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The Walking Dead Review: "Vatos"

By | November 22nd, 2010
Posted in Reviews | % Comments


With the fourth episode of The Walking Dead, we get what is arguably the most anticipated episode yet: Robert Kirkman’s episode. The creator of the Walking Dead comes in to write not only his first episode, but his first ever teleplay. Expectations are high, and there are certainly things that anyone used to Kirkman’s writing in the comic would assume would happen.

So – with the stakes certainly as high as they’re going to get for the show until the finale, how did Kirkman do in his episode of the Walking Dead? Find out my thoughts after the cut.

As a note, spoilers are discussed.

To put it lightly, this was the best episode of the series so far. It’s an interesting episode, because this is the episode that digresses from the story of the comic the most, but in the end we are given a story that is more in the spirit of the comic than the episodes that took directly from the book itself.

This episode splits into two parts. Half of the episode deals with Rick, Glenn, T-Dog and Daryl in Atlanta, trying to get their guns back and dealing with the episode’s aforementioned vatos. The crew find themselves crossed with a group of survivors who kidnap Glenn and threaten to kill him if they don’t get the guns. As it turns out, the gangbangers are really not that much of a threat at all. They are merely protecting a retirement community and attempting to survive themselves, which offers up one of the first heavy tropes of zombie stories: racial attitudes in a post-life world. When everyone around them is dying and returning to kill, how does racial prejudice remain in tact? Apparently it does so quite well if we are to consider Merle, and this episode reinforces the idea that those beliefs are now useless. Of course, the resolution of this sequence is an intense scene played out in Quentin Tarentino/mexican stand-off style until Kirkman disarms us all with a bit of humor to lighten the mood of an otherwise incredibly tense episode.

Meanwhile, the other half of the episode takes place at the camp, in which we begin to see little bits of the comic taking form. Amy and Andrea’s relationship is elaborated upon and Dale and Andrea’s friendship begins to blossom, which comic fans certainly recognize as an important one. Jim begins to act strange, and we are once again left with Shane to act as the hero. It’s interesting watching Shane as such a fleshed out character like this, at least in such a stark contrast from his comic book counterpart. The show allows more time to spend with the characters, and since this isn’t a comic book they need to give us reasons to care about everyone, Shane included. Now we have a character who appears to be duplicitous while selfless at the same time, asserting is alpha male status as best as he can in the wake of Rick’s return.

Of course, then it all goes to Hell. At this point in time, I’d like to reassert that if you haven’t seen the episode, you should stop reading now.

If there is one thing that Kirkman is rather famous for in the comic book, it’s that he has a “take no prisoners” attitude. In a similar fashion to Joss Whedon, Kirkman will lull you into a false sense of security before killing everyone you love. While the show has certainly just begun and most viewers have assumedly not fallen in love with any particular character (except for maybe Rick and Glenn), that doesn’t mean that Kirkman doesn’t establish the undeniable fact that no one is safe. As Ed, the abusive husband, gets torn apart, we also watch as poor Amy, Andrea’s sister, is killed the night before her birthday. After spending an entire episode watching Andrea’s love of her sister become established, Kirkman takes that exact moment as it is revealed how Andrea wrapped her sister’s present to destroy that moment (at least, that’s what I took from the scene). It all mirrors the finale of issue 5 just about to the T.

Continued below

What this ended up doing is two things; first, our rather large group of survivors were wittled down to a much more manageable group and allowing us to no longer question “who is that?”, and second it showed us that this show is not afraid to tear everything down for the sake of realism versus fixating itself to contracts for actors that will ultimately hold the show back, like on your average network show. That kind of attitude in a television series of this caliber is perfect and 100% required. When watching LOST, one of my favorite elements would be that any character could die at any time – even the ones that were incredibly important to the plot from day one. Walking Dead was pushing a dangerously large ensemble cast, and one notable thing about this episode is that there were quite a few “red shirts” making their first appearance here. The herd is thinned out, and we don’t have to worry about new no-names popping up to make unwanted commentary now. On top of that, now our survivors and our actors know: no one is safe.

While I could continue to mention how the show has now had fantastic acting, writing and direction for four episodes straight, I would instead like to focus on one actress. Laurie Holden, the actress who plays Andrea, is the true star of the episode. Andrea is an incredibly important character in the books, and one who has survived up until the current point, having lost her sister in issue 5. She has grown into an incredibly strong female lead, and now the actress has the same motivation that her character did. On top of that, the last three minutes of the episode were absolutely heartbreaking. The thirty second shot of Andrea trying to come to grips with what just happened, with no additional audio and a close-up of her face, was arguably harder to watch than the litany of gore that had just ensued. It was one of the strongest moments of the entire show so far, as was the entire ending sequence of zombie mayhem.

Whenever it comes time to figure out who is going to review what comic book for the week, for the most part we have all learned to not even try to review the Walking Dead anymore. In fact, this has since been referred to as “the Walking Dead corollary”, because the Walking Dead is such a fantastic comic on a monthly basis that it becomes incredibly difficult to sit down and figure out a way to write about how the comic was once again awesome for yet another week in a row. Now that the Walking Dead is reaching new audiences with the AMC show, you have all begun to see what the hubbub is about. This is the zombie experience of the modern day and age. As much as we have had hundreds of zombie stories in the past decade, let alone the past five years, it is the Walking Dead that is going to show everyone what to do just as George Romero did when he pioneered the entire genre, and it’s Robert Kirkman who is going to sit behind a computer and type the scripts that really show you how to do it right.


//TAGS | The Walking Dead

Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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