Editorials
[TV] 6 Things “The Walking Dead” Season Premiere Did RIGHT!
I have all of “The Walking Dead” trade paperbacks and I’ve been reading them for years. I was a fan before AMC ever announced they’d be adapting Robert Kirkman’s tale of the undead for the small screen. I say this because I’m one of the harshest critics of the ongoing series, now entering its third season. I’ve taken a lot of heat from you dear readers for holding the producers accountable, so much so that my partner in crime even slapped my hand. But the fact of the matter is, I expect way more from the cabler responsible for such classics as “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men”.
“The Walking Dead” is the first major zombie series to hit TV, thus I understand where everyone is coming from. We want to be forgiving and give the show a pass. But as fans of horror you too should expect more. We’ve made it a record-breaking series, but it shouldn’t be rewarded for lazily limping by. They need to respect us and kick it up a notch. The ugly drama that went public last season was a sign that, whether you like it or not, there was something wrong with the show. And, as it turns out, AMC has worked diligently to fix it.
Last night AMC aired episode 03.01 “Seed“, the premiere episode that made me believe wholeheartedly that this is a new start. I am finally excited to see what comes each Sunday night. With that I want to reflect back on the season premiere and point out 6 things they did correctly that can take this show into a new era of awesome.
1: It opened with a bang! Guns were ablaze in the season premiere as the survivors slowly worked their way into a prison complex. When the bullets eventually wear thin, they use an arsenal of blades to stab the (un)living hell out of hundreds of walkers. There’s no shortage of blood and guts, and the FX team used plenty of practical effects that would make the great George A. Romero proud.
2: They quickly integrated character drama. The weirdest and most interesting moment was when Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) made intense sexual advances towards Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus). It’ll be interesting to see where this goes. It was also extremely important to create conflict between Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and Rick (Andrew Lincoln), who have tension over Lori’s past relationship with the now dead Shane (Jon Bernthal), and for how last season ended (with Rick having to kill Shane). The most human moment was when Lori confided in Hershel Green (Scott Wilson) about her fears of having a stillborn baby (would it try and claw its way out? What if she dies during birth? Etc.)
3: Carl could be a badass! Without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest mistake made in the series thus far (besides the casting of Chandler Riggs as the character in question) was having having not having Carl kill Shane (those duties went to Rick in the show) at the end of Season 2. He’s one of the best characters in the book – a young boy who is forced to grow up at an exponential rate. Carl murders Shane in the comic, which turns him into a gun-wielding and unstable child. It’s one of the most brilliant characters in the franchise as it truly dives into what it would be like to “grow up” in this environment.
I’m not sure if it’s the poor casting of Riggs or not, but the show seems intent on taking the blame off Carl’s shoulders (maybe they feared the audience wouldn’t like to see a young boy shoot someone?). Last night the writers took Carl in a new direction by showing him shooting walkers alongside the survivors. And later on he was given the command to protect the women in the prison (look into this moment anyway you wish). The point is, the characters within the show are now treating him with more like an adult, which is the direction he needs to go for this to have any suspense. I was happy to see a taste of this, but they need to take this a step further. I just don’t know if his character can ever hit the depths that it should/could have if they had him actually kill Shane.
4: They gave Michonne (Danai Gurira) a lot of screen time. It was a great decision to save the introduction of The Governor (David Morrissey) for another episode and instead opt to spend time developing Michonne’s character (who was already teased at the end of Season 2). While she’s depicted as a hardened, tough woman (she slaughters zombies with no regard and keeps two as pets), they inject her with loyalty and ethics. By pairing her with a dying Andrea she’s depicted as more than a brutal killer, she’s someone the viewers will care for.
5: There’s finally some unique zombies and even more exciting kills. “The Walking Dead” often suffers from “gunfight syndrome” – meaning, watching a gunfight for an hour and a half gets boring. The same can be said about killing zombies. Shooting 100 zombies in the head isn’t fun unless there are UNIQUE zombies and HERO zombies. Season 3 injects some originality with their SWAT zombies, and kick it up a notch with a series of sweet kills (everything from be-headings to one zombie losing his skin and having his face sliced in half).
6: They finally ended with a cliffhanger! One of my biggest gripes with the previous seasons was that the episodes rarely ended by leaving something unresolved. Good television leaves the viewer begging for more. “Seed” ended incredibly strong and cut off before anything can be resolved. What’s scarier than a bunch of zombies? How about a group of surviving prisoners? I feel like this is the first time I’ve said aloud “Next week can’t come soon enough!”
What say you?
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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