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Review: 'The Walking Dead' starts strong in season 3

But can the zombie drama break its pattern of mid-season struggles?

By Alan Sepinwall Thursday, Oct 11, 2012 9:05 AM

  • Critic's Rating B+
  • Readers' Rating B-
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<p>"The Walking Dead" is back in action on Sunday night.</p>

"The Walking Dead" is back in action on Sunday night.

Credit: AMC

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Through two seasons, AMC's "The Walking Dead" has been a show that's great at beginnings, quite good at endings, and really problematic when you get to the middle. With many returning shows, it would be reassuring to hear that the start of the new season (it debuts Sunday night at 9) is strong; with "The Walking Dead," it doesn't tell you anything you don't already know.
 
The series' pilot episode is a marvel of silence and dread, as our hero, local deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) wakes up from a coma to discover that the world turned into a zombie apocalypse while he was sleeping. The succeeding episodes of that season stumble with a collection of loud redneck caricatures and bumpy storytelling choices, before things mostly recover with an unsettling episode set at CDC headquarters, where Rick and his group found out just how hopeless the world has become.
 
Season 2 starts off with a terrific set piece where Rick and the others have to hide from a zombie herd in the middle of a traffic jam. Things grind to a halt once they find temporary shelter at a farm whose occupants have been able to live at some remove from the zombie plague, before picking up in the mid-season finale (Rick's jealous sidekick Shane massacres the zombies their host had been keeping in his barn), and then again with the end of the season (zombies overrun the farm, Rick kills Shane in self-defense, and Rick takes a firmer hold of the leadership reins).
 
We return for the third season with another location that will be familiar to fans of the Robert Kirkman "Walking Dead" comics: an abandoned prison that Rick realizes will be the ideal location to stay protected from the zombies. The premiere deals with how the group discovers and then seizes the prison, while the season's second episode has the group discovering that the place isn't as simple or safe as they had hoped.
 
The two episodes are as exciting and scary in equal measure as I'm sure the creative team (led by producer Glen Mazzara, who wrote the premiere) intended, and suggest that the show's strength isn't so much the bookends of each season, but certain aspects that get more play at the beginning and ending of each year. "The Walking Dead" is excellent with action, with suspense, and with atmosphere, and these early episodes have all three in spades. There are long stretches of the premiere where Mazzara doesn't include any dialogue at all, trusting the actors and director Ernest Dickerson to tell the exact story he wants them to.
 
And a big, welcome part of that story is the way that the group has adjusted to post-apocalyptic life. They are not happy to be constantly on the run, barely surviving, but they've gotten pretty good at it. So much of the story is conveyed in just seeing how the characters move now, which demonstrates how they've developed an unexpected teamwork and some genuine zombie-fighting skills. One of the many issues with the previous season is that the characters never seemed particularly proactive about their situation. You can sympathize for a while with people who are just running and reacting, but when the series goes and goes and they haven't gotten better at what they're doing, they become tiresome. That's no longer the case.
 
But with the prison establishing itself as another potential safe haven, I do wonder what will happen if/when Rick and his crew get it fully secured. "The Walking Dead" characters have never been as well-drawn as the world they're trapped in(*). When the action slows down and we're asked to care about the state of Rick's marriage to Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), or the budding romance of Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan), it can be problematic. But the talking scenes in the first two episodes didn't drag in the way many of them did last season, and I even wasn't all that troubled by Rick and Lori's son Carl (Chandler Riggs), who's grown up just enough to be useful rather than a constant distraction.
 
(*) This is the point where I should acknowledge that I was never a huge fan of the Kirkman comic, in part because I found the characters thin (the show's most compelling personality, Norman Reedus's Daryl, wasn't in the comic), in part because it felt like an exercise in misery porn after a while. I stopped reading partway through the prison arc, after the introduction of a character who will be appearing in this season of the AMC show, played by actor David Morrissey. I'm curious to see if I respond to him any better in flesh-and-blood than I did on the page. 
 
One of the running debates between the characters is whether there's any reason to have hope for the future, given their circumstances. I can look at yet another excellent beginning to a "Walking Dead" season and assume things will start to drag in a few weeks. Or I can hope that this is the year Mazzara and company learn to play to their strengths throughout the season, and not just at the beginning and end of it.
 
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

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Alan Sepinwall
Sr. Editor, What's Alan Watching
Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
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  • Thrillhouse_talkback_profile

    Vaughn

    Not sure I entirely agree with the assessment that the show only excelled at beginnings and endings. That whole s2 stretch after Mazzara took over, from 2x08 to 2x13, was mostly very good. Still had its troubles, but much improved over what had came before.

    October 11, 2012 at 9:31AM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      SlackerInc I agree that everything since Mazzara has taken over has seemed quite good. (As a result, I've started watching the show "Crash" on Netflix streaming, which Mazzara was the showrunner for in its first season only, and it seems quite good so far as well.)

      I also did not like the S1 finale. I thought there were a tremendous number of implausible elements to the whole CDC storyline, and almost gave up on the show as a result.

      October 15, 2012 at 2:55AM EST
  • Default-avatar

    Truck

    They look like live action Ninja Turtles in that promo pic.

    October 11, 2012 at 10:02AM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      Brett This might be the best comment ever. Terrifically played.

      October 11, 2012 at 1:06PM EST
    • Default-avatar

      David Agreed. Brilliant.

      October 11, 2012 at 1:19PM EST
    • Default-avatar

      Miles Genius contribution

      October 11, 2012 at 3:13PM EST
    • Default-avatar

      jack_is_laughing This comment makes me think some sort of Ninja Turtles/Walking Dead S3 premiere video mashup is required.

      October 11, 2012 at 3:54PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    Mark

    I agree that Daryl is the most interesting character. Season 2 had too many characters to develop with the most interesting being Hershel. Overall, they did a great job with establishing enough tension and release in season one compaired to the more character development of season two. Also, the poor kid is almost as annoying as Anakin Skywalker. Hopefully, in season three the editors will have more shots within the action sequences without direct hits to thread fo zombies and less unlimited rounds of ammo.

    October 11, 2012 at 10:40AM EST Reply to Comment
  • Default-avatar

    Col Bat Guano

    Wait a minute. This show is about zombies?!?!? I thought it was an examination of family life in rural Georgia.

    October 11, 2012 at 10:51AM EST Reply to Comment
  • Panther_talkback_profile

    kro_lin

    There are a few minor annoyances with the show...but after a second viewing I realized that The Walking Dead is probably my second favorite show on television. I absolutely love it. If there is one change I would love to see, however, it's Lori. For the love of god I wish they would kill her off.

    October 11, 2012 at 12:32PM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      jack_is_laughing As uneven and frustrating as Walking Dead is, I keep coming back to watch it. I, like Alan, have a lot of issues with Kirkman's comic book but I've kept reading it. I've finally lost interest in it with the newest arc, which just feels redundant to me, but there is something incredibly compelling about the idea of long-form storytelling after the zombie apocalypse.

      However, I won't stick around forever if the quality doesn't become consistently better. I hope the writers and producers get this and will raise the bar rather than falling back into old habits.

      October 11, 2012 at 3:58PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    J

    I personally liked season 2 a lot, there were probably 2 or 3 episodes in the first half that were too slow and could have been condensed, but overall I liked the tone and build-up into the midseason and season finales.

    October 11, 2012 at 5:55PM EST Reply to Comment
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    Key

    Wow, A+ from The fans. Can I watch this fresh, without having seen previous seasons?

    October 11, 2012 at 7:37PM EST Reply to Comment
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      J Either use your Netflix, or get a free one month trial and burn right through them (both seasons are on there). Its not completely necessary to watch the entire series beforehand, I don't suspect, but you'd be missing out on some compelling TV.

      October 11, 2012 at 8:32PM EST
  • Default-avatar

    ron mexico

    "Misery Porn?" Alan says that like it's bad!

    For what it's worth, I definitely understand what he's saying there about the comic - but I have never read a comic book that was as hard to put down as The Walking Dead. It was also kind of refreshing to compare against the TV version because you empathize with Carl in the comic while Wesley Crushering his TV version. Looking forward to a great third season - and I admit, I do secretly hope the TV version is a little less miserable.

    October 12, 2012 at 11:32AM EST Reply to Comment
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    Col Bat Guano

    I just saw the extended preview on AMC and saw Rick talking about searching for food, fuel and ammunition. Finally, some mention of what should be the overriding concern of these people.

    October 13, 2012 at 6:27PM EST Reply to Comment
  • Image_talkback_profile

    unclevanya

    I can't say I am happy about liking TWD. It's really just a filler on my VCR to see sometime during the week. I also think its a good feeling killing those walkers, getting your own aggressions to anger.

    October 15, 2012 at 12:43AM EST Reply to Comment
    • Default-avatar

      Matthew Holy crap! You have a VCR? Just kidding....I knew what you meant.

      October 15, 2012 at 1:14PM EST

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