Episode 29 - The Voice of Reason

Now that the zeitgeist whale of the NFL has left the scene, there is room for the smaller creatures in the sea of culture, like the second half of the second season of AMC’s The Walking Dead, to come out and play. In this episode, most of the characters are floundering in the aftermath of shattered delusions, and some of them finally tune in to the voice of reason. All of Rick’s band confront the fact that their weeks-long search for the missing Sophia was a deluded folly, and Hershel turns to the bottle in the face of the realization that the “walkers” really are dead and that his wife and son will not be getting better. The episode returns us to some exhausted conversations that stand in for the rare and elusive zombies in this zombie apocalypse, and just when it seems like AMC is putting back on the same, way-too-familiar treadmill, new characters show up and give us hope for the series. Did I say, “hope?” We don’t need hope. We need frakking ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES, AMC! We need zombies in our zombie TV show.