Walking Dead

I just recently got into the comic book that the series is based on, and from the looks of the trailer, they're not holding much back. Very excited to see this.

 

I am SO excited for this show. The trailer is awesome. AMC is awesome. Zombies are awesome. Frank Darabont is awesome. What's not to like?

 

A low quality but very watchable pre-air of episode one has hit the internet in all the usual places.

 

Ordinarily I'd agree but two words: The Mist. The ending was awesome (though sad) but the rest of it sucked.

That said I can't wait for this show either! Or, I could before they started ramming 50 million commercials for it down our throats.

 

So glad I saw this topic again since I totally forgot. Going to have to make sure and set the DVR for this.

 

The interwebs have coughed up a copy of the first episode a week early via bittorrent. It's good. Really fucking good.

 

I do surveys online for some extra cash- and one of them was to watch the majority of the pilot for this show. Let me tell you, it was one survey I did not hate doing.
I do agree with a previous comment that it opens a LOT like 28 days later, which I loved.. but it deterred me a little at first. Watching it though- I loved it. It's amazing. The acting is solid, the makeup is amazing. It's gory and doesn't hold back. I honestly thought i'd never get to see it, it seemed like a show that would be on Showtime or another movie channel and we don't have any of those, so I was really surprised and extremely pleased to find out it is coming on AMC.
Finally a zombie TV show. It's taken too long! I can't wait to watch it again

 

Bump. Premiere at 10.

 

If ever one doubted the power a great score can do for a show, watch the scene where Morgan Jones is trying to muster the courage to put his wife down intercut with Rick returning to the site where he first saw the legless zombie. It would have been nearly forgettable without the music track, but with it? Pure genius.

Not that this should come as any surprise to people that watched "Battlestar Galactica", but Bear McCreary is a fucking wizard.

 

Good news is that Doc Jenson is going to be covering this for Ew.com. http://tvrecaps.ew.com/recap/the-walking-dead-episode-1-premiere/ Doc always had some good info for Lost, excited to see what he brings to WD.

And great, great first episode. Excited to see where it goes, happy to see they didn't shy away from the blood and guts, amazed at that legless Zombie that Rick puts down, and concerned that it's only 6 episodes for this first episode.

 

I for one am glad that it didn't turn out like The Mist. The legless zombie in the park wasn't CGI and I am soooo thankful for that. That's what made The Mist so bad for me. The CGI was horrible.

I know they're going to drive me crazy with Rick and his wife & child repeatedly just barely missing each other all throughout the first season. Am I making sense?

 

Then re-watch it while playing this

 

I found the first episode had a lot of promise. The main character has amazing facial expressions. The scene with the peep hole and his eye - Just wow. In a zombie apocalypses it always sounds like fun to blow people's heads off and drive over them but the human component of this show is fascinating. The deconstruction of humanity and the clinging to it is what will keep me watching.

Wow. I just reread that last pretentious statement. I feel like I should grow my hair to cover my eyes and invest in black skinny jeans, dark eyeliner and razor blades.

 

I'm always impressed when shows - particularly science fiction shows - are able to present stock elements in new and captivating ways. Just like you said, in a typical zombie/infected film or series it would be open season on undead targets. And as much as I like to think I could put a few rounds in my loved ones' heads if they turned into zombies, I doubt it would be that easy. The scene with Morgan struggling to shoot his wife was incredible, as was Rick's flirtation with blowing his brains out under the tank. I thought the best example though was Morgan's explanation of why they hadn't fled to Atlanta yet; I could totally sympathize with the idea that after losing his wife to the fever, he simply lost the will to move on. It's a simple yet totally believable reason, and one that doesn't feel contrived for the sake of having a character show up out of nowhere to serve as an expository tool for the writers.

Obviously both of those clips dealt not with the dead, but the living. And while I am making a deliberate effort to stay away from the source material it's not hard to guess one of the underlying themes of this serious will probably be the question of whether the zombies or the living become the real monsters.

 

For someone who has read the entire series, I can say you're pretty much right about that. I obviously don't want to spoil anything, but I can say that 'The Walking Dead' isn't about the zombies at all. It's about a group of people trying to survive in a horrible world and what they would do to protect eachother. The people who are expecting Rick to start massacring zombies with chainsaws and rocket-launchers and shit are going to be disappointed, but people who can appreciate some solid human drama will be pleased.

 

The opening was ripped straight out of 28 days later, but it's pretty much by necessity. As cool as zombie apocalypses are, the "was in a coma and woke up to the apocalypse already occurring" is the only way to do it, because it's the only way to sidestep having to show how modern technology somehow lost to an aimless, largely brainless, herd of slow moving primates. When you think about it it's the least realistic premise ever.

Take these zombies, up the speed and strength factors by ten, ramp up the aggression, slap on razor sharp claws and teeth, give them the ability to solve problems and hunt in packs, and you have the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park, and even with those the writers only dared have them threaten a fairly small, isolated and underarmed group of humans, not all of fucking civilization.

 

You'd be more skeptical after reading this article: http://www.cracked.com/article_1868...ampaign=Feed:+CrackedRSS+(Cracked:+All+Posts)
The gist of it is that zombies would fail to transmit their disease, get fucked up real quick by our guns or crumble in either hot or cold climates.

 

Or get mauled by bears, wolves, gorillas... or any animal that could easily kill a human one-on-one if you remove our abilities to reason and use tools from the equation.

Great show by the way. The scene where he's walking down the dark stairwell with only a pack of matches was suspense genius.