AMC zombie series from Frank 'Majestic' Darabont - The Walking Dead

watching THE COLONY, discovery channel's "survivor: apocalypse" reality show, and i keep expecting zombies to stagger around the corner

whoa ep one of this was absolutely fantastic...blown away.

Don't raise my expectations please. OK? Thanks!

First ep was pretty solid IMO, they get the "origin" shit over and done without too much trouble while throwing in a few nice details. Closing song is pretty WTF though.

yeah, just watched this. surprisingly fucking good tbqh.

Yeah sorry to raise expectations! Basically I felt it was v good dramatically, v tense, managed to make the events feel sad/disturbing, and looked great. The zombies behave and look far far better than say 28 Days Later.

Ladies just can't learn to turn off a damn light or not to take sentimental mementos instead of survival supplies, amirite?

What I expected, especially after watching the 4 minute episode 1 preview
but I liked it all the same.

Here's hoping this series is a long good zombie movie

This was v v satisfying
also, my girlfriend tends to leave the lights on
and she spent large chunks of this telling me when she could look

Very well done. Nothing surprising or new, but the sniping the wife/killing the crawling torso scene was great.

Also, I'm totally going to judge rural deputy sheriffs for having backward views on women. Turning it off in disgust.

And yeah, women be grabbin' the photo albums. It's The Simpsons Movie all over again.

xp, lol, people getting scared to horror

It was okay, not particularly mind blowing. Hopefully there will be enough deviation from the comics that I won't have a sense of having seen this all before.

Loved it. Though honestly, Sheriff Egg have you watched no zombie movies? Sheesh. DONT GO INTO THE CITY. (Sherriff was Egg in 'This Life' in the longago...hence Sheriff Egg)

Had long nerd discussion with Mr Veg over car vs horse in zombieworld...I was pro horse, well until I remembered the whole lunch on legs thing, doh.

Greg Nicotero special effects ftw.

That little girl headshot in the opening scene was Assault on Precinct 13-level cold-bloodedness.
I approve.

I assume that the horse was previously able to run away from danger?

Anyway, this show rules.

haven't read the comics. the story was pretty meat and potatoes, but i thought this was executed wonderfully. very atmospheric. definitely was way more into this than anything zombie-related i've seen in years. altogether a very solid pilot.

few issues: 1. yeah, that song at the end. 2. guy at the farmhouse who for some reason decided to write GOD FORGIVE US on the wall with blood of the wife he just shot?

Driving home from my friend's house through empty streets was fun.

How long was Rick in a coma? Wouldn't it take a while for zombies to overtake the world, since they are not a particularly fast moving bunch? Maybe this is answered in the comic, but I was just curious.

maybe europe is fine

liked it, but still worried it's going to fellow the comic's descent into melodrama

oh most definitely
writing is not mad men/breaking bad level at all
but melodrama is the fuel this thing runs on

One would hope, having the spine of a larger story from the comic book, they can work out how to improve on its faults. Of course, I don't know about Darabont's chops in this regard. I worry that HOLLYWOOD names dazzle execs into not questioning the showrunning skills.

Anyways, if it stays a quality piece of genre and nothing more, it would be a shame but I'd be alright with that.

the comic's rhythm was long periods of being off-balance, then an island of calm for about half as long, then everybody loses everything and a few people die and we're off balance and on the move again, then an island of calm
repeat ad nauseum.
if the show can do this without turning into zombie groundhog day and always keep the stakes high (and if that kid can act; that kid has GOT to be able to act) this should be able to hold my attention for as long as it takes for michonne to show up and for this to become the action movie I assume it's ultimately aiming for

Simply must download this tonight. I'm totally geeked for this.

this was great. things I liked the best: letting the main character be totally vulnerable/scared shitless. sympathy for zombies. lols at zombies. the loyal horse companion. only thing I didn't: the wife side story.

i agree it's not really on the level of mad men or breaking bad, but hard to imagine how this plot would hit those levels anyway. i just think it's dramatically really exciting, and so i can imagine v easily looking forward to it each week.

happy to hear this from the A/V club review:
"It's been made clear that it will feature new characters that don't appear in the book, eliminate ones that do, and follow the plots and stories of the comic only insofar as it suits the arc of the series."

Yeah, cutting to the wife and that scrappy band of survivors was a bit jarring considering the mood that was set before. It had to happen, I guess, but that "twist" was pretty cliché. xxpost

Zombie and apocalypse drama is a pretty rich vein for really great drama. I'd like to see it do something more than just AAGH ZOMBIES and hopefully avoid the "WE are the real enemy" as much as possible.

From the preview I saw ages ago, I remember thinking that little girl ran, so I was happy to see she just moved a little briskly. Slow zombies>>>>>>>>>>>Fast zombies.

How long was Rick in a coma? Wouldn't it take a while for zombies to overtake the world,

When they're taking showers at the police station, Morgan says, "The gas lines have been off for a couple of months."

He would have been in a coma for a while before that happened though, since everything was fine when he got shot.

That crawling half-zombie was O_O

Haven't seen this yet but have read the comix, and hoping they cut out the psycho armchair ninja lady with a sword. Clearly they like her, because she's lasted this long in the books, but she always struck me as more than a little ridiculous (see also: blind guy vs. zombies in "World War Z").

That crawling half-zombie was O_O

I was feeling for that poor zombie, it was way more sad than scary.

Scary first time around, sad when he shot it..special effects makeup etc on it were A+++

the zombies look and act in a way that's a lot more interesting than lots of other zombie tv/films

Yeah, there's a remnant of their living selves still in their faces/behavior somehow, I really like it

Also like the violence of the zombie killings...pretty impressive for basic cable. The one scene where the sheriff blew away the deputy guy up against the chainlink gate..wow

yeah it's v full on. and i agree yeah, it's weird how they sort of seem still human somehow, moreso than i dunno, something like 28 days later.

They really played up that human remnant with Morgan's wife. Nothing malevolent in her face at all, just confusion and a weird tinge of sadness. They also (thankfully) never went for the clichéd "she seems so human" and then WHAM she attacks.

It helped that the wife really didn't look very zombiefied...just kind of drugged/out of it.

How long was Rick in a coma? Wouldn't it take a while for zombies to overtake the world,

When they're taking showers at the police station, Morgan says, "The gas lines have been off for a couple of months."

― Tub Girl Time Machine (Phil D.), Monday, 1 November 2010 15:09 (1 hour ago)

actually says "for maybe a month".

yeah nicole otm, i couldn't help but think of drugs/alcoholism or something with that whole "she looks like herself but isn't" vibe.

She kinda looks like Michael's crackhead mom from The Wire.

Was that Tara's mom from True Blood?

i gotta say the standards for tv-14 are getting stretched to the limit here imo

Don't understand how they got away with some of this stuff but edited the Friday the 13th movies down so much.

How long was Rick in a coma?

my guess is probably 28 days?

kinda surprised at the positive reactions here. maybe I've seen too many innovative zombie flicks in the past year (and there have been a bunch recently) but the walking dead didn't bring one new thing to the table. every aspect of the zombies seem to be lifted from romero, coma guy waking up to the apocalypse is from 28 days later, even the "living with your loved ones as zombies" stuff is in the dawn of the dead remake.

I guess all that wouldn't matter as much if the characters were interesting, or the script was on point, but everything seemed workmanlike and perfunctory. my wife's verdict at the halfway point was "this is neither interesting nor scary". then she fell asleep.

the sexism in the opening scene was kinda o_O. you can say, hey they're smalltown cops, but guess what, smalltown cops tend to be kinda racist, too. and later the same character has to talk some sense into a hysterical women, so it seems like the show's totally down with lol dumb broads...

coma guy waking up to the apocalypse is from 28 days later Day of the Triffids "28 Days Later" didn't exactly invent this gambit.

The opening scene, IMO, was just a clumsy setup for some misdirection. (At least for those who are watching this without having read the comics.) Shane talks about his arguments with his wife, then later on you see him arguing with this woman and figure, "Hey, at least he got away with his family," then they show LOL IT WAS RICK'S WIFE ALL ALONG U N00BZ!

I guess my expectations were lower? I'm happy to watch a series-long version of boilerplate zombie tropes.

Zombies are zombies...the tropes are tropes bc they're zombies, it's not like they can be not undead. It's how they are used, it's only 1 episode and so far its creepy, bloody and interesting enough to keep me interested

true, and if the walking dead borrowed from a semi-obscure 60s monster movie I'd be more forgiving, but it's borrowing from one of the most famous zombie films of the past decade so

xxp

i think romero-style zombies are a generic, public domain archetype at this point.