Today I will be doing a spoiler-free review of season 2 of The Walking Dead. This season is somewhat similar to season 1 in that there isn’t a crazy amount of action but it mainly focuses on telling a great story with some phenomenal actors. This season mainly follows the same group of people last season led by Rick, Shane, Glenn, and Daryl finding farmland. The farmland does have people living there with an older man in Hershel Greene with his two daughters Maggie and Beth. Maggie and Hershel immediately become very important characters while Beth doesn’t do much this season. The group convinces Hershel to let them stay at the farm for at least a little while. However, many things go wrong time and time again throughout the season that keep making Hershel think twice about letting them stay. Also, Hershel and his family have been isolated from everything going on for the most part so they don’t understand how dangerous these walkers (zombies) truly are. This season is absolutely fantastic and its 13 episodes all fly by with there not being any stinker episodes. There are multiple storylines going on throughout the season with the most prominent ones being Carol looking for her daughter, Rick and Shane butting heads, Shane starting to lose it, and the group trying to show Herhsel and his family how dangerous the walkers are.
The antagonist this season just like the last is simply the walkers. Even though there isn’t any human antagonist, this season is still phenomenal as they make the walkers really intimidating and make them look like a real threat. There are 5 or so deaths, mostly of background characters, that are killed by walkers. So like I said, they do a good job making them a threat without killing off any prominent characters. There are some other characters from the group that basically do nothing this season. Examples are Carl (Ricks kid), T-Dog, Dale, and Andrea. Another character who doesn’t actually do too much but does have something important going on is Lori (Rick’s wife). The acting in this season is phenomenal with some of my favorite moments in the show’s history taking place. There are multiple scenes in episodes 7 and 8 that are just great with Shane, Rick, and Hershel. However, nothing really compares to the final scene of episode 12 that also has a massive ending. The performance from Shane and Rick alone in that episode is fantastic and that entire episode is easily the best of the season. Like I said, the action isn’t too prominent, but it’s really effective when they do. Episode 13 is the perfect example of that with the entire episode being pure chaos. The cinematography is still solid for a show that still doesn’t have a major budget. It definitely gets better and better each season. The pacing, plot, characters, acting, and ending are all basically perfect as well while also having a great score. This season just does it all to a tee.
I always rate shows I watch and I rate them based on 10 things in the show. Those things are: action, acting, cinematography, pacing, score, characters, ending, plot, protagonist, and antagonist. I rate all of those pieces 1-10 and then after that, I add up the scores of all 10 of them and get a total score out of 100. I gave this season a 96/100, and this still isn’t even my favorite season from the show. This is probably in my second or third spot, but still just a phenomenal season of television that does everything very well if not perfect.
