'The Walking Dead Season 2: In Harm's Way'

The past two episodes suffered from incessant darkness, but this time around it seems that issue's been fixed. Despite the dark tone and frequency of nighttime scenes, I never had any trouble making out the environment. That's a comforting improvement over the invisible labyrinth of the first episode's cabin.

Michael Madsen grants Carver the only sliver of legitimacy the character has as a villain, which says a lot considering how flat and one-note the dialogue could be. Where a sociopath instills fear, a gravely-toned sociopath exploits it, and Madsen pretty much nails it

As usual, the music is a faint current, but effective when the moment calls.

I don't need to be a passive viewer of any more zombie stories, especially in 'The Walking Dead' universe. The proof is in this episode's finale, which I conveniently forgot to mention until now. It's a brilliant scene, something I won't spoil, but it's brilliant because I was a part of it. Everything else uncomfortably unnerved me, I was watching a TV show with a dialogue wheel. I never touched the story, and so the story rarely touched me. That's the cost of promising a video game and delivering a script.

But, even still, some moments were undeniably effective.

Some decisions still feel like they matter, and despite the shortcomings of the plotting and 'In Harm's Way's' underwhelming villain, the writing is still compelling as you watch Clementine weave through zombies and people alike, grasping her own growth as a survivor in a survivor's world. I just wish there was some gameplay to stitch her story together, which is kind of the point, isn't it?