It was around this time last year that we were bidding adieu to The Walking Dead for a year. However, the success of last season has birthed a much longer second season, and thus we only have to wait two and a half(ish) months for a few more new episodes (six to be exact). So what better way to send us into the hiatus than with the show finally achieving an attribute that the comic has done so well for so long.
Click on down to find out what that is.
As a note, immense spoilers for the episode will be discussed. Seriously, if you haven’t watched it, do NOT click down (or, for that matter, go to the show’s website at the moment.)
One of the reasons The Walking Dead as become as notorious and fantastic of a comic book as it has in its eight year lifespan is it’s tendency to engage in emotional violence. Now, emotional violence is far from a technical term and one I only recently discovered was used by people that were not me and my best friend. To put it simply, emotional violence in media and literature can loosely be defined as “leading you to believe something you are used to believing, getting you to invest in it, then in the most gruesome way possible turn it on its ear and make you regret thinking that way in the first place.” Countless times, the book has lured the reader into a false sense of security, tricked them into thinking the story would progress in a certain way, then seemingly picked out the most sure of sure things and took them out of the picture permanently in such a way that moves and terrifies the reader, partly because its almost like Robert Kirkman peered into their minds to figure out the best way to totally mindfuck them. 91 issues of emotional violence later and he can still do it.
The show, however, had yet to hit that point. Sure the danger was ever present and there was just as much interpersonal turmoil between the living humans as their was between them and their undead aggressors, just like in the comic. But that general sense of emotional uncertainty was not there. In short, the show had telegraphed a lot of its moves to the point that even if you didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, you could put the pieces together really quickly once they started moving to their ends. A lot of this is simply as a consequence of working in the medium of television as opposed to graphic fiction. You simply take in a lot more information with TV as opposed to comics where you are required to do some building in your head. However, this week the show turned a corner and reached a similar point to the one the comics had reached and did it in a very uniquely televised way.
In short, Sophia coming out of that barn the way she did was pure, unadulterated emotional violence.
And they were frickin tricky about it too. Since she disappeared in the first episode, everyone with at least two functioning brain cells immediately jumped to “she got eaten or turned” as their gut response. It was just the path that made the most sense given the circumstances of the world they lived in. However, as the season progressed and we weren’t given an answer one way or another, the human mind starts to rotate and by this episode I had come around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, she had encountered some other survivors and was out there somewhere, alive and mortified. Having her appear now not only serves to hammer home the inherent hopelessness that is living in the world of The Walking Dead and makes the viewers and the characters both feel like suckers for ever doubting our initially dark assumptions.
The episode manages to accomplish all of that in just the final five minutes, but that does not mean the preceding 55 were filler. This season has spent a considerable amount of time focusing on the human element of the story. Taking time to explore the differing ways people react mentally and emotionally to the plague and the world changing is part and parcel to the way a story like this should be told and highlights what makes The Walking Dead unique.
In this episode alone we’ve seen the culmination of a lot of these threads, be it Daryl’s awakening altruism in the wake of not having much better to do than be nice or Maggie and Glen coming together by sheer force of will and believing that humanity works much better in times like this than apart. On top of this, we see Hershel’s somewhat antiquated world view collapse and Shane representing blind anger and aggression challenge Rick’s weakening desire to hold to traditional, democratic social norms. It’s almost like a treatise on human nature existing in a microcosm with a truly wild element that provides a universal (physical and mental) threat to every vestige of humanity. It’s a lot smarter than most give it credit for, but that is part of its charm and overall likability: it appeals to intellectual literature snobs like me and to people that just like to see people eaten by other people. A more universally appealing show has not been seen in many, many years.
Ultimately, this show deserves every bit of the accolades it receives. It not only succeeds in creating quality, compelling television but succeeds equally well in being (without question) the strongest live action comic book adaptation ever. Needless to say, February 12th can’t come any sooner.
