This week I watched all six episodes of AMC's The Walking Dead on Netflix, and tonight I offer my review of the show thus far.
I will keep this review brief: I should have finished Meltdown ten years ago. The Walking Dead (in its comic book form) launched in 2003, exactly when I hoped to finish my original draft for Meltdown. I agonize over this because The Walking Dead is nearly identical to the story I began writing for Meltdown in 1998. The zombies, the slow deliberate pace, the focus on humanity... hell, even the concept of traveling in an RV made it in there. Between this and Cormac McCarthy's The Road, just about every concept I originally envisioned Meltdown to be has been made popular.
Not that there is anything terribly original about the zombie survival-horror genre, but Walking does an extremely admirable job with it. Striking the perfect balance of character, drama, action, gore, and suspense, Walking may end up being the best story/show/movie about zombies ever produced. There are no overarching plots that echo society a la Romero's Dead-series or goofy (but excellent) diversions like those from Shaun of the Dead. Walking is all about humanity at its most basic level: fear, love, hunger, thirsts, desire, insanity - the very core of the human psyche is tested as early as the opening scene of the first episode.
Despite a highly-repetitive per-show format (spin up the story from the previous episode, move the characters around, end with a cliff-hanger), Walking does an excellent job with its characters through-and-through. There are good guys, bad guys, guys we love to hate, and guys we are sorry to see die.
Walking's strength is clearly in its core characters and their desire for survival. Perhaps less entertaining is some of the techno-babble that dominates much of the final episode of season one. This is a minor complaint against a series that is already so well done no other zombie tale before it may matter.
I look forward to catching up with season two this year. Well, that and finishing Meltdown. Dammit.
B3 out.
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