In case you happened to be dead yourself, you may not know that the scariest show on TV lost its “Dead” head, Frank Darabont, this summer when he was knocked off during the hiatus of “The Walking Dead.”
The good news is that the creepiest, scariest, most fetchingly wretched and wretch-inducing drama on TV didn’t claim hero sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).
The horrifying news is that it did claim Darabont, the brilliant show runner/executive producer and the creative mind who fought for years to bring the graphic novel to TV.
His head was chopped right after he addressed the roaring throng at Comic Con this summer, leaving the show’s surviving cast and crew, in a state similar to Grimes’ post-Apocalyptic group: struggling to figure out how they’d go on another day.
You’ll be happy to know that at least as far as the first two episodes go (90 -minute season premiere this Sunday night), the show is better than ever — which would have seemed impossible.
Of course, Darabont was involved in these episodes, so it’s hard to know whether the quality will continue — and devastating to think it will slip, which I doubt.
At any rate, when the series closed last season, the survivors had found out from the last remaining doctor at the CDC in Atlanta that there was no cure for the zombie disease. And then the place blew up.
This season, the intrepid living are Fort Benning-bound, hoping to find what may remain of the military. But before they get too far, they come to a massive, miles-long broken-down vehicle jam on the highway.
What seems at first like an impossible situation becomes somewhat better when they realize there are thousands of cars –albeit cars filled with rotting corpses — containing not just fuel, but clothing, water and other necessities of life.
Oh, puleeze — did you really think it was going to be that easy?
As the survivors are grabbing (somewhat reluctantly) what they can, the worst happens. A herd of thousands of zombies comes struggling over the rise. Damn! Just when you think you’ve caught a break, too!
In addition to even better/worse zombies, the series seems richer and more concentrated on the few remaining survivors.
Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and Shane (Jon Bernthal) are still trapped in a nightmare within a nightmare. They had an affair when she believed her husband was dead. Not!
Andrea (Laurie Holden), meantime, is so grief-stricken that she’s suicidal. Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) thinks it’s his responsibility to stop her. Again, not!
Redneck blackheart Daryl (Norman Reedus) turns out to be more of an asset than we would have imagined while T-Dog (Robert “IronE” Singleton) turns out to be more of a whiner than anyone can stand.
Kids go missing, guts go flying, the folks we want to survive more than any of the others may not. But it’s the guts and gore that’ll get you going. In fact, this season’s guts fest makes last year’s entrails necklace look like designer jewelry. Stay tuned, and turn away!