Just found Seasaon 2, episodes 7 - 10 for download. LOVE this show!

The pace sure has picked up in the last couple episodes.

So where are you in the story?

I just started the new episodes. LOVE it!

Big night.

Very big.

Next week's is going to be wild.

Wow. That's all I can say.

I am a bit disappointed by the recent episodes. The pace of development is jarringly uneven, and I think this is a plotting problem rather than a deliberate effect. Randall's captivity could have given an opportunity to reflect on the conflicting approaches to survival, but it gave way to action and melodrama instead. I do like Shane's reflection in the window of the building before walkers came crashing through, but more could have made of it.

To be on topic, the main survival thing I learned from the past few episodes is: learn to interrogate people. The Walking Dead, like The Island, subscribes to the "hit them until they talk" school of thought. As one FBI agent says, if that's what you do, it's hard to trust the information they give you (they may just be making up what you want to hear to stop the torture), but people do it because it's easier to hit someone than to outsmart someone. I guess I'll put it up there with learning to ride a llama in case I find myself retreating to the Andes after a nuclear holocaust.

Spoilers below:

So what's the deal? Some people are already infected while living, but they do not exhibit symptoms until they are killed by something else?

Glen needs to get it on with Maggie more often. She's your woman, so be her man! It's gotten to the point where I'm wondering whether the producers or the audience might be uncomfortable seeing regular gestures of intimacy in an interracial romance.

Poor Dale. I didn't think they'd get rid of him since he's one of the better developed characters, and he has a certain tension/relationship with two other characters.

Guess they'll get a chance to put all those guns to use, hunh?

Yeah, the natural conclusion is that everyone is already infected or that the cause is airborne and attacks at the moment of death. Doesn't bode well for a long term capacity of the "survivors"!
With respect to their guns -- they don't have enough ammo to combat that horde. There had to be 2-300 walkers looking for their next meal. I see more living becoming dead... perhaps even Maggie.

Many fans hypothesize that the fact that everyone is already infected with the virus is what the CDC doctor whispered into Rick's ear at the end of that episode. That's got to be about 5 or 6 billion zombies roaming Earth....

Glenn/Maggie - Season Two had two different Executive Producers and only thirteen episodes to juggle a rather large cast of characters. I think those facts had more to do with diminished screen time for certain characters. Also, Glenn's character made it clear that he has intimacy issues -- Maggie having freaked him out when she said she loves him. And with the zombies residing in the barn until recently, daddy Hershel in the house and hungry zombies in the woods, there haven't been a lot of prime rendezvous locations handy. Interracial romance has not been a big deal on television for decades.

Poignant Q&A with Shane actor Jon Bernthal on filming his last episode of TWD

http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/03/11/jon-bernthal-shane-walking-dead-shocker/

Take me inside the filming of that final confrontation and the emotions at play while playing it.

"We shot that scene all night long. And the entire cast came out and spent the entire night out on that field to be there for the last scene, and Jeff DeMunn [who played the recently deceased Dale] actually had been gone. He lives on a farm in upstate New York, and he had flown down and surprised me to be there for my last scene, which just touched me. And like I said, there was a lot of feeling about the last scene. The writers wanted it to be one way, the actors wanted it one way, the producers wanted it to be another way, I think everybody just sort of had their idea of what that scene should be, and it was just Andy and I in the woods walking out together, and Andy and I turned to each other and said, “You know what, man, this is you and me. Let’s do this for you and me.”

And various reviews:

http://entertainment.time.com/2012/03/12/the-walking-dead-watch-better-angels/

The final sequence of “Better Angels” was arguably the most well crafted set piece of this season. With Rick and Shane alone in a foggy field under the light of a full moon (okay, the moon was a little too big), it felt like a horror movie. It was dark, cold and scary. They had it out — the two alpha males who we knew could never coexist — in a sneaky set up where ultimately Rick was the devious one, coaxing Shane with talk of a truce before literally plunging a knife into his heart. Passion strained the bonds of affection between Rick and Shane, and they became enemies despite the better angels of their nature.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/cele...7GF6R_blog.html

Still, it’s a little sad. Shane stood out as perhaps the most compelling conflicted character in season two. It was never clear what Shane might do next, and on a show where everyone has had the same argument at least five times, a dose of unpredictability was welcome.

Shane’s starkly black and white approach to handling life’s major obstacles will be profoundly missed. From now on, we’ll just have to watch “Walking Dead” while always asking ourselves WWSWD — What would Shane Walsh do?


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtrac...-showdown-.html

With Shane gone, the broken group just might be able to find cohesion again; there is no longer an instigator to question Rick and Hershel's more pacifist, humanist leanings. But in the world of "The Walking Dead," rarely do things get better.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/03/1...ngels-tv-recap/

"For provocations, “Better Angels” offers two choices: Lori’s possibly misinterpreted message of thanks to Shane for his just-after-the-apocalypse heroics on her behalf, which he might have heard as “I still love you, Shane.” Or Rick’s unilateral decision-making over the groups’ affairs, notably reversing last episode’s near-consensus in favor of executing the captive Randall.

"... the simpler interpretation could also be correct: Shane is a twisted psychopath who will kill for what he wants. His scheme to kill Rick borrows from both of his past plots. "


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Yes, I have problems with this, too. In fact, I had to surf ETS while watching the show. ;D If there is no action, then there's gotta be something like gripping psychological drama to keep the viewer's interest. But it seems that the screenwriters were too concerned about setting up the showdown between Shane and Rick (by portraying a series of conflicts leading up to Shane's murderous plan) that their characters stagnated.



Maybe so, but the combination is unusual. When's the last time you saw romance between an Asian male and a non-Asian female portrayed on prime time TV? Interracial romance on TV has been mostly black man/white woman or white man/Asian or Latin woman. Black women and Asian men appear nowhere nearly as frequently. I'm not accusing the show of racism -- far from it! But I wonder whether the show is still trying to figure out how to portray a "non-standard" interracial romance yet, and so gives Glen an intimacy issue. This is just a guess, obviously.

Thanks for all those quotes. Did you go through all those articles yourself? Good work!