Zombiepocalypse Now

AMC's zombie show The Walking Dead, based on the comic book series of the same name, is in the middle of its second season. Unfortunately, the perfectly crafted big-budget dread that drove the first season—including a finale in which the characters realize that what remains of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has no cure and no government cavalry is coming to save them from zombiedom—has devolved into tedium and sniping. 

The characters spend much of the current season wandering in the woods looking for a lost child who never spoke enough to make the audience care that she's missing. Although the pacing disappoints this time around, the show still gives the viewer big questions to mull: How much time should be devoted to saving one individual—even a helpless child—when life is a constant struggle to evade ravenous, flesh-gnawing creatures? Is each human life still infinitely precious when the world has ended? —Lucy Steigerwald