Yes, I’m still alive, despite my absence from this blog lending evidence to the contrary. Rather than dwell on that, though, let’s pick up as though there wasn’t a huge gap between my posts : )
So with two children under five, almost all of my media consumption is well after initial release. I haven’t been in a movie theater in four years, for example. I also can’t manage to watch any TV shows as they are aired, and haven’t shelled out for a DVR (I realize this makes me a bit eccentric). So I do my best to catch up via Netflix, especially for cable TV shows.
I’ve been watching “The Walking Dead” recently and enjoyed it. It’s suitably grim with a dash of hope and uses classic zombie tropes. A couple things bothered me, though.
First, they don’t give us much of a timeline to establish how we got to full-out zombie apocalypse. Our protagonist wakes up to a wholly changed world. His wife initially seems to have moved on from his death, etc. There are dramatic reasons for all this, but my internal organizer wants to know the steps the world took to get there.
The show also sometimes seems like it takes place in an alternate reality where no one has a seen a zombie movie. I know Atlanta is hot, but wearing next to nothing when zombie bites are a death sentence is foolish at best. Break out the riot gear or motorcycle suits a la “28 Days Later.” Also, the scenes where blood spatter (and the risk of infection) seems nonexistent are amusing.
But overall I’m glad AMC took the chance and made this. Zombie TV is a fun change of pace after making my way through “The Sopranos.”
Anyone else watched this?
I have. As a big fan of the original graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, I found the show really disappointing. I don’t understand the reason for the various changes that were made, and for the life of me I cannot understand why the TV characters act they way they do. Nothing that happened in he show made any sense to me.
Buzz,
That’s interesting to hear. I haven’t read the graphic novels, though they’re definitely on my radar for future reading. My guess is that they would be grimmer and take more time to flesh out the timeline and world.
I don’t want to be spoiled on the graphic novels too much, but I’d be eager to hear what aspects of the TV events most grated on you.
Cheers,
Eric
The most grating aspect of the TV show for me was this: the *comic* is ultimately about what happens to society in face of the apocalypse. A lot of brutal, uncomfortable, and just plain unusual choices get made by the characters. The TV show pretty much omitted all of this and focused on “Eww, zombies!” Ironically, for all the boundary-pushing zombie gore, the show essentially censored most of the source material.
The TV show also explained the cause of the zombie outbreak (the CDC lab in the last tow episodes). The comic has been going for years now and hasn’t even hinted at what caused the outbreak, nor allowed the characters to find any remnants of the government, much less 100%-safe military compounds.
It’s hard to go into detail without revealing spoilers. The gist is that AMC got it completely wrong. I heartily recommend reading the comic.