Walkers – Page 5 – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 7 – Heads Up

“Dying is simple. It all just stops, you’re dead. The people around you dying – that’s the hard part.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Ok, I’ll admit it – last week I missed that we’ve already got on to Day Two of this year’s Walking Dead. In my defence, I think the night happened while Daryl was unconscious, so we only saw snapshots of it in those brief moments he woke up. So, six and a half episodes in, and we’re now on the season’s second day. That’s not quite 24-level real time, but it’s close. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 7 – Heads Up”

The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 6 – Always Accountable

“If you have a roof over your head… if you have food, you have walls – you have choices. And without Walkers, and bullets, and shit hitting the fan, you’re accountable for them. You’re always accountable.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Still wondering if Glenn’s really dead? Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to wonder at least one week longer, as this week’s Walking Dead caught us up with yet another narrative strand in the gang’s long, long day. This time, we found out what happened to Abraham, Sasha and Daryl while all the other bad shit was going down back at the town; and as ever, the script (by Heather Bellson this week) gave us a satisfying balance of undead action and character development. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 6 – Always Accountable”

The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 5 – Now

“This is what life looks like now. We have to see it. We have to fight it. If we don’t fight, we die.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After last week’s fascinating diversion into Morgan’s Jedi training/psychoanalysis, it was back to business as usual in this week’s Walking Dead, as we returned to the running plot of Rick’s none too successful plan to lead the Walker herd away from Alexandria, just when the Wolves attacked. But if you found last week’s flashback frustrating for prolonging the tension of whether your favourite characters made it back alive, you must have been positively gnashing your teeth at this one. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 5 – Now”

The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 4 – Here’s Not Here

“You said you wanted everything I had. Every last bit. Well, here it is. Every. Last. Bit.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Walking Dead showrunner Scott Gimple sure knows how to ratchet up the tension. After last week’s events left various of the characters in mortal danger – and in one case seemingly dead – you’d have expected this week’s extra-length ep to resolve those cliffhangers. Not a bit of it – we’re going to have to sweat over the fates of Rick, Glenn et al for another week. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 4 – Here’s Not Here”

The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 3 – Thank You

“Have you ever had to kill people, because they’d already killed your friends and they were coming for you next? Have you ever done things that made you feel afraid of yourself afterward? Have you ever been covered in so much blood that you didn’t know if it was yours, a Walker’s, or your friend’s?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Blimey. Even by Walking Dead standards, that was bleak. I mean, sure, there was plenty of action – and oodles of gore – but even this show rarely offers an episode so suffused with hopelessness. We knew the Wolves’ attack, and that blaring truck horn, had put a crimp in Rick’s Walker-herding plan, but I wasn’t prepared for quite how catastrophically wrong it all went as a result. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 3 – Thank You”

The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 2 – JSS

“How do you just live, when that’s the world?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After last week’s lesson about how ill-prepared they were to deal with the dead, this week’s Walking Dead saw the pampered Alexandrians get slapped in the face by the real world again – only this time by the living. I wasn’t entirely surprised to find that the blaring truck horn distracting the Walker herd at the end of last week was caused by the Wolves – I’d been expecting them to turn up. But I’d thought the show might have given the Alexandrians a little breathing room between dealing with hundreds of Walkers and the marauding living. Not a bit of it – The Walking Dead isn’t a show to give its characters a break. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 2 – JSS”

The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 1 – First Time Again

“I know this sounds insane, but this is an insane world. We have to come for them before they come for us – it’s that simple.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After six uneven weeks of its nascent spinoff, it comes as something of a relief to welcome back the original Walking Dead, in an extra length season premiere. Six years in, though, the show has seemingly explored nearly every possible storyline in their zombie apocalypse – can there be anything left to say, or is the show simply being prolonged because it’s AMC’s biggest hit? Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 6, Episode 1 – First Time Again”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 5 – Cobalt

“The game is changed. We return to the old rules.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

“Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”, as WB Yeats writes in his apocalyptic poem The Second Coming. In this penultimate ep of Fear the Walking Dead, we see that process in action, as even the Gestapo-like National Guard start to crumble and run, while the understaffed ‘hospital’ is seen to resemble the sort of battlefield infirmary you might have seen in the Civil War, complete with prison stockade. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 5 – Cobalt”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 2 – So Close, Yet So Far

“When civilisation ends, it ends fast.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Civilisation may be ending fast, but there was still fairly little plot advancement in this second ep of AMC’s cash cow spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. And yet, despite that fact, this was a much tauter, pacier instalment than the pilot, due in no small part to being told almost entirely in real time. Like 24, but with zombies. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 2 – So Close, Yet So Far”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot

“She was eating them!”

(SPOILER ALERT!)

There’s a fundamental problem with prequels, which is that you know how they’re going to end. Along the way, you often have to contort your story to make it fit with the pre-existing outcomes (“have the protocol droid’s memory wiped”). Of course, knowing broadly how a story will end doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyable – otherwise nobody would have gone to see Titanic (SPOILER – the ship sinks). The challenge is to get your audience invested in the characters living through what you already know is going to happen, and hopefully show some spectacle along the way. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot”