“The Walking Dead” is a True American Horror Story

Much was made about the show’s season six premiere, which featured what appeared to be a cast of hundreds, if not thousands, of extras in full zombie makeup. This massive group of walking dead had somehow ended up trapped in a quarry that was not all that far from the too-good-to-be-true Alexandria compound that is home to dozens of naïve folks who thought they were safe behind their walls and, by the end of last season, to Rick Grimes and his band of hardscrabble survivors.

By the end of the episode, the zombie hoard had escaped the quarry and Rick and most of what we might refer to as the primary warriors of the group (including Daryl, Michonne and Glenn) were executing a plan to lead them away from the compound. The episode ended with a cliff-hanger: The sudden sound of a horn blowing from the direction of the compound threatened to ruin Rick’s plan. It looked as though the hoard was shifting and heading right for the very location they were trying to protect.

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking that episode two would pick up where episode one left off, with the zombies approaching the compound and all hell breaking loose. But that wasn’t the case, and that’s when “The Walking Dead” won me over all over again. This is something it has managed to do time and again throughout its first five seasons, even after plot turns I didn’t care for – like that lame prison virus story – but never with the same giant impact of last week’s episode.

Episode two took us back to the compound to check in on action-mom Carol (played by Melissa McBride, pictured at top), now and forever the most fascinating character on this show’s canvas; young Carl, who seems to be losing his edge (potentially one of those plot turns that will turn me off), and the rest. There they were, chatting, strolling, baking, making plans … blissfully unaware of the horror that was about to descend on them.

But wait! There was no sound of a horn blaring anywhere in the compound. That was the first clue that something was off, or that the narrative had jumped back in time an hour or two.

After a few quiet scenes with Carol and Co. puttering about, the end of their new life as they knew it began as the compound was suddenly under siege … not by mindless, hungry zombies, but by lunatic, knife- and axe-wielding, flesh-and-blood humans known as the Wolves – crazed killers who had broken in and were determined to savagely butcher everyone they found. In what may be the most startling scene in the series to date, Carol was quietly looking out a kitchen window at a woman she had just criticized for smoking who had gone outside and lit a cigarette. To her horror – and ours -- a man with an axe ran up behind the woman and killed her between puffs.

At that moment, and for the rest of the hour, episode two of season six became what I believe to have been the scariest hour of television I have seen in longer than I can remember. There is much talk about horror on television these days – usually involving FX’s “American Horror Story,” The CW’s “Supernatural,” Showtime’s “Penny Dreadful” or WGN’s “Salem” – but very little in those shows is ever genuinely frightening (though “Penny Dreadful” certainly had its share of hair-raising moments in its second season whenever those creepy witches were around). They can be unnerving, engrossing and/or disturbing … but terrifying? Not so much.

Indeed, even though I have often found “Walking Dead” to be scary, that episode put everything in a new perspective. I haven’t been so spooked by something I saw on television since I sat frozen on the couch watching that Zuni fetish doll terrorize Karen Black in the 1975 ABC movie of the week “Trilogy of Terror.”

But “Walking Dead” raised the bar on itself last Sunday. What could be more horrifying than a violent invasion of one’s neighborhood or one’s home by people intent on slaughtering other people? From the Clutter family (terrorized and murdered one night in 1959 in their remote Holcomb, Kansas home) to the victims of the Manson murders (killed over a period of two nights in 1969 in Los Angeles) to the Petit family (terrorized by two men who beat Mr. Petit, raped and strangled Mrs. Petit, sexually assaulted one of their daughters and then burned both daughters to death in their home in 2007 in the idyllic town of Cheshire, Conn.) and so many monstrous murders in between, few events have terrified people more than savage attacks in the places where people feel the most safe. I can’t help but think that “Walking Dead” last week tapped into that particular fear, one that people generally tamp down but which can come instantly to the surface by way of a simple unfamiliar sight or sound, if not something much worse.

Watching that episode I realized that horror is a genre that television has really only tip-toed into, mistaking lunacy and nasty all-star camp for actual terror. “American Horror Story” is especially guilty of this; it may be entertaining at times, but that entertainment does not come in the form of genuine scares. Unsurprisingly, the one exception would be the home invasion episode in season one, which was memorably chilling. (I hope one of the storylines in the current “AHS: Hotel” ties into it. Mysterious Marcy, the realtor who sold the Murder House to the Harmon family in season one, has already made an appearance. Can other connections be far behind?)

Similarly, in its first season AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead” was very much about terror in and around the home and the responses of parents to threats against their children. Which has me thinking: It was Carol, the least likely hero on the canvas, who ultimately took charge in last week’s episode of “Walking Dead” and saved the day, just as she has done at other times throughout the life of the series. I never made the connection until now, but I have to wonder if the fan response to Carol had anything to do with the decision to make the central character in “Fear the Walking Dead” another heroic mom?

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