'Seed' - The Walking Dead, Season Three

The Walking Dead

Season Three

Episode One

'Seed' - 4.5

To be completely honest, I found this generally fantastic show's newest season opener a bit... boring. Far be it from me to spit in the face of horror fans, but I feel like that this show has had a part of its heart cut out. Perhaps it's this new Rick who's parading the group around in the name of survival rather than in the name of all that is good like the old version of his character did. Maybe's it's the lack of Dale, a character capable of providing a human voice, one that was still able to talk about love and happiness, rather than food and water and cold and blood and walkers. 'Seed' would rank as so far the most disenchanting of The Walking Dead's offerings, showing that this series definitely does not support a zombie invasion, rather it laments that type of cultural dissolution. 

Ug, big words.

Let me be clear, at least clearer for me. The best example of the show's sudden coldness comes in the very first scene. We open in a house overrun with walkers, the camera starting us off by looking deep into the milky eyes of a hungry beast, zooming out just as Rick and T-Dog burst through the door and take all of the dead things out. It's not a too complicated task, and they complete it in the amount of time any seasoned zombie killers would, before beckoning in the rest of the survivors. Three things come to light immediately; since we last saw them, quite an amount of time has passed, shown by Lori's sudden belly explosion. Second, in this long time (comparatively. I mean zombies must make every day feel like a month) the group hasn't lost a single member, with even Beth still hanging around. Third, this first scene is completely dialogue free. Strategically, the silence is to ensure that the mass number of zombies roaming around outside can't hear the survivors in the house, but realistically the writers would have had a reason for doing that, and I believe it is to show both the awkwardness and dissonance in the face of Rick's staunch leadership. At one point for reasons I don't understand he pulls a can of food that Carl had just opened from his little hands and chucks it away, leaving the hungry boy... still hungry.

Guess what; new title sequence. It's not like a drastic change, there isn't any go-go dancing baby or something, and they haven't devolved to a soft focus capitalised title card that floats towards the screen, then glides past while discordant and mysterious notes play over the top... If you get that reference... Anyway, it's simply different footage cut together in a slightly more functional and effective manner, as well as removing the pictures of Lori and Shane. Does that mean Lori might kick the bucket? If it does, do you think it will have anything to do with her little chat with Hershel? If you don't know, Lori - who could be minutes away from breaking water all over some zombie's feet - worried that she'd lost the baby after not feeling it move in a few days, but when she talks to Hershell she's not so worried about it itself. Rather, she worries that if Rick is right about them all being infected, then if the baby has in fact died then could it rise as a little walker-foetus inside her uterus? It was by far the most disturbing thing I've ever heard, and I think Hershel thought something similar as well, pushing that idea aside with little thought. She then immediately asks the veterinarian to kill her and/or the baby without hesitation if one of them looks to be dead or ready to turn, which could easily lead to a very awkward situation down the track. Lucky for them Rick doesn't seem too fond of Lori so much anymore, at least on the outside.

 The group's attempts to find a sustainable shelter before Lori drops a baby in the middle of an infested street seemingly come to a satisfying end, with Daryl discovering the jail we saw at the end of the last season. Somehow, they missed it, or maybe it was artistically presented as being much closer than it really was. Either way, they get there, but find it completely filled with prisoners and guards; all dead of course. 

For whatever reason, about now was when I noticed that walker's groan. Don't you need to breathe for that? 

 Beside the point entirely, I know. So Rick has decided that the jail is the perfect place to make a home at, despite the obvious zombie problem. I guess in this world non-zombie controlled housing is difficult to come by, and thus the jail is possibly the best place they've found in a while, as it clearly hasn't been breached by outside walkers yet. I don't know where they filmed the jail scenes, but the location was far too expansive to have been completely built as a set for the show. It was pretty cool, and it was wonderfully separated into quadrants which the survivors could deal with one by one as they begin to take control of the facility. Soon enough they release one yard from the holds of its zombie inhabitants and they sit down to a quiet, enjoyable bonfire conversation which contained some of the pleasant, character-driven portions of the show that I've come to love. Beth was a particular focus, perhaps because she isn't so well known. She just sang, which means that she still isn't so well known, but we are shown that Carl kind of has a little crush on her, which is sort of cute but also a horrible, horrible omen for the sweet girl. OH NO! HE'S HAPPY! KILL HIM AND EVERYONE HE LOVES!

Bit by bit they capture more of the prison, taking a few littler yards and then capturing the visiting room and a cell block, meaning that the survivors can all hop into a bed with a mattress, finally. I know that a prison is a major location in the comics, but I wonder if its presence in this season hints at the more... cold approach to the action, as jails aren't known for being accommodating or pleasant. I admit though, it is a pretty safe place to wait out the zombie apocalypse, even when overrun.

On that note, the men of the group (and Maggie, but not Carl) decide to try and claim the cafeteria, wondering if there may be food available. This requires a brilliantly creepy journey through the never-ending and nearly pitch-black tunnels which are simply littered with the bare-boned corpses of many an unfortunate resident. Of course they eventually come across the culprits behind the corpse-munching; a whole horde of zombie prisoners, who split the group up when Maggie and Glenn are forced to run another way, scaring Hershel who opts to go back for them. 

This ends well for everybody, as he ends up getting a big bite taken out of his leg by a rather lethargic walker, but Rick, Maggie and all the others manage to save him from actually being devoured, taking him to the cafeteria where Rick quickly takes his leg off with a hatchet. Don't think I'm being reductive, it was surprisingly free of fanfare or emphasis. It looked gruesome and painful, but it really was impressively brief. 

I know I've complained many times during this review about the coldness so far, but this almost absent-minded removal of a somewhat important character's (he's the goddamn doctor!) leg was something you might see in an actual horror MOVIE in which we aren't overly familiar or sympathetic with the people experiencing these horrible events. When a whole bunch of living prisoners pop their heads up from behind the counter we pretty much see the whole thing from their perspective; five people just burst in through a locked door carrying a gravely injured man, took out a hatchet and took a few nice hacks at his leg, all within the space of a minute. The only speaking prisoner is right: 'Holy shit.'

I was impressed. To so unceremoniously commit on-the-fly surgery on a likeable-enough character and then to almost comically introduce about five or six other random guys was...   a bit much. Nothing worthy of a downgrade in the rating, but it just jumped so quickly from one thing to another once they went looking for the cafeteria. I really didn't have much of an idea of what was going on. All I know now is that there are a whole bunch of new characters and Hershel desperately needs to be carried back through the walker-infested hallways and to safety. This is going to end well. 

So what the frig happened to Andrea? Well, let me tell you... I'm not overly sure. She's alive, we see her, and she's still with the crazy woman and her two pet walkers, but she's not well. Seems that the black woman (I know her name but I didn't hear it said so I won't write it down) is out collecting food for her sick friend who had protected her through the winter, which we totally skipped. Andrea believes that she's knocking on death's door, so crazy lady decides to make a run for it, pulling her out of the meat locker they were bunkered down in and venturing out into the world. 

Ok, that was... interesting. This new character is definitely something, but what exactly that is is yet to be seen. We don't know who those two geezers she carries around are, and I haven't heard her name, but she's pretty awesome. No one I know can use a katana like that. I wonder where she got it? I wonder who she is? I wonder where she's from? Ok, I clearly wanted more information on this woman than two measly scenes which gave me NOTHING. NOOOOOOTTTTTHIIIING!!!!!

So, The Walking Dead, what was that? It didn't really set up a plot for the coming season like your last season premiere did, and you didn't even introduce the new characters. What is up with that? Yeah, the scenes in the corridors were scary, but the other zombie moments were little more than stab-slice-shoot-kill-all-is-well, and that's honestly not that interesting. I'm excited to see where you're going with Hershel, how black woman will protect Andrea and what's up with Lori's baby, but that's all in the future. What happened in the now? Not that much. 

Other than present this new season as entirely distant and heartless, I have to wonder if 'Seed' gave us much at all to work with. I'm glad the group has found shelter in a new home, but if it is too safe then where is the conflict? You don't want it too much like what we saw in the last season at the farm. We could do a few more character-building low-action episodes, but the issue is we already know these people. Where are you going, show? What are you doing?!