October 14th

The Walking Dead 5.06: "Consumed" (2014) directed by Seith Mann
The adventures of Daryl and Carol in Atlanta. Despite diving into a huge city post-apocalypse, this is a pretty low-key episode that focuses on strengthening Daryl and Carol's friendship as they look for clues in their search for Beth.

In season 1, Atlanta was swarming with zombies. Now people waltz down the empty streets without too much concern. According to Wikipedia, Atlanta has 447,841 people in it. Let's try to make some reasonable assumptions about this. Ignoring the people in the metro area, let's say that Atlanta was like New Orleans during Katrina and 80% of the population managed to evacuate. That leaves about 90,000 people left in town. Judging by what we've seen in this series, I think it's safe to say that at least 80% of those people died and became zombies. That makes for about 72,000 zombies wandering around. Atlanta is 132 square miles in size, so this gives it a zombie population density of 545 zombies per square mile. Yeah, I don't think this is a place you'd want to walk around in...


The Walking Dead 5.07: "Crossed" (2014) directed by Bill Gierhart
One of those calm-before-the-storm episodes, due to the mid-season finale coming up next. Rick and company prepare a plan to rescue Carol and Beth, while Glen and company have fun fishing.


The Walking Dead 5.08: "Coda" (2014) directed by Ernest R. Dickerson
I think the TV-invented character of Daryl has given the showrunners more latitude with Rick. In a prior episode, Noah steals his and Carol's weapons. Facing the death sentence of being weaponless in a zombie-infested city, Daryl irresponsibly stops Carol from shooting Noah. Why? Because Daryl is the fan-favorite who they are ensuring they keep good-and-pure. They want to keep someone that the audience will always root for so that they continue to tune in.

No longer the only lead character of this tale, Rick doesn't need to be likable or identifiable. They can send him down as dark of a path as they need. Which I like. In this one, he kills an escaping police officer in cold blood. To Rick, Beth and Carol are so important that he refuses to let this outsider screw up their rescue. It also shows some of Rick's disgust will the entire world's condition: the poor guy is sick of the constant crises and tragedies. "Shut up," he tiredly tells the officer right before shooting him. He doesn't have the energy anymore to deal with things in a more civilized manner. Interesting.

Also, Beth dies in a stupid manner. Bah.


Friday the 13th: The Series 1.01: "The Inheritance" (1987) directed by William Fruet
Since I'm in the middle of watching the movie series, I thought I'd check out the first episode of the TV show as well. Aired right between Part 6 and Part 7, I was hoping maybe there would be some reference to Crystal Lake in here somewhere. Nope. The only connection to the film series this show has outside of the title is the fact that Frank Mancuso Jr. worked on it.

This wasn't something I watched as a kid, so the only other episode of this show I've seen before was the Cronenberg-directed one. The premise of the show is excellent: two cousins inherit an antique store. Unluckily for them, their deceased uncle had been selling cursed items at the behest of Satan himself. It's now up to the cousins to track down all of these cursed items and locked them in vault below the store where they can't hurt anyone.

That's an idea absolutely ripe for story ideas. Sadly, for this first episode, they went with the tired "killer doll" cliche. It's not even a killer doll good at its job. It takes two tries to kill its owner's step-mother and fails to do more than scratch the face of its owner's babysitter. I'm guessing this is why the network chose to air this episode fourth rather than first... it's just not very strong and has to spend a ton of time setting things up.