My last PopMatters column of the year and I look back to compare Season One and Season Two of The Walking Dead.
Everything seemed to be working in The Walking Dead‘s favor coming into Season Two. Everything I was hearing made it sound like we were in for interesting possibilities. Clementine as the main character seemed like a really good move and the integration of the 400 Days cast was expanding it into a wider world. And yet, it wasn’t bad, just lesser.
It could have been the change in writers. Sean Vanaman wrote most of Season One with Mark Darin and Gary Whitta filling out with an episode a piece. Compare that to Season Two, where you have 5 writers, often working in pairs, only two of which worked on more than a single episode. We don’t know what happened behind the scenes and it’s hard not to think that this had a huge impact on the final product. Yet, I can’t help but feel that that wasn’t the problem.
I was surprised after the first episode’s release to find that it was only an hour and a half. Or rather I was surprised upon replaying Season One to find those episodes were over two hours apiece. There’s more time, more space and more material to work with. That’s where I think the biggest difference between the two seasons lay.
Check out my musings on the topic over at PopMatters.