The Walking Dead: Every Season Ranked Worst To Best

The Walking Dead's sophomore outing gets a lot of hate, and it's easy to see why. With a massively reduced budget, the second season was forced to take on a more minimalist form of storytelling, setting all its action in one place.

Making camp on the farmland of Hershel Greene and his family, the season follows Rick, Shane and the group as they search for one of their own. What follows is a claustrophobic, moody affair, full to bursting with (mostly) brilliant character work but continuously tripped up by its snail-like pace and uneven tone.

Particularly soaring with its depiction of Rick and Shane's escalating feud, season two grapples with the moral implications of the new world, causing a rift between its struggling characters as they confront their sins.

Regrettably, though, these otherwise powerful themes are eventually overcome by the sheer tedium of the season's meandering drama, which features far too much repetition and filler to get itself into a nice rhythm. It features stunning individual moments -- the fate of Sophia, the fall of Shane -- but as a whole it's far too turgid.