“The Walking Dead”, one of AMC’s original series, surpassed my expectations with a fulfilling Season 2. The show focuses around a sheriff’s deputy, Rick Grimes, surviving with his family and a small group in a post-apocalyptic world where the dead come back to life yearning the flesh of anything with a heartbeat. In the previous season, the group lived in Atlanta only to realize that there was nothing left after traveling to the CDC and talking to the one remaining scientist. Upon realizing that his plan for safety was a dead end, Rick then led the group out of Atlanta towards Fort Benning. While on the highway, their car breaks down and the youngest member of their group, Sophia, goes missing. While searching, they stumble upon Hershel and his family at their home farm, that has been untouched by the zombie plague. His unexposed farm leads him to believe that the condition of the world is being exaggerated. Shane, Rick’s old police partner and the antagonist, discovers that Hershel is keeping a naive secret and takes matters into his own hands in a traumatic half-season finale.

The shocking episode leads Hershel to a local bar in the continuation of Season 2. Rick and Glenn find him, but while there they encounter an aggressive group. Rick, Glenn, and Hershel managed to escape, but when they did so they brought home a prisoner which aroused a conflict between Shane and Rick. The two best friends feud and struggle for power leading to a climactic confrontation between the two. The commotion attracted a horde of hundreds of zombies who endlessly followed a mysterious helicopter from Season 1. The group gets overrun and separated as the survive against waves of the walking dead. The season ends as the group questions Rick’s ability to lead them as they lay stranded on the side of the road with no place to go.

The first half of Season 2, although dull and boring at points, provided critical character development for the second half of the season. For example, the character of Andrea turned from a suicidal woman who didn’t want to live in the ongoing nightmare that consumed her old world, into a marksman that contributed security and protection to the group. This leads her into the most dangerous of all situations in the finale of Season 2, but she is saved by a strange hooded character. The first half left something to be desired in terms of excitement and adrenaline, but as the second half progressed it became action-packed. The unrealistic element of the series took away from intense parts of episodes, such as the slim chance that almost everyone in Rick’s group has the ability to shoot a walker in between the eyes every time. In the season finale, Andrea and Glenn shoot walkers in the head consecutively out of a car as it rolls on bumpy grass plain at night. This skill, portrayed by civilians, trained for one day, would leave military special ops units running scared. Overall, I feel that Season 2 was an utter success, and with each episode it became even more amazing to watch.