S02E01
When the first season of The Walking Dead was released on Netflix, I intended to only watch the first and maybe the last episode. After all, it has been almost a year since I last saw them. Instead, I watched the entire season back-to-back which only compounded the issues I had with it: namely the uneven storytelling. Even though last year’s finale was utter garbage, I was still excited to catch up with our Apocalypse Avengers (trademark pending) after their unhelpful visit to the CDC. Was the painfully long wait between seasons worth it? Well, yeah.

The episode opens with Rick on a rooftop in Atlanta talking into the walkie to Morgan, or to himself as he pretends to talk to Morgan. The encounter with Jenner at the CDC has left Rick off-kilter as he desperately tries to keep hope alive for the sake of the group. They decide to ditch Atlanta (finally!) and forge ahead to Fort Benning but it isn’t long before they hit their next obstacle: a blown hose in Dale’s RV. As they scrounge through the dozens of abandoned cars for parts, a herd of the undead come shuffling down the road.

Everyone crawls underneath the cars to avoid being detected but poor little Sophia gets spotted by a walker and runs into the woods. Rick chases the young girl and her zombie pursuers and leads them away long enough so she can make it back to the road. Rick handily dispatches the walkers but learns that Sophia never made it back to the group. Even with Daryl on the girl’s trail, they are unable to find her and head back as night approaches. The next morning, everyone sets out to find her but instead run across a few bodies, some still moving, some not.

While it was not as great as the series’ premiere, this episode hopefully signals good things to come for this season. As before, the cast excels at creating a nicely rounded group of survivors in the post-zombocalypse world. Rick is still the hesitant leader, Shane the brooding tough guy, Andrea the brooding tough girl, etc. Not much in the group’s dynamics have changed since the first episode but we do see Daryl come around to giving a damn about someone else and Lori finally is given something to do except be the supportive wife. The exchange between Andrea and Dale is especially well-crafted and even heartbreaking as she justifies her reasoning behind wanting to die at the CDC.

One of the truly remarkable things about all the first season’s episodes was the grandiose style of story telling and this installment continued that trend especially with the bleak imagery of a few dozen zombies stumbling down the highway littered with abandoned cars. That said, once Sophia goes missing the story loses a bit of steam as the rest is mostly people wandering through the woods searching for her with little else going on except the still dreadful plot point of Lori and Shane bickering at each other. As Shane is now saying he is leaving the group, perhaps this will be resolved soon. I would say he’s assured to stick around because he’s in the opening credits but that didn’t help one poor soul from this week’s episode. While the last thirty seconds or so threatened to be cheesy, it turns out the producers wanted to remind us that no one is safe in this world.

Between this episode and the previews for those upcoming, I am hopeful that the missteps in season one were just teaching lessons for the show.

BONUS: Zombie Kill of the Week
Andrea’s deadly screwdriver to the noggin takes the cake for most unsafe, yet effective, use of household tools.