Spoilers for last episode of Walking Dead
Last night was the season finale of freshman AMC series The Walking Dead, which chronicles the fate of a group of survivors after a zombie apocalypse. The show only had six episodes in this first season and the last one, although still very dramatic, seemed shaky to me and over done. I’m still a fan of this series and will watch it with interest whenever it comes back (some estimates have it on hiatus until October, 2011) but I’m not as hooked as I was in the beginning. Here’s a good recap from Hollywood Hills, which gives us the essentials:

“The Walking Dead”… opened with a flashback between Shane and Rick. It recounted how Rick was both abandoned in the hospital and why Shane thought his friend and partner was dead. Shane isn’t a bad guy (which I hope we all realize). It’s just that what’s going on around him has turned him into a live wire. The flashback proves Shane did all he could to rescue Rick from the hospital. He at least kept the dead out of his room by barricading it with a hospital bed.

Cut back to modern day. The group of survivors are inside the Center for Disease Control and appear to be the safest they’ve been since the outbreak. Dr. Jenner says they can come in as long as they submit to a blood test. They agree. He also warns them that once the doors close they won’t reopen. They don’t question this.

The group isn’t happy to find that Dr. Jenner is the only person left at the CDC. But they are happy there’s food, hot water and general safety. But something still isn’t right. He’s not telling them much. Everyone gets drunk to forget their worries. A drunken Shane nearly rapes Lori. But she scratches him and he leaves.

The following morning at breakfast, they demand some answers from Jenner. He takes them to where all the CDC magic happens, queues up the computer and gives them a lesson. He shows them what happens to a person who is infected through death and resurrection. He also lets them in on the fact that he’s failed, has no idea what the disease is and there likely isn’t any cure anywhere. Or maybe no one else but them for that matter.

Then someone notices a countdown clock and Jenner tells them that’s when the generator power runs out. He won’t tell them what that means exactly. Rick asks the computer. “She” informs them that once the power runs out the CDC will undergo complete decontamination. Which they soon learn means the entire building will be blown up by explosives almost as powerful as a nuclear weapon.

Jenner kind of flips out a bit and locks them all in there with him. Playing God, he informs them they’re stuck and they’re better off to stay in there with him and meet a quick and painless death. The alternative doesn’t sound much better, but they’re not ready to give up. Well, most of them. Jenner does finally let them free but Andrea and Jacqui decide to stay and meet their deaths. Dale convinces Anderea to go just in time.

Everyone who wants to be outside is just as the clock is running out. Then the CDC explodes. I won’t complain about how fake and disappointing the graphics were here because I liked the episode. So the survivors get into their vehicles and take off. Who knows where they end up and what next season holds.

[From HWHills.com]

Here’s what bothered me about this episode. Of course most of the group got out of the CDC before the explosion and of course Andrea and Dale were fine despite the fact that they cut it extremely close. And of course all of their vehicles operated without a glitch and were able to drive away even though they were just a few feet away from a detonation that was supposed to be nearly as strong as an atomic bomb. The whole episode was like a lesson that the world would never be the same, that all infrastructure had failed, that no one had any answers or hope and that, as Andrea kept mentioning “there’s nothing left anywhere.” So we saw, in spectacular fashion, the failure of one of the last CDCs on earth, according to Dr. Jenner’s account. The guy had tons of weapons, ammunition and supplies but it never occurred to him until the absolute last minute to inform the group that the building was going to implode. He almost took everyone down with him, women and children included, without giving them the option whether to die or take their chances on the outside. I’ve heard this show compared to Lost, which I never watched, and I’ve also heard many people complain about how frustrating Lost was at times. Now that comparison, I get. I hope that next season’s Walking Dead can get back to the gritty character-driven drama it was at the beginning.