The Walking Dead: "Seed"

Just like I promised, here is the first review in my series of reviews for each episode of The Walking Dead. I was really hyped for this episode after the stunning season 2 finale. It was an episode that finally let the show live up to its potential and go all out. No slow pacing, no bullshit, just straightforward zombie action coupled with a pretty good story. Did this episode live up to the hype? Well, not exactly, but I still enjoyed it a far bit. SPOILERS!!!!!

The episode started out fantastically with the group trying to take down a group of walkers and take over a house. It's very well done: there is no dialogue and the group acts like a well oiled machine. They efficiently take down a group of walkers and then proceed to flee when an even bigger group approaches them. We see Carl has fully embraced this world now. He is carrying a gun and participating in the attack. We also see Rick has really enforced his "This is no longer a democracy" rule. People can advise him on his decisions, but he gets the final say. It's also clear there has been a large passage of time since the last season ended. Since Lori mentions at one point that their baby is just "days away," I'm going to go ahead and say it's been nine months. The episode does have a very cinematic feel. It really seems like a sequel to a movie that came out years ago. The pacing is much better. It does drag at times, but for the most part everything seems to be moving well. I also liked the evolving dynamics. Rick and Lori have clearly become hostile towards each other, and I'm amazingly not blaming Lori for that. She actually tries to have a conversation with him to try and sort out some "things," but Rick will have none of it. I didn't mind Lori a ton in this episode, but that's largely because she didn't have much to do. Hey, that's a great solution for the Lori problem: ignore her! The zombie action was great, and the ending was top notch and more than a little bloody and shocking. I kind of saw part of it coming, but I did not see the results coming. Now, I said I didn't like everything about this episode. The biggest problem I had were the occasional pointless scenes. I did not get the scene that had Maggie and Beth singing. Maybe there was some symbolism behind it or maybe it was meant to generate atmosphere, but I felt it just brought the episode to a screeching halt for two or three minutes. I also did not like the scenes with Michonne. Yes I know she's important, but you could have held off on her for a bit, or at least just kept the single scene she had with Andrea. Again, those scenes brought the episode to a halt. But at the end of the day, those may just be nitpicks. It was a good return for the show, and I hope to see it improve next week.