'The Walking Dead' – Great Moments from Season One
Starting in October 2013 we will be recapping the newest Season of The Walking Dead, but in the meantime I thought we would keep you from missing the show too much by reminding you of some of the great moments from past seasons.
Days Gone Bye – had the fortune to be one of those pilots that by itself is an amazing piece of storytelling and when combined with the rest of the first season makes for a beautiful tapestry. From the first few seconds you just knew you were witnessing something never before seen on television. The action of the pilot doesn’t really begin until the main protagonist Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, makes it to Atlanta and literally runs in to a herd of zombies. However it is in the first moments that the action is really established for the viewer by the use of overwhelming silence. The lack of noise makes it so that anytime we the viewer hear a sound it is an immediate assault on the senses. It is magnified in such a way that you are constantly on the edge of your seat waiting for something, anything to happen.
Guts – was, in my opinion, the hardest of the first 6 episodes to pinpoint a great moment from. Not because it wasn’t a good episode, it was, however most of the episode was about introducing the audience to some of the other survivors and letting us know that Rick wasn’t alone in the world. But the moment that kept coming back to me over and over again was the sight of Glenn Rhee, the guy who can get in and out of anything, hurtling full speed down the empty freeway with no thought to anything other than the fun he was having in that moment. After living constantly on the edge of dying it was moment of pure fun. Something you can imagine he hadn’t experienced in a while.
Tell it to the Frogs – I don’t know if they knew that when they cast Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon that they were changing the course of the series, but that is exactly what happened. When we first meet Daryl he is an ill-tempered guy with an extremely short fuse. He also just happens to be a tad bit racist, but luckily that is more from conditioning and upbringing then a sign of how he really feels. For the first season Daryl is more of a peripheral character, but as time went on he became invaluable to the group and the audience. A close second would have been when Shane beats the abusive Ed bloody because come on the asshole had it coming.
Vatos – had so many freaking good moments that it was kind of hard to pick just one. But I ultimately had to go with the death of Andrea’s sister Amy. Not because the death itself was gruesome, but because of what it signified. Up until that point all the deaths had either already occurred off screen or were of no consequence to the viewer. RIP Ed. Amy’s death on the other hand showed the audience that everybody could be sacrificed at any point. Even the pretty blonde girl.
Wildfire – was another one of those episodes that was packed full with great moments. One of my favorites was when they left Jim to die on his own so that he would not put the rest of the group in danger. I loved this moment because it put the final, forgive the pun, nail in the coffin of any hope that the audience may have been saving of this being a show with a probable happy ending. Except the characters had not yet realized that point of fact because when the doors to the CDC opened and the light shined over our war torn group you could see that they still held on to hope. That light symbolized possibilities.
TS-19 – was about establishing that this is the world our survivors live in now. There was no going back and that was never more clearly stated then when Dr. Edwin Jenner, played by Noah Emmerich, was explaining the progression of the disease through Test Subject-19. They knew what happened after someone was bit and how the disease progressed from the victim dying to becoming a walker however they didn’t know why it happened, what caused it, or more importantly how to stop it from happening. There was no escape. Their old way of life was gone and now they had to figure out how to survive in this new violent world where the only thing that was certain was death.