There hasn't been a good drama on TV, since we lost 24 and Lost. (I'm still crying myself to sleep.) At least there wasn't until last Halloween! That was the night The Walking Dead, Based on a popular graphic novel, premiered on AMC. I watched the show from the beginning, and I can tell you, no TV in my life has been so capturing, entertaining, and horrifying.
The story follows Rick Grimes, an idealistic sheriff's deputy in Georgia, who, after being sent into a comma by a gunshot wound, wakes up to a deserted hospital, with the undead clawing at him from behind a locked door. Rick escapes from the hospital and embarks on a quest to find his family. Throughout the season, Rick must do battle with insanity, loneliness, racism, and above all, the dead.
The thing that absolutely hooks me on The Walking Dead is how many episodes could go the entire length without seeing a zombie once, because the show isn't really about zombies, it's about people. The conflicts in the show are largely not about zombies. You think your husband is dead, do you hook up with his best friend? And when he comes back? What do you do then? You need to go back into the zombie infested city to save a member of your group, but he's a vile racist. You fight a street gang for a bag full of guns, but the street gang is protecting a nursing home. The conflicts in the show are all about morals, and How they break down or get stronger after the dead rise.
There is one thing that really caught my attention on the show. Throughout the season, you see some characters slowly fall to insanity, and you love it, every episode, you are wondering if someone is finally going to crack, or if they go so far over they edge, they make everyone else zombie fodder. It's conflicts like these that set The Walking Dead apart from other zombie movies and shows.
The next thing I want to talk about it the three kinds of horror. There's type one, where things jump out at you really fast, type two, which I call gore-horror, where some idiot assumed that more guts=scarier, and type three, which is psychological horror, it's also the only good kind. Three guesses which type of horror the walking dead is? Well for all you gore-horror enthusiasts out there who can't connect my last two sentences with this one, I have two things to say to you, get therapy, and it's type three. There is only one instance of type two horror in the entire season, and even that is used very creatively to make a type three. The survivors need to chop up a dead zombie and smear it's guts on them so they can't be smelled, the scene is disturbing to watch, not because of the gore, but because of the fact that they are chopping up another human. Type three horror is good for this show because you know that the zombies are coming, you just don't know when, and you pray it isn't when the kids are getting home-schooled, or Rick is having a tender moment with his wife, and it eats away at you, by the end of every episode you feel as crazy as some of the characters are.
My only complaint with the show is that at the end of the season finale, Rick gets a secret whispered in his ear, and we need to wait for next fall the find out what it is. I'm guessing it's something terrible, like the bite doesn't cause the disease, only speeds it up, because it's actually air-born!
To end, I want to say that if you haven't yet seen The Walking Dead, see it right now. Because if you don't, you're missing out on some fabulous TV. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to eat, I'm starving, I wonder if we have any leftover brains in the fridge......
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