The Walking Dead - Season 2 [AMC - US] *Spoilers*

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

vampires, witches, african shamans, druids, aliens... anything but zombies

it's a safe bet

pixelburp

nuxxx wrote: »

bump what do people expect after the mid season break

my life is so imcomplete without this series!

Don't get your hopes up that the pace will pick up - the first episode, maybe even the second one too, will be set on the farm & deal with the aftermath of the barn 'outing'. In fact, based on a promo already released for the return of the show pretty much confirms that suspicion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIBCIi2Kgz8

tommy2bad

Don't get your hopes up that the pace will pick up - the first episode, maybe even the second one too, will be set on the farm & deal with the aftermath of the barn 'outing'.

Damn, we need to get away from that farm, it's killed the pace of the show.
While lots of stuff happened, it seems so slow for some reason. Maybe it female directors doing long lingering face shots or the budget doesn't allow for SFX in the quantity needed but its time to get on with it for F's sake.

Thargor

I think the CDC storyline was worse than the farm tbh, it was just so ridiculous, the main facility in America for dealing with epidemics and its manned by one guy and his talking computer (that they all marveled at like it was some kind of Star-Trek technology) and is set to explode and kill everyone if the power is interrupted? They wasted half the season on that aswell.

When I look at the writing on shows like this, Terra Nova and a few other ones I have to wonder if the writers strike a while back did major damage. Theres a really amateurish vibe coming from so much stuff these days, Im wondering if a lot of writing is being done by interns or people like that are just out of college and willing to work for crappy pay/no contracts. A lot of it is so stupid its like it was written by Leaving Cert students.

Kirby

Thargor wrote: »

I think the CDC storyline was worse than the farm tbh, it was just so ridiculous, the main facility in America for dealing with epidemics and its manned by one guy and his talking computer (that they all marveled at like it was some kind of Star-Trek technology) and is set to explode and kill everyone if the power is interrupted? They wasted half the season on that aswell.

When I look at the writing on shows like this, Terra Nova and a few other ones I have to wonder if the writers strike a while back did major damage. Theres a really amateurish vibe coming from so much stuff these days, Im wondering if a lot of writing is being done by interns or people like that are just out of college and willing to work for crappy pay/no contracts. A lot of it is so stupid its like it was written by Leaving Cert students.

I know what you mean. The thing to bear in mind though is that writing is important........ but don't underestimate the importance of directing. To be frank, I'm not sure alot of them know what they are doing and just try to copy their idols. The script is often adapted during filming with chunks being invented on the spot or forgotten altogether. This is fine with lads with vision.....but if you have some wanna be this is not always a good thing.

With regards the man in charge....good stories are ruined by amateurs and poor stories are made great by the talented. We've all seen this. People enjoyed the source material for this show and yet find alot of fault with the tv version. This isn't the writing.....its how its being portrayed on screen.

Directors....this is where I would be spending alot of my budget.

PerrinV2

Watched the finale there,really enjoyed it.What I really liked was the music actually around the time when sophie comes out and it changes.I rewatched the section a few times.

Morlar

tommy2bad wrote: »

Damn, we need to get away from that farm, it's killed the pace of the show.
While lots of stuff happened, it seems so slow for some reason. Maybe it female directors doing long lingering face shots or the budget doesn't allow for SFX in the quantity needed but its time to get on with it for F's sake.

I think the whole motorway/farm part took place over a couple of days. Odd that a series would change the timeline like that. I liked it overall. It was also good to see how others were handling the situation, given their unique location & it's features (farmhouse with swampland, no guns).

I liked the last episode finale, also the Otis situation. I think season 2 has improved as it progressed. Looking forward to the rest of it now.

bb1234567

Parody of Glenn and Maggie in the drugstore, watch it its funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbGrh8dHwp4&feature=player_embedded

Badgermonkey

bb1234567 wrote: »

Parody of Glenn and Maggie in the drugstore, watch it its funny

I did.

It wasn't.

KeanSeenan

Yeah, jesus, I can almost picture the voice actor with his eyelids taped to look squinty.

SteelyDanJalapeno

when are we back?

backinexile

when are we back?

12th of Feb

That's what it says on IMDB

Kettle316

bb1234567 wrote: »

Parody of Glenn and Maggie in the drugstore, watch it its funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbGrh8dHwp4&feature=player_embedded

Well that was awful!!

bb1234567

Kettle316 wrote: »

Well that was awful!!

ok I watched it again and it wasnt very funny, I thought it was much funnier the first time I watched it:pac:

pixelburp

So it seems what Darabont had planned was quite different to the crap we got in the end. Apparently, the random zombie soldier inside the tank in the pilot episode was to be the star of series 2's opener:

www.aintitcool.com/node/52526

In case the link is problematic, below is a paste of Darabont's mail to the site, with more detail on the proposed direction. Interesting to note that the paper-thin characterisation in the final show wouldn't have been an issue in the Darabont version:

Frank Darabont wrote:

Dear Eric,

Sure, I’ll confirm that storyline. Why not? Big caveat here though:

CraveOnline is much mistaken in saying this was for a “web series.” This was never meant as a web gimmick, this was intended for use in the actual TV series. I wanted to kick off the 2nd season with the flashback episode Sam describes, which would have followed a squad of Army Rangers getting trapped in the city and trying to survive as Atlanta falls. 



The idea was to do this with a very focused “you are there” documentary feel. Not going all shaky-cam, but still making it a bit rawer and grainier than the rest of the show. We’d start with a squad of maybe seven or eight soldiers being dropped into the city by chopper. They have map coordinates they need to get to; they’ve been told to report to a certain place to provide reinforcement. It’s not a special mission, it’s basically a housekeeping measure putting more boots on the ground to reinforce key intersections and installations throughout the city. And we follow this group from the moment the copter sets them down. All they have to do is travel maybe a dozen blocks, a simple journey, but what starts as a no-brainer scenario goes from “the city is being secured” to “holy ****, we’ve lost control, the world is ending.” Our squad gets blocked at every turn and are soon just trying to survive. I wanted to do a really tense, character-driven ensemble story as communications break down, supply lines are lost, escape routes are cut off, morale falls apart, leadership unravels, mutinies heat up, etc. (Yes, this approach owes a spiritual debt to a number of great films, including Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort.)

Along the way, I thought we could briefly dovetail this story with a few established characters from the show. Not to overdo that, mind you, because it could get silly and too coincidental if you load too much into that idea. But I thought it would be great to veer off on a quick narrative detour that brushes our soldiers briefly up against some people we know. Picture our squad arriving at a manned barricade where some civilians are being held back from leaving the city on shoot-to-kill orders to stop the spread of contagion, it’s a panicked high-intensity scene, and in this crowd of desperate people we find Andrea and Amy. The barricade gunners panic, the civilians start to get mowed down by machine gun fire, and in this melee the girls get pulled to safety by some old guy they don’t even know. It’s Dale. He’s nobody to them, just some guy who saw the opportunity to do the right thing and reacted in the moment. This would have been perhaps a minute or two of the episode, just a cool detour like the various outposts the soldiers encounter in Saving Private Ryan, but we would have witnessed the moment that Dale meets Andrea and Amy, seen where that relationship began. I also felt it would be a great way to get Emma Bell back into the series for a moment, because she was so wonderful and we were all so sorry that her character died and she had to leave the show. (Of course if this “brush with established characters” idea didn’t work in the script stage, I’d have tossed it out. You try a lot of ideas like that as you go, see how they play. But I thought this one stood a pretty good chance of being engineered to work well.) 



So the story follows these soldiers through hell as the city falls apart and the squad implodes, with Sam’s soldier being the main character and the moral center of the group. He becomes the last survivor of the squad, and he finally gets to the map coordinates they’ve been trying to get to from the start: it’s the barricade at the Atlanta courthouse intersection from the pilot where Rick later finds the tank. The soldier is still alive when he gets there, but he’s been bitten. He’s accomplished his “simple” mission, but he’s gone through seven kinds of hell to do it (including being forced to frag his squad leader), and now he’s dying. And he crawls off into the tank just to get off the street and under cover. As his fever builds and the poor guy starts to hallucinate, he pulls his last grenade and considers ending his life. He sets the grenade down on that shelf for a moment to reflect on all the **** and misery that brought him to this sad end-point of his life, and to dredge up the courage to pull the pin...but before he can act, the fever burns him out and he dies. 



The kicker comes in the last moments of this episode:



After the soldier dies this squalid, lonely death...and after a quiet lapse of time...we do a shot-for-shot reprise from the first episode of the first season: Rick comes scrambling into the tank to escape the horde...blows that zombie soldier’s brains out...now Rick’s trapped...fade out...the end.



The notion was to take the “throwaway” tank zombie Rick encountered in the pilot, and tell that soldier’s story. Make him the star of his own movie, follow his journey, but don’t reveal who he is until the end. The idea being that every zombie has a story, every undead extra was once a human being with a life of his/her own...was, in a sense, the star of his own life’s movie. And we’ve followed this one particular guy and seen how his life ended; we witness his struggles, see his good intentions and his failures, and we experience his godawful death in this tank. That’s why I cast Sam as that tank zombie in the first place instead of just casting some extra. I had this story in mind while filming the pilot, and I knew I’d need a superb actor to play that soldier when the time came.



And then starting with Episode 202, we’d be back with Rick’s group and back in step with the flow of the established story from last season.

I always had in mind to throw in a “wild-card” episode every season, maybe as a season opener or closer. Just a separate story more in the feel of an anthology series, one that appears completely off the track of the regular series but actually does wind up tying in somehow by the fade-out. They did that sort of thing on LOST on occasion, and I really respected it. It always seemed like a bold choice that trusted the audience and rewarded their loyalty with a totally unexpected surprise episode every so often.

That’s it from me. I hope things are well on your end.

Best,

Frank

PhiloCypher

Interesting concept for an season 2 ep but not for the premiere , so many unfamiliar faces would have had casual viewers thinking the show had gone through some sort of reboot .

KeanSeenan

Yeah seems like a bit too much of a left turn for the season opener..maybe as a series of cold openings throughout part of the second season, or maybe the first if he had the idea then. Then again, as it's on AMC it may seem like they're doing Breaking Bad's Season 2 shtick but with no real pay off.

KeanSeenan

Got a 16 episode 3rd season. Comic readers will have an idea of the arc going on with this many episodes. I'm interested again.

pixelburp

More importantly, is there any news on a budget? If it's another 16 episodes of faffing about one location, then I can't say this is exciting news...

ejmaztec

pixelburp wrote: »

More importantly, is there any news on a budget? If it's another 16 episodes of faffing about one location, then I can't say this is exciting news...

I expect they'll all be stuck in a pitch-black mineshaft for 16 weeks, talking and talking and talking and talking.............................

don ramo

pixelburp wrote: »

More importantly, is there any news on a budget? If it's another 16 episodes of faffing about one location, then I can't say this is exciting news...

well with breaking bad finnishing it should free up some funds for the walking dead, unless AMC decide to make another series,

Mr E

New 30 second teaser... looks great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN24JZQ2AWw

allanb49

17 seconds looks like a prison yard

Dacian

KeanSeenan wrote: »

Got a 16 episode 3rd season. Comic readers will have an idea of the arc going on with this many episodes........

allanb49 wrote: »

17 seconds looks like a prison yard

Well spotted.

pixelburp

Ok ok, I said I wouldn't be watching the 2nd half, but it's only fair I give the premiere for the latter half a go. But if they're still fooking about on Hershel's farm by the rolling of the credits I am definitely gone.

Also - "The scariest show on TV"?? Really? Something tells me that press quote wasn't referring to the newest series.

Mr E

Who wants to watch the first 3 minutes of the next episode?

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/tvnews.php?id=86406

expectationlost

Mr E wrote: »

Who wants to watch the first 3 minutes of the next episode?

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/tvnews.php?id=86406

interesting

pixelburp

I'm sure I'd feel for the teenage girl if we ever got to know her name.

Hank Scorpio

looking forward to this again

Darksaga87

Is the american release date been announced yet?