Written by: Frank Darabont Directed by: Michelle MacLauren Striking a balance between gorefest action TV and cable drama is not an easy task - and it seemed that, in writing the first two episodes of a zombie drama, Frank Darabont wanted to meet that problem head on. Guts is a tense and action driven episode, but it gives the characters plenty of time to breathe at just the right moments to prove that this is a show worth sticking around for. More often than not, the second episode of a TV show will show a dramatic dip in quality from the pilot - most often because the big name director only signed on for the first episode. However, Michelle MacLauren (of Breaking Bad and now Game of Thrones fame) steps in to essentially make the second episode as heart-stoppingly suspenseful as the first, and twice as gut churning. The defining moment of this episode is alluded to in the title - in order to escape past a group of Walkers, Rick and Glenn paint themselves in the guts of a dead one. Before hacking up the corpse, Rick pauses and takes the time to learn the dead man's name from an ID stored in his Wallet. The scene that follows is sickeningly graphic, but it paints a vivid picture for the viewers who will be sticking around: You must do awful things in order to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, but retaining your humanity is just as important.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
