TV Review: The Walking Dead – “What Lies Ahead”

The Episode: 2.01 – “What Lies Ahead”

The group of zombiepocalypse survivors continues on their trek out of Atlanta in the wake of the occurrences at the CDC at the end of last season.  But when they run into the permanent gridlock on the interstate, they take the time to regroup and grab some supplies on the fly.  As they do, they encounter a zombie “herd” that strolls by.  And even though they avoid notice by the majority of the herd, a few walking stragglers discover them and try to catch some fast food.  This leads to a search in the woods for Sophia, who was pursued by two zombies, with Rick hot in pursuit of them.  Sophia vanishes after Rick handles the two zombies and her mother, Carol, is in a near panic over her disappearance.  Subsequently, Rick starts to doubt his leadership more and more, as do some members of the group.  Meanwhile, Shane is planning on leaving the group, thinking it’s for the best considering the ever-difficult situation between him and Lori.  And Andrea is looking to join him.  The episode ends with a shocking turn of events for the group.

Guy’s Take

With the circumstances surrounding the departure of former showrunner, Frank Darabont, whether on his terms or not, being a matter of he said / they said, the hope I had going into Season 2 of The Walking Dead would be that the change in leadership for the show could produce a change in the narrative direction as well.  Because after a fairly brilliant opening, the show devolved into just a morass of moronic storytelling populated with characters – outside of lead character Rick Grimes – that I found it continually hard to give two shits about whether they lived or ended up as zombie chow.  If said change is due to occur, it will have to be after this last episode with Darabont’s name – or rather an Oded Fehr character’s (heh, Ardeth Bey) attached to it.  “What Lies Ahead” is simply more of the same water treading, wheel spinning tedium that mostly destroyed the six-episode Season 1 for me.

What occurs is that our ragtag band of survivors are back out on the road after getting a couple of answers about the whole zombbiegeddon occurring from the CDC, but not finding much in the way of hope there and barely surviving the doomsday self destruct of the entire complex.  Their exfiltration of Atlanta is by way of the major highway, which soon turns into a bad idea because a lot of people had the same idea before them.  And their corpse-riddled and abandoned cars that are littering the highway are a testament that, at the time at least, that wasn’t the biggest success.  So the survivors, which consist of Rick, Lori, Shane, Andrea, Dale, T-Dog, Glen, Daryl, Carol, Rick’s son, Carl, and Carol’s daughter, Sophia, decide to scavenge for supplies while Dale fixes the “malfunctioning” hose of his RV.

Stories of course carry over from Season 1.  The weight of the world continues to hang on Rick’s shoulders.  Shane is still dealing with the rejection from Lori now that Rick is back in the picture, which also affects his relationship with Carl.  And Andrea has a major issue with Dale because he forced her to evacuate the CDC when she wanted to remain and die by saying that he was going to stay there and die too if she didn’t leave with him.  Now she resents his forcing her hand in order to save his life, when he thinks that he in actuality saved her life, which she says he patently didn’t.  As a result, Dale is reluctant to let her have her gun back because he fears she’ll use it.  And as it turns out, Dale is playing the whole group about the working nature of his RV’s hose, using it to try to keep them together as long as possible.  Apparently he’s trying to delay the onset of the Spock mantra concerning the needs of a group.

Things kick into high gear when the group finds themselves out in the open when a wandering herd of walkers mosey down the highway.  The only thing that the group can do is take refuge under the cars as they zombies shuffle by.  And therein lies one of the bigger nitpicks of the episode: considering that it was established in Season 1 that the zombies can smell the living, and that Rick and Glenn had to wear zombiemeat tuxedoes in order to not be detected by the walkers, these zombies don’t seem to pay attention to their noses as the group hide under the cars.  This was a pretty tense yet familiar scenario, one that was employed by Rick in the first episode when he had to duck under a tank to avoid a zombie OccupyAtlanta last year in the pilot.   Of course not all of the zombies clear the scene, and Andrea is accosted by a zombie who can’t wait for his turn to use the lavatory, and little Sophia is chased into the woods by two walkers.  Rick takes off after them to save her.

When Sophia goes missing, accusatory glances are tossed Rick’s way, and another burden is added to his already sagging shoulders as they spend the majority of the episode looking for her in the woods.  There’s the impromptu autopsy of a walker to see if her ate Sophia and a seemingly meaningless encounter of a corpse in a tent that took the easy way out of the situation via gun to mouth.  The group ultimately ends up at a church where they find a couple of congregant walkers, including a truly gnarly-looking veiled woman.  Jesus Christ puts in a guest appearance in a couple of talky (via Carol and Rick, not JC) – and utterly hokey – scenes.  And there’s a shock ending concerning Carl that, while telegraphed like news from Gettysburg, is nonetheless brutal and hopefully portends a ratcheting up in the character work.  Because it is still horrendously stale.

End Credit

A 90-minute episode this certainly didn’t need to be.  There’s little in the way of forward movement for anybody, save for Shane, who is contemplating leaving the group to go this own way.  Yet he still spends a decent amount of the episode arguing with Lori about it.  And since she thought it best he keep his distance from her, especially since he got too friendly at the CDC, where is the argument here?  And the resentment that Andrea has for Dale because he won’t give her her gun and is seeking a thank you for his actions at the CDC ends with no resolution.  Interesting, though, that Daryl saves T-Dog considering events of last season between the two.  The production work on the episode – particularly the stellar zombie makeup – is still solid.  I can only imagine the hell it must be shooting in the Georgia woods in the summer.  There’s palpable grime to be found in the characters and the work by the actors is all fine.  But the writing continues to do them little favors, especially a clunky opening with Rick on a walkie talkie.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10