The Walking Dead: "Wildfire"

This is the next to last episode before the first season ends.  Too short!  I read somewhere that Frank “Shawshank” Darabont doesn’t plan on ending this first run with a cliffhanger – but given the circumstances, how exactly is that possible?  When you’ve got humans trying to figure out how much of the world hasn’t been taken over by brain-eaters, there’s no way to say “See ya after our hiatus!” without leaving us hanging, right?

Oh.  I’ve forgotten to mention this in earlier recaps, but this is obviously laden with spoilers.

It’s the morning after the zombie attack that made me wig out at the end of last week’s episode.  Half the survivors are dead.  Our remaining folks are separating dead zombies dead from their own deceased.  And of course, they have to deal with the freshly dead, to make sure the new corpses don’t rise with Extreme Zombie Makeovers themselves.  “Dealing” with them means smashing their heads in with various blunt objects.  We get some full-on hardcore visuals of shovels bludgeoning skulls.  Much splatter, with extra bonus sound effects -- a symphony of cantaloupe crushing.  Or maybe some nice Honeydews.  Sweet.

We learn that Grimes has been starting each day trying to contact Morgan with his walkie talkie, the guy he met back in the first episode, when he was first stumbling around trying to make sense of the new world after his coma.  Remember Morgan and his son?  Who stayed behind in the same town where Morgan’s wife is now roaming around as a zombie?  Because they just couldn’t bear to leave her?  Morgan has the other half of the walkie talkie set.  Grimes told them he’d contact them if he found survivors.  So he tries to send word out into the radio void every morning, not knowing if he’s getting through or not. 

  They lost a lot of people during the previous night’s attack.  But the saddest loss is Andrea’s little sister Amy, who was gnawed on by a zombie with a preference for white meat.  Which means not only did she die, but because she was bitten, it’s only a matter of time before she herself rises as a zombie with a bad case of the munchies.  Big sis Andrea has been sitting beside Amy all night, and refuses to anyone else come near.  Uh, hi: if you don’t do something with little sis soon, babe, you’re gonna have to deal with her all over again: borrowing your clothes, stealing your hair dryer, clawing off your face and eating it, all that annoying little sister stuff.

Grandpa Dale is the only she lets get close.  He sits with her and they have a nice little exchange where he pays his respects, saying how much he cares for the sisters.  Andrea talks about what a bad sister she’s always been to Amy, and how she wishes she’d been better.  It’s all very touching – until Zombie Amy slowly awakens in Anrea’s arms, fingers twitching, eyes all milky.  Andrea talks to her, apologizes, cries, and all the while, Amy’s reaching up and slooooooowly wrapping her fingers in Andrea’s hair.  Her mouth is opening.  She’s growling, pulling Andrea closer.  She’s hungry.  I’m cringing. 

Andrea says she’s sorry one more time, and then, still crying, puts a gun to Amy’s temple and pulls the trigger.

Goooooood morning!

Meanwhile, as campers are dragging dead bodies around, Crazy Jim isn’t doing so well.  He was the guy digging all the graves yesterday, sort of delirious.  Turns out he was bitten by a Walker in the attack last night too.  Ohhhhhhh shit.  It’s not like he’s dead, folks.  You can’t just shoot him in the head.  Or can you?  Redneck Darryl says hell yea you can.  He suggest exactly that.  After a tussle, Grimes says, “We.  Don’t.  Shoot.  The.  Living.”

Of course he says that while pointing a gun at Darryl, but whatevs.  Once again, this show hinges on the kind of decisions that you’d only ever have to make after civilization is over.  New world, new rules?

Turns out the group is facing a crossroads regarding its leadership.  Their camping spot miles outside Atlanta isn’t safe anymore.  But where to go?  Grimes says they should head to a nearby CDC facility, since it might be a safe bunker with military protection, and a possible cure.  His weasel buddy Shane, who’s looking more weasel like all the time to me, says they should head in the opposite direction towards an army base.  They can’t agree, and to Grimes’ dismay, his wife isn’t sure where her own loyalty is – although he still doesn’t know that she was sleeping with Shane as recently as 48 hours ago.  Yowzah.  That revelation’s coming, though.  You can totally tell.

But for now, as Redneck Darryl puts it: “These people need to know who the hell’s in charge.”  If the group is going to keep its humanity, it’s going to need rules, and structure, and a leader they can trust.  I’m with you, Redneck Darryl.  I personally feel I’d be awesome after a zombie apocalypse.  Firm bedtimes, teeth-brushing every night.  Just ask my daughter.  I’m all about structure.

After Shane and Grimes conduct a private a penis measuring contest argument about leading the group, Shane decides to back his friend’s decision, convincing the group that heading to the CDC is the right thing to do.  Before they leave, Grimes pleads into his walkie talkie one last time, hoping Morgan and his son will hear and follow them.  He’s all, Don’t go to Atlanta!  It belongs to the dead now!  It’s actually a cool moment, because you wonder if Grimes is actually talking to Morgan, or to God, or himself, or something deep like that.  I love this show’s quiet moments.  Seriously, so well-written.

The caravan heads out at dawn.  One family, the McExpendables, decides not to join them, but to go to Birmingham instead.  Bad move.  Guess those actors were working for scale.

The group makes a dramatic departure from camp, but it doesn’t last too long because the camper overheats and they have to pull over.  Damn Winnebagos. 

This is the point where everyone realizes that Jim, laid up in the back of the camper, is not doing well.  He can feel the zombie in him taking over.  He wants them to leave him.  “My decision,” he says to Grimes, “not your failure.”  As if he knew that Grimes is having some personal issues right now.

So after a short group discussion, everyone decides to adhere to Jim’s wishes and… LEAVE HIM PROPPED UP AGAINST A TREE ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  They all say their goodbyes, even though they’re not sure they’re doing the right thing.  It’s a poignant scene, and when they drive off, Jim is resting, looking up at the sky, waiting for his Inner Zombie to come out.  Idyllic.  Brutal.

This episode is clearly about decisions.  Particularly, the kind of decisions you’d only have to make after the end of the world.

After commercials, we get a whole new situation, so unexpected I have to check and make sure I didn’t change the channel by accident: we’re in some sort of scientific facility (the CDC bunker, we learn), with a dude who’s apparently a scientist.   Yep, we’re in a whole new place.  Some sort of lab facility, where a guy in a hazmat suit is working with a tiny flap of zombie flesh in a petri dish, trying to find a cure for Zombitis.  He looks haggard and exhausted.

Ah, shit! He screws something up in the lab, and alarms go off!   He runs out to jump in the Silkwood shower, watching in dismay as the automatic decontamination unit burns his lab. 

The guy is making some video recordings, to keep track of his efforts.  He, like Grimes with his walkie talkie, is talking to no one, hoping there’s some point to it all.  As he records himself, we pan back and see  that the facility he’s in is huge.  Massive.  And empty.

“I think tomorrow, I’m going to blow my brains out.  Haven’t decided.  But tonight, I’m getting drunk,” he says to his camera.

Back outside, our survivors seem to have arrived at the CDC headquarters, which is surrounded by rotting bodies.  Grimes is totally second-guessing his decision to drag everybody here, but the group walks up to the big metal doors and starts banging.  They think it’s abandoned.  Everyone’s mad.  And getting panicked, because it’s getting dark, and ohhhhhh crap, there are zombies approaching. 

Inside, Lab Guy is watching them on the security cameras, and hoping they’ll just go away.  Outside, Grimes sees the camera over the door and starts yelling “I know you’re in there!  I know you can hear me!”  And he’s almost crying and the others are freaking out and the zombies are getting closer and the flies from all the dead bodies are getting louder and agggggggh I’m freaking out because this scientist is just going to let them get killed by the Walkers HOLY CRAP.

And the metal door opens, bathing everyone in a blinding light.

End credits.

Whew.  Next episode: The season finale, where the survivors learn from the scientist that “there’s nothing left… anywhere.”

The Walking Dead: "Vatos"

Let me bookend this recap up front: I started off this episode bored, and ended cringing in one corner of my couch, saying GAHHH!!

After last week's one-sided smackdown between Shane the Cheating Weasel and Wife-Beater Ed (which ended with Ed crumpled and bloody and Shane feeling guilty), things are tense in the camp outside Atlanta.

The sisters Andrea and Amy are getting away from the stress by fishing in the lake. And reminiscing about their dead father. It's a sort of sweet little bonding moment, which can only mean one thing, and you don't need to be a genius to figure it out. Something extremely bad is going to happen to one of them by the end of the ep.

Meanwhile, a previously ignored survivor named Jim is digging holes in a clearing nearby. A lot of holes. In the hot sun. He's not talking to the others, and getting scary.

Yep, things are getting rough in the woods.

Credits.

Up on the department store roof in Atlanta, Merle's brother Darryl isn't handling the sight of his brother's severed hand real well. It's becoming pretty obvious that Racist Merle hacked off his hand to escape the handcuffs that kept him trapped. And likely got away before the zombies from below swarmed the rooftop. Deputy Grimes, Glenn, and T-Dog promise Darryl they'll find his brother, but the tension is cranking tighter. There's definitely some sort of rumble on the horizon.

The group follows a trail of Merle's blood back down through the department store, pausing only to take down one uniquely gross zombie whose entire jaw is hanging by threads. Darryl hoists his crossbow and sends one arrow to the head – Zing! Zombie done. Awesome. (I swear, this show brings out the 7th grader in me.)

They can't find Merle (although they do see evidence showing that Merle used the stove in a restaurant kitchen to cauterize his stump gahhh! before moving on), so the group devises a plan to fulfill their other mission: grab the big bag o' guns that Grimes abandoned in the middle of the city when he was there the day before, trapped by Walkers. The "plan" mainly involves Glenn darting out, grabbing them, and then running like Hell. Ok – you know what? That's not a plan. My 9-year-old daughter could come up with that one, y'all. The others seem to think it's pretty brilliant, though; especially Redneck Darryl, who says to Glenn: "You got some balls for a Chinaman." "I'm Korean," Glenn snaps. Come on, Darryl. 21st century, Man.

Meanwhile, back at the camp: Dale, the camp's official Grandpa patriarch, confronts delirious Jim, who's still digging holes. I have no idea if this guy has done anything in previous episodes. I don't think so. It's sort of hard to say how big the camp actually is. Regardless, Jim is digging what appears to be a ring of graves, and Dale approaches him to say, "uhhhh... what up, buddy? You're scaring people." Jim says nothing, keeps digging. Finally, with everyone else looking on, Weasel Shane has to grab the shovel out of Jim's hands and wrestle him to the ground to try and get the crazy out of him. Very tense scene, but when Jim calms down, face in the dirt with Shane kneeling on his back, we learn that before the zombiepocalypse, he had a wife and daughter. And he sobs: "The only reason I got away was because the dead was too busy eating my family."

Argh. This show does a great job with the heart-cracking moments that come out of nowhere. Poor Jim.

Back in the city: the Gun Retrieval plan goes into action: Glenn runs out from an alley amidst a scattering of zombies who see him and start to growl. Glenn gets the guns while the others position themselves to distract the Walkers when they start getting too close – but in his own alley, Redneck Darryl discovers... a whole other dude, who's neither dead nor part of their group! Yes, there's a whole other group of survivors in the city, and they quickly surround Darryl and Glenn. They saw the bag of guns out in the street, and have been working on their own plan to get it. Screw that, new guys! Get your own guns! After a fast scuffle against a backdrop of approaching zombies, the new guys don't get the guns – but they do get Glenn, jamming him into their Pinto and peeling out.

Commercials. Apparently I can win a "stagger on" role on this show if I do something, or enter something. How cool would that be, seriously? I'd love to be a zombie. I need to start practicing my one-leg drag, and my moaning. Braaaiiinnnnss... I smell a guest-star Emmy.

Grimes and Friends managed to scam a hostage of their own from the other group, and make him lead them to the new group's hideout. They're thinking a trade will happen. And if it doesn't? They have all these great new guns.

There's a confrontation between the two groups. It's like a very grim, non-musical West Side Story. The leader of this new faction is a tough-looking dude named Guillermo who likes saying stuff like "I will feed you to my dogs!" The episode is taking great pains to portray this new group as a total Latino gang of Vatos (which is Mexican slang for "dudes," apparently. Thank you, Wikipedia.). But, of course, as Grimes and Friends enter the hideout with their own hostage in tow, we quickly learn that the hideout is actually a old folks' home, and the "gang" is really just a bunch of scared guys who are protecting the elderly residents who were abandoned by the facility's staff. And Badass Guillermo? The rest home's janitor. Well-played, show. Well-played.

The factions aren't so much divided now. Grimes decides to split the bag of guns with the new group. They're all facing the end of the world, and putting up whatever front they can to survive. "The world’s changed," T-Dog observes dolefully. "No," Guillermo says, "it's the same as it ever was. The weak get taken."

Grimes and Friends say goodbye to the Vatos and head back to their van, so they can hightail it back to camp. Except... Doh! The van is gone! Where is it? Who would take it? They all agree: it has to be Redneck Merle (now officially deemed Stumpy Merle), probably headed back to camp for some one-handed vengeance.

But that’s not all. Oh no, we're not quite done yet.

It's nightfall at the camp. The group is gathered around the campfire, having an old-fashioned fish fry, chatting away, enjoying some peace and good times. Grandpa Dale is telling the stories, spinning yarns, and it's all very nice and special. Yes, I know what you're thinking. And you're totally right. Something horrible is about to happen.

Alone in his tent, Wife-Beater Ed is still nursing his broken face (busted up by Shane in the previous episode), refusing to join the others at the campfire. He's laying there feeling all sorry for himself, when there's a scratching at the tent's zipper. Ed yanks open the flap to tell whoever it is to leave him alone, and---

Zombie!! Zombie zombie zombie!!

They're everywhere, swarming the camp. Ed gets eaten quickly (not a huge loss – he's the wife-beater, after all). But the rest of the campers scream and fight. And lose. And get chewed. It's horrible. Amy, who only hours earlier was fishing on the lake with her older sister, gets ripped open by a zombie who has a taste for blondes. I TOLD you that idyllic boat scene meant badness later.

Grimes, Glenn, T-Dog, and Darryl, who've been walking back to camp from the city, hear distant screams, and run to help. When they arrive, they discover chaos. Zombies everywhere, victims everywhere. They blow zombies away left and right, so much brainsplatter that even the camera lens is dripping red.

When the massacre is over, the survivor camp's population is down to half its original size. Grimes's wife and son are alive. So are Shane, Dale, T-Dog, Glenn, and Darryl, and a few others. But they're surrounded by the corpses of their friends, including Amy, cradled by her sobbing sister Andrea.

Standing off to one side, looking around at all the bodies, formerly delirious Jim can only say: "I remember my dream now... why I dug the holes."

End credits.

Scenes from next week: Camp dissent. Do they stay in the woods, knowing that the zombies can find them? Or move out? And where?

Hellcats: "Pledging My Love"

This episode almost did it. I almost quit Hellcats. You have to expect that when the opening dance sequence is, well, a dance sequence that you think might just be pushing the envelope of acceptable television especially if you're not watching Glee. And if you are pushing my envelope, you've probably goon too far. Lets face it, my standards are pretty low. THANK GOD, it was only a nightmare for Marti. By the way, I'd be pissed if I was Aly Michalka and they took my character and made her irritating all the while making Heather Hemmen's Alice Verdura way more appealing. Doesn't verdura mean vegetable or something in Italian? The major focus of this episode is Alice's sweet peas, I mean cantaloupes, oh wait that's a fruit. Maybe I'll just call it her sexy vegetable dip. You see, as well as everyone else on the Lancer campus sees, Alice took pictures of her crudités and sent them to Jakey and somehow someone got ahold of all of the raw naked veggies and sent them out to every one's email. Anyone else hungry?

Moving on to the snoozefest that is Vanessa and her problems with her boyfriend Derrick. *YAWN* I think using the term "waking up on the wrong side of the bed" doesn't quite describe the "good morning honey, you suck at being my boyfriend, I don't care if you are making tons of money at this new job you don't pay enough attention to meeeeee anymore" attitude she wakes up with. As her reward for acting out like Joan Crawford, Derrick proposes to her with a dance routine. Another dance routine. After she accepts and much celebration, they go to bed and Vanessa is startled awake after having a sex dream about Red Raymond.

Who wrote this episode? It's like a mash up of a Broadway musical and a Vivid Entertainment production. Less Broadway, more Vivid please.

At the ass crack of dawn Dan "The Man" Patch knocks on Savannah's door. I guess we are supposed to understand that Dan's been up all night wringing his hands deep in thought over his new found emotional dilemma of being in like with Savannah and having a huge... um "crush on" for Marti. With little more explanation than "It's not you, it's me," Dan dumps Savannah. Savannah slaps him and gives him the boot. Buh bye. Savannah really needs to stop ending episodes with her face all contorted.

Then there is that other annoying side plot of Marti and the Convict. Marti gets kicked off the project. The convict fires his lawyer, Julian, the law teacher. Marti quits Julian's class saying that he's a sell out. Julian signs the papers releasing her but apparently Marti's tirade about him being a sell out has touched a nerve. Julian takes her back on the project and in the class and then they exchange sexual favors. Just kidding. Marti gives Julian a big hug making Julian very, very uncomfortable. It's not clear if he is uncomfortable about the pants area, but uncomfortable never the less.

Back to our little broccoli floret Alice, who exacts revenge on Damian, the football player who shared her crudités photos with the entire campus when she finds out that he is gay. *GASP* After a not so well thought-out plan, she decides she is going to out him but after a harsh scolding from Red and Vanessa, she decides it would be better if she just blackmails the guy for the next year by making him take classes in privacy issues and how not to win friends. Or something like that. Dear Damian, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, don't you know that you don't win friends with salad?

The Walking Dead: "Tell It To The Frogs"

So far, this show's had a perfect batting average; a great mix of storytelling, character nuance, and viscera. Episode Three holds up to the previous two, although it's a little light on Hot Zombie Action for my taste. But I'm still in – in fact, I'm totally involved now, and just found out that the show's first season will only have six episodes. Damn you, AMC! (Shaking my fist at the sky)

As the episode revs up, we're back on the roof with Redneck Merle – Merle, as we recall, ended up handcuffed to a pipe on the roof of a department store in the middle of zombie-ridden Atlanta, left behind by the Merry Band of Survivors basically for being a racist. He was pretty pissed at the end of the ep last week -- now he's terrified and mewling like a baby. Ha! That's what you get, Merle. He gets even more panicky when he sees that the zombies from the streets below have made their up through the department store, and are clawing at the padlocked access door, eager to get to him. They're hankering for some Merle Tartare. He really should pull a Franco from 127 Hours and find a way to hack of that arm so he can get the hell out of there. But if he doesn't, I won't feel bad. If you saw the previous episode, you know Merle deserves what he gets. Next time, Merle, trying being a little less assholian. (I prefer to live in a world where it's ok for jerks to get eaten by zombies. I can think of at least five people from work that totally deserve to be zombie sushi.)

and... opening credits.

Back at the camp in the woods. Everyone going about their morning activities. Lori Grimes is cutting her son's hair, idly hanging out with her husband's best friend Shane, whom she's sleeping with. I really don't like this dude. I'm sure by the end of this episode, this show will play me like a fiddle and do something to make me feel empathy for him, but at the moment, he's still a cross between an alpha dog and a weasel in my book. An alpha weasel.

No time to dwell on that, though, because the Atlanta contingent returns to camp from their wacky adventures in Zombieopolis! And Deputy Grimes steps out of the truck! And his son and wife see him and get all excited! And Shane is standing in the rear with an expression that says: Um.

Big hugging reunion for the husband, wife and son, while Shane looks on. Is it me, or did things just get awkward?

That night, Grimes and Lori have special private mommy and daddy time. It's all very romantic. Everyone knows that the hottest sex is always post-apocalypse, am I right? Holla! P.S. So far, Lori seems pretty cool with not telling Grimes she's been sleeping with his best friend. Is there ever a good time for that?

Everyone's sitting around camp the next day when sounds of a ruckus emerge from the woods – finally. (This episode has been light on gory violence so far. Don't get me wrong, I like the human element of this show and all... but without zombie hacking, it does lose some luster.) The crew heads into the woods and discovers a wayward zombie feasting on a deer. Graphically. Like, gristle in the teeth. The survivors discover him and beat him into a paste. Again, graphically. GREAT shot where the old man of the group splats his head wide open like a melon. Sweet! But hey, someone points out, this is the first time a zombie has wandered this close to their camp. Bad!

After they kill the zombie, there's more rustling in the woods. But this time it's Darryl, Redneck Merle's brother, who's been hunting. It becomes clear right away that Darryl is tied with his brother in the Asshole Race. And he doesn't handle the news about his brother's abandonment well. Duh.

Since Grimes is Mr. Good Guy, he decides to go back to Atlanta – not just to rescue a racist handcuffed on a roof, but to retrieve a dufflebag he left in the middle of town when he was outrunning zombies. The bag has a bunch of handy guns, as well as a walkie-talkie that's his lifeline back to Morgan and Duane, the father and son who took him in during the first episode.

You know, Grimes's nobility may get a little annoying here in a bit. Sure, it's part of the show's premise, watching how people change when civilization crumbles: do you look out for yourself or help others? Do you save people that don't deserve saving, or do you say screw the others, and sleep with your best friend's wife? And Grimes is the hero, after all. But still. You have a son, Dude. Seriously, you’re going back into Zombie Times Square? Is that smart?

Not only does he go back, he takes Glenn, Merle's brother Darryl, and T-Dog with him. Back to Atlanta.

After they leave, big-time drama unfolds at the camp. Lori finds Shane hanging out with her son Carl, looking for frogs by the lake. After sending Carl back up the hill, Lori rails on Shane -– she essentially dumps him hard, now that her hubby is back. At first, she acts like a bit of a bitch; but then, it turns out that Shane was the one who told Lori her husband was dead in the first place, before the zombie uprising! Hmm. Still. She's acting a little too bitchy. Like she has no responsibility for this little triangle they're now in. Shane tries to explain how he's feeling to her, and her response? "Tell it to the frogs." Zing!

While that's happening, there's an even bigger conflict brewing nearby. Three of the other women are washing clothes at the water's edge while Ed, another fat and surly jerk, lounges nearby, smoking. The women are vaguely disgruntled about the fact that, even at the end of the world, they're the ones doing chores, while the men sit on their asses. Ed moseys on down to see what the womenfolk are laughing about, when they should be busy scrubbing out his tidy-whities. "You oughta focus on yer work... this ain't no comedy club." Nice. Ed ratchets up his jerk quotient a few more levels, and there's a big throwdown as the women stand up for themselves and Ed tries to drag his wife away from the others for some old-fashioned spousal abuse. Shane, still feeling screwed over by Lori, charges in and unleashes some hard rage all over Ed, beating him into the dirt. It's an incredibly intense scene that ends with Ed being cradled by the wife he likes to beat as the others look on – and Shane is surprised at what he just did. It would be a hardcore scene even without the end-of-the-world context.

In town, Grimes and his buddies carefully make their way through Atlanta again, picking their way past the occasional errant zombie. They climb back up through the department store they barely escaped from the day before, prepared to free Merle from his handcuffs. But when they get there, Merle's gone! Well, that's not completely true. Lying on the roof is a bloody hacksaw... and Merle's hand. GAH!!

End credits.

Scenes from next week: Everybody's fighting – survivors are fighting each other at the camp, survivors in the city are fighting with a new faction, and everyone's fighting with the zombies, who are slowly, relentlessly closing in on everyone. Looks like less Oprah drama and more brainsplattering next week. Good.

Hellcats: "Finish What We Started"

When we last left the Hellcats, Savannah's hopes and dreams of a magical deflowering were completely crushed. Crushed by her naivete. Marti told her Dan Patch was a player but what she didn't tell her was that Dan had been playing in Marti's secret garden accidentally trying to grow little Patches and then skipping town and never talking to Marti ever again. Well, for at least six months anyway. Savannah basically turned the dirt over in Marti's garden in front of the entire squad, including Lewis "Does this look crooked?" Flynn, who apparently is afraid to do any weeding now and they all leave Marti alone with only one friend, Dan The Man Patch and Alice who admits to feeling "kind of" sorry for her. I'm really beginning to like Alice. She's just a big old slut, what you see is what you get and she gives it out freely. Only thing is since Alice stole that magazine article away from the Lancer football team, Bill Marsh, the crooked head of the athletic department essentially shuts down all cheer activities and blah, blah, blah. This whole part of the show could die for all I care. I'm watching this show for all the hot cheer girls and boys. I'm not watching it to see Evil Bill Marsh bribe people to play football. What high school jock is going to turn down a chance to play collegiate football if he doesn't get hush money?

Speaking of hot cheering girls and boys, we got a bit of it at the beginning and then the only cheering after that was the christian academy cheer squad *yawn* that Savannah's slutty and pregnant (sound the sirens a christian girl lost her virginity and got pregnant whoop whoop whoop) sister cheers for. Savannah saves the day, fearing for the safety of the newly conceived cheerbaby and helps her sisters squad get the sponsorship they need for nationals. And then Savannah lies to her mother and realizes that there really is a time and a place for lying and sometimes we don't always need to know the truth, especially if that truth is knowing your best friend and your boyfriend did it in the back of a Buick, which by the way is exactly where Dan Patch and Marti just happen to be, discussing the scene of the original sex crime while Marti is on a stakeout trying to gather evidence to help with that wrongly accused musical convict she is going to free by the end of the season. Forgot about that, didn't you? Well, the writers didn't.

You know what they say, if the Buick's a rockin'... well they don't actually rock anything, but it does get a little steamy in the Buick but it's short lived and in the end Marti tells Dan it's all a mistake, it was then and it is now and that's that and then they started singing "Why Can't We Be Friends" by War. Not really I just made that up, but I think that would be really funny. Or stupid.

Lewis "Does this look crooked?" Flynn apologizes to Marti for not having her back. Savannah forgives Marti for not telling her the entire truth about her and Dan. Lewis "Does this look crooked?" Flynn goes and gets Dan Patch so that he and Savannah can "patch" things up. Then they all get together and have group sex.

Ha, no they don't but they do share a group hug, all four of them with Marti and Dan giving each other the "I'm In Love With You Still Stink Eye".

The camera pulls away as the music comes up.

The Walking Dead: "Guts"

When last we left our hero the stalwart Deputy Grimes at the end of the show's first episode, he'd gotten himself stuck inside a tank in the middle of Atlanta, surrounded by zombies, and I was on the couch staring at the TV slack-jawed and freaking out about how awesome this show was.

Episode 2 starts at the survivor encampment where we see Grimes's wife Lori, who is – hey, what do you know – wandering in the woods by herself. That's showing some excellent post-zombiepocalypse judgment. Naturally, she hears some lurky noises in the brush, and realizes, okey dokey, time to be scared, and what the hell was I thinking wandering off alone?

A hand grabs her, she whirls around, and it's Walsh, her new boyfriend (psyche!), who, if you recall, is also her husband's cop partner. Ah, I get it -- she wasn't wandering around like an idiot – she was waiting for him. So they could get down. You know. Get down. Down town. In the grass. Sure, she's pissed at him for scaring the hell out of her rather than announcing his presence in a low, non-threatening tone. She makes her anger clear by letting him lick her stomach. Cue the brief, but actually sort of explicit, (sweet!) sex scene.

Oh, and right before they do it? Lori removes her wedding ring from the chain around her neck, to make their woodsy coitus less sleazy. In the storytelling business, we call that foreshadowing! They have their wilderness sex which is clearly going to come back and bite them both in the ass when they finally reunite with Deputy Grimes in the next episode. I predict awkward extra-marital pregnancy. Just you wait.

Credits.

After commercials, we're back with Grimes inside the tank, stuck in the middle of Atlanta and surrounded by zomboids. Acting on the advice of the mysterious kid talking to him on the tank's CB, Grimes decides to make a break for it. Which he does successfully, with bonus points for an AWESOME shovel slam to a zombie's face. Because AMC is badass and won't be shielding us from glorious zombie violence. I love the zombies on this show, by the way. They may not have a lot of coordination, but they're goal-oriented. They've got pluck.

Grimes discovers his savior, an Asian kid named Glenn (played by Steven Yeun) who grabs him and shoves him up a fire escape to the roof of a nearby building where we meet another survivor group. Way more tense than the group in the country. This group is extra peeved because as it turns out, they only snuck into the city to get supplies, but now they're trapped on the roof of this here department store because Grimes galloped into town, raised a ruckus, and now the zombies are all riled up and on red alert for yummy human flesh.

Members of the group include a pretty blonde woman named Andrea (Laurie Holden) who's clearly going to be a love interest for Grimes; a kindhearted black guy named T-Dog (IronE Singleton), a couple other expendables, and a head-shaven, gun-toting, angry redneck named Merle (played by the incredibly convincing-as-a-racist Michael Rooker, who's made an impressive career portraying characters carved out of granite. You'll recognize him when you see him).

Instantly, we get a glimpse of some of the conflicts happening in the group, mainly spawned by Merle, who has a penchant for throwing the N-bomb around for fun. After he starts to beat up on T-Dog for no reason, the newly arrived Deputy Good Guy Grimes puts Merle down like a dog, handcuffs him to a pipe, and gets all up in his face, to help him see that he's currently not being Part of the Solution. Unfortunately, he does so with cheesy lines like:

"We survive this by pulling together, not apart."

That's ok. I forgive.

The group brainstorms some escape options. They consider using the sewers, but that proves unwise. There be zombies down there. But from their spot on the roof, the group spies a construction supply site nearby, one with plenty of available trucks in the lot, perfect for a getaway. The only problem? How to get there. Then Grimes has a truly horrific awesome idea. See, it turns out that zombies can literally sniff out humans, since living things smell differently than dead things (duh). So Grimes and Glenn retrieve a handy corpse lying out back, hack the carcass open and smear themselves all over with viscera oh no they didn't oh yes they did. Presto! Instant undead disguise. This way they can casually stroll through town, hobnob with the zombies, and make their way over to the trucks.

Which sets up the one of the most awesome scenes in the episode: Grimes and Glenn staggering through teeming masses of the Walkers, doing their best imitation of that slow-shuffle walk. Unexpected comedy gold: when one zombie gets close to Glenn and starts sniffing him skeptically, and Glenn has to do his best casual uuurrrggghhhhhh growl to be convincing. I love that this show just made me laugh in the middle of such a nerve-wracking scene.

And then it starts to rain. Of course. And the rain quickly washes away their Zombie Fresh Scent. The undead catch on, Grimes and Glenn are revealed as impostors, and a frantic chase ensues.

Meanwhile, our rooftop survivors are watching the progress below, and are ready to run back down to the department store garage as soon as they hear word from Glen over the CB. And here's where we learn something that I'm pretty sure wasn't made clear in the first episode: the people stuck in Atlanta and the people roughing it in the woods outside of town are part of the same entourage. I didn't get that before. I really get it now though, when the wilderness contingent gets a transmission from the city folk about being trapped in the department store, and Walsh (Deputy Douchebag, currently porking his partner's wife) basically says, Hey, they're on their own. They knew what they were risking when they decided to go into the city for supplies. Already, I can't wait for the eventual smackdown this dude has coming from Grimes when they finally meet again.

So Grimes makes it to one of the trucks over at the construction lot. The gang up on the roof see this, and barrels back downstairs to the department store's loading dock to get picked up. Everyone except Racist Merle, who's still on the roof, handcuffed to a pipe. Not so tough now, are you, buddy? Merle starts whining like a little bitch, and of course T-Dog, the recipient of Merle's fists of fury earlier, has to go back to unlock the cuffs. But as he heads back, he trips, and loses the handcuff key down a pipe! Gah! Merle is apoplectic with rage, thinks T-Dog did it on purpose, goes all racist again, and T-Dog has no choice but to leave, blubbering about how sorry he is for being unable to free Merle. Which he shouldn't be. Merle's a dick. But clearly there'll be repercussions of some sort for leaving Merle up there, screaming epithets into the echoing city.

Grimes drives the truck to the department store, mowing down zombies all the way. The crew from the store piles in and slams the back gate down just as zombies get to them. Whew! But wait! "Where’s Glenn?" someone frets.

Glenn is fine. After being trapped and terrified in the middle of the city, Glenn is going about 90 on a freeway out of town in a hot-wired Camaro that was part of Grimes's plan to help distract the zombies. And as he drives off, Glenn lets out a whoop of delight. The credits roll, and I sit up on the couch, saying, Wait! It's already over? But... but...

The first half of the ep was a little slow, but picked up quickly once the survivors suddenly had to resort to Plan B to get the hell outta Dodge. Once again, this show's premise is reaffirmed:& when the end of the world comes, the brave get braver, and the weak get weaker.

And the dead stay hungry.

Scenes from next week: the two groups reunite! Grimes and his wife are suddenly face to face again. And it turns out Racist Merle's got a brother who's as much of a dick as he is.

Hellcats: "Back Of A Car"

Is it hot in here or is just me? *Fans Self* Let me start out with a few of the more *ahem* memorable quotes from this episode.

"We'll go have nasty acrobatic sex in positions that you can't even draw" -Alice

"Ah pretty much anyone can draw stick figures, so..." -Dan Patch

"Oh Jakey, I always want to remember you like this, when you still had your testicles." -Alice

"Okay listen, Bill Marsh is a sanitary napkin in a suit I get that." -Jake

"I'm chopping down the cherry tree." -Savannah

So, what do you think this episode was all about? Sex, sex, sex, and no sex. And the '80s. This episode was made for The Culture Brats. I think, at least the '80s part right? We are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the conception, I mean inception of The Hellcats at Lancer so of course we are having an '80s-themed party for spirit week. GOOO Helllcats! Listen, I know I'm not really a Hellcat but it's spirit week damn it, so I will refer to them as we. I have to say the party sequence where Coach Vanessa sings and dances while dressed up as Tina Turner was way less uncomfortable when she did the awkward little dance back in the "Ragged Old Flag" episode. I found myself reliving my high school days when I really dressed up like Madonna and went to school and got ridiculed by the softball team, *swigs wine*.

Um, where was I? Oh right, the party. You know it wouldn't be a party if someone didn't get drunk and throw a wrench in the spokes and that someone would be Wanda, Marti's mom who has a penchant for inappropriate behavior. See, Savannah has her night of deflowering all planned out for after the party. I think she must have spent about a thousand smackeroos to woo Dan into her web, only to have Wanda mention that Marti is in love with Dan Love, love, love I say! Which now has Dan second-guessing his little brain.

The other side story here is that I now have a girl crush on Alice. I know this is silly but seriously that woman really does have balls. She commandeers a glossy magazine article that was supposed to be about the Lancer Football team and gives them a better, juicier and all together steamy story. I am pretty sure that Alice is going to sleep with the journalist, I just can't seem to remember her name.

Marti and Dan share a highly tense and awkward moment as Dan asks her if he is making a mistake with Savannah. Marti is all like "Nope, my lips are sealed." Well she might have said something like "I have nothing to say, blah blah, something, something, have you seen Lewis 'Does this crooked' Flynn?"

Oh yes, yes, YES. The climactic ahhending. Savannah, through a series of events (and by events I mean two conversations she had, one with Marti and one with Dan) discovers that, and oh my god can you even guess what is about to be revealed? Marti and Dan chopped down each other's cherry tree. In the back of a Buick. In the middle of nowhere. And it was good for what it was. Which turns Savannah inside out and thrusts her out of the hotel room in slow motion, barefoot with her face all twisted with emotion as she leaves Dan in the bathroom trying to figure out how to get the damn condom wrapper open.

And that is somewhat more exciting then most people's first attempt at chopping down the old cherry tree.

The Walking Dead: "Days Gone Bye"

I have a love-hate relationship with the undead. I love zombie movies, but they always give me the late-night wigguns. So I was both psyched and scared to watch the premiere of AMC's new powerhouse series The Walking Dead. The show premiered Halloween night – I sat down to watch it after my wife and daughter went asleep, giving myself permission to turn it off it got too freaky.

It did get freaky. But I didn't turn it off. Commence recap.

The first scene has our hero, Sheriff Deputy Rick Grimes, walking down a lonely stretch of Georgia road past overturned, abandoned cars. He's carrying a rifle and a gas can. Whatever horrible thing that's supposed to happen has already happened, apparently. I already have the foreboding sensation I got reading the first chapter of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Great. Wigguns ahoy.

Within the first five minutes, Deputy Grimes is facing down a rasping, ravenous ghoul – who's also a little girl, clutching a teddy bear. She's hungry, feral and quick. Grimes has no choice but to raise his rifle and shoot her in the head, thanks, which we get to see in full-on Splattervision. Ok, AMC. So that's how it's going to be, is it?

After that delightful little prologue, we zoom back in time to a more idyllic, pre-zombie morning where there's still civilization. Grimes and his partner Shane Walsh are hanging out in their police car, shooting the shit about women. We learn that Grimes's marriage is in trouble. We also learn that Walsh is a sexist pig who claims women are too stupid to turn lights off when they leave a room. Both Grimes and Walsh are fairly slouchy cops in this first scene (great acting by Andrew Lincoln and Jon Bernthal), which is key to remember later, when both are forced to become stand-up leaders of survivor groups after the Zombiepocalypse.

A call comes in on their radio about a high-speed chase, and they jump into action. One fast-paced showdown scene later, and Grimes has been shot by criminals and is in an ambulance heading to an emergency room.

Cut to a few weeks later. Grimes wakes up in a hospital room. The flowers by his bed have long since wilted, and everything is eerie. Wonderfully creepy scene with Grimes staggering through a deserted hospital looking for help. There's wreckage. There's blood smeared on the walls. There are a couple gnawed-away bodies around. And finally, there's a set of big metal double doors, boarded shut, with the words "Don't Open, Dead Inside" scrawled on them. Grimes approaches the doors, which start to rattle. Gah! In other words, this shit just got real.

I, of course, start to feel my skin crawl. My thumb is hovering over the FF button on my DVR remote. I stay brave, and Grimes stumbles out of the hospital. Unable to believe the fact that world ended while he was unconscious. This sequence feels slightly stolen from 28 Days Later, but it's so well-paced and beautifully shot that I'm cool with it.

Grimes, still in his hospital gown and staggering around sort of like a zombie himself, sees something moving in the park. He approaches, and realizes he's looking at half a zombie, missing everything from the torso down, laboring hard to pull itself along through the grass. It's got virtually no meat on its bones. Its face is disintegrating. Grimes is freaked at first, but what's so diabolical is that as I'm watching this disgusting zombie pull its legless self through the grass by its fingers, I start to feel bad. For the zombie. For the pathetic half-zombie trying hard to get... nowhere. An interesting moment.

More on half-zombie later. For now, Grimes stumbles on, and comes upon a man named Lennie and his son Duane who are holed up a house, low-profiling it while zombies constantly drift through the neighborhood. (It's awesome how zombies are seamlessly woven into the background of scenes, making them both creepy and mundane.) We get some backstory on Lennie and Duane – their wife/mom has been zombified, and she's still hanging around the neighborhood. In fact, she frequently climbs their porch steps and rattles the doorknob, because part of her mushy memory keeps pulling her back. Which of course is heartbreaking for Lennie and Duane. This is where we realize that this show is less about brain-eating zombies and more about the emotional core of its human characters, who have to relearn how to live after losing almost everything they loved most in the world.

Grimes bonds with them for a bit before deciding to move on. He's convinced that his own wife and son are still alive. There are rumors that the CDC has a victim shelter in Atlanta, and they could be there. Lennie isn't quite ready to make the move, so Grimes leaves them. Um... I'm sorry, why do they stay in a house surrounded by a neighborhood Rotary Club of the Undead? Instead of traveling with a deputy sheriff who has lots of guns? Hard to say. Something about the fact that the mom zombie (mombie!) is still shuffling around, and the dad just doesn't have the stones to put a bullet in her head yet. I question their survival imperatives.

Side story: Remember Grimes' partner Walsh? Sexist and sort of a douche? We learn that he's the de facto leader of a small survivor group hiding out in the woods, living in tents. He's suddenly a stand-up guy because he has to be – and one of the members of this not-so-merry band is Grimes' wife Lori. Remember now, in the beginning, we learned that the Grimeses were having a wee bit o' marital trouble. Turns out that after surviving the Zombiepocalypse, Grimes's buddy Walsh and his wife Lori are hooking up! Gettin' down with it! Doing a little horizontal mambo! So that's going to be an awkward situation if they all bump into each other at the next company party. I dig what this implies about the direction of the show itself: how relevant are our rules of morality and propriety after the end of the world? What's the point of fidelity when you've got dead people walk around, snacking on brains? New world, new rules.

I have to mention one more thing: before Grimes leaves town, he goes back to the park where he saw that mangled half-zombie. Which is pretty easy to find, since it hasn't made great progress. It's still doggedly trying to get somewhere, clutching fingers, rasping breath, all of it. This time, Grimes approaches, kneels by the disgusting, retching thing, and looks at it with pity in his eyes. "I'm sorry this happened to you," he says to it. The thing looks up and I swear for just a second it has puppy dog eyes, pathetic and sad. When the zombie slowly reaches out for Grimes, the deputy does the humane thing and blasts its head off. I'm sitting here dumbstruck by the poignancy of it, seriously. This human moment feels like it's illustrating something important about the series itself.

Grimes finds a horse and rides into Atlanta on an empty freeway. Meanwhile, the survivors led by Walsh and Lori are talking about how they should go out and post signs for other survivors warning them not to go to Atlanta, since the CDC's survivor center is not so much. Foreshadowing!

Grimes wanders around deserted, downtown Atlanta for a bit, encountering the occasional zombie here and there. We're forced to remember something Lennie said to Grimes earlier: don't be fooled by the Walkers. They may not be much one at time, but when they're in a group, and hungry... whoa momma.

Which Grimes discovers when he and his horse turn a corner and are suddenly confronted with hundreds of zombies, whose heads all turn towards him at the same time. I actually hear myself say "Holy Shit" out loud.

Panic. Awesome chase scene. Grimes gallops off on his horse, but there's nowhere to go. He's surrounded by a flash mob of zombies. Part of me really wanted them to all jerk upright and start doing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" dance. If nothing else, it would diffuse the freaking tension.

Grimes is pulled off his horse, and scrambles away as a group of zombies rips the horse open and begins to devour it oh yes people that happened GAH.

Grimes tries to run away, but can't. He crawls under a car, but they follow. At the last minute, he managed to climb into an abandoned tank in the middle of the street and seal himself in. He's clearly aware of exactly how screwed he is, and I'm thinking, wait, this is supposed to be a series, right? How's he going to stay alive for future episodes? When there's a crackling on the tank's CB, and a smartass-sounding voice says, "You in the tank. Feeling cozy in there?"

Huh? Awesome.

And then it's the last shot of the episode: an overhead view, looking down on the tank covered with zombies, all clawing to get in. We pull back and see that the streets are filled with the undead. We got one guy, trapped in a tank, beneath a blanket of monsters.

Gah!

I'm in. Yes, it's creepy and stark and we're definitely going to see buckets of viscera, internal organs, and exploding zombie heads. But we're also going to get some very human stories. For the characters of The Walking Dead, there's hope after the end of the world.

Hellcats: "The Match Game"

Sex, pie, and secrets. It's like a cross between sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll and sex, lies, and videotapes.

This episode is packed full of horny cheerleaders in desperate need of money willing to sell their bodies, their reputations, and their relationships for the sake of paying for a spot in the nationals. They do this by holding a date auction where each one of them is bid on to raise money, kind of like going to the Bunny Ranch in Vegas. I think.

Sluts.

I'm just kidding. Seriously though after watching this episode I can't decide if I am hungry, need a date, or maybe just to break down some emotional walls and be free, as free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows. Well, you get the picture.

Marti reveals to the entire squad that she and Lewis "Does this look crooked?" Flynn are doing the horizontal mambo and the squad's reaction was something between total silence and crickets chirping.

Savannah confronts her Mother and they both agree that it's okay if she decides to throw caution and potentially her virginity to the wind and travel down a winding road with Dan.

I think Alice just straight up slept with her auction date who happened to be her boyfriend, because the next day she was still wearing her Hellcat uniform after the auction.

And Vanessa's hopes of having a steamy mcsteamy love affair was dashed when she realized her anonymous bidder was her boyfriend Derrick and not her ex, Red Raymond.

They completely gloss over Lewis "Does this look crooked?" Flynn's date. He garnered the most dirty money from a 65-year-old man with salt and pepper hair, not that there is anything wrong with that, at all.

My favorite quote from this episode is from Wanda, Marti's drunk mom who doesn't ever seem all that drunk to me. "Don't touch it. If you don't touch it, it doesn't count." Oh that Wanda, she just woos me with her delicate sensibilities.

If you are a fan of the '80s you do not want to miss next weeks episode when the Hellcats host an '80s party, complete with a Thriller sequence, I think. At least that is what the teaser implied.

Hellcats: "Ragged Old Flag"

I know each and everyone of you have been holding your breath for my weekly Hellcats recap that I never posted last week so I must apologize because you've probably passed out by now. That or you have gone elsewhere to get your weekly dose of sexy cheer time. Quite frankly, I don't blame you. I blame me. Last week, my DVR went on strike and never recorded it and this week I made sure to record it only to discover that the CW aired episode one. ONE! I am very angry right now. So this week you get last week's recap and next week you will get this week's. Right? If you think you're confused, you should be me trying to sort that out in my brain.

So last week was all about personal integrity on Hellcats: Ragged Old Flag.

Alice always seems to be the problem. The volleyball team tries to topple her from the top of a pyramid by chucking the ball at her head but because she's a roided-up athlete, she dodges that ball with superhero-like stealth. Which almost results in a hair-pulling catfight between the Volleyball Amazons and Hellcat Kitties with a flag football challenge to decide if the Hellcats are actually mice or men. Little do the Hellcats know that the VB Amazons are the champions of intramural flag football league. [Cue sad horn music]

So the episode goes on, Lewis "Does this look crooked?" Flynn realizes his dad is actually crooked and has been accepting hush money from the Lancer University athletic department. Vanessa does a little dance and by little I mean a really awkward dance that Red watches from a creepy distance and Marti bails on the Hellcats vs. Amazons because she has to go be a law student instead of the flag football star receiver. The nerve!

So back to the very important matter of the flag football challenge. Alice decides that the Hellcats need an angle to win the game since Marti is now *too sick* to be that star receiver so she pays a visit to her boyfriend who happens to be coaching the VB Amazons team in this flag football challenge. I am just not sure if Alice ends up being the QB, the wide end, or the star receiver. I am pretty sure she does all three to gain access to all of his plays. Which the Hellcats never use because Lewis "Does this look crooked?" Flynn is over the crooked life and refuses. He does his best to guide the girls through a rainy, awful massacre of a flag football game. But then out of the mist with bagpipes playing in the background, Savannah looks over and sees Marti, the saviour of mankind emerging with a determination that can only be rivaled by Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

And in just a few short moments Marti saves the day. Yet again. They score, and score and score once more. The rain stops. The clouds part. Rays of sunshine bathe the Hellcats in all their winning glory. The volleyball team cheers them on at the bar in their panties and then like all tragedies, the guillotine falls and Coach Vanessa informs them, mid-celebratory shot I must add, that their bid video did not make the cut by one spot. With the pathetic cheering in the background from the VB Amazons in panties the camera lingers on the sad faces of Marti, Lewis, Savannah, and Alice and we are left to wring our hands in complete worry until next week when we get to find out the fate of the Lancer Hellcats.