Watched the first episode of season 2 yesterday. It was kind of slow, but overall it got me pumped for the rest of the season.
Some of my thoughts:
1) If basically everyone is dead, I don’t think NFA rules apply. The crossbow and hand-to-hand zombie killing is dangerous, and is getting old. Find a gun store that sells suppressors, or better yet a suppressor manufacturer and loot the shit out of it. Advanced Armament Corp (AAC) comes to mind, they are located in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Seeing as The Walking Dead is currently taking place around Atlanta a simple 32 mile jaunt down I-85N could net them all the slidencing power (and sweet NFA weapons) they could ever ask for. Problem solved.
2) The product placement at 29 and 39 minutes for the Gerber zombie apocalypse knives was so forced it was hilarious. I’m sure that’s not the last we will see of this knife set on the show, considering it’s now part of weapons they have on hand. Show the Gerber logo some more, flash those smiles, say something great about them, and collect your money AMC.
3) Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think the zombie makeup looked a lot better this season. The special effects also seemed a bit better too.
If you forgot to set the DVR, you can always watch it online on Amazon for a couple bucks:
Season 2 Episode 1 – What Lies Ahead
Or better yet, According to commenter foxtrot, if you don’t mind commercials you can catch it for free on AMC’s website – HERE
Any of you guys watch it? What were your thoughts?
Comments
67 responses to “The Walking Dead – S02E01”
I agree with you %100 dude. It’s the South, guns are even more prevalent than anal lube and cocaine in San Fransisco. There’s no reason to use archaic revolvers and hunting rifles when, IRL, there’d be plenty of access to ARs an AKs.
I’ll take your word for it about San Francisco; I’ve never been. Had I ever been there though, I don’t think I’d be privy to the cocaine and anal lube situation. I’ll bet you’ve got some disturbing stories that you could tell, but should probably keep to yourself.
Feel better?
I chuckled a little as I was typing, so I guess, yeah, I do feel a little better. Thanks for your concern, I guess?
Sure thing.
I know what you’re implying. So no, I’m not gay.
If you’re the top it ain’t gay. That’s what my Gym teacher told me.
Dibs on big spoon, that’s all that matters.
Considering all the military check points and .mil gear that was portrayed as just laying around in Episode One, there should have been plenty of opportunities for the worst survivors of the Zombie Apocalypse to trade up to M-16, M-9, and obtain more than one hand grenade.
While one may argue that there could have been a shortage of ammo, I have been told by others that there is always someone who no longer need his gear and has some ammo left. The Incompetent Wanders of Zombie Land didn’t even do a good job of looting the cars on the freeway in the first episode of Season Two.
Or better yet how about trading up to Humvees and newer vehicles. Lots of car lots with some real steals left on the lot.
baseball bats are fine, but bladed / edged weapons requite too much precision, too much blood splatter, and too much time getting it out of a skull. plus, very little in the way of crowd control.
mike, I’m writing my own .pdf guide after the fallacious and downright laughable zombie survival guide. would you promote it ? It’s more of a manual than a book, by i put my all into it.
There are no bug out bags to be seen and nobody collects any info on the disease which i find disheartening these guys are responsible for realism, and this stuff actually applies to the real world.
Oh one thing that bugged me is when the chick was in the bathroom in the camper trying to put the glock back together lol… i wanted to yell!
Ugh no kidding… that was so annoying haha
Or when she wanted her pistol, and the old fart “wasn’t comfortable” with everyone being armed? You idiot, you’re surrounded by the enemy. Make sure everybody has at leaast two weapons! A really quick fam course, load ’em up!
I think he was more concerned she was going to off herself with the gun at the first opportunity, rather than accidentally shooting someone. If you notice they gave the sheriff’s wife a pistol without hesitation later on
I was just going to say that also. I had the luxury of watching the whole first season for the first time right before seeing the premier, so it was fresh in my mind. In the season one finale, she was wanting to stay and die, and now she’s blaming the old man for forcing her to continue on. I took it to be that they were just looking out for her for fear that she might kill herself.
Does anyone else get the, “I’m heading to your place when the zombies show up,” when people find out you’re a gun guy? If so, show them this hilarious article; number five showing that they should have had their own guns to begin with.
http://www.cracked.com/article/126_5-popular-zombie-survival-tactics-that-will-get-you-killed/
I have always thought of number 2 when I see zombie movies. You always see the survivors pushing them away with short sleeves and cut off shirts, bashing them in the head with bats/swords, then they escape just fine albeit covered in zombie blood and slime. I would be walking around with a gas mask, chain-mail armor, and a hazmat suit because there has got to be a high probability that kind of contact would get you infected after a couple instances.
Other suggestions on that list are pretty solid as well.
I thought that the episode was bizarrely schizophrenic about guns. On one hand the Deputy guy in the very beginning was quite OK with the girl having a pistol, and then later on he agrees with the old man and basically becomes Brady poster boy spouting about how only folks with “training” (ie like him and the Sheriff) should be carrying guns.
The only argument that sort of made sense was that undisciplined panic fire or an ND could cause a zombie herd to descend upon them, but that can be avoided with a bit of training, the scrounging up and issuance of holsters (no need to conceal at this point, right??), and making sure that no one is by themselves (positive morale effect of having someone next to them).
It’s not a bad idea for them to be using sturdy tools as weapons, though. A good hatchet is perfect for close-in work, never runs out of ammo and never jams.
It might jam in a zombie’s skull and you’ll have a tough time getting it out in time for the next zombie! (Purely speculation. I don’t know that it could or not; I’ve never taken a hatchet to someone’s skull… yet.)
I love this show so far, and was pretty happy with the first episode this season.
I agree with the firepower comments completely. Crossbow boy needs to upgrade, and soon. I think he’s down to two arrows now. Seriously.
I also tend to look at other survival elements, particularly vehicles and support gear. Why, oh why, when your crappy RV breaks down constantly and traffic pileups are a constant worry would you not take advantage of the ocean of ready to go vehicles available and get something more suitable? A fourwheel drive truck or jeep with gas cans kept filled in the back and you’d roll right around/over pretty much anything in your way instead of leaving yourself exposed in a bottleneck while you try to once again fix the pesky radiator hose. The motorcycle I can kind of see – but certainly not the awkward apehanger SS chopper the guy was putting around on.
I’d blame the writers – being a bit lazy to furnish the characters with unreliable transportation so that it breaks down and creates danger.
However, for the characters, it may make some sense. Think about it: their world has been depopulated, and overrun with something they’ve only seen in horror films. As shaky as it is, their RV is probably “homey” “comfy” and of course quite portable. It gives them some familiarity. Even if it makes sense to transit to a better functioning vehicle, there might be a psychological barrier to doing so.
In addition, they know their present vehicle fairly well. Who knows how reliable some other vehicle might be, and can they afford the time and zombie-attracting noise to start going on test drives? And finally, just about any vehicle they’d take over would have to be rid of the smell of death – difficult to do even with adequate time, and specialized cleaning equipment and chemicals.
As for her inability to reassemble the Glock, I wouldn’t be too hard on her. It looks like the Smith and Wesson is the actual gun given to her by her father, and she wasn’t even all that familiar with it. Add to that the stress of trying to reassemble it both quickly and quietly while an undead creature is trying to get her and I’m not at all surprised she couldn’t pull it off.
I’m enjoying the show. If you can’t ignore stupid decisions made by the cast of every zombie show ever made, it can be very frustrating. :) As gun folks we tend to look for equipment based solutions to problems. I can’t imagine anybody here would ever have trouble putting a Glock together. Heck I can do it and I’ve never owned one.
suppressed anything is still louder then his crossbow. the old man doesn’t want the blonde to have a gun b/c he’s afraid that she might commit suicide.
It’s not louder than my Suppressed P22.
That statement doesn’t make sense…
i watched it but i realized a lot of the plot and reasons people do things in this show don’t make sense. its still fun though. i agree about the gerber roll out… the product placement probably couldn’t be more obvious.
I like the show too. When it comes to the gun stuff I keep reminding myself that the Deputy was out for some time while the zombies took over. I am pretty sure a lot of gun shops and store would have been thoroughly raided before he ever even woke up, let alone made his way to Atlanta and so on. And I believe they are basing the TV show on a comic book series, so they may just be holding true to that. Either way it’s better than a whole lot of crap on TV right now.
My only question is how in the hell did that church ring an electric bell without grid power
A couple of things. I can see one of the advantages of having the RV as the top makes a nice high observation post. The thing is, how did the zombie herd/horde get so close without being noticed when the old man was on top of the RV scanning with binoculars? He should have seen them a mile away. Also, I understand being quiet and all with clubs and crossbows. If so, then why wasn’t there a zombie horde descending on the church when the church bell was ringing? Those a just a couple of things that are in-coincident. Also it started out good, then got kind of slow, but finished strong with the kid being shot. All in all, not bad.
I had never seen this show until last Sunday when they had the season one marathon as a build up to the season premier, so I sat and watched them all while working on the computer. But it seems that firearms are hard to come by, as someone else suggested, I’m sure plenty have been looted by the time the show begins. On the other hand, if that’s true, then there must either be many more survivors, or you might run across some guns that were previously held by people who are now zombies.
In any event, I haven’t noticed anyone carrying a weapon with a barrel threaded to accept a suppressor. I wouldn’t know how to thread a barrel, and even if it’s as simple as using a tap and die set from a hardware store, none of the pistols they possess have barrels that protrude far enough to fit a suppressor. I think the old man’s rifle is without a front sight post, so that might work, but other than that, they’re going to have to be loud.
You could make a suppressor from pvc pipe and some fire resistant foam. Its not a matter of not having the materials, the went through a store for Pete’s sake. Most of the “characters” do not seem particularly crafty and the writes even more so. This series is another example of putting all of the budget in special effects and costumes and less in writing talent.
correction *writers*
In the comics they do raid a gun shop in downtown Atlanta and make off with a butt load of ordnance. I was hoping they’d recreate that scene in the TV show (I mean, who doesn’t fantasize about running through a gun shop with an empty shopping cart and filling it with whatever you can get you hands on?), but I understand why they used Rick looting the Sheriff’s station rather than the gun shop. Day 3 after a zombie outbreak there’s probably not a pristine gun store left in the US, let alone Day 40-something, or whenever Rick finally wakes up
in the 1st season, they went to the police armory and grabbed guns, however most of the gun were lost/traded.
There are some huge deviations on the show versus the comic. I know it’s live action, but sticking to the comic as closely as possible is really the only way to make things seem as gritty as it ought to be.
Even with that said, I like the character Daryl and I hope he stays on as a permanent member. I will be bothered if the show turns his brother into other future characters.
Did nayone else catch the Hyundai ad? The deputy picks out a Hyundai SUV
and packs it up for his new ride, then the next ad is a Hyundai ad.
Not a coincidence, methinks.
No way! Are you suggesting that companies pay to have their product placed in television shows and then run their ads during the next commercial? Preposterous! Marketing experts aren’t that clever. Next you’ll be trying to tell me that grocery store designers put the milk and eggs at the rear of the store so that when you run in to grab a gallon of milk, you have to pass by all the other enticing things they want to sell you, or that they place the more expensive brands at eye level, and the generic stuff higher or lower, because people are inclined to buy things placed at that level.
I think you’re just a conspiracy theorist!
Most of the weapons they have are simple and reliable. its all pump and bolt guns and I’d rather have a slow shooting gun that forces me to make every shot count then a semi/full auto that gives me the chance in a panicked states rattle off rounds at will and miss.
Gun details aside….. the reason I gave up watching this show is the mentality of the survivors. At this point in the timeline, survivors should be thinking like SURVIVORS! Everybody should have two guns. They should be driving… if not tanks…. tractors or hardened SUVs…. chainlink fencing over the windows… grill guards with spikes…. and could we think about flame weapons?
Can we think about trapping and incinerating the zombies? They flock to the sound of ______? Then let’s us use that as the bait for a trap. Can we just line up on some bulldozers or tractors and run over zombies until we need to refuel? And there should be a rolling cache truck. Maybe a hardened tractor trailer/ semi / RV from hell….
If you are going to survive, then you have to act like a survivor.
I was thinking about this comment earlier and then had to step away from the computer for a while. Yeah, ideally everyone would be armed to the teeth, driving tanks, yadda yadda. But, who wants to watch a show with no with no struggle to it? If things were easy for them, it wouldn’t be interesting.
It is supposed to be entertainment, after all.
Josh,
I don’t want it to be a shoot fest either. But the characters are not behaving as if they have survival instincts at all. They need to adapt. They haven’t.
Theirs is the mentality of panic and unpreparedness. Smells like America.
I love this show. Had a little season 1 marathon on Sunday to catch up.
As for Gerber… I hate gerber. AUSA had a large display of Gerber knives… and frankly it says one thing to me… Gerber makes as many knives as possible hopping that somethign something sticks. Most of which are your typical hard angled FDE/Tan/Coyote/TacBlack/tacticool blades. I’ve seen gerber knives and axes chip, bur, snap, hell I almost lost a finger (almost) to a gerber. they made sub par garbage. I loved how they laid out the gerber kit. I could smell product placement the second that kid tried to yank it off that geek.. like it was all heavy or some shit… Please… They dont use S30V (Benchmade and others), or some crazy shit like VG10 or 8Cr13MoV (SpyderCo). They use mystery steel, and sometimes they use something like…. oh… taken right from their site… “High Carbon Stainless Steel” what the fuck ever that means… Gerber made decent knives like… 20-30 years ago… back when they where called “Gerber Legendary Knives” For christ sake.. their parent company is Fiskars.. they make fucking scissors. I remember when I worked at REI for a minute and Gerber had just been bought out by Fiskars. Funniest shit.. It was like a storm of knives rolled in. 25 different models, all blister packed in that blister packed plastic shit that takes a decent knife or razor blade to open. Fucking gerber… *ends rant*
The girl who lost her sister in Season 1 and couldn’t figure out how to put a gun back together after being field stripped (even though she had it half way there… “yeah the barrel goes right there… no wtf are you doing… god damnit… put it back.. oh my god wtf is she doing” “SHUT UP JUSTIN! She cant hear you its a god damn TV show!”)… Looked like a Barreta M96? Anyways… it didn’t have a hammer… any one notice that?
I believe it was a Glock, that’s why it didn’t have a hammer. And a “Beretta” 96, Baretta was a TV show, has a hammer, I believe it’s just a 92F chambered for .40 S&W.
I enjoyed the first season and was really looking forward to this seasons premiere. I too am disappointed with the way the characters are acting and choosing to protect themselves. They left some SERIOUS fire power and armored vehicles at the CDC. And why keep that old busted up RV? They couldn’t find something in all those abandoned vehicles to replace it with?
I remember thinking the same thing. How many M-16s and Berettas were just laying there with all those dead soldiers…I would’ve been loaded down with at least 20 m-16s by the time they got to the CDC
For anyone interested, here are the knives seen during the show.
http://www.gerbergear.com/Apocalypse
haha I swear some of you guys don’t read my posts. :P
Nobody reads that crap Mike, we just watch the videos and look at the pictures. :)
I’m just kidding
LOL!
Ok, what did I miss?
you can watch the first episode for FREE directly on amc’s website.
http://www.amctv.com/the-walking-dead/videos/the-walking-dead-episode-201
Cool thanks, i’ll update the post!
All in all, I thought it was pretty solid. They have drifted far from the comic, and that keeps it fresh for a viewer like me. I do agree with the weapon selection though…while they are “everyman” guns, at this point I know more folks who own more ar/ak’s than bolt guns…but that could be generational. I half chuckled when Daryl found a pristine pre-1980’s Colt Detective special in the tent…Hell, I haven’t seen one of those in a gun shop in years.
By the way, Gerber’s stone cold rip off the “Woodsmans pal” is pretty tacky. The gerber is half the price, half the quality (I bet), and made in China. I don’t believe the Gerber can be close to comparable.
http://www.woodmanspal.com/
Not all Gerber products are made in China. :P
I’m glad for that.
Gerber LMF ASEK II is made in the USA.
Knife tests did a review on it.
I’ve bought three, and gave two away as gifts. :D
Which of those shown in the TV show were not?
Is that thing made in the USA?
I’m hoping that at some point they explain not only the origin of this infection, but maybe just as importantly, how it is spread. In the first season when they went out to procure the truck to get them out of the city, they donned heavy clothing and rubber gloves (looked like the heavy duty type used to mix chemicals) before chopping up a twice-dead zombie and smearing themselves with it to cover their scent. They made a point of saying, “Don’t get any on your skin.” Good advice, I would think.
But later on they’re beating zombies with baseball bats and blood is splattering all over them. Then in this last episode, two of them eviscerate a zombie and open his stomach to see what he had last eaten using bare hands! I carry surgical gloves with me when I’m hunting deer or pheasants; I don’t want to stick my bare hands in anything! That’s partially just me though; if I’ve got gloves on, I’ll stick my hands in almost anything, but without them, not so much! But with everything they’re doing, and the lack of means for good personal hygiene, I would think it would be pretty likely that they’ve got small cuts or abrasions on their hands (and other places) that would easily be an opening for any type of infection. You’d think if you can be infected by a bite, you could be infected by any bodily fluid getting into your blood.
Even though she was struggling with reassembling that Glock(the Matag of guns) I did get a bad flashback of trying to reassembel Beretta 92’s with that finiky recoil spring that if it’s a micron to the right or left reassembly is a no go.
You sir are wrong. I will post a video just to prove you wrong.
http://youtu.be/Xk2WcIKEHUw 5min 30sec
I read that the shows creators wanted it to be more interaction between the survivors (like in the movie “The Mist”) rather than a shoot fest of zombies. (I’d rather have that)
I sure hope it doesn’t turn into some stupid soap opera series. (and gets “stupid”).
And you know that if the actors want too much in salary, the writers can just kill them off and find new survivors.
I dont know. I was into this last season but for some reason not caring much for this one. Can’t pin point it but just not the same for me.
So how does a guy see that buck in season 2 but not the kid standing directly on the other side of it???
Target fixation. He was probably so focused on the buck that he couldn’t even seen the trees let alone the boy.