Fight the Dead Fear the Living

When the world is ravaged in The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season [Blu-ray] by a zombie apocalypse, police officer Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and a small group of others struggle to stay alive as ‘the dead’ stalk them at every turn. Can Rick and the others hold onto their humanity as they fight to live in this terrifying new world? And, amidst dire conditions and personal rivalries, will they ultimately survive one another?

Based on Robert Kirkman’s hugely successful and popular comic book series, AMC’s original series “The Walking Dead” is an epic, edge-of-your-seat drama where personal struggles are magnified against a backdrop of moment-to-moment crisis. A survivalist story at its core, the series explores how the living are changed by the overwhelming realization that those who survive can be far more dangerous than the mindless walkers roaming the earth. They themselves have become the walking dead.

It’s the human aspect of the show that drew me in. What they do, how they survive, the relationships that are made when the basic tenents of society as we know it have been broken down. I’d watch something like that even if there were no zombies. However, the zombies aspect of this show adds a wonderful scary element of danger that can’t help but make one wonder what they themselves would do in such a situation. This is a drama. It’s people plucked out of every day life and dropped into a new and terrifying world that looks exactly the same. It’s about how they survive. It’s not meant to be about zombies macking on people for an hour. Though the fact that that could happen does make it interesting. The zombies themselves are disgustingly well done and gross and the gore is quite graphic and realistic. When a zombie bites into someone’s neck and rips the flesh free and blood spurts and sprays…it looks real. There is a very disgusting scene involving a well in Season 2 that I will not go into other than to say…Wow. I’ve seen R rated horror movies that weren’t that well done or dramatic. Granted, the zombies are thankfully dense and sheeplike and they have only one purpose. To feed. On you. Add in a little imagination as to how you would survive in such a world and the show is quite compelling.

I wont get into characterization too much other than to say there is a hodge podge to choose from. Some you will like, some you wont. Some will be easy to identify with and others will really make you think about what choices YOU would make in their place. All will surprise you at some point and you may just cheer for the most unlikely of hereos as well as the obvious ones. If you can handle the gore – this is a show not to be missed.