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

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.

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!

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, November 6, 2010 6:11 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

should watch LotD again, as i remember very little other than that it has dennis hopper and is bad (or maybe i just didn't like it).

yeah josh, you're totally making me wish LotD was better, because it definitely had some cool ideas and potential in it

my son got me a zombie board game for my birthday

My greatest hope for this show is that it will help take zombies back from the realm of the "zeitgeist" and especially the ironically cute and quaint, and make them horror again.

Good luck with that

Shush ;)

i liked the episode that was on tonight. it was engaging. didn't see the first one. big fan of the comics. tuesday morning i go back to the land of no cable so.

it was pretty good. i'm wanting to re-read those issues so i can remember what plots were from the comic and which ones weren't

watching the second ep right now and already even better than the pretty dope first ep

i don't think this episode reflected the comic; as i remember it, there was no "party" and definitely no white power guy.
this was a set piece ep and a little less successful in my eyes than the first one. Went fast though! At this rate, a six episode season isn't going to get past the first ten issues!

oh come on michael rooker vs. a guy in a kangol come on

this show should be called the walking been there done that

what does that even mean

My greatest hope for this show is that it will help take zombies back from the realm of the "zeitgeist" and especially the ironically cute and quaint, and make them horror again.

― kenan, Saturday, November 6, 2010 6:01 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

if anything this is going to hasten the gentrification of the dead. it'll do for zombies what dexter did for torture porn, i.e. normalize it for a mass audience.