It had been years since I last saw Ken Russell’s The Devils and in the interim I had forgotten what an eyefuck it is. Even beyond Vanessa Redgrave’s madcap turn as a randy nun with a repulsive prosthetic hunchback and Oliver Reed’s sinful-as-a-chocolate-éclair handlebar mustache, the film is just one scene after another of effulgent, gratuitous genius. While most folks would cite Tommy and Women in Love as better films, for my money this movie is Russell’s finest moment.

Oh, sure, the movie’s narrative is a bit of a mess, but given the subject matter, I think it works in Russell’s favor. While every character and their mother is going on about decadence and wickedness, it’s Russell himself that’s committing the real transgression here; from the first frame to the last, The Devils is full-on, joyously blasphemous film-making.

……

Speaking of blasphemy, I also had opportunity last week to revisit one my favorite horror comedies. Álex de la Iglesia’s El día de la Bestia (“Day of the Beast”) isn’t as over-the-top as Dead Alive or Evil Dead II and it lacks the lyrical poeticism of Dellamorte Dellamore, but it certainly belongs in that hallowed company for its masterful balance of laughs and horror. There are realtively few ‘shocks’ in El día de la Bestia, but the apocolyptic tone of the film is pervasive and persuasive.  While the genuinely likable characters and performances make this one a delight to watch, its de la Iglesia’s portrait of mid-90′s Madrid as a filthy garbage heap quickly sliding into the incinerator that lingers with me.

The supernatural elements are fun, but it’s that moment when our protagonist, Father Ángel Berriartúa (Álex Angulo), is sitting at a bus stop and he sees a group of men get out of a car across the street and set a homeless man on fire that pushes El día de la Bestia into a whole different weight class. Love this one.

……

Of the films I caught lately, though, the real sin against man is  L’ Occhio del male (“Manhattan Baby”), quite easily the single worst Lucio Fulci film I’ve ever slept through.

If you’ve ever seen Fulci’s transcendentally terrible The House By The Cemetery, than maybe you are under the delusion you’ve seen the man’s worst horror film, but rest assured you don’t know the dregs of Fulci’s 80′s output until you’ve watched ineffectual archaeologist Christopher Connelly stumble around with his eyes bandaged under his glasses after getting his corneas zapped by blue laser beams fired out of an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph. I know that does indeed sound awesome in a MST3K-sorta way, but trust me, you’ll be the one wishing your eyes had been disintegrated after 10 minutes with one. I spared myself some of the torment by falling asleep 30 minutes in and scanning over what I had missed at 4X when I woke. Even that felt like an eternity spent in some previously unpostulated level of Hell reserved for Fulci apologists, and this is coming from a guy who owns both City of the Living Dead and The Beyond on DVD.

Ellison Jane Belcher was born at 2:50 pm today after putting my wife through five excruciating days of near sleepless early labor and meals that consisted entirely of jell-o and toast and jam. Both mom and daughter are doing great.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to fix my other two daughters some pizza and get Toy Story 3 started before I have a riot on my hands.

Short one this week, everyone; the day job is bustling. Too bad, too, because last night’s episode was the strongest yet in many ways…

• “How can you let her marry someone like that?” This really hits on *a lot* of deeper issues in the series, doesn’t it?
• “I’m truly sorry…about the lo-cal.”
•  Eddard and Cat’s good-bye wasn’t showy, but it sold me on Michelle Fairley’s performance. Just something in the warmth there. Having said that, aging Cat up does make her relationship with Baelish feel a bit odd – - at least to me. Not so much on her end, but on his side of things.
• Speaking of Littlefinger, Gillen killed it in his first episode, didn’t he?
•  ”…they don’t put that part in the songs.”
•  SPOILER: There’s some rather heavy subterfuge at work in the Jaime/Cersei scene (mostly seen in Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s performance) but I wonder if anyone who hasn’t read the book would see it. They laid it on a bit thick there and I wonder how that will affect viewer empathy/sympathy for Jaime later. I think they’re trying to duplicate Martin’s own antics in this regard, but reading a character say those things and hearing them come out of an actor’s mouth are two very different things. Still, I’m all for twisting audience expectations, so what the hell; let’s see how it plays out in Season Three. 
•  Martin had Dani’s story as a stand-alone, award-winning novella. Could the Dani moments in the series to this point withstand similar isolation? Sorry, but only an apologist would say so. Yes, I realize they’re trying to cover a lot of story with her in very limited screen-time, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing it well.
•  ”Do you think I’m plump?”
•  SPOILER: Wow, they kind of hinted at Ser Jorah’s secret a bit early, didn’t they?
•  What a great ending! Bean’s slow turn from pride to horror and fear? Awesome.

Storytelling. It’s interesting how this episode devotes so much of its runtime to people telling stories. It never occurred to me just how much of Martin’s first novel consists of people telling stories, telling lies, trying to ferret out the truth or avoid it. Stories as instruction and as diversion. Heck, even in the Dani/Drogo scene, its their newfound shared language that reveals their new intimacy, not the sexy shenanigans. Stories as a way to bond men or (sometimes in the same scene) deepen old grudges. It’s nice, then, that everyone in tonight’s episode proved such a compelling storyteller – from Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to Addy to the wonderfully cast gal they got playing Old Nan. The tale she tells Bran about the White Walkers – - how much more frightening it was than if we had actually been shown anything! Very well done. Words, especially when wielded by someone as charming as Littlefinger, really are the deadliest weapon in the series. Notes carried by raven…the Spider’s little birds whispering…
Like I said, I have more along this line of thinking, but it’s all muddled by other business so I’ll leave it at that for now.

This episode, more than the first, really managed to convey the books’ sense of impending doom. I really got the feeling that these characters are on a long, slow road to despair and we’re going to march with them every step of the way. This tone of futility may be a hard thing to endure episode after episode. I saw someone describe the series as cheerless, and while I think that may be denying the show some its wit and charm, there’s no escaping the fact that this is grim shit and it only gets grimmer. For every triumph (see Dani’s story), there are dozens of crushing blows to the spirit. And yet… and yet…herein lies the crux of the series. In a world that is so obviously mechanized towards grinding down the weak and the unlucky, these characters will struggle and plot and fight until the last breath, and they will cling to hope that somehow justice will ultimately find those who deserve it most. That’s the definition of nobility, right there, and make no mistake – this series is all about nobility in title versus nobility in action and in character. Episode two gets that across in spades.

• This?

Even more satisfying than I hoped.

• The scene between Cersei and Cat – if that’s the quality we can expect of the new material in the show, then bring it on.  The tears in Cersei’s eyes – I have no doubt those are genuine. One thing Martin makes clear, and I’m glad to see it evidenced here, is that Cersei may be a devious bitch, but she has an unquestionable love for her children. She would walk through fire for them, and this scene between two mothers who both have that unwavering devotion made this scene really rich stuff to watch.
• “It’s only for life” Well, pledging your loyalty to the king is supposed to be for life as well, isn’t it Jaime? Oh, wait…maybe you’re the wrong person to ask about that.
• I teared up during Arya’s and Jon’s goodbye. Yes, I am that lame.
• Hmm. Interesting changes in that scene with Jon and Cat, having Eddard in the room, and having Cat spill her feelings about Jon while also relating her fears about Eddard’s departure. It works, I’d say, but maybe not as well as it could have. The writing seemed a little off here.  Maybe someone else can put their finger on it?
• So, seeing the scene where Jon asks Eddard about his mother makes me feel that Sean might just be on to something with his theory here…(SPOILERS for the book)
• Addy was really strong in his scene with Bean where they discuss the Targaryen. That’s the kind of rage I missed from him last week. This is the sort of bottomless vendetta that can blind a man to more serious threats in his own backyard, I’d say.  Bean was also wonderful here.  The thing I loved most about this scene, though, was the frustration they both had with one another when discussing  the same old shit they’ve been arguing about for years. They truly felt like brothers and old friends there.
• Those eggs still look like they’re made of plaster to me.
• I said my piece about Khal Drogo’s bedroom etiquette last week. I see what they were going for, but it seemed a hamfisted way to go about it and it continues to make Drogo look like someone I’d gladly see get an axe in the head.
• Now, for the last ten minutes or so of tonight’s episode, I felt like I was watching a very, very effective and faithful replay of the events of the book and it made for some truly compelling drama. I was on the edge of my seat through the whole thing, and I knew what was going to happen. Everything from Joffrey’s cruel taunting of the butcher’s boy to the way Addy played his bit note-for-bloody-note as I had envisioned Robert behaving in that scene, this was all great. This is one of those cases where I really do wonder how these scenes played for people who hadn’t read the book. And the kids were terrific. I haven’t been blown away by Turner’s portrayal of Sana but when she was pleading for Lady’s life? Man, did I buy that. I’d advocate giving the casting folks a big ol’ raise for the way they culled these young actors out. I haven’t been disappointed in a single one of their performances to date.

I often catch myself falling into that trap of “worrying” how civilians might come at something like Game of Thrones, as if it’s important to consider the show without the prejudices or predispositions of having read the books beforehand. This is silly, of course. I can’t erase the knowledge and emotional baggage of having read the books first and, more importantly, there’s no reason on earth I should even try. Beyond its success in the ratings either providing me with more or fewer episodes to watch myself, what is the value in trying to anticipate how a casual HBO viewer might respond to Game of Thrones? The opinions of non-fans can be interesting and even insightful, but trying to taper my own enjoyment or approach to the show by seeing it through freshman eyes doesn’t grant me any better appreciation of its merits…or faults.

For example, how am I to respond to the blatant sense of ‘wrongness’ I got watching the scene where Khal Drogo takes Daenerys there on the shores in the light of the setting sun? I have no clue how something like that ‘plays’ for a viewer who hasn’t read how Martin approached that same moment. Did it work for this hypothetical ‘newbie’? Objectively, is there anything wrong with that scene in the context of the show itself, divorced from Martin’s novels? I can’t say, and it’s a fool’s errand to try to put myself in that mind space. I have read A Game of Thrones and can say that while I genuinely dug the first episode, the aforementioned consummation of the Drogo/Daenerys marriage didn’t work for me.

I won’t get into nit-picking the details. There has always been something of a disconnect for me in that moment when Drogo and Daenerys…ahem…join. The tension lies between the eroticism Martin brings to the scene and the cold reality of the fact that this young girl would probably be terrified to the point of shock at what was happening to her. That said, I think Martin has enough of the latter in there to disfuse charges that he’s being exploitive. In addition, he plays with our expectations of domination and submission by having Drogo “submit” to Dany in subtle ways throughout, even if they are simply gestures of seduction. The point is, Drogo never comes right out and forces Dany to submit; he may intimidate through his size and his strength, but he is patient and at times ‘tender.’ Admittedly, that would be a difficult thing to swallow in the show, but the route they took instead, of making Drogo *exactly* the sort of guy he seems to be when we meet him, is precisely the sort of thing Martin goes out of his way to avoid or undermine in the book. I think the scene plays real, maybe even more so than its literary counterpart, but it doesn’t intrigue or surprise. And that’s my biggest gripe, really—they had a chance to be daring and they decided to be, well, obvious.

I single out that scene because, for all the show’s strengths (and it has a lot), I felt there was some not-so-subtle manipulation of the source material at work in just about every scene intended to either reduce negative controversy (see above) or build acceptable controversy (the gore, Tyrion’s tarts – - hey, that should be a band name). It was as if every scene had been just a little too carefully adjusted and scrutinized. I know, I know, every show is micro-managed down to the last stitch on someone’s britches. This time, however, it felt more…if not cynical, then perhaps condescending. Some changes were just fine, while others seemed to make characters less vibrant and unique.*

Lest you think I disapprove of every perceived change to Martin’s book, how about those “bad guys,” huh?

I have to say, I *love* how they are playing these characters so far. The first scene with Cersei and Jaime Lannister had a wonderful tone to it, overflowing with a familiarity and ease that made them both seem truly human and, yes, even a little personable. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Jaime has just the right blend of arrogance and roguish charm.

And Viserys Targaryen? Wow.

If there is one character in A Game of Thrones that is obviously and unquestionably BAD, it’s Viserys, so bravo to the filmmakers and Harry Lloyd for making him so insidiously gentile rather than the hand-wringing, near-hysterical bully he could have been. Lloyd’s line delivery when he tells Dany he’d let the entire Dothraki army fuck her if it meant getting his Kingdom back chilled my blood. He brings the right amount of honey to the role, and everyone knows that while honey is sweet, it is also deadly…like a fox…

Other things I noted:

• The opening was very strong, although seeing the dismembered bodies and the symbol they were arranged in versus seeing them “as if asleep” told me right off the bat that the series wasn’t going to be as subtle as the books. Not a deal breaker by any means. This is a visual medium and sometimes that necessitates working in shorthand.
• The sound of the Others…the frozen bodies, the cracking of ice…creepier than the dead girl’s eyes in my opinion. Still I was a tad bit disappointed they rush through this sequence; the steady, unrelenting doom of the book was replaced here by disjointed cuts of shapes whisking through the rushing branches.
• Everybody loves the nifty title sequence and rightfully so.
• The first scene with the Starks was very well done in establishing some key character traits and interactions—Arya’s ability to hit the bullseye when Bran couldn’t and Catelyn’s look at Jon—all very well done. Again, we’re working in shorthand and that’s not a bad thing in television, so long as it works and here it does.
• I like the relationship hinted at between Rob, Theon, and Jon. In fact, I like how familial Winterfell feels, even in this first episode. Everyone feels like they have been together a long time (except for Sansa, and I don’t know how they would have made her feel more “at home” there since she sticks out in the book as well).
• Did they cast Joffrey well or what? Tell me you don’t want to see him get a good, hard slap by a gauntlet from the moment he appears on-screen. I mean, look at that little monster:

I might just make an animated Gif of…a certain someone slapping him when the moment comes next week.

• I have it on good authority that the Hound’s helmet was made of pure Dio-era Black Sabbath, with a little of Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” thrown in for shine.
• OK, I’m going to state the obvious here: Peter Dinklage was great. I think it’s easy to overlook his performance because Tyrion is such a strong character and Dinklage has proven he’s a great actor. It’s such an effortless combination of two wonderful things that it almost becomes absurd to point out how well they’ve come together. Between Tyrion and Arya, the show has the books’ two most likable characters covered and covered well.
• Having said that, in this first episode the Tyrion moments were almost too outstanding, if you take the word literally. I hope Tyrion becomes more than the comic sage who shows up on screen to steal it and walk off stage right—knowing the role he plays in the future, this concern is a minor one, however. Martin does paint Tyrion precisely as he appears here in the early sections of A Game of Thrones – - it’s just odd to see that behavior in that context *without* the benefit of hearing Tyrion’s thoughts to make the tone of his chapters mesh with that of the surrounding ones.
• I grant you, I see how Robert should have a bit more stature or muscle under the years of excess, but damn if Mark Addy isn’t how I pictured him, almost to a tee. I will say that I didn’t quite get Robert’s unbridled hatred for the Targaryens in the crypt; that detail about Eddard’s sister and Robert’s past with her lacked the full scope of Robert’s longing and anger, but it certainly wasn’t anything I’d write to my congressman about.
• Wait, so where’s that whorehouse? I know there are villages and such around Stark’s castle, but the way that was cut, didn’t it seem like the Starks have their own little brothel there in the keep?
• So the one legitimate chance they have for some skin and they don’t show it? I liked how Martin played with Cat’s nudity in that scene in the book – again, it was a little thing that sets up a sense of history and relationship between characters (in this case between Eddard, Cat, and Maester Luwin) and I missed it here. Still, what was there in the scene felt genuine and the way they ended the scene, with Bean’s look of torment as he struggles with the best course of action for both the king and his family, was choice indeed.
• The Dothraki wedding was about one tenth the size I pictured it being, and Momoa’s weird face as he watched the men kill each other for a piece of tail was a little too adolescent for my tastes. I never got the impression in the book that Drogo was anything less than impassive much of the time, and when he did smile or laugh, it certainly wouldn’t have been with the leer of a skeazy twelve-year old boy.

So, first episode of Game of Thrones? Well met! In spite of some things I didn’t care for, it was a solid adaptation that was just brimming with great performances and atmosphere. Cinematography was crackerjack and the pacing was breakneck. No question, I’ll be here next week.

* Sean T Collins notes the changes to Cat’s character, and while I didn’t spot those directly, I agree in hindsight that these *do* alter her character in ways that aren’t entirely beneficial.

I’ve played Dragon Age II once all the way through, and I’m nearly done with my second run.

The game has some serious—some would say (and have) fatal—flaws.

1)      The recycled environments are disappointing at first, and gradually move on to being completely distracting. I understand that taking the time to develop fresh environments for some of these quests would have lengthened development time, and the cost-to-benefit ratio was probably deemed too marginal to do so. Still, when every mansion and cave looks exactly the same, it really yanks a fella out of the story.

2)      The new inventory system is for the birds. For me, micro-managing my companions’ armor and weapons was a big draw in the first game, and here the process has been simplified to the point where it feels utterly arbitrary.

3)      Why do potions now require a cool down period? WHY??

4)      The in-game trigger to access doors and chests and obtain loot from fallen enemies is ridiculously touchy, so much so that finding the icon that signifies you can access these things involves making your character do the hokey-pokey for a minute or two before you see the icon letting you know that, yes, you can now get your shit.

5)      The Friend/Rival system seemed really arbitrary in some cases, making appealing to any given companion character’s interests in those situations a guessing game. I had this problem with Mass Effect II’s Paragon/Renegade system as well, for what it’s worth. Sometimes you say something you think will give you some brownie points with Companion X only to see a nice little +5 Rivalry.

6)      There’s a disconcerting disconnect between your character’s appearance and actions versus the reactions you get from NPCs. As an example, my mage saved a Templar from a particularly nasty Abomination using all the wicked magic at my disposal, only to have the Templar turn and remark that we need to keep an eye on mages because “they aren’t like you and me.”

7)      Some of the mini-quests involving collecting items from dead baddies and turning those objects into random folks for cash reward is pretty pointless and ultimately a waste of time.

8)      The final moments of the game do not provide an entirely satisfactory resolution to your time spent as Hawke. After nearly thirty hours questing and killing in Hawke’s boots, I wanted a bit more from the closing coda.

Having said all that…I loved this game. Not as much as I loved Dragon Age: Origins, perhaps, but that game has a really special place in my heart; not since Final Fantasy VII have I had so much invested in a game as I did in Origins. Still, while Dragon Age II is a definite departure in several critical ways, I found it a rich and satisfying experience. The more arcade-style combat was a hoot (particularly if you play as a mage), and while the gameplay is distinctly more like a JRPG (oddly, it reminded me a great deal of Final Fantasy VIII and X) and far less open-world than Origins, the story and world were compelling enough that I never felt it was an inferior beast to its predecessor.

Now, if you want a *really* SPOILER-filled look at the things I enjoyed most about Dragon Age II, feel free to proceed. Be warned: 1) if you have any intention of playing any of the Dragon Age series but have yet to do so, don’t read any further; and 2) this is more of a reaaally long essay than a review, so if you really couldn’t care less about those sorts of things, feel free to be on your way.

Still here? Then damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

“Anders, what have you done?”

In a game with its fair share of jaw dropping moments, those words lead into the single most shattering event in the Dragon Age series to date. Over the course of three games (and, yes, I include Awakening in there because it really does feel more like a legitimate sequel to Dragon Age: Origins than a normal expansion pack), there have been some truly shocking twists. None, however, come anywhere close to Anders’ actions in the “third act” of Dragon Age II, in my opinion.

As first introduced in Dragon Age: Origins-Awakening (or, as I like to call it, “Dragon Age: Loot Party”), Anders was written as a guy just looking for any ol’ reason to launch into a full-blown diatribe about the oppression of mages and the tyranny of the templars who watch over them at the behest of the Chantry.

In Awakening, behind his bad one-liners and creepy, lifeless eyes (…black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes…), there’s always that part of Anders that seethes with resentment at being trapped in a world he never made. When we first meet the character, he proclaims his innocence for the murders of the templars whose bodies litter the floor behind him (“I didn’t do it,” are the first words out of his mouth), but then he giggles mischievously on recounting how one of them made the funniest gurgling sound when they died at the hands of the Darkspawn.

Still, in Awakening, Anders was more than happy to avoid confrontation with the templars. He was content to hide out and keep his distance as much as possible. So what happened between Awakening and Dragon Age II to turn him into such a sour-puss and a “revolutionary”?

Justice.

The Fade spirit identifying itself as Justice is portrayed in Awakening as a pure soul with a driving interest in seeing wrongs righted and vengeance meted out to those who deserve it. Yet, he’s far from an angry or volatile creature. He seems open to reason and genuinely compassionate. Witness, for example, how sensitive he is to the plight of Kristoff’s widow when he realizes his occupation of her dead husband’s body has caused her pain.

Yet, there’s a curious and fascinating preview of things to come in a side-conversation between Anders and Justice in Awakening. Justice asks Anders why, for all his complaining about the oppression of mages by templars and Chantry, the runaway sorcerer hasn’t done more to help his people and strike a blow against his oppressors. Anders replies that it would be “hard” and he likes doing things the easy way.

Yet, in Dragon Age II, we find Anders radically transformed by his union with Justice, and, as Anders points out, the merging has infected Justice as well. The two beings now share not simply one body, but a mind and philosophy that combine the views and emotions of both. Anders is imbued with Justice’s unwavering dedication to doing what is right, whatever the personal cost, and Anders has contaminated Justice with a lifetime of frustration and suppressed rage.

The result is a man driven by both an uncompromising moral code and a self-righteous fury.  As he himself says, “I can no longer tell the difference between justice…and vengeance.”

For some insight, let’s hear from Anders himself, shall we?

“To stay in the mortal realm, he (Justice) needs a host, a body to inhabit for a lifetime, not a corpse which will rot out from beneath him. If I gave him that, he would give me all he had, all he was. Together, we could remake Thedas into a world where justice rules, not fear…a world with no Circle. No templars. A world where every mage can learn to use their gifts and still return home at night. Where no mother ever need hide her child… or lose him to the fear of his neighbors. Where magic is recognized as a gift of the Maker, not the curse it has become.

It’s almost too much to imagine. The Circle, the templars, they’ve shaped my life. I was no more than twelve when they came for me. My mother wept when they fixed the chains to my wrists, but my father was glad to see me gone. He had been afraid, ever since the fire in the barn. Not just afraid of what I could do, but afraid of me, afraid my magic was punishment for whatever petty sins he imagined the Maker sat in judgment upon.

I always knew I wouldn’t submit. I could never be what they wanted from me — compliant, obedient, guilty. But before Justice, I was alone. I never thought beyond my own escape: Where would I hide? How long before they found me?

Now, even that thought repulses me. Why should so many others live with what I will not? Why must the Circle of Magi stand? Just because it always has, just because those who read Andraste’s words twisted them to mean that mages must be prisoners? Why has there never been a revolution?” – Anders’ Short Story

In Awakening, one of Ander’s defining characteristics is to shrug off even the slightest whiff of a suggestion that the Chantry’s fears about the domination of mages by evil spirits from the Fade may be justified. He won’t even entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, the Chantry and the templars have a point, and mages are a force to be feared. Rather, he looks to the Tevinter Imperium with some admiration, despite the fact that it’s well established that the Imperium trades in slavery and uses magic to bend men to their rule.

This presents an interesting blindspot in Ander’s morality – it’s a crime against humanity to “enslave” mages because they are, ultimately, just men and women who deserve the same rights as every other citizen of Thedas, and yet he dares to hold up the Tevinter Imperium, a governance that rewards only power and enslaves the powerless, as a preferable alternative.

Interestingly, Fenris, Dragon Age II’s resident warrior elf, was a slave of an Imperium magister and represents Ander’s polar opposite—someone so beaten down and abused by mages that he bristles at the merest hint that you are sympathetic to their plight. This gives us two characters who have escaped oppression and are left broken and bitter from their experiences. The difference between them is that Fenris views the entire situation in terms of self, while Anders has become more socially motivated. Sebastian, our oh-so-tight-assed noble companion, warns us to watch out for Anders because he will always put his own needs first.  Fenris is content to take revenge against the man who enslaved him, while Anders seeks vengeance on the entire system itself, regardless of the price he will pay.

Ander’s destruction of the Chantry and the murder of everyone within it are intended to be the shot heard around the world, the straw that breaks the camel’s back and forces the silent war into the open. “There can be no compromise,” he announces. Someone will win, and someone will lose.

At least, in his mind.

The truth is, of course, that everyone loses in the world he has just created. For all his rather-insipid proclamations that it will be worth the conflict if, a hundred years down the road, a mage and human can love one another without fear of templars or the Chantry, the sad reality is there had already been a war between mages and ‘normal’ humans, and it ended in the very compromised system that Anders is trying to destroy. No matter what his motives, Anders actions are the work of an idealist with no true sense of the consequences of his actions, so real sense of the world beyond his own experience of it.

Regardless of whether his motives were understandable, his methods are undeniably abhorrent. The game casts it in an even harsher light by making the player the unwitting accomplice in Anders’ act of mass murder. First, we’re sent off to get the ingredients for Anders’ mystical bomb (under the delusion that Anders is, in fact, creating a magical ritual that will rid him of his mystical possession by the Fade spirit, Justice), and then we get tasked with distracting the Grand Cleric in the Chantry while Anders plants his bomb. Granted, you can refuse Anders in both these tasks, but without the foreknowledge of what he plans to do, why would you? Only the second task reeks of anything suspicious, but by then the die is cast.

In my case, and I’m sure in the minds of many other players, I still held out hope that if Justice could be removed or rendered inert, the smart-ass (and benign) mage I met in Awakenings would find his way back to the surface. This hope sure as hell blinded me to the obvious. It’s a devastating act of betrayal in the game, particularly if you’ve taken Anders’ side and been supportive of his views. If you’ve made a friend of Anders over the course of the game, his actions are both a stab in the back and in the heart.

Is Anders a hero? Particularly when viewed against Fenris, who is content to simply free himself of his burden and let thousands of other slaves rot away under the Imperium’s rule? What about Merrill, the young elf who turns to blood magic in her effort to restore the ancient mirror that she feels will provide her people with a bridge to their lost culture? Anders calls her selfish when the team learns that the Keeper has willingly taken the mirror’s demonic presence into herself to keep Merrill safe, and he’s not wrong—in the end, Merrill’s obsession results in the death of not just the Keeper but the entire clan. Surely her motives were noble, though, were they not? Far more noble than Fenris’.

In the world of Dragon Age, we see time and time again that the road to ruin is often paved with such noble intentions. This goes all the way back to the beginning of Origins, with Loghain’s betrayal of King Cailan in the deluded belief that Cailan would ultimately lead Ferelden back into Orleasean occupation. Loghain believes Cailan will destroy the land Loghain swore to protect at any cost. Ultimately, Loghain’s actions cost Ferelden not only its King but thousands of lives due to civil war and the Blight. And, of course, in Origins, we are given the chance to take Loghain’s motives into consideration when passing judgment on him at the Landsmeet.

Funny thing? If you play the Return to Ostagar expansion pack, you find out that Loghain’s paranoia wasn’t entirely unfounded—Cailan was, in fact, up to some behind the scenes dealing with the Orleaseans. In fact, it appears that Cailan had every intention of leaving his wife, Loghain’s daughter, and marrying an Orleasean noble to help solidify the peace between their nations. For a guy who watched the Orleaseans plunder and crush his country under foot for a hundred years, its understandably a bitter pill to swallow.

The key difference in that situation is that, up until that point, Loghain has been the undisputed villain of the game—the man who betrayed the Throne and framed the Grey Wardens for the deed. Even if we do understand his motives, it’s easy to sentence Loghain to death because his crime was one against not just the country but against us, personally. Now, contrast this with Anders’ journey.

The game’s creators have become a bit more savvy in the years between developing Origins’ story and the story in Dragon Age II. This time, they essentially had us running around and working side-by-side with one of the villains. They made him a companion and, if we so choose, a trusted ally and maybe even a lover. I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but when the moment came to execute Anders, I found myself taking every conversation and battle I had with him by my side into account…and I spared him.

And it also didn’t help matters much, from a meta-gaming perspective, that I had Anders as my party’s healer either, although there are potions that would have quickly let me reassign points to Merrill for that role.

Which brings me to the next really interesting thing about the game—the narrative structure. The biggest complaint I’ve seen so far, with the exception of the admittedly damning use of recycled environments, is that the way the story unfolds doesn’t work. Some folks think Act One is too long and that the quests and missions are disjointed, and, as a result, Act Three suffers from a lack of emotional investment in what happens.

Of course, I disagree.

I think the brilliance of the story this time around is that Act One throws a heap of seemingly random events your way to build both background and understanding. It’s a cumulative effect—imagine 100 sheets of thin, almost clear film, with each containing only 1% of red pigmentation. Alone, the color is barely noticeable to the naked eye, but stack these sheets one on top of the other and by the time the final sheet is laid out, you have something that appears entirely red when seen from above.

Nearly every major quest deals in some way or another with the plight of people in Kirkwall as they deal with the central themes of the piece (I’m talking *story* quests, not the little goofy loot grabs where you pick up a pair of pants and deliver them to the guy who lost ‘em). Every story element has to do with authority and oppression. Heck, the city of Kirkwall used to be a former slave port and it’s nicknamed The City of Chains, for cryin’ out loud! The only way you can gain entrance into Kirkwall at the beginning of the game is to sell yourself into indentured servitude. The Fereldens labor in the mines where, that’s right, SLAVES used to work.

The game goes even further with the notion of how authority can be used and abused with the big bad in the game. Meredith, the Knight Commander of the templars, is the unquestioned true authority in Kirkwall, and in the end she is corrupted by not just her obsession that mages are a threat but by a giant slab of lyrium—the very source of the templars’ power over mages and the source of the Chantry’s control over the templars.

It’s all so very symbolic, when you get down to it—being literally and figuratively a case of absolute power corrupting absolutely. She has gone unchecked and her corruption has been allowed to flourish…just like what happened with the mage lords of the Tevinter Imperium…hmm.

Still, it’s easy to miss how many subplots and story beats deal with oppression and freedom because sometimes these ideas come in the guise of a willing submission to a faith or belief, or rebellion against same. Consider:

1)      The Qunari represent a willing submission to the authority of the faith, and conversely a peace found in accepting their role in life, even if that role is as a rebel. Conversely, the Arishok ultimately stages an uprising and intends to kill anyone who doesn’t accept the Qun.

2)      The Dalish covet their culture, and reject the authority of man, but Merrill is made a pariah for wishing to pursue forbidden aspects of that culture.

3)      Some mages find comfort in their lives in the Circle. They are protected from the demons that would exploit them. Some templars want to see the mages treated more justly, and help them escape from the Circle.  Both groups are constrained by convention and struggle to find peace within it, or else rebel against it.

4)      Fereldens escape the Blight only to find themselves at the mercy of a city that doesn’t want them and merchants who will exploit their desperation. These “dog lords” are treated as a “blight” of their own on the city of Kirkwall.

Which brings me to the biggest draw in terms of the story, and that’s the illusion of freedom versus the reality of tyranny.

Now, some folks be complainin’ that this new game doesn’t afford the freedom to choose your own destiny in quite the same fashion as the first game, or rather that it limits our ability to create a character that’s uniquely ours. This is, of course, utter balderdash. Even taking into consideration how much freedom Origins gave you to create your own Grey Warden, the choices were still finite, and the responses you got from NPCs were still predetermined. The illusion of player control was just subtler.

Some of that is lost in Dragon Age II, but in exchange we’re presented a story that deals head on with choice versus destiny. Flemeth even states as much explicitly at the start of the game when she says she can never decide if something is chance or destiny.

Every single character in the game affects someone else’s “destiny” and the story concerns how each character responds to that control. Some seek to exploit a situation not of their making and other seek to seize the moment and create their own personal fortunes (Isabella and Varric is a perfect examples). Some seek to maintain control, or even gain more control, over the lives of others. Some decisions are made for the greater good, despite the cost to human life and liberty in the short-term.

Ultimately, the player’s decisions affect not just their own path but the lives of everyone around them. Hawke becomes a central figure in the story because through many seemingly small decisions throughout the game, the character shapes how much control or influence other people have on their own destinies and those of the people around them. Again, it’s cumulative.

Game developers BioWare are known for making games that force the player to make some incredibly difficult moral decisions (Mass Effect II’s big question about whether or not to cure the genophage springs to mind—yikes!). You can follow your gut, and try to do the right thing, but sometimes this doesn’t reward you with a beneficial outcome. The stakes are much higher in Dragon Age II for some of the decisions you make, and those decisions are made all the more challenging by the fact that the writers of the game have provided some legitimacy to every view point.

I’ve read some critiques that the game makes it difficult to side with the mages in the conflict between them and the templars, based on the evidence that at some point or another every mage turns out to be involved in something shady or resort to Blood Magic, the series’ own form of black magic. I believe the balance is there, nonetheless.

It’s true that most of the mages you encounter do rebel against authority or attempt to seize power for themselves. It’s also true, however, that mages are victims of a conspiracy to lobotomize them from their dreams and emotions, and are confined to a frickin’ former prison if they want to live; mages who attempt to free themselves of the circle are branded malificar and are hunted down and killed—regardless of the mages motives for leaving.

We do encounter some templars sympathetic to their plight, and this stems from the fact that the mages *deserve* some sympathy. They did not choose to pursue magic, or to be particularly susceptible to demonic influence because of their nature. These are people born into a condition that makes them extremely powerful, and they must live their entire lives either confined or hunted because of it. A few times, mages are referred to in impersonal terms as “weapons,” but they are people first—victims of their own nature. I’d suggest that if you don’t get a chill down your spine when you see the army of templars under Meredith’s command brutally hacking their way through mages in the Keep, you are made of colder stuff than I, McDuff.

I’d argue that making so many mages in the game dangerous only balances things a little better and makes the players’ decisions more difficult. In Origins, siding with the mages is more or less presented as the right thing to do. Dragon Age makes the decision much more difficult, and therefore more interesting. We learn in Origins, for example, that mages can be possessed by demons from the Fade and that makes them dangerous, but it isn’t until Dragon Age II that we learn such possessions don’t usually come from conscious deals made with the demons so much as an inherent vulnerability in mages because of their connection to the Fade. In dreams, mages are open to influence and even a noble mage can be taken over in a moment of weakness if they let their guard down. This makes the templars’ and Chantry’s fears far more understandable. They have good reason to fear what would happen if mages went unchecked and unwatched.

When Anders sparks the war between mages and templars and puts the Chantry in the middle, he does so because he thinks this system is broken and it leads to abuses on both sides. He believes that more mages turn to Blood Magic and become Abominations because of their oppression then they would if they were given the same freedoms as everyone else. Of course, this belief has some evidence that denies its validity, namely the Teventer Imperium.

At some point, the series will take us to the Imperium and we will see their crimes first hand. We will also see, I have no doubt, some evidence that gives some weight to their own positions regarding magic and authority. That’s the most rewarding aspect of the entire series, after all—it forces us to take sides when both sides have some legitimacy to their views. It leaves you second-guessing, and sometimes feeling a little dirty.

Even if Anders had good intentions, his actions are horrific. Depending on how you play the game, the player may find themselves in the same boat, forced to take actions that are deplorable and cruel in the interim in the hope that some greater good will come of it. Or you can simply look out for yourself, and let the chips fall where they may. Either path takes you head-first into the maelstrom, where Hawke must confront a new world where war has erupted and lives can be ruined in the blink of an eye.

Of course, beyond even this, there is…something brewing. For all the chaos unleashed in Dragon Age II, what really may be the most important story point is that while Thedas is now at war with itself, something else waits in the wings to exploit the situation. Something very old…and very dangerous.

So, yeah, there’s a lot to love in Dragon Age II. It’s gorgeous to look at (although not quite the kaleidoscope of Technicolor grotesqueries that Awakening was), the action can be super awesome, and there are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments in the dialogue (“Did he…arl your eamon?”). Mix all that together, and you have an experience that transcends the game’s shortcomings to become something really special.

1. We get off on the right foot, but it’s wearing the wrong shoe.  The opening almost serves as a satisfying way to explain Rick’s predicament when he woke. It certainly puts Shane in a more positive light. The biggest problem is the situation never feels as tense or chaotic as it should. It almost gets there but never really makes us break a sweat.
2. BTW, let’s all welcome our old friend, The Military Are Ruthless Bastards, to the party. He might have made a better entrance if not for the lackluster way he was introduced. Goes to show that sometimes it’s all about the delivery.
3. OK, given Amy and Jim’s deaths less than 16 hrs earlier, I didn’t buy the celebratory mood at all. Not. At. All.  I was expecting them to cut to Andrea just staring at them in slackjawed horror and disbelief, but instead she just looked like she had acid indigestion.
4. You know what was missing from the shower montage when we cut to Shane? This.
5. Shane is going to confront Lori. He is going to try and force himself on her, because he is the Drunk Friend Who Is Also A Jilted Lover and they do that sort of thing. At least they do in the every movie since Thomas Edison made his seminal short “The Drunk Jilted Lover” in 1913. Only good thing in that scene was Sarah Wayne Callies’s performance. In fact, she’s really shaped up nicely since the first episode.
6. Thank god they didn’t provide the origin story. I don’t even mind the fact that Omnipresent Super Computer, Soothing Female Voice Model was hanging around for the whole episode. But, really, why are they wasting screen time explaining this? I mean, does any of this have any relevancy beyond making Andrea feel better about killing Amy?
7. Oh great, The Ticking Clock showed up. God, nobody get him started on immigration.
8. Man, Sean T Collins points out here what shoddy storytelling  it is to have the fate of these people rest on a conversation with this Jenner guy, who has no connection to our cast beyond his physical presence, and I couldn’t agree more. Look, I get it. This whole CDC thing is our characters’ struggle in microcosm – them versus seemingly hopeless odds and inevitable cataclysm. “It sets the air on fire.“ Like the Apocalypse get it? Because the whole show is about our characters kicking against the pricks, aka the End Of All Things? Regardless, while I see how this is supposed to work, it divorces our cast from the threat they’ve been facing for the first five episodes and introduces a new threat that has no emotional resonance for us. Where the hell did they misplace Morgan and his son? Instead of spending time introducing the Jenner character, a figure who may not have any relevancy to the show moving forward, wouldn’t it have been stronger to book end the season with some update on characters already established in the series? We don’t care about Jenner, nor do we really give a damn how the zombie infection works. It’s like our leads got dropped into an entirely different series, really. Although, the whole scenario did give Jenner an excuse to utter “This is our extinction event, ” which was the best line in the episode.
9. The opening scene seemed to indicate they wanted us to re-evaluate Shane, but watching him go from the Drunk Friend Who Is Also A Jilted Lover to the Guy Who’s Had Enough Of This Shit And Shoves a Gun in Someone’s Face isn’t an evolution in characterization, not even on a channel that reruns The Three Stooges for two hours every morning.
10. Great, so now they’re ripping off Lost in Translation. Oh, I kid. This bit of tomfoolery with the  whisper didn’t do much for me, but the look on Rick’s face almost sells it.
11. Hey, who invited Shockwave From Explosion Sends Hero Flying? Always the life of the party.
12. Am I supposed to be…feeling…something when Jenner and Jacqui look at each other and hold hands? To put it bluntly, this show hasn’t done anything to earn the emotional impact this moment was trying to engender. If you want to see “let’s hold hands and face our deaths together” done right, watch Toy Story 3. That’s how you choke up a grown man in his late thirties. This? Not even close.
13. “Tonight… in an EXPLOSIVE episode of The Walking Dead…everything…will end…with a BANG.”
14. It’s the final episode, and some people we didn’t really know or care about all that much just got their schnitzels blown up, so what better way to close out the episode, and the season, than with Bob Dylan? He’s got that whole melancholy gravitas, right? I guess it’s better than Wang Chung. Although if I were in charge, I would’ve had this track playing from the moment Jenner opened the doors to let our refuges out and on through the final credits – no dialogue, just throw in some slow mo of the gang all running and lots of sweaty close ups? Tell me that wouldn’t have been freakin’ awesome.

Season Wrap Up:

The biggest challenge for me has been taking the show on its own terms. I don’t mean separating what Darabont and Co. are up to with what Kirkman/Moore/Adlard do in the comic. It’s easy enough for any post-adolescent to make peace with the fact that changes can and will be made as the demands of the medium (and studio, and advertisers, and audience) vary greatly between the graphic arts and moving pictures. While I may not always agree with the changes, I try to consider them for the impact they have on the show itself, rather than view them as some sort of crass commercial hackery that “ruins the comic.”

No,  I’ve had difficulty trying to settle into just what kind of show The Walking Dead wants to be. Sean T Collins seems to have found the perfect solution by taking what comes and not setting his expectations too high. This is usually how I go into 90% of horror television or films. If you’re going to be a fan of horror, you better learn to like the taste of baloney, as Stephen King once said. This is certainly how I approach HBO’s True Blood, which I often enjoy precisely because it’s so ribald and histrionic.  Every now and then, that series manages to punch me in the face or make me cover my mouth in shock. Rest of the time, I just soak in the corn.*

I’ve been unable to do this with The Walking Dead. I’m not overly attached to the source material and, as I said, even if I were, expecting high fidelity to the source would make me the chump, not Darabont and crew. Having said that, I’ve found myself being particularly…aware of how the show is executed. More than any other program I watch, The Walking Dead has become more a critical exercise for me than anything else. The issue isn’t how receptive I am to junk, it’s how the series ultimately fails in the most elementary tenants of decent long-form storytelling.

Bottom line? I can’t accept this show on its own terms because it hasn’t established any terms; it’s still pussy footing around trying to figure out what the hell it wants to do. If I were judging Frank Darabont solely based on the ‘creative vision’ on display in this series, I’d suggest the name is really a pseudonym for a committee of producers with no background in breaking a story or constructing a narrative.

Take Boardwalk Empire, for example. Not HBO’s greatest drama (yet), but it’s a fine one. It’s also a pleasure to watch. Its narrative is engaging. Its characters are meaty and rich. Its dialogue is rarely off, and sometimes even manages to have some real crackle and poetry to it. It’s a show I look forward to falling into for an hour when I watch it. Contrast that with the first season of The Walking Dead and the differences become apparent, I think. So far, the best episode of the season has been Episode Five and it worked best because, for once, the parts fit together to create a uniform whole.

I can understand why some folks are polarized over the series so far, with some claiming it’s the best thing since cheese whiz and some proclaiming “it sucks.” Looking around, though, most folks seem to be in my shoes and feel the series could best be categorized as ‘alright’. True Blood, the closest thing to a ‘true’ horror television show currently on the air besides this one, gleefully Jumps The Shark at least once every fifteen minutes or so, but there it feels completely natural – that’s the kind of show it’s been since its first episode. In contrast, The Walking Dead takes itself far more seriously but somehow manages to come across more trivial than True Blood by virtue of how tentative and distracted it seems. Both shows veer wildly in tone from scene to scene, but the key difference is one does so by design and the other through clumsiness. To make matters worse, for fans of horror films, trudging through the swamp of clichés can be frustrating, particularly when they’re mixed in with derisory writing and nondescript direction.

There have been a few, I think, genuinely great moments this season though. Were they strong enough to make The Walking Dead a ‘must watch’ show? Not for me. These moments are like the tasty brownies in one of those lamentable Swanson Salisbury steak dinners – they’re chocolatey and delicious, but they’re the only thing remotely edible in a meal I wouldn’t feed to my garbage disposal. Thanks, but I can get my brownies elsewhere. There’s no shortage of quality, entertaining television I have yet to watch (wait, they cancelled Terriers already?), and even 44 minutes a week is time I’m not spending enjoying one of those programs. I mean, I haven’t even finished Deadwood yet, for the love of god.

Bottom line, as far as dropping in on a second season with The Walking Dead, I think my time would be better spent in (hopefully) more compelling company, but we’ll see. Maybe if some trusted voices give it more love, I’ll catch up with it down the road. If not, I’ll be none the poorer.

• Sometimes True Blood manages to be both horrifying and absurd at the same time, which is  extremely difficult to pull off well. Case in point, the end of “It Hurts Me Too” in Season Three may be one of the most ridiculous, and nonetheless disturbing, moments ever broadcast on television.
• Oh, and Curt liked the season finale about as much as I did. Curt’s one of those “trusted voices” I mention above and if he gives Season Two a clean bill of health, I’ll have to rethink my stance.

1. They couldn’t burn those bodies away from the camp? Pee yew.
2. Andrea’s cold resolve was pretty chilling. That was some unwavering stillness there, which contrasts nicely with how she’s been portrayed in the series up until now.
3. You know, this is the first time I’ve really felt how difficult the situation would be if someone were bit. Yes, we’ve seen it before but this evoked some serious thought from me. It was made all the more intense by how relatively healthy Jim looked. How would that not be stone-cold murder at that point?
4. “We don’t kill the living.” Take out the ‘don’t’ and you got yourself a dandy Cannibal Corpse album title there.
5. Boy, Laurie Holden (Andrea) and Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale) really sold a moment that could have dropped like a lead balloon. As evidenced by last week’s opener with Andrea and Amy, scenes of intended intimacy like that can go south fast if the writing, pacing, and/or delivery is off even a little bit. Everything here was rock solid, even the “today was her birthday” bit.
6. On the other hand, how much stronger would it have been if Carol’s final good-bye to her husband weren’t telegraphed ahead of time? Think of how magnificently off that sequence would have been if we’d had only the slightest indication Ed was a bastard leading up until the moment Carol turns his face into meat pudding.
7. I agree with everything Sean T Collins says here about Amy’s resurrection. It was eerie and moving at the same time – a rare thing to see someone even attempt, much less execute as well as they did here.
8. That said, while Sean’s thoughts on the show’s reliance on zombie (and horror) film cliché ring pretty true to my ears rang true to me, I may be softening to this aspect of the series. There weren’t any moments in this episode’s plot that took me by surprise, but if I take execution into account? See Amy’s scene and the Dale/Andrea heart-to-heart above.
9. The cinematography in this episode was just out of this world. From the waves of heat coming off the dry dirt road to the diffused light in the Winnebago in that first scene when Rick talks to Jim, it all added some wonderful texture and verisimilitude.
10. Shane and Rick, Lori and Shane…that whole business was much more tense than it had any right to be given the cliché. I don’t credit much of the dialogue for this, but rather the performances and the way they’ve let the fatigue and desperation become a real physical truth in their faces and body language. It also helps that Dickerson lets each scene breathe just enough to let the tension build; no CSI cuts here.
11. Oh, hey Hispanic guy has a family. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.
12. There’s a lot to unpack here. Jim taking charge for his own fate, taking the decision out of Rick and Shane’s hands in the midst of their battle of wills. How we pay our respects and how we mourn the dead. What it means to be human versus being simply alive. I think for the first time we got to see how the physical presence of the dead and the inescapable reality of mortality bring out some interesting nuances of belief and character here. How each character deals with the very real presence of Death here made for some fine drama.
13. Whoa…it’s…SCIENCE!!! Since I don’t get to see the coming week’s previews, this came completely out of left field. If Curt’s right and they’re going to explain away the zombie plague, this is a biiiig disappointment. There’s really no way to explain the zombie outbreak without undermining the story on some level and Kirkman knows that. It is far more evocative and frightening that this apocalypse has no definitive cause – the cruel mystery of the situation is part of the existential horror of the comic. After all, is there a monster more sympathetic to existential horror than the zombie? The tag line of Dawn of the Dead infamously read “When there is no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth,” but in tonight’s episode we are confronted with the Sartre’s even more famous No Exit line, “Hell is other people” as well – which circles fully back to the familiar zombie trope, “they’re us.” For following the zombie apocalypse, what horror could any hell possibly hold to compare with the mockery of life that the zombie represents here – an existence without those crucial things that define us beyond the debatable existence of the soul – our empathy, our fear, our very will to survive despite how pointless it all seems.  Ironically, the only time an explanation for a zombie outbreak has ever delivered something that actually amped the horror of the situation for me was in the ending of [REC], and that was precisely because it pulled the rug out from the “zombie as virus” cliché and turned the entire film into a Prince of Darkness-style “Evil as Virus” thing. Is it too much to hope that the whole thing started after some archeologists uncovered a copy of the Necronomicon somewhere in the Middle East? Probably.  Regardless, it does seem that they’ll be getting an origin story for the virus next week and that’s more than a little sad.
14. I laughed at “I think tomorrow I’m gonna blow my brains out. I haven’t decided.”
15. That walk up to the CDC was our first truly disturbing scene of epic horror since Episode 1, and it was great. Only a single zombie on display, and yet the sight of those bodies spotting the pavement like fly-covered dog droppings had more nightmare juice than the zombie attack closing last week’s show, in my opinion.
16. Yes, the light coming from the open door was pure corn, but I thought Andrew Lincoln punched a hole through it with his fraught, almost pathetic plea for salvation leading up to it. How much of that was Rick’s fear for his family’s safety and how much of it was the awful knowledge that it might be his mistake that put them at risk?

Yup. This was my favorite episode of the series to date. If you had told me at the end of Episode Two we’d get something like this, I might have doubted you. That said, next week could return us to Dumbsville, so I’ll keep my expectations in check.

They did a swell job of making Merle more a force to be reconned with then just a wacko with a snarl and a KKK membership card. The entire ‘hunt for Merle’ aspect of the first half was pretty great. By the time they find the van missing and suspect Merle of the crime, I felt that there was reason to fear this dude.

And, yes, I’m now joining the Merle Will Be The Governor camp, although how he’d amass an army like that in the time frame of the series is a big question-mark. But I’m sure they can tweak that whole scenerio.

“The only reason I got away was because the dead were too busy eatin’ my family.” – As far as dialog, that’s Kirkman at his best right there.

“They took Glenn!” – Funny how one line can add some colors to a character. They’re going out of their way here to make Daryl more reasonable than his brother. Wonder how that dynamic will play out.

Oops, wrong about Ed! Thank god.

Most upsetting part of the conclusion? Carl’s tears. That reaction was the right stuff; we don’t see nearly enough child actors in horror films being allowed to melt down like that.

A strong episode that made me wish Kirkman was writing the whole damn series. Yes, there were at least three of his patent “listen while I drop some nugget of wisdom on you” moments in the episode, but I don’t mind that so much.  It’s shorthand, and not entirely elegant, but it works just fine. Sure as hell beats what Darabont was giving us for characterization in episode two.

This still isn’t “must see” television for me, but it has evolved nicely over the second episode. The horror is still on the weak side (there were some good zombies in that final attack, but the blood letting itself didn’t hit me very hard), and there haven’t been any moments to rival the most haunting shots in the pilot. Still, they’ve got me until the season ends. Let’s see how it plays out.

Other takes:

Sean T Collins

Curt Purcell

This is just my opinion, but one critical component of good drama (Mad Men or Breaking Bad, for example) is the tension between the internal (what the characters believe/feel/want) and the external (what they want everyone else to think they believe/feel/want). We get some of that witches’ brew this week, mostly from Sarah Wayne Callies’s Lori and Jon Bernthal’s Shane. In particular, I loved what Bernthal brought to the screen while Lori was razing everything they shared over the past month. The look on his face conveyed everything from confusion to hurt to impotence, yet none of that came out of his mouth – it was all there in his face. That’s the secret sauce, right there.

There was also that nice moment when the women discuss the unequal division of labor between the sexes as they wash clothes not far from where Lori and Shane are having their confrontation. Yet, alas, just when I think a conversation between the “women-folk” signifies that perhaps the showrunners have more up their sleeve than I might have given them credit for, it all gets flushed down the toilet with an utterly ridiculous exchange between the women and Ed…the Wife Beater. Like racist Merle Dixon, Ed isn’t a character – he’s a social issue. The only thing missing from him is some Yellow Kid-style text on his shirt saying “Spowzal Abuse. Don’t it beat all?” It’s particularly frustrating because time spent with Ed is time we’re not spending developing the characters who matter dramatically, the ones we need the most time with in order to build some connection for the horror that’s coming. Lori, for example, or even Dale or Glenn.

What’s funny is that as a teenager I used to love it when Stephen King would drop characters like Ed or Dixon in a story, because you knew that they’d end up getting some of the nastiest business in the book. And sure enough, our payoff last night was seeing poor Shane work through his heartache by raining ever-lovin’ beatdown on Ed’s kisser. It worked as a nice character beat for Shane really, but I’m not the only one who thinks it will have a big impact on Shane’s fate when the shit hits the fan, right? Even if I’m right, that doesn’t change the fact that characters like Ed are worse than two-dimensional – they actually serve as detriments to the show because they’re huge landfills of wasted time.

Say what you will about Robert Kirkman’s writing, but there is one thing he is very good at and that is honing in on the emotional truth of his characters at any particular moment in time. In a given scene, Kirkman is able to present (albeit often in awkward, matter-of-fact exposition) exactly what that character really would be thinking or feeling in that particular situation. It’s a gift that covers a lot of his more two-dimensional character work and makes us identify with people that really aren’t all that interesting outside of the situations he places them in.

I’m not advocating the series’ producers spend thirty minutes out of every episode having characters talk at us ala’ the Real World Confessional, but what’s been lacking so far is the sense that most of these people have an inner life and are more than just people who talk at one another. I think a perfect example of how to do it right came in this episode when Rick and Carl ran into each other’s arms and collapsed into a big ol’ dusty embrace that I could just feel in my bones. There was authenticity in that moment, and that’s the best thing you can have if you want us to give a damn about these people; let them behave and express themselves in the ways that feel genuine. I grant you, we’ve only spent a few hours with these folks, and if this episode has taught me anything, it’s that I shouldn’t assume the way a character is introduced says everything about that character. Still, how deep are we really going to get into the hopes and dreams of Ed, the chain-smoking asshole?

Other things that hit me:

1)      Would have been good to see Rick establish the importance of the bag in Episode Two beyond the weaponry contained inside. Not that big of a deal, but still would have been a good way to lay that seed in there. With the escape last week and reunion shit this week, I had completely forgotten about the walkie talkie thing until he mentioned it.

2)      Hey, I kinda liked the opening with Merle! Weird, huh? Thought Rooker delivered some good stuff here. He’s got the crazy down.

3)      With Curt on this – that Deer Zombie was pretty nifty. Also dug the zombies at the rooftop door. Those eyes on that one? Creeeeepy. Which is what a zombie should be. Always.

4)      Speaking of the rooftop door – where did all the zombies go when Rick and co. show up? Did they follow Merle? Did they get bored?

5)      Now, I don’t recall the comic version of events, but did Shane actually lie to Lori there and tell her he knew for a fact that Rick was dead? It certainly colors Shane in a different light. Yet having said that, I actually liked him more in this episode than I have until now, even though this revelation, if taken at face value, makes him look like an even bigger cad.

6)      I do hope that Lori’s demands mean we no longer have to bear Shane’s legitimately sad attempts to bond with Rick’s son, Carl.

7)      So vibrators don’t work following the zombie outbreak? It’s two batteries and badda bing – not exactly cutting edge tech there, ladies. Of course, this is assuming that one vibrator is just the same as any other, something I would never suggest. In the context of the other ‘appliances’ being rattled off, it just struck me as a ‘one of these things is not like the others’ moment.

8)      Pretty great last shot, all things being said. Not sure why it works, exactly – I never expected Merle to buy the farm – but it was still kind of haunting. Maybe it was Norman Reedus’s woeful wails in the background.

This episode earned the series another reprieve. I want to see how Shane and Lori deal with the inevitable reveal of what happened between them, and that’s something I wouldn’t have said last week. With the addition of Ed (aka “I IZ WIFE BEATR”) and, to a lesser degree, Daryl (Merle and Daryl? Really?), the show still skates far too close to self-parody for my tastes, but there are enough other elements starting to click that I’m now playing the “wait and see” game. Like I said, I’d like to see the writers actually take a page from Kirkman’s playbook and really give us more scenes that really show us the emotional reality for these people. The business with Shane and Lori was a good start. More please.