strives to be the hero that Rick is, and fails miserably. He tries too hard. Doesn’t plan his strategy. Shane barges in headfirst and damn anything or anyone that gets in his way. That would be a good trait except for the fact that Shane’s motives are purely selfish. He didn’t go off to fetch supplies for Carl. He rode into the sunset, hoping that the display he made would get him back in Laurie’s good graces. I spent a good chunk of the hour grinding my teeth at Shane.
And because Shane has his head wedged, Glen is beginning to have an identity crisis. His main purpose in the first season was to be the sidekick to the hero. Well, our actual hero isn’t in the game. He’s sidelined with his family, holding their breath to see what the future holds for Carl. Glen can’t help there and he realizes it. The guy trying to be the hero isn’t, leaving Glen to flounder around searching for someone to connect to that he can help. It seems he’s found that in Maggie, but what will happen when Rick is ready to don the white hat again? Will his Tonto abandon the potential Maggie presents to be just a sidekick again? Only time will tell there. I don’t even try to predict what TWD’s writers will do. They’re kinda crazy.
Speaking of crazy… I can’t believe my mother was right about Daryl. It is a trip to watch this character slowly open up to the other survivors. From the get-go we were supposed to think he’s like his brother, but this episode shot that to hell. We actually see Daryl for the first time. It isn’t the hardass squirrel killer in those woods with Andrea, but an intelligent man who was given the short stick in life and still managed to make the best of it. The way he dealt with Andrea and her determination to opt out of life was brilliant. This is a character to watch, not that you guys weren’t already.
The overall tone of this episode was hopelessness. Each character had a moment when they looked at the world around them and the pressure became too much to handle. Our survivors are beginning to buckle. They are getting desperate and we all know that desperate people do stupid things. The next couple of episodes are going to be interesting, to say the least.
We love our commander of the Green Brigade, Iron E Singleton, and he shows us his love again in a fabulous shout out to the Zombie Survival Crew in his interview with CultureMob.
Here’s what Culture Mob had to say: Another character who has been there from day one (or in the real world, episode 2) is T-Dog. Best known in the show as the guy who drops the keys to the handcuffs that led to Merle Dixon cutting his hand off to escape the cuffs. I had a very cool opportunity to speak exclusively with T-Dog, actor IronE Singleton. Now that the show has been picked up again (there will be a season 3 already announced) the writers are going to have the time to explore and develop all of the main cast including T-Dog.
Season two of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” kicked off with a groan, lurch, and the bang that made viewers jump off their couches. For a show that went through more than a few growing pains during filming of the current season, TWD creators are proving that despite the changes, they are still striving to deliver one of the best-made programs on television. And the proof isn’t in backroom antics; the numbers for the season premiere alone are amazing–7.3 million viewers tuned in to catch the flesh-munching goodness, shattering previous records for a basic cable TV show.
The first episode was light on the bloodshed, but heavy on character focus. We got a serious look at the women who provide the backbone of the survivors. You’ve got the widow finally finding her footing in life after the death of her abusive husband. There’s the woman who has lost everything and everyone she loves and wants nothing more than a way out. And, of course, we have the once-thought widow who is reunited with her husband, but not until after sleeping with his best friend.
There’s a saying, “Behind every great man, there’s a great woman.” We were shown in season one that the women handle more than their share of the work in camp. Since leaving the camp, that work has translated to emotional support, and basically the three have become a collective “mommy”–a mommy with a gun and short temper, apparently. The best thing the creators did with that first episode was hit the women where it hurt–their children. One child goes missing in the middle of a zombie attack, and the other…well, remember that bang mentioned before? It wasn’t a happy moment for our survivors.
Episode two carried on with the deep look at the women in camp. Almost instantly, Laurie knew something was wrong. It’s always been a little creepy when a mother does that; how despite distance, she knows her family is in danger. Too many times it has happened in real life to be simply a story mechanism. This story line is really putting the focus on Laurie and when she tells Rick his place is by her side with their son, you knew he’d sit, stay, and do what she wanted.
We’re also introduced to a new group of survivors out on the farm. You don’t take notice of their women until after the men have all taken off to do what men do, risk their necks without a solid plan. But when Maggie decides to make her presence felt, it is a solid blow that snags your attention. As we put it while discussing the episode, Maggie is the face of girl power in The Walking Dead, no doubt.
On this show, the women are a symbol of hope, while the men try to be realists…to a fault. Survivors of any disaster need hope in order to keep putting one foot in front of another. Without it, they’d be like the corpses in the cars on the freeway, laying there waiting for a slow death. Now we just have to wait and see if that hope can survive the horrific situations thrown their way by fate.
Green Brigade Commander, IronE Singleton, took some time out of his busy schedule to bare his feelings (and his chest???) about his beloved brigade. So Green Brigade members are you going to answer his call? Show your pride and leave your commander a message to let him know that YOU are on your toes and READY to face the Zombiepocalypse with him.
Disclaimer: The Zombie Survival Crew is not responsible for the whereabouts of Commander IronE’s shirt and cannot be held accountable for its absence. No shirts were harmed in the filming of this public service announcement.
In exactly seven days, fans of The Walking Dead will gather around their televisions to watch the season two premier on AMC. It’s no small secret that your Zombie Survival Crew commanders have been not-too-patiently waiting for the new season of the show. We’ve kept our eyes out for any news or tidbits from the set and all that did was create a burning need to see what lies in store for our favorite band of survivors.
Our wait is almost at an end.
To celebrate the upcoming premier of The Walking Dead, the ZSC wants to know what your favorite moments were from season one of the show. We’d also like to hear what you think will happen to Rick, Shane, Lori, Glenn, T-Dog, Daryl, and all the others in season 2. Every crew member that posts a comment will be entered in a drawing, the prize: an official ZSC t-shirt signed by cast members of The Walking Dead.
Neat, huh?
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Here’s what you have to do to win:
~ Log in to ZombieSurvivalCrew.com (if you are not a member, please sign up. It’s FREE and easy.)
~ Post a comment on this article telling us your favorite moment of TWD season 1 and predictions for season 2 before October 16th.
The Prize:
~ One (1) random commenter will be picked to win a ZSC shirt signed by the cast of The Walking Dead.
Rules:
~ One (1) entry per site member.
~ Entries must be posted on the website by 11:59 PM PST on 10-16-2011.
~ Entries containing foul language will be disqualified.
~ Entrants must be registered members of zombiesurvivalcrew.com.
Don’t forget to tune into AMC on October 16th at 9PM ET to catch the second season premiere of The Walking Dead!
The event was bound to be crawling with UGA agents and others out to gather information on Zombie Survival Crew command, but when the call came through there was no doubt your Commander-in-Chief would attend.
The gauntlet of bright lights made it hard to keep track of the action, but I managed to catch some shots of Laurie Holden, Steve Yeun, Jeffrey DeMunn and other cast members before settling in for the much anticipated opening episode.
Now you’re not going to get any spoilers from me, so don’t even try…unless you happen to have a million bucks lying around and then maybe we can talk.
But I will say it was not what I was expecting – which is a good thing – and I almost tossed my complimentary popcorn onto the poor souls in front of me a couple of times – which is a great thing. And every time I thought “oh, there’s the ‘gotcha’ moment, thanks, let’s move on,” another one was around the corner, and it just got better and better. That’s not to say there aren’t some extremely telling character development moments that will shake viewers and touch their greatest fears, because…oof, The Walking Dead isn’t pulling any punches.
The opening episode will keep fans guessing and off-balance, confused and screaming (literally) for more. I could have sat there all night watching the entire season.
If you want to hear more than I’m willing to divulge, take a look at some of the production and cast interviews on the red carpet here.
Instead, I stumbled off, still nauseous from the viewing, to the after event where IronE snapped this picture with Steve Yeun that is just too cute for words. Him, not me. What a sweet, articulate, engaging young man he is….kind of reminds of Glen, actually.
ZSC Command not only survived the night, but came away from it having discussed future missions and creating updated strategies. Green brigade Commander IronE Singleton prepped a special mission for the Green Brigade and has the undying gratitude of ZSC Command in its entirety for his commitment to helping us all prepare for the onset of a zombiepocalypse.
This episode had a lot going for it. A. Lot. So much so that I had to sleep on an idea on how to tackle this review. Which, by the way, didn’t help one dang bit. My head is still spinning. The writers for TWD are mean, mean people. I’m just going to jump right in and hope this makes sense.
Rick’s guilt over leaving Sophia doesn’t cause Shane to lash out about time wasted, but people injured or killed during the hunt. Yes, people are resources, especially after you’ve established a camp and everyone has their separate duties to uphold.
Priority Status: High
Instead, I stumbled off, still nauseous from the viewing, to the after event where IronE snapped this picture with Steve Yeun that is just too cute for words. Him, not me. What a sweet, articulate, engaging young man he is….kind of reminds of Glen, actually.
I ran into our new 
