When There's No Room Left In Hell Or Basic Cable

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I assume that by now some of you have watched the latest episode of The Walking Dead that aired this past Sunday? I've made it clear previously that I think the show's pretty much terrible and I only watch it now for the beyond stellar zombie work by Greg Nicotero (although I did think they gave us a great final ten minutes to December's mid-season finale). 

And I still think the show's pretty much terrible now, don't get me wrong. I know a lot of people who've had problems with the show had problems with the stagnancy of the survivors - that they just seemed to sir around doing nothing episode after episode - but that's not really where my problem lay. I imagine there'd be a lot of boredom to the post-apocalypse, and if the show were deft at handling its characters this could be fascinating stuff. But no, there's no deftness. Just blunt broad obviousness, time and again, and it's laid on cartoonishly by too many of the actors - when you want nothing more than to see approximately 75% of the people on-screen have their intestines sucked down like spaghetti by undead ghouls, then we have a problem. 

Anyway besides that a part of me is as much as ever living on the fumes of hope that we'll get to see Jon Bernthal and Sarah Wayne Callies torn limb from limb, I did think this most recent episode did a couple of small things right. (beware slight spoilers for the most recent episode) First, that little comic bit with Lori having to chase down the severed arm that fell off the truck was funny, and "funny" is a word I'd come to think the show was allergic to. More dark humor like that, show! Sitting around watching everybody huff and puff like hyperventilating spray-tanned skeletons grows a little bit wearisome. 

And secondly, that scene in the bar with Michael Raymond-James (hey Rene!) was killer (pun obviously intended). Maybe I was just glad to see somebody else's face for a change, but it felt like a moment straight out of the far-superior comics - something that spun the show's reason for being off into an interesting episodic way. It asked something from us as viewers - the most basic question of apocalyptic fiction really: what would we do if we were placed in this moment? - it didn't just smash us in the face with it. Credit where credit's due. Now if only the other forty minutes or so hadn't been a tedious stew of unbearable accents and brow-furrowing we'd be getting somewhere.

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