THE WALKING DEAD: R U GOING TO WATCH?

The Walking Dead returns tonight on AMC for a
second season of zombie-infested drama. It's been nine months since we last
left Sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his
rag-tag band of zombie-pocalypse survivors outside the exploding headquarters
of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Season 2 promises more friction between
survivors, a richer understanding at some of the characters (Norman Reedus' Daryl,
for instance), twice the episodes (13 in all) and lots and lots of
blood-splattered, zombie-fueled terror. 

As we head into the 90-minute premiere, here
are 10 important things to know before you watch. For fans, it'll serve as a
refresher. For newcomers, it should give you all the information you need to
survive a zombie attack. Okay, not really -- but you'll at least make it
through the premiere unscathed:

1. Pay close attention to Rick's opening
monologue. He'll give a brief re-cap of where things stand, too. You'll
probably be left with one dangling question. The answer: Jacqui.

2. The nasty, black-toothed people you see on the screen are not meth
addicts. The entire population of the earth (as far as we know) has been
decimated by a virus that turns the infected into zombies.

3. If you read the Robert Kirkman comic
books, don't assume you know where this ship is headed -- the show only uses
the comics as a loose guide for its own story line.

4. Zombies, though lethal, are slow and stupid. They're easy to outrun,
characters just need to avoid getting trapped and/or surrounded by them.

5. We don't know if there's any cure for the virus. At the end of season
1, we met Jenner (Noah Emmerich),
a CDC scientist who was pretty sure he knew how the infection worked. He chose
to stay and die when the building self destructs.

6. Before they left, Jenner whispered something in Rick's ear. We don't
know what that something was. Could he have seen something -- say a surprising
encounter between two characters -- or did he discover something interesting
from the blood tests he did on the group?

7. Andrea (Laurie Holden) didn't want
to leave the CDC alive. If you're wondering why she's got a death wish, know
that she had to shoot her younger sister in the head at point blank range when
she (her sister, Amy) was bitten and turned into a zombie.

8. Lori Grimes (Sarah Wayne
Callies) and Rick's best friend and fellow sheriff, Shane (Jon Bernthal), had a
post-zombie-pocalypse friends with benefits kind of relationship when they both
thought Rick was dead. When he surfaced alive, they broke things off. Rick
doesn't know.

9. Carol's (Melissa Suzanne
McBride) husband was killed when zombies swarmed their camp in
season 1. She and daughter Sofia are kind of downcast about that, but not
really since he was a pretty abusive guy who had more interest in his daughter
than was probably healthy.

10. Daryl's older brother, Merle (Michael Rooker), was left
handcuffed to the roof of an Atlanta building by Rick. We know he cut his hand
off to escape. We don't know what became of him after that.

SOURCE: ZAP2IT