Genre: Sci-Fi | Horror | Thriller

Air Date/Time: February 19 at 9/8c

Network: AMC

Director: Billy Gierhart

Writer: David Leslie Johnson

Summary: Based on one of the most successful and popular comic books of all time, written by Robert Kirkman,AMC‘s The Walking Dead captures the ongoing human drama following a zombie apocalypse. The series follows a group of survivors, led by police officer Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln (Love Actually, Teachers, Strike Back), who are traveling in search of a safe and secure home. However, instead of the zombies, it is the living who remain that truly become the walking dead. Jon Bernthal (The Pacific, The Ghost Writer) plays Shane Walsh, Rick’s sheriff’s department partner before the apocalypse, and Sarah Wayne Callies (Prison Break), is Rick’s wife, Lori Grimes. Additional cast include: Laurie Holden, Steven Yeun, Norman Reedus, Jeffrey DeMunn, Chandler Riggs,IronE Singleton and Melissa McBride.

Those of you who have been saying that the first half of season two was too slow, and thought that last week’s episode was too slow, will really enjoy this week’s episode. That’s because it’s fun, sometimes, to have your judgment of a show be validated. Yes, I’m sorry to say, I have now joined you, and no offense to my new group, but I hope it’s temporary. There is definitely more action this week, and things happen, but there were so many missed opportunities for greatness, so many times that the easier road was taken, and so much overwhelming boredom, that I actually found myself not caring about any of the characters by the end of the episode. This makes me exceedingly sad.

Well, I still care about one or two of them. I’m not giving up on the show, not at this point anyway, but something’s going to have to change next week or I will be fully on board with the bored. I don’t need a zombie massacre every week, but come on. We were promised a fast-moving second half. When you start hoping for bad things to happen to the main characters, those we’re meant to be invested in, that’s a bad sign, right?

Of course there are some excellent moments. There’s some great scary tension, and we get it more than once, because as I said, there is more action than last week. The closing scene actually borrows pretty heavily from more than one of Shakespeare’s plays, and it’s nicely acted and well-directed. The music, especially at the end, is absolutely impeccable, well done again, Mr. McCreary, and the effects are nauseatingly gruesome as always, well done, Mr. Nicotero and the gang. It’s beautifully shot, well edited, and the sound – especially the silence – fits perfectly.

Those aspects, however, don’t erase my irritation at being duped into thinking that the end of the last episode meant that things were going to start happening, hard and fast, in this episode. Because. They. Don’t. It’s turning into a soap opera, for which I have no patience, but even those move along more quickly than this. I now feel like I have defended this season for too long. This is not season 1. This is very much season 2. Please, please, make me eat those words next week. Please.

And sorry, but there’s one more thing that can’t go unmentioned for another week. Every single character had something to do at one point or another this week EXCEPT – and this is really starting to tick me off – T-Dog. COME ON. He has been with us since episode 102 and I still know almost nothing about him. It’s starting to make me feel very uncomfortable, as I continue to wait for that great T-Dog-centric storyline, or even moment. Other than one scene, when he was ostensibly affected by a non-zombie-inflicted wound infection early in the first half of this season, he’s been given almost nothing but a few toss-away lines. We’re fifteen episodes in to this series now, 14 of them with this character, and every single member of the original group has been given a decent part on several occasions, except for him.

I don’t like writing reviews like this, and I’m hoping this is the last one I have to do for one of my few A-list shows. I also hope that every reader now will enjoy the episode much more than I did, since I have lowered your expectations. You’re welcome. The consistently excellent production values keep this episode from getting a lower score.

I give The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 9 “Triggerfinger,” Three Out of Five Stars.