So, The Walking Dead is back....

And y'all probably know I have mixed feelings about it. Sorry, that was just the Southern part of me coming out. Some of those accents on there are laid on so thick, they stick to you. 

Anyhow, Sunday's premiere had some good moments, some bad ones and some that barely registered.

I still feel as though this season is going to be as convoluted as ever. They are trying to flesh out the characters a bit, which is good. Except for some of them are just so annoying... Ahem... Lori, ahem... 

And Carl, the little boy, there's just something wrong with his face that I can't put my finger on. 

But as long as they keep fleshing out (and defleshing) the characters and don't go on another CDC Atlanta style tangent like they did at the end of last season, then I think they just might be okay. 

Everything after the zombie attack on their camp last season was just disastrous. Not in the fun way, either. 

And as long as they keep giving us awesome sequences like the one screen grabbed from above, I will keep tuning in. 

I mean who can argue with somebody exploding out of an RV washroom and screwdrivering a zombie in the brains through their eyehole?

As reproduced here:

Here:

Here:

Here:

And here:

This fella sure can't.

Anyways, here's hoping they keep up things like this.

xoxo

D-bag

"And when I die" everybody dies... Except for maybe, the show actually won't now?

Those of you who know me will also know that I have had mixed feelings about the last two seasons of True Blood.

More so this season than last, even. It's just hard for me to see a show that has created such a great mythos for itself, that has so many great characters and potential, go down the road of lazy writing and cliches. 

I have read that the writers continue working on the season after it begins filming, which is not an uncommon practice in TV land. But nowhere have the problems with this been more glaringly obvious than in this last season.

Storylines that don't go anywhere--werepanthers, Hotshot and Faeland anybody? Characters that no longer serve a purpose--you all remember my brother,Tommy? Unrelated and unnecessary character arcs that seem to exist just to fill time--medium baby thieving, for the win? 

And melodrama. Melodrama. Melodrama. Bill and Sookie. Eric and Sookie. Bill and Eric and Sookie. Eric and Bill. 

I will not mince words, I didn't think very much of this season. 

Until this last episode. 

Granted, there were a few great moments in the first eleven episodes. I really enjoyed the exchanges between Marnie and Antonia towards the end of their relationship. I think Brit Morgan is a fantastic actress and made Debbie Pelt into a complete scene stealer every time she was featured. And Ginger is always great. 

But other than that, I can't really point at anything in particular I liked. This season was convoluted, had a bunch of starts and stops. Was downright silly at some points. I really thought that this might be the end for True Blood and me.

But then they go and air an episode like "And when I die." 

"Die" being the operative word. Just about six characters die in this episode, or died towards the end of episode eleven. 

Granted, I didn't agree with some of the writers' choices, but I think anytime a show goes through a killing off like this, the audience is going to be affected. And I certainly was. Was downright overwhelmed by that last scene.

Maybe they took cues from shows like The Vampire Diaries, which kill people off left, right and centre. Maybe the cast had gotten too bloated, maybe the writers recognized they didn't know what to do with all of them anymore and thought they were better served dead than floating around in limbo for another season.

Either way, I think they realized what they were going for. 

What the writers managed to do on Sunday night was recapture some of what made me like True Blood to begin with. The finale focused on those character we know and love. It brought back spectres of the past that really formed some of the show's best story arcs and most heart wrenching moments. 

It allowed Anna Paquin to show off her acting skills, once more. She does heart rending anguish quite well. 

It had emotional depth and resonance and at some points was thrilling, moving and just completely fucked up. It had characters making decisions that actually made sense and managed to make all that heart wrenching interpersonal action exceed mere melodrama.

All that the show used to be.

Keep in mind that there is definitely a reasonable apprehension of bias on my part in discussing "And when I die." 

I probably couldn't ever knock a Halloween episode of anything. Maybe that explains a bit. 

And though the episode wasn't perfect, it was enough to put my faith back in the show, make me look forward to next season.

Until then,

A bientôt, Bon Temps...

xoxo

D-bag

Big Bloody Valentine promo...

Not that I have a television, but I wish this channel were available in Canada.

xoxo
D-bag

The Walking Dead: Guts....

 

The Walking Dead

Episode 2: Guts

Let me start by saying that I was more impressed with the first episode than my co-blogger, K-reel, was. From the moment I was introduced to Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes, I liked him. The character development that played out over the episode only made me like him more.

His reactions to the situation he found himself in were quite believable and really served to humanize him for me. In the fear and disgust that flashed across his face as he encountered his first walkers and the pathos he obviously felt for the things, he really came across as a good man. Somebody I wished could be my dad, even.

And that I think, is one of The Walking Dead’s greatest strengths: that it is more a show about humans with zombies in it than it is a show about zombies with humans thrown in. There were several moments in the premier episode where I felt my heart being wrenched in my chest, they were so emotionally affecting. I won’t ruin them here, but really, you should all at least watch the first episode and see for yourselves.

From the moment Rick awoke in the hospital, the nightmarish world of the walking dead was painted so viscerally across the screen that I found myself drawn in and believing everything that was happening. The fact that this show has dramatic gravitas is what makes it so distinct in the genre, I think.

Though I like zombie action, with people running around, jumping off walls and butterfly kicking zombies in the head a la Resident Evil, I like real emotion too. And in a way, this show combines a little bit of both elements. Minus the flying kicks. At least, so far.

So, now that I’ve established I’m a fan of this show, let’s talk about its second episode, Guts. Spoilers follow, though I will try to limit them.

Guts takes up where Days Gone By left off, with Rick in a fair amount of trouble. He escapes, and hooks up with some other survivors. Tensions escalate within the group and we see that the walkers aren’t the only monsters here.

The mean, vicious side of human kind rears its ugly head and its just the kind of thing I think is going to happen when the zombie apocalypse arrives. People won’t be united, we’ll be just as divided as we were before, only now we’ll all be even more indignant because we’ll all have lost friends and family and will be waiting for the next time we have to kill something.

People who were assholes before are still going to be assholes, and you’re really going to have to be careful who you choose to travel with. I’d recommend staying away from large groups because of this fact, unless of course through some miraculous twist of fate you can stay with people you already know and trust.

Because as the world gets harder and more cut throat, people will too. We’ll all have to learn how to survive and that will inevitably lead to us all becoming more cruel. So, I’d say stick with as few people as you can. No more than five, that’s for sure.

Everybody’s going to be competing for limited resources, so the fewer people you have to divide yours up with the better. That is until you establish your own commune, a defended utopia where you will begin to rebuild the world. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Anyways, back to the show.

As we continue to learn more about the survivors, the intricacies of their relationships begin to come to light and we start to get a sense of who they were before all of this happened. Likable or not, the characters here are vivid and full of life.

Rick of course, remains the moral compass of the show and it’s particularly interesting to see how his views on society change in a scene played out in the department store he finds himself trapped in with the other the survivors

The stand out among the other survivors introduced in this episode is quite obviously Glenn. And he is quite likable too, a nice sidekick to Rick. I always admire those who don’t bitch when it’s their turn to put themselves on the line for the group and Glenn really has his turn here. I hope that this will be the kind of person I will be when the dead begin to walk the earth.

There is a reason that this episode is called Guts, and let me just say it is pretty sweet. And by sweet I mean disgusting, excuse my somewhat twisted sensibilities. The survivors do something I’ve read about in zombie fiction before, but it really is quite different to see in live action.

Let’s just say it involves a little bit of dress up, and a lot of pulverizing.

As the episode draws to a close, the show’s two separate storylines grow closer to intersecting. This will provide quite a lot more human drama, though plagued of course, by the used-to-be-human drama provided by the constant threat of a walker taking a bite out of you.

Catch episode three, Tell It to the Frogs, tonight on AMC. Or stream it later!

XOXO

D-bag

The Walking Dead: "Days Gone Bye"

Apologies to all (5 or so of you), as I’ve been off the radar for some time, due to my move to Korea.  I’ve been busy, with almost no time to fully contribute here at The Stuck Thumb.  I haven’t had much time to seek out things that spark my interest enough to write about, to be honest, but I’ll spare you the gory (I fucking hate puns) details, and get at this.

The Walking Dead.  I’m going to reiterate just how long I’ve been waiting for a television series dedicated to zombies.  In consequence of this wait plus a few months more, after I viewed the trailer, I may have had high expectations for this pilot.  In all honesty, I think that maybe nothing could have matched these expectations.  My expectations are likely just unrealistic.

Now, I’m not saying this pilot isn’t worth a watch, because it absolutely is!  I genuinely enjoyed watching this episode.  I’ll say in advance to this post, I’m going to reveal a lot about what’s going on in this episode.  You’ve been warned.

The opening scene is of the utmost importance.  Here, we see the main character pull up in a police car to overturned and abandoned vehicles.  We know what’s up.  Among these abandoned vehicles, we see abandoned toys that reveal to us children have likely been killed and/or turned, we see a rotting corpse in a car, we see an abandoned gas station.  All of the go-to creepy elements.  We hear some shuffling as the protagonist investigates the area.  The shuffling leads us to a little girl.  Though we immediately know she is what is later referred to as “a walker”, it isn’t made completely obvious until she turns around.  Before this happens, the main character identifies himself to her as a policeman and that she should not be afraid.

The fact that this character is in full uniform is something I find kind of ironic, and dare I say satirical.  The fact that all authority goes out the window in the case of an apocalypse, makes this guy look like kind of a moron.  Maybe it’s the only thing he feels he’s got going at this point, maybe he’s still in denial, who knows.  When it comes down to it, no one’s going to listen to a damn word this jackass in the police uniform says.  This uniform will not mean anything to zombies, nor will it mean anything to the living.  I’m unsure if this was done on purpose by the writers.  Either way, he shoots this fucking zombie kid in the head.  Has the commonly used zombie child tactic lost most of its’ shock-value in this day and age?  I can’t be certain, but I think it was a solid opener for this series.

We backtrack a few weeks? A few months?  The time lapse is not revealed.  We see what happens to this character, his coma, his trek home when he awakes.  We see some pretty gory stuff, including half of a corpse dragging itself along the grass with its’ spilled intestines dragging along behind.  This is where I felt they were going to take the series seriously enough.

You can’t half-ass this zombie shit.  Zombie films do not typically include sex, so you’ve gotta jam-pack it with gore and violence to get the viewers.  It’s a bit more of a challenge.  Many of these vampire movies and television series will use sex as a ploy.  Vampires are sexy now?  When/why the fuck?  Maybe a bit of a cheap move?  That’s another story.

So, this man awakes, learns of his surroundings, and has gotta learn to hold his own against this breed.  A man and a boy he meets let him practice in their front yard.  Something I wanted to make note of during his practice session was the brief appearance and use of a hard, transparent face mask while beating in a zombie head.  Now, this is something very practical that I haven’t thought of using before.  Along with open wounds, and I feel this is just as important, one should be careful of the eyes and mouth.  If any infected blood gets in there, you’re just as fucked.  Sure, it’s not often where writers will avoid a full on zombie attack to infect someone through mouth or eyes, but it certainly happens.  Don’t you remember? That’s how the father died in “28 Days Later” - a small drop of infected blood in his eye.  Imagine dying that way when the zombie apocalypse actually hits.  Embarrassing.

Anyway, back to the plot.  We find that this character has left behind a family.  A wife and a son.  Nearing the end of the episode, we find the protagonist convinced his family is alive.  Clothing drawers are empty, they’ve packed items of sentimental value.  He parts with his company and sets off on a mission to find them, like almost any other person would do, sure.  What I’m uneasy about is the fact that the audience finds his wife and child to be alive AND that he’s almost made contact through radio with them.  Chances of these people being alive would be slim.  Chances of contacting, or rather stumbling across these people again would be even slimmer.  Adding to this situation, we find the wife to be involved with another man.  This makes things even more complicated, and I’m maybe a little nervous this series will turn out a little more dramatic than need be. 

Maybe my problem is that the writers didn’t build a relationship for viewers to see between these characters before the apocalypse.  I don’t give a shit if they find each other, to be honest, and I’m betting the majority of the viewers feel similar.  One thing I respected about - and my apologies for constant comparisons to - “28 Days Later” is that they didn’t make it about the protagonist searching for anyone of importance to him, aside from his parents in the very beginning whom we find have committed suicide anyway.  The plot of the movie was based almost entirely on the protagonists’ survival along with the small group of people he met on the way.  Well, hey, that seems more realistic.

Anyhow, I’ll leave you with those thoughts.  Overall, I am intrigued to see how the next few episodes turn out.  Maybe you’ll hear more from me on this as the season progresses.

XOXO

(It’s about bloody time) K-Reel

The Walking Dead

Finally! It’s what I’ve always dreamed of! A horror television series dedicated to something other than vampires. More importantly, a television series dedicated to ZOMBIES! Let’s face it, the vampire thing has been way overdone to the point where I’m no longer - though, I’m not sure I was ever - interested. Get your baseball bats and shotguns ready. It’s time for some straight up zombie killing.




Based on the American comic book, The Walking Dead was picked up by AMC to be adapted into a television series. I’ll admit I have never read the books, but I’m not sure I’d be able to take an animated zombie apocalypse very seriously. There is something to be said about the precise make up and the blood and gore that goes into producing an onscreen zombie. I’m not sure I’d want it any other way.

The premise of The Walking Dead is relatively simple, and a formula we’ve seen before. Man wakes up from prolonged coma, man realizes he is almost entirely alone, man starts desperate search for those he loves. On the way, man encounters a large quantity of dead people and eventually comes upon someone to explain the back story to this. Survival methods ensue.

Can we say 28 Days Later? Admittedly among my top 5 zombie movies, I can appreciate a similar premise. I think I’m excited to see where they go with The Walking Dead and I will certainly be watching the premier this Halloween. A zombie television series was long overdue.

I’m always interested in observing methods of zombie survival and comparing those methods to my own for when the zombie apocalypse actually hits. Which it will...

XOXO

K-Reel

Sookie Stackhouse...

Is one bad ass bitch!!!


I laughed. I came. I died. True Blood has thrown everything at as this season, but this is by far my favourite moment. If you watch, I applaud you. If you don't, you should.

XOXO

D-Bag