TV Geek Out 196: The Walking Dead, "TS-19"

And so the first season of The Walking Dead ended with a bang and a whimper. In "TS-19," Rick and the rest of the survivors discover that the CDC is far from the haven they'd anticipated, and that Dr. Edwin Jenner isn't as much of a samaritan as they'd thought. Or is he? Jenner offers to share the certain death the CDC's computer is counting down to -- one of the few sure things our crew has encountered, and something that's all the more tempting now that it's clear the whole world has fallen to the zombie outbreak. Sure enough, some of the crew takes him up on the offer (bye, Jacqui! We hardly knew ye!) but the option of taking the easy way out only strenghtens Rick's resolve to survive. The last vestiges of the survivors' hopes that civilization will return anytime soon go up in smoke along with the rest of the CDC, and the search for a safe place begins again. Yet for the season finale, "TS-19" was surprisingly light on zombies, aside from the tantalizing opening glimpse of just how bad things got at the hospital while Rick was sleeping. And besides the drama surrounding how and which of the survivors would escape from the CDC, the episode was so low-key that it bordered on anticlimactic. Despite the show's unevenness, its mini first season made a maximum impression. We talk about the strengths and weaknesses of "TS-19" and the season in general, our hopes for season two and much more here.

TV Geek Out 192: The Walking Dead, "Vatos" and "Wildfire"

TV Geek Out covers two installments of The Walking Dead with this chat about "Vatos" and "Wildfire," the 4th and 5th episodes of the series. In "Vatos," Rick, Glenn, T-Dog, and Daryl react to the discovery of Merle's severed hand in Atlanta, follow his trail of blood, and attempt to retrieve Rick's big bag of guns. Complications quickly arise when they run into another human in the middle of the operation, who calls out for help from his seemingly hostile gang of survivors. Back at camp, sisters Andrea and Amy go fishing and Jim is obsessed with digging holes, but the big event is the gruesome nighttime zombie attack! during the fish fry that night. "Wildfire," deals with the fallout from that horrific attack, in which, among other victims, Amy was killed and Jim was bitten. Andrea is traumatized and won't leave her sister's corpse... until Amy eventually turns into a zombie and Andrea puts her out of her misery. Meanwhile, the group is split over where to go now that their campsite is no longer safe, and how to handle the Jim situation as he slowly deteriorates. And in the last part of the episode, the show takes a leap into the CDC, where a sole scientist is still toiling away trying to develop a cure for the outbreak. Listen in as TV geeks Heather, Perry, and Dana discuss all this and more here!

TV Geek Out 189: The Walking Dead, "Tell It to the Frogs"

TV Geek Out covers The Walking Dead's third episode, "Tell It to the Frogs," in which Rick reunites with his family and joins the band of survivors outside Atlanta. Meanwhile, Merle is still baking on the city roof and having a serious a meltdown as hordes of zombies try to force their way through the chained door to devour him. Rick and the others struggle to decide what to tell Merle's brother, Daryl, when he gets back from hunting, and Rick, not surprisingly, insists on the moral route of total honesty. He even decides that he wants to go back for Merle, and spends much of the episode attempting to convince others to join him. They also deal with the disturbing arrival of a zombie near camp before a group of them head back to Atlanta for Merle -- and for Rick's abandoned bag of guns, ammo, and his walkie-talkie (for communicating with Morgan and his son). Also, at the quarry Shane teaches Carl about hunting frogs before getting told off by Lori and later stepping in on a skirmish between the women and wife-beater Ed, in which Shane beats the living daylights out of him. Listen in as TV geeks Dana, Perry, and Heather discuss all this and more here!

TV Geek Out 185: The Walking Dead, "Days Gone Bye" and "Guts"

TV Geek Out begins our coverage of AMC's smash-hit zombie series, The Walking Dead, with this epic chat about the first 2 episodes! In the premiere, "Days Gone Bye," small-town cop Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma to learn that zombies have overrun society, which mostly now looks like a ghost town scattered with corpses, both dead and undead. We discover this terrifying, sad new world along with Grimes as he heads out in search of his family and meets father-and-son survivors Morgan and Duane, and we're introduced to a camp of other survivors outside of Atlanta and discover along with Grimes that the big city is the very opposite of a safe haven. In "Guts," Grimes meets a group of people who are on a mission to retrieve supplies from Atlanta. He helps them deal with their power-hungry bigot, Merle, as well as the dilemma (partly caused by him) of how to get out of a building surrounded by hordes of famished zombies and escape the city alive. The answer leads to possibly the most disgusting couple of scenes in the history of television -- let's just be glad that TVs don't come equipped with Smell-O-Vision! TV geeks Heather, Dana, and Perry discuss how the slow, contemplative style that the show establishes fits right in with AMC's other series, and analyze how the zombie world here compares to other stand-outs in the genre, as well as the comic it was based on. Listen in to this mega-geek out here.

(Note: The "Guts" discussion begins at about 57:13.)