'Walking Dead' finale recap: Zombie science and a message about ecology

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So, this is the way Season One of "The Walking Dead" ends: not with a whimper, but with a giant, all consuming bang, a massive explosion that sees the CDC go up in huge, shooting walls of flame.?Sincerest apologies to T.S. Eliot, but it appears that Rick, Lori, Shane and the other survivors have been delivered back into a zombie-infested waste land now that their temporary refuge has blown up. At least they got to enjoy the facility's many amenities -- hot showers, air conditioning, copious bottles of wine -- for a short while.

Tonight's finale, "TS-19" (the initials standing for Test Subject rather than Thomas Stearns)?did yield much insight, though, into the nature of the plague itself, in relative terms anyway. We learned that the disease, which could be viral, fungal or microbial, invades the brain of an infected person much like meningitis; the brain and eventually the other organs go into failure, resulting in death. Although resurrection times vary, from as little as three minutes to up to eight hours, the brain stem begins to work again, causing the new Walker to get up and start moving, but all traces of the person the Walker once was are gone and do not return.

This information comes courtesy of Dr. Jenner, the scientist who has opened the door to the CDC to the survivors, though he insists that they submit to blood tests to ensure that they're not infected.

Afterward, they're all seen having dinner, drinking, celebrating the fact that they're alive and well, until Shane asks the obvious question: namely, where are the other people who are supposed to be manning the facility and just why is Jenner all alone? The answer, it turns out, is that many of them deserted the CDC to be with their families after things "got bad." When the situation "got worse," Jenner explains that the rest either bolted or committed suicide, but he continued to work, hoping to do some good. ?

Later, an intoxicated Rick thanks Jenner for allowing them all in, finally letting down his guard and admitting what he really thought, what he could never tell anyone in the group -- that he was convinced they would have died in the outside world unless they had managed to find a safe haven. Of course, it's only the illusion of safety they've found.?

While Rick is away, Shane, who's also quite drunk, violently confronts Lori about the way she's spurned him since Rick's return, swearing to her that he had sincerely believed Rick to be dead (a flashback sequence at the opening of the episode underscores his claim) and that in any case, she owes her life and Carl's life to him: If she'd known Rick was still in the coma, Shane argues, she never would have left and likely would have died.

Shane insists he loves her, even as he attempts to force himself on her, and it appears that only Lori digging her nails into Shane's neck to injure him stops him from raping her in the CDC rec room. When Rick crawls into bed with her after the altercation, he tells her she doesn't have to be afraid any longer, but he does so without knowing the real reason she's crying.?

The next morning, Jenner shows everyone his research, which was conducted on that fateful subject, a woman, who we learn, was actually Jenner's wife. It's Dale who notices the large clock on the wall, which is counting down, it turns out, until the time the basement power generators run out of power and fail, and a master computer goes into "decontamination" mode, which will detonate high impulse explosives that will wipe out the building and everything in it.?Jenner, who's resigned himself to his fate, points out that he's been unable to communicate with any other facilities for nearly a month. The French, he says, seemed to be the final holdouts, and they believed they were close to finding a solution to the global pandemic. But when their power grid went down, that was the end of it all. "The world runs on fossil fuel," he shouts. "How stupid is that?"?

Jenner locks everyone in the central area, telling them that the only thing waiting for them in the outside world is a "short, brutal life and an agonizing death," but Rick insists that there's always hope. His argument is convincing enough for Jenner to eventually agree to unlock the doors -- with just four minutes until "decontamination" -- but first Jacqui and then Andrea decide to stay with Jenner and die. Dale refuses to accept Andrea's decision, reminding her that her sister would have wanted her to escape, and she does finally agree to go (though only after Dale tells her that if she's not leaving, then neither will he).

As to how the survivors actually escape the building, well, that's courtesy of a very conveniently remembered hand grenade that Carol has carried in her bag since having found the item in Rick's uniform when she first washed it back at camp. The device blows open the CDC's otherwise impregnable front windows and they all make a narrow, harried escape. As the giant fire burns in the background, the five-car caravan pulls away onto the highway and toward an uncertain future.??

What happens next? Where will the survivors wind up? Will we see Walker Jim? Will Merle Dixon come back to wreak havoc? You'll have to wait to find out until next Halloween, when Season Two of the AMC series will premiere. ?

-- Gina McIntyre

Photo: "The Walking Dead" Credit: AMC?

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'Walking Dead' recap: Is this 'Lost' in translation?

Hmmm, let's see: We have a group of survivors stranded in a remote location who are forced to overcome their trust issues if they want to defeat the mysterious predatory forces surrounding them on all sides, and now there's a lone scientist manning an abandoned underground outpost conducting possibly futile experiments while struggling to retain a slippery grasp on his own sanity after "wildfire" was declared. If a character named after a philosopher or a smoke monster or maybe a randomly generated series of numbers turns up next week, J.J. Abrams might want to consider making a few well-placed phone calls.

Seriously, though, if the comparisons between "The Walking Dead" and "Lost" hadn't been heated enough before Sunday night's episode of the survival-horror series, "Wildfire" certainly should put them over the top. Tonight, we met Jenner (Noah Emmerich), who is first glimpsed speaking directly into some sort of camcorder and finally giving viewers a better idea of just how long it's been since the world fell to the walkers. To be precise, it's been 63 days since the disease went global, though "wildfire" was declared 194 days ago (the code word, naturally, isn't explained). Though Jenner admits he's made "no clinical progress," we see him conducting an experiment, one that ultimately goes awry, triggering a computerized alarm system that engulfs his lab -- and some important tissue samples -- in flames.

Alone and pondering suicide over a glass of red wine, Jenner spies Rick and Lori and Shane on the security cameras outside the Centers for Disease Control, which is home to his bunker, and he stares in disbelief at the survivors, who are desperate to find a way inside, what with it being dusk, and they're having little food or fuel to make it through the night. Just how did they turn up at the CDC? In honor of "Lost," here's a flashback.

The action picks up with Rick on his walkie-talkie, attempting to raise Morgan, warning him to stay out of Atlanta, that the city "belongs to the dead now," and trying to guide him to where the camp is located (though he mentions that last night walkers came out of the woods, so the site has been compromised). At the camp, the others are throwing corpses on a pyre made of burning tires as Andrea sits cradling the body of her sister, Amy, who was killed by the walkers. Several people, including Lori and Dale, try to coax her to step away, but she remains rooted to the spot until Amy awakens as a walker -- and then Andrea tells zombie Amy that she loves her and shoots her through the temple.?

The bigger dilemma, though, is that Jim has been bitten by a walker. Rick argues that they should all head to the CDC, that if there is any vestige of government left, that facility, which was said to be working on a cure, must still be operational and represents Jim's best chance for survival. Shane, however, argues that they should all go toward a military base, one that happens to be 100 miles in the opposite direction. (The former partners are at odds, too, over Rick's decision to go back to Atlanta to retrieve the guns and attempt to rescue Merle Dixon; Shane tells Rick that had he and the other men been at the camp, they might have helped save lives by killing more walkers, with Rick arguing that it was the fact that they had so many weapons that helped the campers fare as well as they did against the ghouls.)

With Jim becoming feverish and delusional, they ultimately decide to head to the CDC in a caravan of vehicles, though Morales opts out of the plan and instead heads to Birmingham with his family. When the RV breaks down, though, Jim, momentarily lucid, implores Rick to leave him behind, saying that his "bones are like glass" and that he wants to be with his family. The group unanimously agrees to grant Jim his wish and leaves him sitting next to a tree, the virus taking hold of his body. Rick offers to leave him a gun -- should he desire to avoid what appears to be his inevitable transformation -- but he declines and gazes up at the sky as the others pull away, still headed, it turns out, to the CDC and what certainly seems destined to be a fateful meeting with Jenner in the series season finale, set to air Dec. 5.

-- Gina McIntyre

Photo: Andrew Lincoln in "The Walking Dead." Credit: AMC

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'Walking Dead' recap: Grave implications

Well, Ed, I can't say you'll be missed.

The abusive husband was one of several casualties in tonight's episode, "Vatos," penned by "The Walking Dead" comic creator Robert Kirkman, who seemed right at home adapting his characters for the screen.

He opened with a quiet conversation between Andrea and Amy as the sisters sat together in a boat fishing, recalling childhood memories of their father. At camp, though, a rattled Jim (Andrew Rothenberg) was spending his morning furiously digging graves on a hillside in the relentless Southern heat — a nice bit of foreshadowing hinting that the rustic domesticity the survivors have cobbled together in Atlanta's rural outskirts is about to end. Indeed, by the episode's conclusion, walkers have invaded the camp taking with them not just Ed but Amy too.

Jim's erratic behavior becomes a focal point, with Dale suggesting he put down the shovel, Lori plainly stating that he's frightening everyone, including Carl. But as Shane steps in to subdue Jim using physical force, the man cops to suffering from the most intense form of survivors' guilt — he lost his wife and two sons to walkers. The ghouls were too busy feasting on his family to notice as he fled.

Later, Jim apologies to Lori for scaring her son. He tells Carl that he dreamed the boy was worried about his father but that he needn't be, saying that Rick is "tough as nails" and that nothing will stop him from returning to his family. After Carl leaves, he tells Lori to keep her son close, to never let him out of her sight.

In the city, after Rick, Glenn, T-Dog and Daryl discover that Merle has gone — having sawed off his hand to escape from his shackles — they try to continue their search following a trail of blood leading inside the building. But when the drops stops at a stove, which, they deduce, Merle used to cauterize his wound, they decide to turn their attention to retrieving the bag of guns that Rick had dropped in the street when he first reached Atlanta. Glenn offers to run out to pick them up, insisting he can make it faster solo, and the others agree to cover him.

The mission goes awry, however, when a skinny guy with a neck tattoo and his friends ambush Daryl and kidnap Glenn but fail to capture the weapons — or Rick's hat, which Glenn also managed to grab. It turns out that a group of young Hispanic men were also after the guns, but rather than the violent thugs they at first appear to be, Rick and the others eventually learn that they're protecting and caring for the elderly and infirm left at the abandoned medical facility where they've taken shelter — after the professional staff had abandoned the patients to die.

After dividing up the weapons, Rick and the rest of the group head back to where they'd parked the van they'd driven into the city, but it's vanished. They assume Merle has stolen it and is on his way back to the camp to take his revenge. They rush to the grounds only to hear gunshots being fired, and they assume Daryl's bloodthirsty brother must have made it to the camp ahead of them. Instead, they discover a battle in its final stages, with bodies, walker and human, scattered in every direction.

Andrea cradles her younger sister in her arms as she bleeds to death from her bite wounds, and the others silently stand by, surely realizing what will have to happen next — namely, dispatching Amy to ensure she doesn't become a walker and starting the search for a new place to call home.

— Gina McIntyre

Photo: Andrew Rothenberg, left, and Jon Bernthal in "The Walking Dead" Credit: AMC.

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'The Walking Dead' recap: Blood and entrails make for a sumptuous zombie feast

Midway through tonight’s debut episode of “The Walking Dead,” our hero Rick Grimes, the small-town sheriff played by Andrew Lincoln, encounters a former colleague who has succumbed to the mysterious zombie plague that has gripped the American South, and possibly the rest of the country -- or even the world. Rick, determined to give the man the peace of the grave, shoots him in the forehead at point-blank range. His brains explode from the back of his skull. The camera watches, unflinching as the gruesome scenario plays out.

One thing’s for sure. Nothing like this ever happened on “Mad Men.”

In interviews leading up to tonight’s “Walking Dead” premiere, series creator Frank Darabont had promised that the show would skimp neither on character development or zombie gore, and while he certainly seemed to deliver on that promise with this first episode, it was the copious amounts of blood and brain matter that left perhaps the strongest impression.

Maybe it was just odd to see such strong horror movie violence on a channel best known as the home of the perennial Emmy-winning, cocktail-swilling drama. Or maybe it’s just plain disturbing to watch as a good guy guns down a little girl carrying? a stuffed animal in the opening segment of a new program. Granted, she was a zombie, but still.

As for the characters, this first episode focused largely on Rick, a seemingly stoic man with a troubled marriage, a young son and a chatty partner named Shane (Jon Bernthal). Before long, the duo is caught in a shootout, and at its conclusion Rick is severely wounded, ending up, we learn, in a coma. When he comes to, it’s obvious that some considerable amount of time has passed -– just how much is unclear –- but the hospital is deserted and in complete disarray.

Rick wanders past an empty nurses' station and discovers the partially devoured body of a young woman lying on the tile; he wanders back the other way, past fixtures hanging from their sockets and exposed wiring, to find a set of padlocked doors with a warning spray painted across them in black ink: “Don’t open, dead inside.” Moaning sounds come from behind it, and a hand reaches toward Rick, who bolts and flees the building.

Outside, the scene is just as grim; he wanders through a parking lot full of dozens of bodies, some covered by white sheets.

If the hospital scene is reminiscent of Danny Boyle’s horror film “28 Days Later,” the rest of the show is straight-up George Romero. The zombies (or walkers as they’re known on the show) move slowly, the virus -– or whatever it is that is the source of their taste for flesh -– is transmitted through a bite or a scratch and the only way to stop them is a shot through the brain. They devour their victims with full-on, entrail-ripping delight, courtesy of special effects maven Greg Nicotero, who worked with Darabont on his underrated film “The Mist” and who also had a hand in several of Romero’s own zombie projects.

In this new world, Rick is determined to be reunited with his family. After gaining his bearings thanks to the kindness of two fellow survivors he encounters, he begins his quest, one that ultimately finds him on horseback, riding toward Atlanta where there is rumored to be a settlement of people that might include his wife Lori and son Carl.

What he doesn’t know is that although Lori and Carl are alive, they’re holed up in the countryside with a small group headed up by Shane, who seems to have embarked on a romantic relationship with Lori, judging from a kiss they share.

Atlanta, naturally, turns out to be a death trap –- the city is overrun with walkers; Rick loses his horse to the ghouls and finds himself trapped inside an abandoned tank, alone and surrounded on all sides. Just then, he hears a voice over the radio speaking to him, asking, facetiously, if he’s cozy. Cue “Welcome to My World” by Wang Chung (!) and lots and lots and lots of zombie gore as the walkers feast on Rick’s trusty horse, and Episode 1 is done.

It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks how Darabont manages to maintain the balance between the drama and the horror on the show -- pilot episodes are always tricky, after all, since there's so much exposition and character introduction to include in not a great deal of time. Certainly, though, the premiere didn't skimp on the scares; in all, it was a solidly entertaining way to spend Halloween.

-- Gina McIntyre

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How to survive the zombie apocalypse? Ask 'Walking Dead' star Andrew Lincoln

30 October 2010 |? 9: 00 am

It is not every day a player gets the chance to play a cowboy - just ask Andrew Lincoln .the ' star of the CGA new original series, "The Walking Dead," explains that, when it was first offered the role of Rick Grimes, Sheriff small town survives the zombie apocalypse and struggle to survive in a world devastated by the flesh-eating disease undead, the opportunity to saddle and the canal that its internal Gary Cooper proved too much trying to resist.

"I went to work, and I put on boots cowboy, a Stetson, bag cannon and obtained a horse called blade and rode in an apocalyptic Atlanta," Lincoln said recently in a telephone interview. "It was my work for the day, and it is surprising.?

Lincoln, who works as a player in professional 16 years and feature film credits include "Love Actually" and upcoming Sony Pictures Classics release "Made in Dagenham," stated that zombie performing carnage is just one aspect of narration in the multiple facets on a group of people trying to overcome their nature horns in the middle of what he calls a "Kafkaesque nightmare."

Read more of this interview with Lincoln at hero complex.

-Gina McIntyre

Photo: Andrew Lincoln in "The walking Dead."Credit: AMC

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