We Don't Need No Stinkin' Amazon

Most fans of The Walking Dead are well aware of The Woodbury Shoppe, the one and only official Walking Dead store.  The quaint little shop sits at 48 Main Street, on the corner of Seavy and Main in Senoia, Georgia, smack dab in the middle of the area used as "Woodbury" in the show and within sight of the Gin Property (the Alexandria Safe Zone). 

The shop occupies two floors in one of the tallest buildings in little Senoia (four total stories, one of which is the basement).  The street level is full of just about any piece of Walking Dead merchandise you could possibly find, including several items exclusive to this official store.  Although Senoia might be quite a drive for most, the trip is by far more rewarding than ordering those trinkets online, though one can also order directly from the store's online portal which we suggest over ordering online elsewhere.  We always recommend supporting the Main street businesses whenever possible to help keep the area thriving for fans and locals alike to enjoy.

Perhaps the most admired item on the main floor is a bust of "Bicycle Girl" from the pilot episode, displayed proudly in the middle of the store.  Getting to see Greg Nicotero's work up close and personal is quite the opportunity no TWD fan should miss.  As if that weren't reason enough to visit, the basement of the shop functions as a mini TWD museum showcasing several examples of unmistakable set pieces.  There you can see a full size replica of the "Don't Open Dead Inside" doors, Merle's bike (used by Daryl), and sit inside one of the prison cells while admiring the amazing paint job done on it by TWD crew.  If you didn't understand why Norman Reedus mentioned how incredible that paint job was in a Behind The Scenes video on AMC's website, you will certainly get the picture when you see those cells in person.   

The walls of the basement are absolutely covered in writing.  Every cast member has visited the shop and left messages and autographs there for all of the fans to enjoy.  That's right, if you want to make sure you've followed in the same footsteps as your favorite cast member, all one needs to do is visit The Woodbury Shoppe to know you've had a shared experience with him/her.  In fact, the shop itself is owned in part by names that should be familiar to all TWD fans:  Robert Kirkman (TWD creator) and David Alpert (EP).

Sharing the basement space is a newer addition (opened late 2014), The Walking Dead Café (primarily a coffee shop serving TWD themed Starbucks, though they also sell sandwiches, soup, and desserts).  Although this makes it the second Main street coffee house (see our earlier post about The Senoia Coffee & Café), we wholly recommend a visit to both.  The Senoia Coffee & Café does have a larger lunch menu, so perhaps save TWD Café for dessert to avoid a caffeine high.  Just be sure to work them both into your plans and you won't be disappointed.

The Woodbury Shoppe is of course Destination Zero for most fans visiting the area, and we would expect no less.  Be sure to save all of your TWD merch purchases for your trip and take an empty belly so you can patronize as many businesses in the area as possible.  Just be careful not to blow through your savings in this all-too-tempting TWD mega-store. 

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A Must-See TWD Fan Favorite

If you're a newer or more casual fan of The Walking Dead, you might not know that filming takes place in and around Senoia, Georgia (pronounced by most locals as seh-noy).  It's a tiny little town South of Atlanta where the summer's heat is just as soupy as it seems on the show, and it's not too hard to imagine that sweat dripping down Daryl's long locks to be real.

"Downtown" Senoia itself is a quaint little Southern town that you might recognize as the setting of Woodbury in the show.  Although the real Woodbury isn't that far away, Senoia was used instead because, if you can believe it, Senoia is bigger and better suited to filming.  Fans flock to the area from all over the world, but despite the fact that one might think it would take on the feel of something more like Disney World during the filming months, it still retains a quiet, slow paced, sparsely populated feel.

The post-apocalyptic "Woodbury Wall" that we are all so familiar with from Season Three is long gone now and aside from the presence of fans and (if you're lucky) cast and crew, Senoia proper is back to business as usual.  The wall sat at the Southern end of the town, at the bottom of the hill Senoia occupies, though it's difficult to tell from the show that it's actually on a hill.  Across the road from "Woodbury" (behind the gazebo you can see in several shots outside the Woodbury wall) lies a set of train tracks and Gin Street, where the now famous "Gin Property" lies.  The Gin Property is a housing development partially built up by production that became the Alexandria Safe Zone (in fact a large part of the Senoia revitalization can be attributed to Raleigh Studios, who erects buildings and homes to look old both for TWD and other filming projects).  The Gin Property has been described as a "living back lot" for Raleigh Studios... and people really get to live there.

Yes, you too can now sit in the fan-favorite stop, Senoia Coffee & Café (The Woodbury Coffee House in the show), sipping a wonderfully flavorful cup of java just outside where the Woodbury wall once stood while looking at the Alexandria Safe Zone wall.  For any Walking Dead fanatic, it's a wonderful way to spend an afternoon and should be the first stop on your list if you make the trip to town.  In addition to liquid refreshments, they also serve lunch (and on Friday/Saturdays dinner), as well as a selection of desserts.

If you're planning a trip to Senoia, be sure to show up between May and November, while filming is going on... and best get there before we find out the last season is upon us.  Even if the ASZ is off limits and you may or may not get to see the cast prowling around, you might still get to see the crew buzzing in and around the Alexandria wall.  While we were there in early November 2015, we got to see ASZ lit up for night filming and saw Daryl's new bike being carted around by the crew.

Senoia Coffee & Café is a wonderfully not-too-kitschy nook with exposed brick walls and thickly cased windows characteristic of old buildings in a small town.  It's just about as hipster as you ever hope anything in Senoia could ever strive to be (which isn't much), and the staff is incredibly friendly.  They are more than gracious and welcoming to TWD fans and will happily give you the day's insight on what they've seen going on or if anyone notable has been in the shop that day.  Though at the time of this writing their site is offline for an unknown reason,  their social media accounts are live and well:  Twitter  Facebook  So be sure to check them out, throw them a favorite, and drop on by the next time you get a hankerin' for a road trip!


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Our Apologies

Soooo... we dropped the ball in Season six.  We admit it.  Please forgive us.  We'd say the reviews were far and few between, but it looks like there wasn't any in between.  We suck.  We have no other excuse than life got in the way.

We're planning a site redesign and something extra special that we know everyone will be excited about once we announce it... until then, we'll come back to post our summary of S6 and thoughts about what S7 might bring and might even update our poor trivia page, since it's been neglected since S4.  Good grief!  Are we all that old now?!

We'd like to thank everyone for their continued loyalty and patronage.  It's for you we stay in business.  We don't make a dime off this site; quite the opposite.  We're here for you.  So keep chiming in, keep visiting, and we'll be sure to give you more content to make it worth your while.

The Walking Dead: Season 6 Episode 1 WDF Review

Episode 1:  First Time Again

Here we are back again for the Season 6 Premiere and we're loving the fact that AMC seems to have made 90 minutes the default length of premieres.  That, and they have consistently used Greg Nicotero as director for premieres since Season Four, which he seems exceptionally skilled at.  Yes, please, thank you! 

Here we pick right back up where we left off.  Sort of.  We're flashing back and forth with the flashbacks all in black and white.  We get a couple more than average moments of comedic relief (which is a hands down favorite to this mod), the most memorable being Morgan asking Michonne if she took a protein bar from his apartment when she, Rick, and Carl visited in Season Three.  Though we only ever saw her eating his chips, we have the sense that she totally lied when she denied taking that bar.

Rick has discovered how Alexandria has been kept safe from walker hoards... there is a quarry nearby with trucks blocking the exits that has been acting as a giant walker trap.  They have been sliding and falling into the stadium sized pit and now number in the thousands, just waiting to break free to cause their slothful, munchy havoc en masse.  Though he is proving unpopular with some of the Alexandrites, Rick has come up with a preemptive plan to lure the hoard miles away from Alexandria where the massive hoard cannot destroy the town a la Hershel's Farm.  Unfortunately TWD is a world in which Murphy's Law ultimately rules and not only does the plan have to be unexpectedly executed early when the hoard breaks through one of the exits while the team is there to do a dry run, but goes all kinds of wrong thanks to an unknown saboteur.  Lizzie?!  Are you back?

The whole ordeal is beyond epic and has become one of our favorite episodes to date.  We were warned there were more walkers than ever seen before and it took them no time at all to hit us with them.  It was an immensely satisfying premiere and warranted all the hoopla it received, such as the red carpet premiere taking place in Madison Square Garden, complete with a dramatic entrance by Reedus driving Daryl's new bike up on stage.  We end the episode not wanting it to end... and that's how you know they've done their job.  So what's next for our crew and the massive hoard the likes of which have never been seen before, on the loose and headed straight for home?  We shall see.  Yes, in time we will all see.


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The Walking Dead: Season 5 Episode 16 WDF Review

Episode 16:  Conquer

Here we are, finally at the end of Season 5 and having seen the 90 minute finale, we're exhausted!  It seems like just yesterday we were baited with a shot of the prison over Rick and Daryl's shoulders in preparation for Season 3, and now we're in pre-production on Season 6, nearly ready to begin filming back in good ol' Georgia.

Instead of giving a synopsis, we'll just say the internal conflict between the Alexandrites and Team Rick are coming to a head.  The townsfolk are holding a tribunal of sorts to decide if they want to kick Rick out, Nicholas and Glenn are going at it, and even Father Whinesalot is paying his dues via an embittered Sasha who shows him just how bad of an idea it is to proclaim her and the group 'evil'.  The big twist of the finale?  Well you knew there'd be one, right?  It's not that Pete gets the ax (though he does, it's just not a surprise- so long #PorchDick), but that Morgan finally finds the group by way of rescuing Aaron and Daryl from a sticky spot that would have otherwise been certain death.  So we're going into Season 6 with the 'you must change your ways' line firmly drawn in the sand and Morgan fresh from the field on board to help bring Rick back from another brink.

At long last, Morgan has arrived, and is sane enough to finally join the group!  He has, however, discovered some bizarre zen-state where he deems all life valuable... even the bad ones.  It's his excuse for coming to Aaron and Daryl's aid, though in the beginning he seems to be leaving two of The Wolves to be chewed on (he loads their unconscious bodies into a car and then honks the horn... one would assume to draw walkers to them but as Lennie James explained on TTD afterward -the surprise cast guest-, it was to ensure the coast was clear for him to exit instead).  This will for sure be an interesting contrast to Rick's 'trust no one' attitude and seems to introduce our new 'voice of reason' for Season 6, now that Tyreese is gone.  That said, it cannot last forever since the very baddies Morgan let live have already struck again.  Shucks, that always happens.

The mid-season finales tend to be more cliff-hangery than season finales, and this one follows suit (the only real cliffhanger in the bunch was Season 4's terminus lockup, the rest were mostly setting the scene for the following season).  Now they can bounce forward past winter again as they've done in seasons past without causing much of a hiccup in the storytelling if they so choose.  We might not be surprised, then, if when we get back from the break we find things at the ASZ much altered with Rick in power now that he has finally been proven right by Pete murdering Reg right in front of Deanna, though ZenMorgan is definitely not going to approve of the fact that he walked in for their much awaited reunion just in time to see Rick shoot the man in the face.   

One of the most exciting things of this year's finale by far is the first release of the trailers for the spin-off, Fear The Walking Dead.  Set in Los Angeles at the outbreak of the virus, we're going to be treated to the goings-on at the onset that we were largely left in the dark on before, thanks to Rick's coma.  The idea of a fresh start in the same vein of the original but with an entirely new cast is oddly enthralling, despite how much loyalty we have toward our current crew.  The fact that it comes mid-summer may be just what we've always needed.  And yes, it is a new cast and highly unlikely to cross over at all, though some fans immediately assumed going back to the onset meant bringing back to life some of our dead cast members.

So, cheers on a great conclusion to Season Five!  We'll be back atcha in July when the new gang hits the airwaves.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5 Episode 15 WDF Review

Episode 15:  Try

Is anyone else getting depressed that we are almost at the finale already?  We'll be taking up a collection to purchase a truck load of ice cream.  The good kind.

This episode begins with Deanna and family mourning the loss of Aiden.  Martha Stewart Carol is baking a casserole for the family in classic Southern-Funeral style, which is left abandoned on their front porch while Deanna burns the condolences note left with it.  The symbolic shift in mentality wethinks.  Oh, the times they are a-changin'.  Meanwhile the video of Nicholas' account of the disastrous run is played... and he blames it all squarely on Glenn.  Glenn, however, is giving his testimony of the true events to Rick.

Daryl and Aaron are out tracking through the woods and come upon another walker marked with a 'W'.  Back in town, Carol outs Rick on his fondness for Jessie.  Rick brings the matter of Pete's violence to Deanna's attention, but she already knows.  He wants to kill him, Deanna wants to banish him.  Knowing that would just result in Pete returning to exact revenge, he decides to take matters into his own hands and talk Jessie into coming into his protection.  Rick's feelings for Jessie are made clear between them.

Sasha is going a little crazy, and runs off in a quest to rid the woods around Alexandria of Walkers.  Rosita and Michonne follow after, and after mowing down about 25 of them (during which Michonne starts to miss her katana), Sasha breaks down in a way that only Sasha can and returns to the watch tower where she continues to pick off Walkers as they approach the wall.

Pete walks in on Jessie and Rick during their discussion and the two begin a bar-room brawl complete with crashing through the window onto the porch.  Drawing the attention of the whole town, Carl and Jessie attempt to pull them apart, but after the two nearly kill each other Rick finally lets go.  While waving around his gun, he proclaims Deanna's way of doing things dangerous.  He mocks her by asking if she's going to kick him out... and in his speech nearly gives her reason to until Michonne puts an end to his tirade by knocking him out.

And so we are again left with the question of where the finale will take us.  Will Rick seize power or will there be a conflict with an outside threat?  Or some combination of the two?  Perhaps Michonne will emerge as the clear-headed leader?  With Nicholas, Father StabsYouInTheBack, and Rick himself practically proclaiming our crew to be evil, dangerous people, we at least know some internal conflict will continue.  The sneak peeks so far reveal Rick recovering from his fight-wounds and Carol threatening Pete if he doesn't tend to Tara.  Carol's been losing favor, you know, threatening kids and everything, so something is bound to happen to justify her behavior and bring her character back from Maleficentville similar to her saving the day at Terminus.  We hope.

Gale Anne Hurd did promise that there would be blood, and not all of it Walker blood, in the finale.  No one has been given the typical "swan song" episode lately, so it's anybody's guess at who's next on the chopping block.  So bring your cheer sticks and your Kleenex, folks.  Hard to say what's going to happen now.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5 Episode 14 WDF Review

Episode 14:  Spend

Here we go again and Father Gabriel is being weird.  That's fine, Gabe.  Be weird, but it'll come back to haunt ya.  Weird or mean people don't last long on this show.

The supply run gang is headed out to find replacement parts for the solar grid, and they force Eugene to accompany them since he knows what to look for.  This is not going to go well, and predictably, it doesn't.  Our crew gets in more scrapes and loses more redshirts during supply runs, sheesh.  We say goodbye to Aiden, Alexandrian douchbag #1, after he yet again puts the lives of our crew in peril, proving the point that you can't be mean and last.  Shortly thereafter, Noah bites it (or is bitten, a LOT) in a revolving door à la Independence Day window death right within inches of Glenn's face.  A touch brutal.  The good news is Eugene finally comes through for once to save an injured Tara and draw the walkers away from Glenn, who beats the crap out of Alexandrian Nicholas for trying to drive away without him.

Abraham is accompanying a group at a construction site gathering supplies for expanding Alexandria's wall when things go south with them, too.  Overruling the group's foreman, Abraham kicks some ass and saves the day leading to the foreman (a man whose name no one can remember) to Deanna where he recommends promoting Abraham to lead the construction crew.  Maggie is present in this scene, shadowing Deanna as a member of her "cabinet", which makes her feel a bit like an awkward secretary when you remember this is Maggie.  

Sam is stalking Carol the Cookie Lady who is continuing to be just as ruthless as she's been lately.  She tells him he has to go steal the chocolate if he wants her to make more, and when he does she is uncomfortably cold and stern about him not taking half because he didn't do half the work.  He asks for one of the guns she stole, for "someone else" but won't say more.  She deduces that Pete is abusive toward Jessie and perhaps Sam, and goes to tell Rick all about it.  Welp, we know where this is going.

Lastly of note, Gabriel goes to tattle on Rick's group as "bad people" to Deanna, but what he doesn't know is that Maggie is there eaves dropping.  Do you know what happens to people who hoard food for themselves in the zombie apocalypse, resulting in the deaths of most of your own congregation, and then proclaim others to be evil?  We do.  Or at least we know what should.

If you ever find yourself bored this week, just think about Officer Friendly out canvasing the Alexandrian neighborhood looking for an Owl Statue vandal.  It's a bit of a goofy way for him to have spent the majority of this episode, but there it is.

We are continuing a jammed packed pace, racing in a full sprint toward a finale that's just two episodes away.  The one thing one could be afraid of is that with so much time to be spent in Alexandria that the show could become too much about character development (the words "soap opera" have even been used), but the one thing we're not seeing yet, or even hinted toward, is a soap opera.  So far Season 5 is shaping up to be one of the best seasons yet, even with Officer Friendly on Owl patrol.

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