BY MIKEY MIGO
I finally caught up on the six episode season of The Walking Dead. Like a lot of people, I watched the first episode on Halloween but then I had to hold off. I wanted to watch the rest, but AMC’s commercials are retardiculous. I have tried watching Breaking Bad and Mad Men in the past as they normally air, but its torture. The commercials come way too often and are sneaky. So with this I hold off and normally rock the tivo or season sets. So what I’m saying is that I’ve punished myself for the past month or so. While everyone else has been eating this stuff up (pun kinda intended), I’ve been on the sidelines with my eyes covered and my fingers in my ears. I’ve avoided any and all reports, spoilers, reviews, interviews, and anything about the show. Mission accomplished with that feat. So I binged on it and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Andrew Lincoln is a great leading man for this project. The whole cast is awesome. Outside of Jon Bernthal, who I remember fondly from the short lived CBS show “The Class” and the awesome Jeffrey DeMunn. Frank Darabont did an awesome job getting a cast together for this and putting the show together. As I watched it I kept wondering how cool it would be to see this show on HBO or Showtime, but really why? A few more f-bombs and a few more nipples? It’s a zombie drama. I can live without that stuff as long as the plot is interesting, the characters aren’t complete stereotypes, and the story is well written. Lucky for everyone, the source material is a bad ass comic. My only issue is that there were times that the show felt really predictable. It was kind of obvious who was going to stay and explode. It was obvious who was going to be weird and what was going to happen. It was almost as if you could point to minor characters and say “well you served your purpose” and then before the show is over they’re dead or gone. This happened a little too often for my liking, but on the flip side of that it was awesome. For every predictable direction the show took five “WTF” directions. I am a big fan of the way the deaths are portrayed and the violence is handled. It’s gruesome and not overly glamorized. That’s how the show gets you. Sure it’s a zombie show where humans are trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, but this is only the plot device because in reality it’s a great human nature piece about confronting life and death situations. I know that sounded all nerdy, but the point is that this a great show. Is it better than Mad Men or Breaking Bad? No. Those shows are dramatic masterpieces. It would take a lot for a six episode season to get the show on that level. Does the show have potential to reach that level and surpass it? For sure. Fingers crossed.
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