Hmmm. Two zombie related posts in one week? Must have been someone I ate. (Cue thunderclap and maniacal laughter.) Ah, my beloved Minions, I just can’t wait till I start doing videos and podcasts; I’ll be so funny you’ll laugh yourself to death! Ok, enough with the puns. It’s just been one of those days. And I know that our subject tonight is not a movie and is in fact a television show. I know this. But it’s also scary as hell and the third season is about to start and if you hurry you can get all caught up in time for the season premiere.
If you haven’t seen at least Season 1 of The Walking Dead, you are missing out on a treat. The first episode alone is more suspenseful and frightening than 90% of what is classified as “horror” these days. It is extremely violent and full of jump-scares along with award-winning makeup and effects and get this- good story, good acting, and characters you actually care about!!!
And did I mention it was scary?
So the show is based on the graphic novel of the same name. Small town sheriff RIck Grimes wakes from a coma to discover that the end of the world has come while he’s been asleep. Almost the entire population of the Earth has been turned into reanimated corpses, walking dead, who attack and prey on (what’s left of) the living. He returns to his home to discover his wife and son are missing. He meets a fellow survivor and his son who explain what has happened. Rick shares guns and ammunition from the police station and heads into Atlanta to find his family.
Ok, this might be a bit of a spoiler but since it happened so early in the series and all the subsequent series promos show all the current survivors, it’s a bit obvious. Rick does in fact find his wife and son. They are part of a group of survivors living on the outskirts of the city, which has been completely overrun by the dead. The rest of the series is a developing story of how the ragtag group of survivors work together (and sometimes against each other) to try to make it in this new world.
This discussion would not be complete without mention of the excellent source material. The first season follows the comic relatively closely (the first episode is spot-on) with a few interesting changes. These changes are major and seriously impact the ability of the show to stick to the comic. Some of these are major characters who are killed off early in the book but survive on into the show, and other characters who are in the show but not in the comic.
It’s a bit too complicated to go into here except for this: a lot of the story development in Season 2 centered around characters who were not in the books. Because of this, fans of the comics got angry and bored with Season 2 and took to the internets with their rage. Admittedly, Season 2 was a little slow, but it almost had to be to be realistic. Nobody could possibly keep up the pace that the critics seemed to want them to. If all anyone ever did was fight zombies 24/7 they’d die from exhaustion or just get tired and give up. Season 2 gave the characters a somewhat safe place to get to know one another and try to sort everything out. And at the end, when it all went to Hell, it sort of felt like that was the end of their rest for a good long time.
Ultimately this is a very good and scary show. Sure it has its flaws but those are greatly exaggerated in my opinion.
Have you eve heard that joke that goes, “Sex is like pizza- when it’s good it’s great but when it’s bad it’s still pretty good?”
The Walking Dead is like that; even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. And it’s a hell of a lot better than most everything else that’s on. If you haven’t already seen this show, you need to get to it before Season 3 starts.
