Remembering Season 3 of The Walking Dead with five awesome zombie kills

1) Death by silly string zombie. Okay, it's not silly string. But it's just as entertaining to watch Michonne kill this walker with some wire.

2) Death by Subaru hatchback zombie. Seriously, this is the BEST. PRODUCT. PLACEMENT. EVER. I'm sure Crocodile Dundee would agree.

3) Crush zombie head into a pile of goo death. Glen you are #AWESOME!

4) Rick Grimes going all "HULK SMASH" on a zombie.

5) Who can forget face peel zombie?! Whoever thought this up is seriously a genius.

So yeah, season 3 has been over for a month now, and season 4 just started filming in Georgia. Oh what a long summer this is gonna be. But for you ladies out there, I leave you with this thought:

Have a great Thursday :)

Rick Grimes is the paladin in hell only instead of a sword, he's got a colt python baby

The Walking Dead will be aired by AMC in black and white. I talk
about this below. Not only is it a tribute to the comic book by
Robert Kirkman, but it is also an homage to George A. Romero who
essentially invented the genre with a black and white zombie film
called "Night of the Living Dead."

In a kind of chilling delivery, Carl tells his dad in one of the many season 3 promos for the episode "Suicide Kings" (which airs this Sunday), "I think you should stop being leader." Why is it chilling? Because it shows just how much Rick Grimes has lost it, and it's maybe a turning point in the sense that his own son thinks someone else could do better. But the question is: who could lead better than Rick? I know I'd trust him with my life.

For me, there's only one other person that might be suited to leadership in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse and that's Michonne. We also have yet to see if Tyrese (who was introduced prior to the show going on hiatus last fall) will prove to be the kind of life injection that's needed for Rick to be able to be the force for good that he truly is in a world awash with evil.

Have you read The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor yet? My post on it is HERE. I want to warn you, that I want to talk about a major spoiler that's in the book that's probably still true of the television show.

>>>SPOILER ALERT<<<

Philip is not the guy you think he is. His zombie daughter "Penny" that Michonne killed was in fact his niece. The guy pretending to be Philip is actually Philip's brother. The real Philip is dead (he went crazy) and in order to survive, the brother took on Philip's personality and kind of "became" his dead brother. Is that f*cked up or what?

Anyway, in the trailer for "Suicide Kings," it's pretty much stated that Philip has lost his mind. Well, unfortunately, "The Governor" lost his mind quite a while ago when he adopted zombie Penny as his own spawn. Michonne killing Penny disintegrated whatever sanity that remained (if you can even call it that). Basically, I don't think the Governor has any reason to live and is going to be absolutely consumed with hatred and revenge. It's not much of a stretch to say the worst kind of villain is someone who has nothing to lose.

As bad as the first half of the season was (and let's face it, a kid shot his own mother so it was pretty bad), I think from this point on, it's going to be filled with nail-biting scenes and all things grotesque. I really feel bad for Rick at times. It reminds me of a drawing I once saw done by a Dungeons and Dragons artist called "A Paladin in Hell." I don't know the story behind this drawing, but you know that the knight in shiny armor is outnumbered. And it can't end well.

Rick is totally this paladin in shiny armor besieged by evil on all sides. That's basically the
world of The Walking Dead

This old black and white picture also reminds me to tell you that AMC is retrofitting all of the episodes of "The Walking Dead" into black and white to honor the black and white comic book and zombie craze inventor George A. Romero. They will begin airing them starting with the pilot on February 14th (yes AMC is showing Robert Kirkman some love). Will you be watching "The Walking Dead" in black and white? How do you think it will affect the horror?

And for you gun enthusiasts, here's an infographic that tells you all you'd want to know about Rick Grimes' gun courtesy of my new friend, Anthony Welsch, at the Lucky Gunner. Check out Lucky Gunner if you want to see more :).

More from LuckyGunner.com

Are you excited to see "Suicide Kings" this Sunday? Have a great Thursday :)

Analysis of The Walking Dead Season 3 Thus Far

"The Walking Dead" continuously surprises me. I used to think that any story in a zombie apocalypse could never be extended into a series because the monsters are one-dimensional. Boy was I wrong. The way in which Kirkman and his team of writers have developed this world for AMC is nothing short of genius. With the mid-season finale looming just a week away, season 3 has made me understand through subtlety so many things about a zombie apocalypse that truly make it an "end of the world" scenario.  Here's my analysis of high points we have witnessed thus far and what they mean to me:

In "When The Dead Come Knocking", Michonne finally meets Rick because she walks
up to the chain link gate carrying baby formula in a shopping basket in the midst of a
herd of zombies who can't see her because she is dressed in zombie blood and gore. It's
a chilling scene to see a woman so calmly approach the gate and to be so comfortable
around the reanimated dead. Verdict: Michonne may be the most insane person the zombie
apocalypse has ever produced and thus, the most suited to survive.

1) The introduction of Michonne and the Governor, Rick losing his mind, the psychopath Merle, and the sociopath in Carl (Rick's son). My analysis: If you are normal like you and me, you cannot survive the apocalypse. Only people who are insane survive the end of the world, because insanity is the only psychological trait that is capable of dealing with legions of the undead. If you live for any length of time...if you are not insane, you will become insane. You can't escape it.

2) The death of Lori in childbirth. This was more  horrific than T-Dog's death, and it showed how far society has fallen. Women have not had to worry about death from childbirth for nearly a century. But throughout human history, it was a problem. Well with the episode that featured Lori's death, it's back and it's here to stay. Welcome to the stone ages again. The message to all women in the zombie apocalypse: getting pregnant just may be a death sentence.

In season one, this group didn't handle zombies well at all. There was lots
of panicking, screaming, and running. Now they don't even kill zombies if
the zombies are moving too slow. They don't even bother. They're treated
with the same indifference as a fly buzzing around. The ability to see such
things as merely a part of the scenery is disturbing because it's like they
no longer care or are shocked by anything.

3) The reanimation. In season one, the CDC showed us through sophisticated computer technology that the reanimation occurred shortly after death, and that nothing of the former person remained. Yet, we also saw in season one that Morgan's wife turned the knob to their door as if she remembered her home even though she was one of the walking dead. Then in last night's episode, a scientist was trying to discover if a newly reanimated zombie would remember either its name or recall a picture of his family. These kinds of questions, though unanswered to this point, seem to beg of a greater existential one: why is this happening and what exactly is a zombie? Is it a new form of life? Or is it truly an undead creation with no memory of its past life? I also think it may have to do with religion. More appropriately...do humans have souls? And if they do and something is left behind, then what does that say about an afterlife? Maybe it says there is no afterlife at all for any of us and that a person's soul could remain earthbound in a rotting corpse forever.

It's been a fascinating series. I'll be sorry to see it go on hiatus for a few weeks until it starts up again in either January or February 2013.

In other news, did you purchase your PowerBall ticket? I happened to be in Idaho over Thanksgiving weekend and since they (unlike Utah) sell PowerBall, I bought a ticket. Biggest jackpot ever. May the best ticket win. Boy, would $425 million be a real life changer or what!

Have a great Monday.

The politics of revenge in a zombie apocalypse

SPOILER ALERT -- This blog post discusses season 3, episode 4 entitled "The Killer Within" from "The Walking Dead."

In the image above is Andrew from Season 3 of The Walking Dead and from the comic book of the same name. Those of you who have followed my blog for some time know I periodically like to talk about story elements present within the shows that I watch. Aside from being another nail-biting episode, upon finishing, I had questions about the moral nature of man and the idea of screwing over your fellow man in a zombie apocalypse for no good reason.

Primarily...what I wanted to know is why?

Screwing over your fellow man has never really made sense to me in any science fiction drama that features terrible creatures that will eat you. Burke did it in the movie Aliens and when I watch the movie, I still wonder why. Was Burke insane? Did he not see what the alien xenomorph did to humans. It has got to be one of the most gruesome fates ever imagined.

A zombie apocalypse isn't much better.

With Andrew, he had to run for his life from Rick after his nefarious plot (along with inmate Tomas) was exposed and they tried to kill Rick. Rick chased him to a zombie infested yard where Rick slammed the door shut on Andrew. The last thing we heard were Andrew's chilling screams.

Well, we learned Sunday night that Andrew survived without getting bit and somehow made it to a safe place where the zombies couldn't get to him. Now, if that were me (and trust me...there'd be long odds that I could ever survive one day in a zombie apocalypse) I would count my lucky stars, use the skills that I have to obviously survive multiple zombies, and go into the wild and look for a place where I could find food and shelter away from people that want to kill me. Perhaps I could find another group of survivors that could take me in if I showed them that I could be a good person with valuable survival skills.

But this isn't what Andrew does. He gets back into the prison with the intent to screw over Rick and his crew. Doesn't he realize that each time he encounters the zombies that he is risking his life? Why would you ever do that given that the zombies could kill you and the people you are screwing over can kill you? I would be terrified of both. And he literally gets an entire herd of zombies all riled up by blasting the alarm at the prison. This can only end one way.

So why would a person do that? And does it seem just a little unbelievable? Like maybe they needed to establish that the character was a lunatic before going down this road? Or do you think it's perfectly reasonable that a man on his own (that should feel lucky just to be alive in such a cruel world) would turn from thoughts of survival and focus on those of revenge against people who failed to kill him?

I look forward to finding out what you think regarding revenge in settings where the stakes for your very survival are extremely high to begin with, much less inviting wrath from another front.

The Walking Dead Season 3 Four-Minute Trailer got my blood a pumping

Sunday night, AMC premiered the four-minute trailer to season 3 of the Walking Dead. It was previously shown at Comic Con in San Diego this weekend.

We see some Michonne action right off the bat using her katana to kill some zombies in a store. We also see the Governor in the town of Woodbury, Michonne asking for their weapons, and laying the foreshadowing that the Governor is evil by Michonne uttering the words, "I don't trust him."

And the clincher is seeing Merle with a knife wrapped to the stump of his right hand.

If you have the time, please watch the video. It's great.

Have a great Tuesday. #SoExcited for October. It's only twelve weeks away.