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

^ downside of this is that zombies become boring, like the flu. o shit there is zombies in the alley. get the kids inside and call the squad.

yah, but the upside is that before long zombies are like narcotrafickers in Breaking Bad (or alcohol in Mad Men? I dunno, there are no good metaphors here) and we just get into the human relationships and people fucking each other up. That's why complaints about acting/writing are relevant because by the time this gets to season three, zombies are gonna be much less of a major immediate problem and more like a constant natural disaster that letting your guard down around will get you killed over

human drama on TV is never an upside

i mean, i mostly just want to see spock be quizzical in technicolor

or zombies eating people

i get that too. but even two years of "AH ZOMBIE AH NOM NOM NOM" is gonna get tired. They gotta produce some human interest that's soapy enough. Man that kid had better be able to act.

yeah, no, agreed. was kidding mostly. have a certain resistance to EVERYTHING being all soapy and long-form dramatic on TV these days, but overall quality of writing is way better than it's ever been, so can't complain too much. in that regard, this show needs to get its game up, maybe just a little. nobody's bad, but our leads and general tone of dialogue leave me cold. hoping for wife/gf & kid itr.

i'm totally cool with giving this a season before i levy judgment one way or another in terms of acting and plot. AH ZOMBIE AH NOM NOM NOM is gonna be fine for at least eight hours.

have a certain resistance to EVERYTHING being all soapy and long-form dramatic on TV these days

I don't know how much TV you watch, but let me assure you that this is not a catching disease.

The networks and cable channels that do take the risk (and it's still a pretty significant risk) to put on a show that takes time to build and develop an audience and hopefully later sell on DVD -- well, I have nothing bad to say about them. They're walking a tightrope, because the shows have to build episode by episode enough that you can't start watching in the middle, but the shows can't be so slow that they allow for dead spots.

his complete lack of curiosity as to how the fuck this happened.

Instead of trying to survive, he will try to find someone and just ask how this happened. Fuck survival. ;-)

xp, and sorry for the rant, but...

Also, what old-style TV network has even tried to do this? And don't say "Lost" -- you could give that show as much attention as you could afford without giving up sleeping, and it still wouldn't make any goddamn sense. That's not long-form drama, it's just increasingly complicated and interestingly shaped piles of turds. And don't say soap opera either, because that's not really long-form, it's endless-form, which is different, and requires a different kind of writing. The long-form TV drama as it is currently being made isn't just TV that leaves you hanging every week, it's a very new kind of storytelling on TV, made possible by a new kind of TV market. HBO pioneered it, and AMC really hung their stuff out over the ledge when they decided to try the same thing. More than HBO did, even, because they're not even PAY cable, they're just cable. (Though I think there's less and less difference.)

At any rate, soapy happens and always will, but the really good stuff on TV is better than any good stuff has ever been. It's a goddamn golden age. Enjoy it while it lasts, I say.

I very much agree with the golden age thing, Kenan. We're bombarded with fantastic telly.

yeh, no complaints in that dep't. most all my favorite television shows are products of the last 10 years. this isn't to say that i don't get tired of certain formulae.

xp - Co-sign you both. You make an excellent point there, Kenan.

A few of my acquaintances still trot out the tired old "I don't watch TV" line in a sniffy manner, which to my mind just betrays ignorance of how much great stuff there has been in the last decade or so.

On topic, I really dug TWD, particularly the unstinting nastiness of the gore which was surprisingly close to the knuckle for a TV show. I know nothing about the source material, so have no idea where it's going long-term, but will def. be watching to find out.

I HATE people who look down on telly. (Well, not really.)

I think I'll read the books now. My husband has been raving about the comics for the longest time.

Romero already did the practical living with the dead thing in "Land of the Dead." And wrt the bite thing, it's always been zombie lore that the "dead or recently dead" come back to life. The bite just hastens death. You get bit, the virus kills you, you come back as a zombie.

I thought this was pretty good. I'll keep watching.

i agree we're in a tv golden age

doesn't make this show any better

xp yeah, but in Walking Dead world (the comic at least) you don't need to get bit. If you die, you turn. It's something in the earth or whatever. That means when granpa dies a natural death, you don't bury him; you shoot him in the head.

you say potato

i say aaaaaaagggggggggghhh brains aaaaaaaaagh

-o

lol forks

And wrt the bite thing, it's always been zombie lore that the "dead or recently dead" come back to life. The bite just hastens death. You get bit, the virus kills you, you come back as a zombie.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, November 4, 2010 6:39 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, i spoke too hastily. those are the basic "rules." but many contemporary zombie flicks suggest that only the bitten go shambly. varies film to film though.

"only the bitten go shambly"...if this thing goes into season 2, that's our thread title right there

cosine

Thrice.

this is pretty good. oddly my friend just published a zombie novel a few months ago (the reapers are the angels, which is really an incredible little novel, very much a southern gothic, owes a lot to Winter's Bone and McCarthy) so it feels like zombies are now really part of the zeitgeist, taking over from those fancy vampires.

jeez yeah. they're fucking everywhere the last few years. go into any bookshop and there's likely to be a display table dedicated solely to zombie titles. zombie jane austen, zombie survival guides, zombie novels and comics, toys & DVDs, etc. almost more so than vampires, who seem confined to teen & goth (and teengoth) novel series.

my son got me a zombie board game for my birthday

he's fascinated with zombies even though he can't watch any zombie movies (he's 9)

that's not true, he loves white zombie. gonna let him watch night of the comet, too.

Remember zombie banks?

oddly my friend just published a zombie novel a few months ago (the reapers are the angels,

a friend of mine is finishing up a literary zombie novel too. i don't think i'm going to tell him about this, since there are some superficial similarities (the ages of the protagonists, for one). :/

Just read a zombie novel, too: 'Rise Again' by Ben Tripp -- not bad. Doesn't do much that's new, but entertaining and engaging and grim enough. And the protag is a female soldier with PTS, and the two main supporting characters are gay (one male, one female), which was unusual.

I HATE people who look down on telly. (Well, not really.)

I think the problem is that all media have their shitty ends of the spectrum, but TV's is much bigger and much worse, just because you have so much time and so many channels to fill. Plenty of shit movies/albums/books, but for the most part those industries don't have quotas to fill.

I agree that TV is totally primo right now. I work for a dvd distributor and I can get my hands on a lot of movie screeners but honestly, I spend so much time watching tv shows that I don't watch a ton of movies any more, not like I used to. And it's not because the movies aren't good. It's just I can't *not* watch my tv shows. There's a few junky shows in there, but for the most part, it's all gold!

that totally came out a lot more dickish than I meant it to

I swear I'm not a dick

I want to bump the person that said something along the lines of "I'm not looking forward to the ILX discussion" but I can't find that post anymore

how about not read the ILX discussion then

you first

re the previous discussion, TV is totally my most-consumed artform at the moment apart from music.

"consumed" like braiiiiiiiins?

hey if you get IFC, try to watch Dead Set, Charlie Brooker's zombie show about life in the Big Brother House after the zombie invasion. 's'fun!

a zombie story in which the survivors achieve some sort of equilibrium w the undead. they're well-defended and well-supplied, surrounded by an sea of hungry corpses, but able to sustain themselves on what they have. it's a delicate balance, though, and the human tendency towards violent conflict threatens it. if you kill one of your fellows, then your group is one less and the zombies one more...

That set-up's happened at least twice now in the Walking Dead comic

Again, that's the premise of "Land of the Dead," which in turn sets it up as an explicit satire of the bourgeoisie and nouveau riche vs. the underclass. And sort of from the zombie perspective, too: zombie African-American gas station attendant leads zombie army horde to reclaim Pittsburgh from the corrupt oligarchy!

walking dead really doesn't seem to concern itself with issues of class at all and race is only rarely touched on. people have a tendency to focus on the zombies.

Yeah, though come to think of it, the characters in the comic are overwhelmingly working class, as far as I remember. At least for the first few dozen issues.