Walking Dead

I missed the premier episode of this series on Halloween because I was running my Halloween roleplaying game instead, but last week Laura and I managed to catch the second episode. I went back onto Hulu and saw the first episode after that, and figured I'd give my opinion of the show.

I really like it.

I'll add a disclaimer here that I am a huge fan of the comic and of the horror/survival genre, so this show was almost tailor made for me, but I think they could have really screwed it up, and I'm glad to see they did not.

The show, rightly so, focuses on the characters more than the zombies and horror. Watching the show I feel like they're going to be paying far more attention to how the people react to their entire world changing and the daily goal being just survive to the next day. The zombies offer a constant threat, but my impression is that they won't be there all the time. Sometimes the survivors will make their way to someplace safe for a little while, and then they'll be dealing with each other. From watching the show, this whole concept could do just as well and moving the setting into space (like the Cylons chasing the humans in BSG's first episode) or by removing the zombies entirely (making more of a post-apocalyptic setting). The focus is on the characters and the zombies provide a vehicle to tell the story of these people. The biggest threat to survival is not the zombies themselves, but the people and how they'll react to them.

I have to say, I was happy watching the second episode of the show. While I know the show is based on the comic, nearly the entire second episode was original, not at all drawn from the comic that inspired it. It was an early warning to those fans of the comic that this is going to be different. Different things might happen - different people might show up. Don't expect that just because the comic did a particular thing that the show will too.

As a warning, I did try to show my mother the first episode, and while she likes post-apocalyptic shows and character-driven shows, she could not get through the episode. Not for lack of quality of the show, but because the suspense of the zombie threat was too much. If you're not a fan of horror or suspense, this might not be the show for you. I'd recommend giving it a try with the lights on in the afternoon at some point - it's worth checking out.