Wednesday, October 2, 2013

An Oath That Just Falls Short Despite A Strong Opening.


The Walking Dead: The Oath is the third series of webisodes produced by AMC for streaming on AMCTV.com. The first and still best of the series told the backstory of Hannah, a mother of two children who sacrifices herself to save her children and later reanimated into the "Bicycle Girl" zombie Rick Grimes encounters in the first season series premiere.

The second series followed a survivor in a storage facility run by a megalomaniacal manager who takes perverse pleasure in the suffering of others in midst of the zombie apocalypse. The second series did not have the emotional resonance of the first one and instead felt like a short from a Creepshow type anthology.

Now makeup effects master Gregory Nicotero returns to direct the third three part web series entitled The Walking Dead: The Oath. All three parts debuted on AMCTV.com on October 1, 2013 and are available to stream now. This is another prequel story with a connection of sorts to the television series, but none of the main characters are regulars on The Walking Dead or at least as far as I know.

This is an improvement over the second series, but the original is still the best despite some confusion some viewers had because the story was told in a nonlinear fashion. The opening is epic with a tent city of refugees overrun by an undead swarm before two young survivors take off and eventually end up at a hospital seeking medical attention from a dedicated practitioner who took an oath to help those in need to the very end.

Nicotero has improved as a director since the original webisode series, but this series ends rather awkwardly with some unanswered questions that fans of the show are sure to be wondering about with the most obsessive probably declaring it to be a plot-hole. Personally I am kind of back and forth on it and feel with a few clarifications and a more definitive ending this series could have been the best one yet instead of just being better than the second, but not as good as the first. The Walking Dead: The Oath can be streamed now for free online at AMCTV.com.

(C) Copyright 2013 By Mark Rivera
All Rights Reserved.