The Sauced Bulletin

I don’t know how many of you watch this show, but The Walking Dead is a pretty cool show on AMC about life during/after the zombie apocalypse.  Last season it felt fresh and original and every episode that I recall was pretty full of tension and suspense.  But something seems to have gone horribly wrong with season 2, with last night’s episode representing the nadir of the series so far.  It was a really bad episode!  WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?

I regularly read the recaps of this show on Videogum.com (hey guys!) because they’re funny and entertaining (you hear that, Gabe, I called your writing funny and entertaining!).  But I never really agreed with how those recaps mock the show and its characters and I honestly considered them a bit harsh at times.  But now I’m starting to agree with what Gabe says in those recaps.  Last night’s episode was slow, boring, contained a multitude of really dumb plot elements, and effectively advanced the story nowhere.  I’m not going to do a full recap, but here are a few things that stuck out:

1. They are still looking for Sophia:  Carol’s daughter, Sophia, went missing in the season premiere in the midst of a zombie attack.  I thought their search for her would maybe act as a bridge between episodes 1 and 2, but it didn’t.  Here we are on episode 4 and still no fucking Sophia!  Look, guys, Sophia is what, 10 years old?  She’s almost certainly dead by now, or a zombie.  Can we just move on?  Sorry Carol, but this is the kinda shit that goes down in Zombieland.  I mean Andrea’s sister died and she’s dealing with it fine, right?  Oh wait…

2.  Andrea continues to be the worst:  I’ve hated few characters in my years of TV viewing more than Andrea.  Ever since her sister got turned into a zombie and died last season she has been completely insufferable.  We get it, she’s depressed, but does her depression need to manifest as being a huge bitch to everyone?  She hates Dale because he saved her life when she decided to kill herself in the CDC explosion.  Thanks Dale!  Then she hates him more for not letting her have a gun for fear that she’d blow her brains out!  Then he gave her the gun, but now Hershel the farmer takes it away and she’s all “I want my gun back” again.  ENOUGH WITH THE GUN!  If there is one thing on this show absolutely no one cares about it’s whether or not Andrea has a gun on her person.  I hope the next time she and Shane are cleaning their guns both of them go off by accident and they both die.  At least then we wouldn’t have to see Andrea give everyone the stank face every time they ask how she’s doing.

3.  Lori’s “feminine hygiene” issue:  When Lori hears Glen is going to town for supplies in this episode, she asks him to pick up a mysterious item that she says can be found in the “feminine hygiene” section.  Glen’s all “What is it?”  when he reads the paper she wrote it on and Lori’s all “Shut up Glen.”  When he finds it, it turns out to be……a pregnancy test?  That’s it?  That’s the big secret they spend the whole episode trying to conceal?  This makes Lori and Glen’s conversation about what she wants him to get completely nonsensical.  Like if she just wrote down “pregnancy test,” why does Glen ask what it is?  And if she didn’t write down “pregnancy test,” then what the fuck did she write?  Is it supposed to even be a secret from Glen?  I mean I think once he picks up the box of pregnancy tests he’d be like “Oh, she wanted pregnancy tests.  Why didn’t she just say so?”  CASE CLOSED.  I’m not even going to get into how Glen banged the farmer’s daughter in the hardware store because it was the dumbest thing ever.

4.  Lori and Shane:  NOBODY CARES ABOUT THEM OR THE FACT THAT THEY FUCKED IN THE WOODS IT WAS SO LONG AGO PLEASE DROP IT WE HAVE BIGGER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT HERE PEOPLE!

Which brings me to my final point.

5.  There was only one zombie in this episode and it was so stupid:  If somebody asked you what The Walking Dead is about, you would say “It’s a show about zombies.”  You would say this even before mentioning that it involves humans trying to survive the zombie apocalypse.  This fact alone exposes the issue with this episode, and my overall concern about where the show is heading.  Last night’s episode contained exactly one zombie.  ONE!  And it was trapped down a well.  And it was fat.  And it was no threat to ANYONE except Glen when they lowered him into the well.  “Wait, back up, they lowered Glen into a well?” you might ask.  YES, THEY DID.  This was because our intrepid zombie hunters felt they needed live bait in order to lure the fat zombie out of the well before killing, so as not to contaminate the water.  Uh….guys?  That zombie is already bleeding and spitting and generally oozing all sorts of stuff into the water.  You’re telling me that as long as it gets out alive, you’d drink that stuff?  No way.  Also, why are we even doing this when we know there are FOUR OTHER WELLS ON THE FARM!?!?  It finally ends up being all for nothing as the zombie’s fat gross body splits in half and all the guts fall into the well.  Awesome job, gang!  And so ends a totally meaningless, unnecessary subplot that had no bearing on anything.

So there you go.  It was a bad episode that, unfortunately, is kind of indicative of this season of The Walking Dead in general.  The writing is just really sloppy and uninteresting!  Setting the whole thing on a boring farm with no zombies?  Not a good idea for a zombie show!  Having the characters bicker about finding a little girl in the wilderness?  Not fun!  Removing all entertaining/redeeming qualities from the characters and turning them all into hyper-earnest, bitchy Andreas?  WHO IS WRITING THIS SHOW!?  We all hoped that the departure of show-runner/developer Frank Darabont and his entire writing staff wouldn’t make a difference, but it obviously has.  Someone do something!  The Walking Dead has totally lost its identity!  It’s supposed to be a show about people fighting, running from, and trying to survive the zombie apocalypse.  It is NOT supposed to be a show about an annoying, underdeveloped cast of characters being douches to each other while the zombie apocalypse just kinda happens on the periphery.  MORE ZOMBIES, LESS ANDREA PLEASE!