The Walking Dead

You know this show exploded onto the scene and continues to be AMC's highest rated show, which is a slight disappointment because other shows, like Mad Men and Breaking Bad deserve a big audience too. So who is watching the show? It took some convincing but I think my parents are (although I suspect my mom's interest will decline) and of course, us zombie lovers. If vampires get a whole host of their own shows, why not zombies?

It's because zombies are relatively one note villains: they want your brains and won't stop till their dead (again) or they've quenched their unending hunger. There's not much variation to them; they move slow or they move fast, they explode easily or are tough to kill, they are the result of a virus or other, mysterious circumstances. But a show like this isn't going to give you all the details of their zombie universe right away, except the obvious (slow, medium toughness).

Rick wakes up from a coma in a hospital, 28 Days Later style and stumbles into the fresh zombie apocalypse,  bringing the viewer along with him. I figure this is a good way to introduce us into it, and the first episode really is fantastic. Rick's reaction to the world around him is suitable, and the touching story of the father and son is really well done. The man's wife is roaming around as a zombie: he has an opportunity to kill her (put her out of her misery) or holding onto hope and letting her "live."

It's not long that Rick sets out to find his own wife and son, and falls into trouble. I won't spoil any of the plot for you; the series follows the comic loosely but stands on it's own, with new characters and situations. This is great, as being a reader of the comics, you're not already spoiled as you are kept in the dark.

I will mention a few things: you absolutely hate Rick's wife. Are we meant to hate her so much? In the comics she does some shady things, but I guess that character is a bit more compassionate and dimensional. I feel as though the show has too many characters going on, and they die before we get to know them. Granted, in the comic, people are dying all the time, but we get to spend more time with them. We still feel their deaths. Background characters are given screen time then killed; I didn't even know their names and am not "shocked" every time as I am in the comics. Sometimes you get a revolving door feel going on in the comics but I'm not sure the show can do that. They simply do not have enough time to develop these characters. This is something that Lost realized early on: stick with a core set of characters and flesh them out fully. Try to introduce new ones and it's too much for the audience and the show itself.

So the zombies aren't the focus, of course, the characters are. And I hope they spend more time with a select few of them. Let's see some flashbacks (we got one so far) and really delve into these people. Let's get them into crazy situations but always focus on the humanity behind it all. That is, after all what we love about zombie pieces.