Yep. First ep was 90 minutes. The rest apparently willl be an hour each.
OK, thanks. Hopefully they’ll run it again soon, like they did Mad Men.
Can I make a humble request? Can people PLEASE put things from the comics in spoiler tags? A few people have already blurted out, or even just heavily implied, things from the comics and potentially given away what could have been big reveals for us who haven’t read them yet.
I know the series isn’t going to follow the comic 100%, but I’m sure a lot of things WILL be in it. I’m also working my way through the comics as well, so there’s even more of a reason.
That being said I loved the premiere and I’m sad there’s only six episodes for this first season.
A Lurch of Zombies.
I second this request.
I hate spoiler tags, but that’s absolutely reasonable. Though I *will *plead with people to refrain from spoiler tagging anything that’s already been shown on TV.
It’s actually already been a bit of a zombie filled week, after watching Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, the original Night of the Living Dead, The Crazies, Quarantine, Dead Set (Brittish TV miniseries) and buying Dead Rising 2 for the XBox.
I liked The Walking Dead, but I was disappointed that it skipped over my favorite part of any zombie apocalypse. Watching civilization collapse as it goes from “normal” to “zombified”.
In Day of the Dead, the scientist trained one of the zombies to perform simple tasks.
Cut him some slack. The man got shot, was in a coma, woke up to Zombiepocalypse, found his wife and son missing and got a shovel in the face. Its not too hard to accept that he may not be thinking clearly. He is probaly handling it all much better then most of us would. 
ETA: The black father and son told him that Atlanta had a safe area setup, so the best intelligence he had to go on was telling him that ATL was safe.
The guy is still an idiot, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten shot in the first place. He walked forward away from the protective screen of police cars and into the line of fire of the other officers. He failed to ascertain the number of perps in the car. He turned his back on injured suspects before confirming their death. In short, he has no survival skills or situational awareness whatsoever. He is not the kind of guy who deserves to survive the zombie apocalypse and definitely not someone you want the survival of the human race depending on.
Real cops probably would be terrible shots in the situation at the start of the episode, though. It’s entirely possible that this is the very first time any of them have fired their guns outside the range - hell, it’s likely. Extreme stress is not good for your aim, and these guys probably aren’t used to dealing with it. Not a ding on them.
Agreed that their poor situational awareness was a strange blunder - but, again, these guys aren’t used to this level of violence. And taking a bullet to the chest, even if it hits your vest, is a hell of a distraction.
It’s an example of a very common trope in post-apocalyptic fiction.
Usually there is a subset of survivors who no longer live by the generally accepted morals and ethics of our society. Let’s call them “degenerate survivors.” While the degenerate survivors aren’t usually the primary antagonists of the story, they serve to hinder Our Heroes in a variety of ways. We often see them engaging in banditry, rape, cannibalism, slavery, etc. The degenerate survivors embody the breakdown of society, while Our Heroes are usually trying to rebuild at least some sort of civilization.
Part of the tension whenever the protagonists meet other survivors is trying to determine whether the new people are “good” or degenerate. The “hey dumbass” scene in the tank was scary rather than a relief because we don’t know if whoever was speaking is essentially good or essentially degenerate.
They took great pains to make it very clear that Duane’s Dad (DD) was not a degenerate survivor. I could give you a stack of examples, but one of them was that he expected his son to speak properly at the dinner table. It showed an adherence to societal mores and that he hadn’t abdicated his parenting responsibilities. As for why they spoke more casually later–well, the dinner table with a guest is a more formal situation than just sitting around.
This was also why the scene with the group with the ex-partner and wife was so worrisome. The ex-partner showed a lot of signs of petty tyranny, and that type of degenerate usually has at least one “good” woman under his control. The clear implication was that the group could well be forced into degeneracy.
Part of the reason that this show seems so cliche-ridden to me is things like telling us in eleventeen different ways that DD is a good guy. But I’m a person who has read extensively in the post-apocalyptic genre. Maybe it’s not so obvious to a person who has seen the world end hundreds of different ways.
Thanks, Munch and Glory, for your responses. I see the contest is already closed for this week but will continue next Sunday.
And I’m envious, Munch (Hah! MUNCH.)) that you’ve already gotten to shamble with the zombies.
The shootout where Rick is shot just made me think “This is what would have happened in episode 3 if Dukes of Hazzard was real”.
Though the dad also told him he didn’t know if that was still true. Of course it’s possible that he knew good and well what Atlanta was like but just hates cops.
Okay. I wondered whether the author was actually being that insightful and subtle. Glad to have it confirmed by another.
Now that speaks well for a hope for continued expositive dialogue.
Nice job of making it clear, Green Bean.
Oh, don’t be too jealous. All you can see of me is the top of my forehead for a few seconds in this epic zombie thriller.
Tres kewl.
Don’t buy it. The scene was ridiculous (in addition to the other reasons): 4 or 5 cops couldn’t take down one of the assailants before they got grazed (the same assailant who was also under extreme stress)? Let’s not forget that same idiot cop turns out to be pretty adept with his weapon later on.
This is beautifully and hilariously put.
I’m sorry, but you’re both way off. The proper collective noun for zombies released in a 14 minute video way back on December 2, 1983.
Thriller. A thriller of zombies.
I only caught the last 10 minutes or so and nearly wet myself when Rick was crawling under the tank. I literally yelped when the guy in the tank came alive. Did I mention I’m a total wuss? I think I’ll catch reruns during daylight hours!
I got the impression that maybe the wife and his partner had hooked up (at least casually) prior to the outbreak. The partner seemed a little too interested in the state of Grimes’s marriage, ya know?
I felt like I was being asked to suspend a hell of a lot of disbelief with regard to Grimes’s situation waking in the hospital. His beard growth showed it couldn’t have been more than a week that he was unconscious, but the hospital didn’t evacuate any healthy patients? I know in other zombie movies, it’s explained that the hospitals were the first places overrun, since people brought their sick (bitten) loved ones there… that wasn’t addressed at all. We saw at least one person (possibly a nurse) who had been eaten, but no zombie or sick person found Grimes in his bed? I figured they were just trying to get through the setup and the actual, er, “brains” of the show was yet to come.
I literally sobbed during that scene. I immediately emotionally connected that scene to the memory of being forced to have a beloved pet euthanized. I thought that was strange until a friend mentioned the same connection.
Dad needs to get over it and put his wife out of her misery before she comes to bite the son. I understand his issues but suck it up, you have a kid to protect. I never empathize with the family members who can’t kill their poor zombified loved ones, but I’ll cry over the poor horse getting eaten. 