So with the DVD out, I thought it would be nice and obsessive to talk more about the gutted premiere episode. Between the deleted scenes on the DVD (which is not all of the excised footage), Glen Mazzara's commentary, and some press material from last summer, we can pretty much piece together how the entire episode would have played out with some confidence.
- First off, the first episode of season two was originally to be called "Miles Behind Us," which is what the first issue of the second volume is titled. This would have continued a tradition established by the pilot ("Days Gone By"), whose namesake was volume one, issue one. After the Darabont debacle and the decision to graft together the first two episode was made, AMC retroactively rebranded all online materials related to the episode with the final title, "What Lies Ahead."
- The episode would have begun literally right where the season one finale took off, with the caravan driving off from the still smoldering CDC. The production returned to the location where they filmed the CDC exterior to reshoot the departure with new angles. This can be seen in the Comic-Con trailer. This scene is not offered on the DVD.
- Soon after, Shane's jeep gets a flat tire and he has to outrun a horde of walkers. This can be seen in the Comic-Con trailer. Daryl is the one who eventually notices Shane's absence and alerts the others. This scene is not offered on the DVD.
- Shane is narrowly rescued by the group in the RV, embraces Carl and is thankful to all. Shane asks Rick what their next move is, and he and Glenn agree they should return to the nursing home from "Vatos," considering Guillermo's group to be friends and acknowledging that they don't have the gas to go further. This scene is included on the DVD.
- The group arrives at the Atlanta location to find everyone dead and the place overrun by zombies. They clear out the area, are upset, proceed inside the actual building and are further upset by the grisly aftermath. At one point Daryl tells a sobbing Sophia to shut up lest their presence be made known, and Lori snaps at him. On the flipside, Lori defends Rick when Carol gives him lip about continuously putting everyone in danger and he begins feeling sorry for himself. The group barricades the place as best they can, scavenge what little food remains, and decide to hunker down for the night, with the intention to siphon gas and head onward to Fort Benning, Shane's initial suggestion. Daryl makes the observation that the dead have been executed and the place pilfered; the zombies only arrived after some other group of living folks slaughtered everybody and took all the food and medicine. Presumably this was meant to foreshadow The Governor's group. As everyone settles in for the night a few character moments take place: a meager meal is shared, the men agree they can never afford to let their guard down again, Shane shows gratitude to Daryl for saving him, Andrea is pissed at Dale, and T-Dog is assigned the first watch shift. This scene is included on the DVD.
- What probably would have followed are scenes that are in the form of montages in the episode's final version. You'll recall that the episode began with an evocative montage of zombies being zombies around Atlanta. This stuff always existed as Greg Nicotero confirmed filming it for second unit in an early interview. Story-wise, it makes most sense for it to be shown at some point after the crew returns to Atlanta, but it could have always been cold open material, too.
- Next up, Rick's one-sided walkie-talkie speech to Morgan on the rooftop. A lot of people concluded that this was new footage shot after the decision to combine the episodes, which is correct, but it's actually a reshoot. A version of this scene always existed, as depicted by the Comic-Con trailer (where Rick is wearing the white undershirt we seem him in during the adjacent scenes - for some reason in the reshoot they decided to put him in his trademark deputy's outfit, complete with hat). I don't know what changes to the dialog were made that necessitated reshooting - maybe they had to add Rick's references to Jacqui's decision to blow up at the CDC or the plan to head for Fort Benning (topics which were covered in scenes above).
- The broadcast episode intercuts the end of Rick's monologue with footage of the group siphoning gas and loading up for their final departure form Atlanta. In the original cut this may have been a full scene played on its own.
- Once the crew finally leaves Atlanta, the episode likely proceeded just as it does in the broadcast premiere. The only question is where it was supposed to end. Another deleted scene on the DVD shows Rick returning from the woods expecting to find Sophia already back at the highway. When he realizes she didn't make it, there's a fairly heartbreaking moment where everyone (particularly Carol and Rick) quietly breaks down. This I imagine was the intended denouement of the first episode with the search kicking off in episode 2. The DVD also contains one more little scene of Carol sulking silently on the highway as night falls. This could have perhaps been intended as the last image of episode one or the first image of episode two.
- One point of note about where the two episodes got spliced has to do with the passage of time. The last two deleted scenes I've described depict an entire night passing before the group begins their search for Sophia. In the final version, we awkwardly go from Rick smashing a zombie's head in with a rock to a commercial break and return with the search underway. The delay would have lent a little more credibility to Sophia's timeline as far as her winding up in the bog, being found by Otis, and barned up in time for the group to arrive at Hershel's farm.
In his commentary for the deleted footage, Mazzara skirts around the subject of Darabont's dismissal and basically states that the decision to get rid of most of the original first episode's content was because it felt too much like a direct continuation of season one, when the focus should have been on new stakes. And maybe that's exactly it, but around the time the Darabont story broke there was some anonymous source in the crew who basically implied that AMC was simply looking for an excuse to fire Darabont, and expressing dissatisfaction with how the premiere was shaping together was the pretense they needed. And in a recent interview the actress who plays Lori maintains that what happened to Darabont was "unfair." And in the one interview since he was removed where he mentions the subject, Darabont suggests that his relationship with the AMC brass over his issues with the lowered budget were basically what it all boiled down to.
It's curious. Nothing about the footage I've seen is what I'd call "unusable" (as it was described), and while I guess there's plenty of talking the episode would have had no less than four zombie encounters (Shane's escape, nursing home shootout, walker horde on the highway, the zombie harassing Sophia that Rick dispatches), so the argument that Darabont's teleplay was too quiet (if that was ever an argument) doesn't exactly hold water. Whether or not you think the quality of show has improved since Darabont was shown the door, AMC's handling of the situation is pretty bad form and remains no more defensible. It still sounds like Darabont just wouldn't shut up about the budget cuts and they decided to find an accident to happen to him, so to speak.
One other thought that occurred to me. If AMC's issue with the episode was purely story-related, why the hell should the director, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, get assigned blame, which I assume she did if she's never directed an episode of the show since? She delivered on what she was supposed to. I'm making assumptions here, but it would be pretty bizarre if a director got unjustly screwed and all kind of extra money got spent (for a whole new episode would have been required to get 13 episodes) just so AMC could build some sort of case against Darabont.
The drama behind the camera is always more fascinating than the drama in front, it seems! Oh, and somebody uploaded all the deleted scenes from the DVD to Youtube.
