I will spare you the saga of how this news was uncovered — except to properly credit CraveOnline and Ain’t It Cool News for needling it out of Frank Darabont — but I will say this: If it had followed Frank Darabont’s original plan (before he was fired), the first episode of season two of “The Walking Dead” could’ve been amazing, better than any other episode this season.
In a letter to AICN, Darabont revealed those plans for the opening episode, and it would’ve been epic.
The opener allegedly flashbacks to the early days of the zombie apocalypse. The entire episode would have tracked a squad of Army Rangers dropping into Atlanta. They get trapped in a zombie outbreak. “All they have to do is travel maybe a dozen blocks, a simple journey, but what starts as a no-brainer scenario goes from ‘the city is being secured’ to ‘holy sh*t, we’ve lost control, the world is ending,’” Darabont describes in a letter to AICN. So, yeah — Black Hawk Down with zombies.
Along the way, the soldiers encounter some familiar faces from the show. “Picture our squad arriving at a manned barricade where some civilians are being held back from leaving the city on shoot-to-kill orders to stop the spread of contagion, it’s a panicked high-intensity scene, and in this crowd of desperate people we find Andrea and Amy. The barricade gunners panic, the civilians start to get mowed down by machine-gun fire, and in this melee the girls get pulled to safety by some old guy they don’t even know. It’s Dale. He’s nobody to them, just some guy who saw the opportunity to do the right thing and reacted in the moment.”
The end of the episode concludes with the last surviving member of the squad, now infected and dying, hiding in a tank. A very familiar tank …
And here is the awesome kicker: At the very end of the episode, after the soldier had died, they would’ve jumped to the first episode of the first season and recreated it: “Rick comes scrambling into the tank to escape the horde … blows that zombie soldier’s brains out … now Rick’s trapped … fade out … the end. ”
That would’ve been mindhole blowing. Not only would it have added an entire back story about the zombie outbreak in Atlanta, but it would’ve humanized one of the zombies, reminding us that the rabid, infected hordes were once real human beings. It might have also added a heavier sense of ache and sympathy in subsequent episodes, when we find out that Hershel is keeping zombies in his barn because he thinks they’re real people, capable of being cured.
What we got, instead, were six episodes of mostly unlikable, unsympathetic characters (save for Glen) walking around in the woods searching for a minor character with whom viewers had little attachment.
AMC is not commenting on the story, though it’s obvious why they scrapped the episode: Because it would’ve been expensive, and instead of financially supporting the show’s biggest ratings-getter, those cheap bastards stuck to filming in the forest. Thanks for nothing, AMC.
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The redneck actually turned into the most well rounded character on the show. Also the most capable and oddly enough human. I like Glen, but he is kind of one dimensional like everyone else. His one dimension happens to be what the target audience is/identifies with.
But yeah, AMC pretty much decided that they would spend all the praise and good will they had for quality programming by slashing budgets to make the bottom line look bigger. They also have reality programming on the way which means the channel is pretty much getting flushed.
Seriously. The only character I ended up caring about was Daryl, but the rest of the cast treated him like the a-hole racist he debuted as.
Thanks Walking Dead writers, your one helpful and capable character is the villain of the group. This is what happens when you put love triangles in a show about zombies.
I’m so with you. Daryl is the only person I really cared about (although I like Glen & Rick). I would’ve liked a story arch that spent more time focusing on how he is actually a decent man who did bad things (pre-zombies) because of his life circumstances while Shane is a bad man who hid his darkness behind a badge.
Agreed! Daryl has become my favorite character this season. He has the most sense and has become very likable. Plus he is very level headed. Andrea on the other hand needs to get bit by a zombie, or killed off or something. I’m so tired of her whining and bitching about her gun. And what’s the first thing she does once she finally DOES get a gun…? She shoots Daryl.
Damn it, this show could have been so cool.
One thing has become clear: this is the darkest, most terrible timeline.
Maybe if the zombies managed to eat all those awful people. Except Marita Covarrubias, she I could watch run around.
While that Black Hawk Zombie episode would have been a great one off, starting with that as the season 2 opener would have been a mistake. The main problem with WD is that, for the most part, all of the regular characters have zero shading beyond the fact that they all like to follow Rick’s family from one hellscape to another. So what does Darabont do to rectify this? Disregard your main players that you haven’t been able to write for and flesh other, non-pertinent side characters that had the briefest of screen time in the pilot. Flashbacks that the writers have done so far have had little to no impact on what these people’s lives were before the attacks. Splicing in Dale/Andrea into scenes from the Atlanta outbreak screams of Paolo/Nicki from LOST in a sense that you’re trying to retcon establish dynamics within the group that you couldn’t explain within the narrative of the existing show in the first place. Just screams of lazy writing.
True. But I’ll take lazy writing with at least one episode about an Army platoon fending off hordes of zombies over lazy writing with multiple episodes about a damn farm.
AMC overspent. They got rid of Darabont to keep Mad Men and they used the rest of their extra money to invest in new shows that they also will have no money to produce well. Season 2 was embarrassingly cheap. You’d need Shakespeare to make an entire season of a group of people doing absolutely nothing seem exciting. When Sophia came staggering out of that barn, I was in a roomful of people who cheered. Finally, that boring torment was over. Thank god for Daryl.
I’ve kind of lost hope that the show will improve and finally deliver more of the ass-kicking we were promised in the pilot. But I’ll keep watching until they kill Daryl. I’ve grown to love that crossbow-toting redneck bastard.
I like Hell On Wheels. I even liked Rubicon and it’s slow pacing – that’s what it was and wanting it to be something else isn’t fair. But I’ve got a feeling Mad Men season 5 is gonna let a lot of people down.
I used to watch the show cause I liked it. Now I watch it while drinking when I need a good laugh.
By making the characters one dimensional, shitty, and unlikeable, they are just doing their best to stick to the comic book source material as it is written. Filled with shitty, one dimensional unlikeable characters and piss poor writing.
so did you think the show was going to be good initially? or you read the comics after checking out the series? I think the comics are the better tale. i stopped watching this garbage after episode 3 last season. the characters are dynamic. the plotting is amazing. whats best is that in the comic the story is the thing. all is expendable to the story. and for some reason they couldn’t figure this out for the show.
Just because they didn’t use the idea, doesn’t mean they can’t go back to it.
He types hopefully.
The zombie in the tank is Sam Witwer from Being Human, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica… quite a few things and not your typical actor for a 5 minute scene and it’s over. It was him because Darabont wanted to go back to him in season 2 as the soldier they follow. How awesome is it that he thought that far ahead and got an actor more recognizable than most the cast to do a bit part with the plan to bring him back for flashabacks in future seasons. Screw you AMC for ruining this show.
I live in Atlanta and a lot of the show is filmed near my house (I’m a couple of miles from the Cobb Energy Centre that stood in for the CDC in season 1). When they were filming last summer, they shut down a large portion of the highway bypass near here and filmed a ton of gunfire and had helicopters and army vehicles. Several friends watched the scene from their offices and we all wondered where that footage went, apparently they started shooting this and killed the idea. I can’t confirm that, maybe that does happen later in the season or something, but they shot some pretty intense action here last year and I haven’t seen it on screen yet.
Wow, that actually gave me goosebumps and I can’t stand TWD.
I picture Darabont pitching his idea for the second season in front of a group of suits and once he’s done, they look at each other and fire him. They then bring in director B, show him their budget and then proceed to explain that the entire season 2 must be filmed for this much. I’m pretty much done with this show unless the army platoon idea is used in season 3.
I’m really surprised that no one has mentioned one of the most obvious problems with “The Walking Dead”: in addition to being unlikeable – the characters are incredibly stupid. They routinely do moronic things that put their lives in danger unnecessarily (i.e. lowering Glenn into the well). It’s one thing when your characters take risks, it’s another thing altogether when they almost die because of their incredible stupidity. Even the Hershel character repeatedly says “I’m amazed you people have lived this long.”
My other big problem with this season was that it was completely lacking any sense of dread – or the fact that civilization is collapsing. For long periods of time, it was literally like watching an episode of “The Waltons” with one scene featuring a zombie.
I love the horror genre, and zombies in particular – but for the reasons many of you have brought up, and those listed above I’m not certain that I want to continue watching this show – it’s got ALOT of problems.
It should be pointed out though that, even more than the horror genre in general, the zombie genre depends greatly on people being stupid. People walking into dark, spooky places, people needlessly attracting attention, people covering up they’ve been bitten, people letting their guard down. It is not THAT difficult to protect yourself from a bunch of lumbering, brain dead zombie hordes if you got lots of guns and ammo, so in order to get things interesting, they make people stupid because that’s easier than to come up with a credible threat.
I agree with the Well scenario, I wasn’t even sure what that was supposed to accomplish, as if a blubbering, rotting Zombie wouldn’t have ruined the water already just by being in there. Any sane person would have said “fuck you” if they told you to lower yourself into a tiny well with a Zombie.
That said, the entire “waltons” scenario didn’t make sense to me. How they managed to trap all these zombies in a single barn. I mean, did anyone ever stop to ask how you put one in without letting the other 10 out? And that the family somehow has so little experience with them that they think it’s “just a disease” and the daughter actually needs a wake up call of almost getting bitten.
That’s a lot of critiques from people who hate the show. Hate on haters, and keep pumping up those ratings because I love the show.
@Rapax: You’re right about people doing stupid things in horror stories. I think my problem with TWD, is that I know and expect characters in horror genre to do stupid things – but their behavior went well BEYOND that – to the point where it was really distracting. Or the seemingly interminable stupid conversations like Lori’s: “I don’t want my child to learn to shoot a gun”. (It’s not like he needs to protect himself, it’s not as if there’s a zombie apocalypse or anything).
@Beerad: I’m not a ‘hater’. I’m offering a critique of the show. In my estimation it’s not good writing, and it’s not good storytelling – especially when compared to some of the other things that were on cable on Sunday night at the same time (i.e. “Homeland”, “Boardwalk Empire”). If AMC wants me to watch the show, then I want well executed drama. You can’t really say that about TWD so far.
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Haven’t watched a second of it since the abomination that was the Season 1 Finale.