Video Ferox

AMC’s new series THE WALKING DEAD premiered on Halloween, and like a lot of other zombie fans I drank a lot of beer and sat down to watch it. It’s based on the Image Comic series that came out seven or so years ago. I’ve never read the original, as I think comic books are glorified coloring books for lazy, stupid people.

Primetime television sitcoms, on the other hand, are something I have no problem indulging in. Generally, I expect from TV something intelligent, witty, and thoughtful, and I’m seldom let down. Yet, I gotta say, this new offering disappointed me.

The plot was about as slow as the zombies, and the action scenes were — well, about as scarce as the zombies. Where did THE WALKING DEAD go wrong? I mean, the show started out great. I liked when the guy shot that little girl in the beginning. That got me interested enough to sit through the first set of commercials, and then when the show came back with some full-on, guns blazing misogyny, I was pretty hooked.

But then it was all downhill from there.

Dude wakes up in a hospital. Dude wanders around. Meets some people. Has some dinner. I guess this is more fun than watching the cut scenes on the 28 DAYS LATER DVD, right?

The producers didn’t do much to create a sense of tension. The world is supposed to be a dangerous zombie infested war zone, right? Then why are characters sitting around talking out in the open, in broad daylight, without any concern for what might be creeping up behind them. (Hordes of zombies, maybe?) I mean, do the zombies only come out at night? Are they actually vampires? Are they looking for a guy named Neville?

Also, did one scene show people surviving the zombie apocalypse in a tent? I’m sure a good explanation for that will be revealed later, but right now it does seem a bit odd.

If my memory hasn’t failed me, it isn’t until the end of the episode that we see the zombies actually attack anything. And when they do, it’s a horse. So any horses watching the show really had the zombie threat driven home to them and in a way that we human watchers have to wait for.

Of course, we’re told that the zombies attack and eat humans (which of course anyone who’s ever seen a zombie movie already knew, anyway). I wish this information had been shouted as characters were running from zombies though, instead of calmly discussed over tea in a comfortable dining room.

If I seem a bit disappointed, I suppose it’s okay, since judging by their sponsors, I wasn’t really the kind of person they were pitching their sitcom to anyway. I’m not in the market for a new car or a dependable boner pill.

In all fairness, let’s remember that it’s hard to tell how good a series will be from its first episode. It might explode into something awesome. I mean, the special effects were pretty much what they should be, and it was cool seeing on American television the kind of gore that got cut out of the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake back in the nineties. So even if the story sucks at least we’ll have something bloody to look at. I mean, if gore and story are the bread and circuses of the modern horror tale, then we can certainly survive on bread alone.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 1st, 2010 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Advertising, Horror, Television, Zombies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.