There’s been a lot of discussion about the similarities and differences between Robert Kirkman’s comic and Frank Darabont’s television adaptation, but for the most part, I’ve embraced the changes that have been made. For instance, Kirkman would never insert a flashback into his story, but tonight’s season finale opened with one, going back to the early days of the outbreak when Shane attempted to rescue Rick from the hospital. We all know how that turned out, but I was a little surprised to see the military acting so callously – shooting anyone they came in contact with regardless of whether they were infected or not. To be fair to Shane, he had no shot of getting Rick out of their alive with all those machines, but even though he was kind enough to block the door with a hospital bed to keep the walkers out, that doesn’t make up for his adulterous betrayal.

Back in the present, Dr. Jenner welcomes the survivors into the CDC facility, but on one condition: that everyone submits to a blood test, just to make sure no one’s infected. Once everyone checks out, Jenner takes them on a tour of Zone 5, and before long, the survivors are laughing, drinking wine, and generally just enjoying themselves for the first time in a long while. Jenner isn’t impressed, and neither is Shane, who feels like they should be getting the answers they came for instead of getting wasted. But he doesn’t like what Jenner has to tell him – that most of the scientists left to be with their families when the outbreak hit, and others just committed suicide – and so Shane decides to wash his sorrows with a little booze.

Actually, it was probably more like a lot of booze, or he would have been smart enough to walk away after discovering Lori perusing the building’s makeshift library all alone. At first, it seemed like he was just trying to apologize for the way he’s been acting lately, but the more that Lori pushed him away, the more aggressive Shane became. He swears that he didn’t lie about Rick being dead and couldn’t do anything to save him (which is true), but forcing yourself on someone isn’t exactly the way to their heart, and Lori let him know it by scratching his neck. He definitely looked sorry about it the next day after he sobered up, but the damage was already done. Plus, it’s not like his feelings have changed any, and you can bet that Shane is going to become more of a liability the longer he’s around. Just wait until Dale tells Rick about what he saw in the woods.

Most of the survivors were nursing a hangover the next morning, but they still wanted some answers, so Jenner decided to show them what he’s been working on. TS-19 is a test subject who was bitten and then agreed to let the scientists record the infection process to better help their understanding of the virus. Oh yeah, and it just so happens to be Jenner’s wife. He’s still mostly in the dark on what the virus even is, but he does know that resurrection times vary (as quick as three minutes or as long as eight hours), and though it restarts the brain stem, the brain itself remains inactive. Apparently, the French were the closest to figuring out the cause, but they ran out of time when they started losing power in their area.

For the time being, Zone 5 is still up and running, but as Dale is keen to point out, there’s a clock on the wall of the control station that’s counting down, and he wants to know what happens when it reaches zero. As Jenner explains, that’s when the basement generators run out of fuel, thereby activating a facility-wide decontamination which, as we've already witnessed, means the place will go up in flames. The survivors aren’t happy about this new development, and even less so when Jenner decides to lock everyone inside. In fact, even if they wanted to leave, they’d still have to find a way out the building, which has been automatically locked down.

That doesn’t stop Shane and Daryl from hacking away at the metal doors with a couple of fire axes, but as Jenner quite matter-of-factly points out, they were designed to withstand a rocket launcher. I’m not sure if it was meant to be funny, but the way that Noah Emmerich delivered the line made me laugh anyway. As we saw at the end of last week’s episode, Jenner is more than prepared to die, but the rest of the group has different feelings on the matter, and after they beg him to give them a chance, he finally opens the door with four minutes remaining. Rick thanks him for the help, but all Jenner can say is, “The day will come when you won’t be,” before whispering something into his ear. So what did he say? You’ve got me, but from the expression on Rick’s face, it couldn’t have been good. (UPDATED: Now that I've had more time to think about it, Jenner probably told him that Lori was pregnant. I can't believe that it didn't even cross my mind yesterday, but it would certainly be keeping in line with the comic.)

Not everyone is going, either. Jacqui has decided to stay behind to avoid suffering a similar fate as Amy and Jim (to which I say “Good riddance”), and a defeated Andrea wants to stick around too until Dale changes her mind by essentially guilting her into leaving. For a second there, though, it actually looked like Dale had given in as well, and if nothing else, that little moment should serve as the catalyst for their eventual relationship, since it’s been written on the walls for weeks now. And while that’s going on, the others are desperately trying to break one of the windows upstairs to no avail. Fortunately, Carol just happens to have the grenade that Rick picked up in Atlanta in her bag, and after the blast shatters the glass, everyone makes it to their respective vehicles just as the CDC explodes.

It was a great bookend to the season, with the survivors driving off to whatever other dangers may be awaiting them, but Season Two simply can’t come soon enough. The bad news, of course, is that it looks like we’ll have to wait until late 2011 at the earliest, so in the meantime, you might consider picking up some of the graphic novels and enjoying the story that way. At the very least, you might get an idea of what happened to Merle, as there’s been a lot of online speculation that he’ll become a pivotal character in the series. The idea is simply too good to ignore, but whatever Darabont and co. decides, you can be sure that I’ll be along for the ride.

After the attack on the camp, the question of what to do with the dead was always going to be a sensitive subject. While Daryl wants to burn anyone who’s been bitten or killed, Glenn is adamant that they bury their fellow survivors. And when you think of it, they both make pretty good points. If you don’t kill them now, there’s always a chance that that decision will come back to bite you (pun very much intended) in the future. On the other hand, you need to maintain a certain bit of humanity in situations like this or there’s nothing separating you from the monsters.

Of course, before they decide what they’re going to do with the bodies, they need to figure out how they’re going to pry one of them – Amy – out of Andrea’s arms. She’s obviously still coping with the death of her little sister and feeling especially guilty that she wasn’t always there for her when they were younger. But neither Rick nor Lori can get through to Andrea, and it takes Dale’s story about losing his wife to cancer (and how the two sisters are the closest thing he’s had to family since her death) to get her to finally snap out of it. Just in time, too, as Amy begins to come back to life as a zombie and Andrea is forced to shoot her in the head.

With all the discussion going on about how to handle the dead, you can hardly blame Jim for trying to keep his bite a secret. It was only a matter of time before someone found out, however, although everyone took it a lot better than he probably imagined they would. Only Daryl seemed willing to shoot him right there on the spot (then again, that’s pretty much his answer for everything), but Rick believes that the Center for Disease Control might have a cure, and suggests that the group heads there for refuge now that the camp is compromised. Shane disagrees, and wants to go to the military base at Fort Benning instead, even if it’s 100 miles away.

That’s not the only thing Shane disagrees about, either. He thinks that Rick made a serious mistake by going back to Atlanta to retrieve the guns, while Rick believes that without them, they would have suffered even more casualties. It’s pretty clear that Shane doesn’t like how Rick has suddenly taken over the leadership duties since his arrival, and he finally snaps when Rick implies that he’s incapable of making certain decisions because he doesn’t have a family to worry about. It might have gotten worse had they not been interrupted by a sound in the woods, and when they split up to check it out, the only person in Shane’s crosshair was Rick. He even seemed to be seriously contemplating pulling the trigger (no doubt prepared to chalk it up as an accident) until Dale spotted him in the act.

It’s hard to say whether Shane truly stands by Rick’s plan or if he’s just feeling guilty about what happened in the woods, but when they get back to camp, Shane announces to the group that they’ll be leaving for the CDC the next morning. Morales won’t be joining them, however, because he's decided to go to Birmingham with his wife and kid to meet up with other family. Jim, meanwhile, is really starting to feel the effects of the infection - spitting up blood and hallucinating - so when the caravan is forced to a stop after Dale's RV overheats, he asks Rick to leave him on the side of the road so he can die in peace. And when the group finally does arrive at the CDC, there’s no one there to greet them aside from a few hungry walkers.

At least, that’s what they think, but there is someone inside the CDC and his name is Dr. Jenner (Noah Emmerich). Through a series of video transmissions, we learn that it’s been 194 days since Project Wildfire was declared (probably the first documented case of the virus), and 63 days since the zombie virus went global. Jenner has been living in the CDC all this time working on a cure, but after he spills a chemical that burns through his glove, he’s forced to decontaminate the area, destroying all of his best samples. Believing that he’s the last man alive on Earth, Jenner plans to kill himself until he’s alerted of the survivors’ arrival and, somewhat begrudgingly, opens the security doors to let them in. But if Jenner is nowhere closer to finding a cure, how much can he of any help to Rick and the others apart from giving them a place to stay? Or perhaps the better question is: why is Jenner all alone and where are his colleagues?

Just like in the pages of Robert Kirkman’s comic, tonight’s episode (which he also wrote) picked up right where the last one left off, with Daryl not taking the discovery of Merle’s chopped-off hand particularly well. Fortunately, it appears that Merle is doing just fine on his own, as a trail of blood down the opposite staircase leads Rick and Co. to find evidence that Merle has not only taken out a few zombies, but also cauterized his stump on a hot plate before getting the hell out of Dodge. Worried about his safety all alone in the city, Daryl wants to go chasing after him, but Rick warns to keep a cool head and suggests they retrieve the guns first.

But instead of bum-rushing the bag as a group, Glenn volunteers to go alone because he can do it quickly and stealthily. Better yet, he’s even devised a fail-safe plan for protection involving the other three guys that leads Daryl to ask in disbelief, “Hey kid, what’d you do before this?” “I delivered pizzas.” Unfortunately, not even the best-laid plans always go as intended, and when Daryl gets distracted by some Mexican kid and is promptly attacked by his friends, Glenn comes running back down the alley straight into all the trouble. Daryl manages to shoot one of the Mexicans in the back of the leg, but not before they can grab Glenn and drive away.

Of course, they also left the kid behind, and although he isn’t very cooperative at first, Daryl’s threats to cut off his feet seemed to do the trick. (If only he knew that Daryl was bluffing with his own brother’s hand.) Nevertheless, he takes them to the kidnappers’ hideout, which is run by a guy named Guillermo, who tells Rick that he wants the kid and the guns in trade for Glenn. The odds were certainly stacked against him, but good old Rick just waltzed right into their little fort and stuck a gun in Guillermo’s face, as if to say, “You want a fight? Let’s go.” Luckily, none of that was necessary, as it turns out Guillermo wasn’t such a bad guy after all, but just a custodian trying to protect the retirement where he used to work. After seeing all the sick, elderly people depending on Guillermo's care, Rick leaves him a few of the guns and heads back with the others to the van, only to discover that someone (presumably Merle) has taken off with it.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, as Andrea and Amy reminiscence about their days fishing with their father, Jim is going a little crazy digging graves in the hot Atlanta heat. When the others start to get worried about him, Shane steps in and ties him to a tree, even though Jim wasn’t really getting in anyone’s way. Granted, he was going to pass out eventually from heat exhaustion, but if the guy wants to cope with the loss of his family by digging graves, then let him dig graves. Plus, he was doing it because of a dream he had, though he can’t remember what it was about.

We didn’t have to wait long for the answer, however, as the camp was soon attacked by a large group of zombies. Ed was the first to go, and there were plenty of red shirts thrown in as additional fodder, but the big death of the night was obviously Amy – although, even those that haven’t read the comic had to see that one coming after Andrea’s chat with Dale about the birthday gift. Still, it was a great (and even somewhat emotional) scene between the two actresses – particularly Laurie Holden, who hasn’t had very much to do yet this season. Now that she’s free of her sister (I know that sounds horrible, but trust me, it’s for the best), her character can finally start evolving into the Andrea everyone loves from the comics.

It might have seemed a little unrealistic that Andrea could just stand heaped over Amy’s body wailing without so much as a zombie bumping in to her, but I have to imagine that Shane’s shotgun was drawing a majority of the attention. His heroics weren’t quite enough, though, and the survivors were almost forced to retreat before Rick and the rest of the guys rushed in with guns blazing. Of course, now that the campsite has been compromised, they’ll have no other choice but to go on the move, and that’s sure to create some tension within the group. I say, bring it on.

They say you do crazy things in the face of death, but going just plain crazy? That’s reserved for guys like Merle, who certainly wasn’t the sanest person to begin with. And now that he’s been handcuffed to the roof of a building with a horde of zombies trying to break through the padlocked door, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to ensure his safety – even if that means begging to Jesus Christ himself. Of course, Merle knows better than to rely on old JC to solve his problems and decides that he’s going to have to free himself on his own. And wouldn’t you know it, that hacksaw is just a belt-length away from his reach. It's a good thing he's wearing a belt.

Not that anyone would miss Merle – except, of course, for his brother Daryl, who’s currently away hunting for deer when the scavengers return to camp. But before they deal with that particular situation, the survivors welcome back the group and are introduced to Rick, who is finally reunited with his family. Lori actually looks happy that her husband is alive, but Shane isn’t quite as relieved, as he’s forced to watch from afar as they reconnect with one another. In fact, Lori doesn’t want anything to do with Shane now that Rick has returned, and that includes him spending time with Carl. So why the sudden change of heart? Well, it seems that Shane told Lori that Rick was dead, and she’s not at all happy about him taking advantage of her emotions. That pretty much confirms what I initially thought – that Lori and Shane’s romance is fairly recent – but I’m still not sure what’s worse: Lori having an affair, or the speed in which she moved on after learning that her husband was dead. Neither one is very flattering.

Unfortunately, Rick is too busy playing the hero to realize what’s going on between his wife and best friend. After T-Dog informs him that he padlocked the door to the roof to prevent any zombies from getting through, Rick decides that he can’t leave Merle to die up there alone, and wants to go back to Atlanta to rescue him. It’s not exactly a popular decision, but when Daryl returns to learn about his brother’s fate, he agrees to join him on the mission. Daryl might just be an even bigger loose cannon than Meryl, and the scene where Shane and Rick had to restrain him was an excellent display of the show’s ability to sneak in a little humor:

Daryl: “You best let me go.”
Shane: “Nah, I think it’s better if I don’t.”
Daryl: “Choke hold is illegal.”
Shane: “Yeah, you can file a complaint.”

Shane doesn’t understand why Rick would risk his life for someone like Meryl, but there’s an added incentive in going back to Atlanta. After discovering their first zombie within the boundaries of the camp, the survivors are going to need more guns in case it gets worse, and Rick happens to know where a bag filled with guns and ammo is located. The bag he dropped also contains the walkie talkie that he was using to communicate to Morgan with, and he feels that it’s his duty to warn Morgan of the danger in Atlanta in exchange for saving his life. Rick also convinces Glenn to tag along since he knows the layout of the city, and T-Dog agrees to go as well because he's still feeling guilty about dropping the key.

While the quartet makes its way back to Atlanta, the tension among the rest of the survivors reaches a fever pitch. The women are upset that the men don’t do any of the hard labor around the camp, and when they start joking around to help pass the time, Carol’s husband, Ed, steps in to crack his figurative whip. Not one to step down from a fight, Andrea confronts Ed about beating his wife, which leads to him doing exactly that. Shane steps in to break it up, and though Ed certainly deserved a few jabs to the face to put him in his place, Shane continued to take out his anger about the whole Rick/Lori situation on him. It wasn’t pretty, and it will likely become a major turning point for both characters. Ed is going to do something stupid sooner or later that will put the lives of the other survivors in jeopardy (like earlier with the fire), and Shane’s jealousy will likely yield a similar result.

It’s probably a good thing that Rick is gone at the moment, although he’s not having that much more luck in Atlanta. After making their way through the department store (I love that Daryl retrieves his arrows after he makes a kill – how resourceful), the group climbs up to the roof to discover that Merle is no longer there. He did leave behind a hand, however, as well as a trail of blood and the hacksaw he used to cut it off. But even if he managed to get out of the handcuffs, how in the world did he get through that horde of zombies unharmed? It looks like we’ll have to wait until next week to find out, but it sure was a great way to end the episode. And for those of you who have read the comic, it was an amusing wink and nod as well.

In case you were wondering whether Lori and Shane were having any regrets about their secret relationship, well, you pretty much got your answer at the top of tonight’s episode. We still don’t know whether the romance is new (like in the comics) or if it’s been going on for some time, but one thing is certain: they don’t seem too conflicted now that they think Rick is dead. Granted, Lori did look a little remorseful when Shane unbuttoned her shirt to reveal her wedding ring hanging from a necklace, but the ease in which she just tossed it aside definitely didn’t help her case. In any event, you can bet that both of them will be feeling pretty shitty about themselves when Rick comes waltzing into camp next week.

For the time being, though, he just needs to stay alive – something that’s easier said than done considering we last left him surrounded by hundreds of zombies. The voice over the radio tells him that his best bet is to make a run for it while the horde is preoccupied with their latest meal, but not before grabbing a grenade that he discovers on the dead soldier. (I can’t imagine this won’t come back into play in the future, though I was actually waiting for him to use it all episode.) And after shooting his way to safety, Rick meets Glenn (the voice on the radio) in the alley, and the pair hightails it through one of the buildings to meet up with the rest of Glenn's group.

Though Glenn is the go-to scavenger of the bunch, he’s agreed to bring some of the other people from the survivor camp with him on his latest trip in order to gather more supplies. And they’re not too impressed by Rick’s cowboy heroics, which have attracted every zombie in the area, making it virtually impossible for them to get out alive. Of course, they’re not saints either, and within minutes of arriving, Rick witnesses a power struggle between racist redneck Merle (the great Michael Rooker) and the rest of the group. Luckily for them, Rick steps in to take care of Merle before he can do any more damage to the unfortunately named T-Dog’s face, handcuffing him to a pipe on the roof while they devise a plan for escape.

With no safe way out of the city by road, Rick suggests that they travel underground instead. But when Glenn climbs down to the sub-basement of the building to investigate, he discovers that the sewers are blocked off by a metal grate. So instead, Rick decides to get a little creative. If zombies can only tell the living apart from their scent, then all they need to do is pretend to be dead. It’s a great idea, but one that no one really wants to be a part of – especially when it involves chopping up a dead zombie – and Glenn finally agrees to join Rick in covering himself in rotting blood and guts so that they can walk the streets unnoticed. But as Glenn is all too keen to point out, at least the guy they were chopping up was an organ donor.

Better yet, the plan actually works. That is, until a rain storm washes off their disguise and the zombies start to take notice, forcing Rick and Glenn to make quick use of their weapons. Fortunately, they get to the truck in time, leaving the others to wonder if they’re ever coming back. But Rick knows that he wouldn’t be able to rescue them under the current circumstances, so he jacks a car with an alarm system and has Glenn drive around the city to lure the zombies away from the building. The rest of the group heads down to the loading garage to meet Rick, but T-Dog’s conscience gets the best of him and he goes back to help Merle, only to lose the key down a drainage pipe when he trips and falls. Merle thinks he did it on purpose, but at least T-Dog was kind enough to lock the door on his way out. Plus, there’s no way they’re going to get rid of Rooker that easy, and I’m sure that hacksaw will play a role in his eventual escape.

Overall, another solid episode, and one that delivered a lot more action compared to last week’s premiere. Andrea, Merle and Glenn are all great additions to the cast (particularly the latter, whose portrayal by Steven Yuen will likely transform him into the breakout star of the show), although I can’t really say the same for the other three characters. There’s just not a whole lot of depth to any of them, and they might as well have targets drawn on their backs, because the chances of them surviving the season are slim. After all, what would a zombie story be without a few victims?

ALSO: Check out our interviews with author Robert Kirkman, director Frank Darabont, producer Gale Anne Hurd, and stars Andrew Lincoln, Jon Berthnal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Steve Yuen and Norman Reedus.

I’ve been aware of Robert Kirkman’s “The Walking Dead” for quite some time now, but I was always hesitant to read it because the idea of a zombie comic that never ended seemed boring as hell. Turns out it was the complete opposite. After AMC announced that they had commissioned a pilot based on Kirkman’s book (and directed by Frank Darabont, no less), I finally decided to give it a try, only to end up tearing through the 60-plus issues in a matter of months. Suffice it to say, I was hooked, and have been a dedicated reader ever since. It also changed my feelings about the upcoming television series, however, as I was now inclined to be somewhat protective of the source material. But after watching the pilot episode, it’s clear that fans won’t have to worry too much, because “The Walking Dead” is not only in good hands, but it translates perfectly to TV.

The show didn’t waste any time in setting its graphic tone, either, with sheriff Rick Grimes shooting a little zombie girl in the head while out searching for gas. Of course, the world wasn’t always swarming with the walking dead, and we get an appropriate flashback to the days before the zombie outbreak when Rick was just a normal police officer alongside his partner and best friend Shane. But after Rick gets shot in a firefight and falls into a coma in the hospital, he awakes weeks later to discover he’s all alone. The hospital is completely empty save for a few dead bodies lying on the ground, and when he goes outside, there are piles of carcasses all over the place. An unsettling sight for sure, but not nearly as frightening as seeing a decayed upper torso that’s still crawling around on the ground.

If Rick doesn’t seem that concerned with figuring out how a dead person can still be alive, it’s because all he cares about at the moment is making sure his wife Lori and son Carl are still safe. But there’s no sign of them at their house, and before he can look anywhere else, he gets a shovel straight to the face, knocking him unconscious. When he comes to, Rick finds himself tied to a bed post and in the company of a man named Morgan (the always awesome Lennie James) and his son Duane, who are immediately concerned that his bandaged wound is more than just the gunshot he claims it to be. Rick eventually convinces them that he’s not only still human, but has no idea what’s going on, so Morgan fills him in on the basics: people are dying and coming back to life (whom he refers to as “walkers”), and the only way to kill them is by hitting or shooting them in the head. But gunshots make noise, and noise attracts walkers - hordes of them, in fact, including Morgan’s dead wife, who continues to haunt him and his son by roaming outside the house where they’ve set up camp.

Morgan also tells Rick that if his wife and son are still alive – which Rick believes based on the fact that clothes and photos are missing from his home – they’re most likely in Atlanta, where the government was telling survivors to go to after the initial outbreak. But before he heads south, Rick takes Morgan and Duane to the police station to enjoy a hot shower and stock up on weapons. They part ways shortly after, and Morgan heads back to the house with one mission in mind: to end his wife’s misery. That entire scene was heartbreaking to say the least, and it’s only a taste of the kind of heavy character drama that Kirkman’s comic regularly delivers.

Meanwhile, Rick heads for Atlanta in his police cruiser and sends out a distress call over the radio for anyone that might be listening. He doesn’t get a response, but what Rick doesn’t realize is that someone did hear his call – a survivor camp located somewhere near the city that includes Shane, Lori and Carl. Lori is currently petitioning a plan to put signs up on the highway warning incoming travelers of the zombies, but Shane refuses to allow her to put herself in any danger. And before you could commend Shane for being a great best friend, he shows his true intentions by sharing a kiss with Lori in their tent. They both clearly believe that Rick is dead, but that’s still a little early to be moving in on your buddy’s wife, no?

It certainly can’t end well, but Rick has much bigger problems at the moment. His car has just run out of gas, and after stealing a horse to carry him the rest of the way, he arrives in Atlanta to discover that it’s become a ghost town. Or at least, that’s what it looks like from the outside. But when he begins attracting the attention of some zombies, and a few quickly turns into a few hundred, Rick is knocked off his horse and sent scrambling to safety, just barely managing to pull himself into an abandoned tank to hide out. Surrounded by hundreds of the walking dead outside, it seems like Rick’s final hours may be upon him… only to hear the voice of another human come over the radio: “Hey, dumbass. You, in the tank. You cozy in there?” And if that didn’t hook you in for another episode, then maybe “The Walking Dead” isn’t for you, but it's only going to get better from here.