Tag: television

Day 13, 2013 – “The Walking Dead” Season Premiere Recap

On By loweritupIn 31 Nights of Horror, 31 Nights of Horror - 20131 Comment

“The Walking Dead”

American Television Program

walk

I was nervous to watch “The Walking Dead” when I first heard of it in 2010. Because of, you know, the massive amount of gore and other scary things. However, with a bottle of wine, I was able to binge watch the first season on Netflix and I was massively hooked. Since then, it has become one of my favorite TV shows. And last night’s season premiere episode just reaffirmed my addiction. And I only need one glass of wine to get through an episode now. Progress.

The Grass Is Getting Greener

Using Rick’s baby as a timeline, I gathered they moved ahead about 6-7 months since the end of last season. Rick is becoming a full-blown farmer, using the extremely fertile prison land to sustain his group and the additional group of refugees and wandering living people they found. The area around the prison has been reinforced and people go out every day to kill the walker weeds that gather against the fence every night. Seems like a redundant job but I guess it needs to get done. Plus they get to make cool killing shanks out of stuff lying around.

Daryl is still a bad-ass rock star and everyone in the prison treats him as such. Michonne is still a maverick, never staying at the prison for very long and riding horses like it was her life before the turn. Not sure where they got horses from, but Michonne would lay claim to it.

Weather Forecast: Raining Zombies

Even with livestock and gardens, the crew still needs to go on “runs” every once in a while. Daryl and Michonne, along with a few other members head to a nearby Costco-like store to get supplies. Unbeknownst to them, there are dozens of walkers and 1 helicopter on the water-logged roof. In a fun scene of zombie death, they start falling through the roof one by one, narrowly avoiding main characters, and chomping down on tertiary characters. Then the helicopter falls through the ceiling, ruining ANY chance of them getting 5 pound barrel of cheese balls.

Carol’s School of Hard Knocks

With more children in the prison now, the adults try to create a “normal” environment. There is discussion about a “storytime hour” led by Carol. Since it is for kids, adults never check on it. However, “storytime” is just a cover, of course, for Carol’s Lil Fight Club. Carl catches her and she begs him not to tell. Instead he just runs away. Carl’s good at just running away.

Rick Wants to Know Things

Now that he is no longer prime zombie hunter, Rick seems to have taken a more pacifist approach to life. He’s like MacGyver now; extremely crafty now, but doesn’t want to carry a gun anymore. However, now 2-legged Hershel convinces him it is best, keeping his children’s safety in mind. Rick heads into the woods to check on traps set for wildlife. He find a injured boar, but the girl from the Ring gets to it before he does. We find out quickly, she is not a zombie, but some sort of foreigner who has been living in the woods. She wants Rick to help her and her husband. Obviously there is something about her coal-miner face that Rick doesn’t trust, but he follows her anyways back to her camp. When they arrive, Rick discovers that this was a trap for him to become Clara’s husband’s dinner. Well, not her husband, just his hungry head. She ends up just giving up and stabbing herself in the stomach, dying as Rick asks her the questions:

“How many walkers have you killed?”

“How many people have you killed?”

“Why?”

I hope they keep asking people this throughout the season, and at least one person’s answer to the last question is, “Because people are delicious.”

Any amateur TV writer can see this scene was created to show Rick’s new outlook on life. There are things you have to do, but they need to get done. It still left a few unanswered questions. Is Rick going back to get that delicious looking boar? How did that lady survive by herself for so long? Did Rick get his sandwich back?

Michonne: Looking For Gov In All The Wrong Places

We find out that Michonne’s daily trips to nowhere are actually her personal manhunt for the Governor. She’s a determined young woman, and will probably not stop until she finds him, spends at least 20 minutes of an episode just staring at him, then subsequently killing him in some cruel, inhumane way. I’m thinking…throw him into a den a baby zombies who have little teeth so they just take small bites. But that’s just my imagination and brilliant writing skills talking.

Hungry Eyes

At the beginning of the episode, Rick notices a walker at the wall with bleeding eyes. This catches him enough that he sees him again towards the end of the episode. This is a thematic element meant to give us a hint as to what is to come. The end of the episodes ends with a new character, around Carl’s age, showing signs of a fever. He goes to take a shower, but ends up dying. The last scene is him opening his awesome new eyes zombie on the shower room floor. I have a feeling this new type of the “virus” is going to increase the contact lens budget by a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Side Bars We Have Learned From This Episode

  • New character is a medic and former alcoholic.
  • Tyrese is just not feeling zombies in any context.
  • Glenn is not ready to be a father, but also he is more afraid of a zombie baby eating his beloved.
  • Beth doesn’t cry anymore.
  • It’s a bad time to be a pig in Georgia.

Day 9, 2013 – “Ghost Hunters” Season Premiere Recap

On By loweritupIn 31 Nights of Horror, 31 Nights of Horror - 20132 Comments

“Ghost Hunters”

American Television Program

ghost

For someone who hates horror and scary things, I LOVE “Ghost Hunters.” And just like the paranormal, there’s no true explanation for it. Beginning as a Syfy (back then it was Sci Fi Channel) show in 2004, a reality camera crew follows paranormal investigators as they travel to investigate alleged haunted locations throughout America. Through night vision, voice recorders, energy detectors, and a bunch of tools that were probably stolen from electricians, the teams are able to either capture or not the existence of other worldly entities.

I think it is a combination of the history, the science, and the fact that the teams don’t just chase shadows in the night. They actually try to disprove claims. And the are rarely scared of anything. Except spiders. Now of course, no one wants to watch an hour-long show where grown adults talk to the air, so the producers make sure SOMETHING shows up on their evidence.

I need to give props to several people who work on this show. First, the cameramen. Any cameraman who follows someone around for 12 hours into dark, possibly dangerous, definitely disturbing areas deserves a Nobel Prize. As does anyone who has to edit dozens of hours of footage to make it interesting. And not just video, the audio too, since the paranormal teams use both audio and video recordings on their investigations.

Tonight was the show’s fall premiere. In it, the team goes to a family’s home in Arkansas. The Southern ones are always interesting. Well, actually so are the Northeast ones. And the Coastline ones. Okay, all Americans with haunted houses are interesting. The family (self-admitted skeptics turned freaked-out homeowners) bought an early 20th century mansion with the hopes of fixing it up and not at all raising depressed spirits. However, these things happen, and they call in the “Ghost Hunters” to prove they are not crazy.

Through some investigation, the owners and the investigators find out that a woman who lived in the house waited for decades on a married man who never kept his promise. She supposedly committed suicide after her beloved finally wrote her a letter that said, “Yeah, I’m done. Never leaving my wife. Sorry about stringing you along for so long!”

Sad story, but was it enough to make her spirit haunt this family who looks like perfectly nice Americans just trying to renovate a haunted house? The investigators were also told of reports of  “doppelgangers” which are look-a-like ghosts who I assume exist to freak you out, but also there to take over your body. Even the paranormal investigators said, that’s a little outside even our realm of possibility.

The team was able to capture some voices and shadows, but nothing as substantial as I’ve seen in the past on this show. One of my favorite things about the show is how hard they try to make a claim “debunkable.” I like it even more when they say “debunkable” because it’s a silly word.

As one of my guilty pleasures, I will continue to watch this show until there is no more haunted places to investigate. I just hope the show lasts long enough that the investigators encounter a ghost who was a fan of the show when they were alive. Circle of (after)life.