The Walking Dead

[Great Rumbler]

Flesh-eating zombies!

Lots of violence!

Society crumbled to the ground!

Poignant, tear-jerking moments?!

The Walking Dead has all this an more, I'm happy to say. Plus, it's really, really good judging from episode one, not that I'm too surprised with Frank Darabont handling it.

[A Black Falcon]

What, this isn't a thread about the Rangers' chances of winning the world series now? :P

Seriously though, this is some TV show I guess? You don't explain.

[Great Rumbler]

So, you weren't tipped off by the "episode one" in the first post?

[Dark Jaguar]

It's pretty cliche if you ask me. I mean the opening scene, "waking up in a hospital from a coma to find everything in shambles" has been done a billion times, from the first Resident Evil movie to 28 days later. Cliche can work though. If the series is intended to basically be a call-back to every zombie cliche out there all tied together, it can be good in that way. It's got a good start. There's "half-zombie dragging itself across the lawn" ala "Return of the Living Dead". There's "turn round a city street corner to find a whole army" ala Resident Evil Outbreak, and a bunch of others. There's the dramatic "I can't kill my loved one even though I know she's gone" that's been done in... every single zombie thing ever. Yeah, I'm going to call this series a huge pop culture reference to every zombie thing out there.

That doesn't make it bad though. It seems interesting. That said, I bust out laughing at the sheer absurdity of the main character riding a horse downtown with pistol by his side and a frickin' cowboy hat on (yes I know he's a sheriff, but I wonder if they made him one JUST to put that scene in the show, I know I would).

[A Black Falcon]

So, you weren't tipped off by the "episode one" in the first post?

That's the only thing in the post that told me that it was a TV show. Never heard of it.

[Great Rumbler]

It's pretty cliche if you ask me. I mean the opening scene, "waking up in a hospital from a coma to find everything in shambles" has been done a billion times, from the first Resident Evil movie to 28 days later. Cliche can work though. If the series is intended to basically be a call-back to every zombie cliche out there all tied together, it can be good in that way. It's got a good start. There's "half-zombie dragging itself across the lawn" ala "Return of the Living Dead". There's "turn round a city street corner to find a whole army" ala Resident Evil Outbreak, and a bunch of others. There's the dramatic "I can't kill my loved one even though I know she's gone" that's been done in... every single zombie thing ever. Yeah, I'm going to call this series a huge pop culture reference to every zombie thing out there.

That doesn't make it bad though. It seems interesting. That said, I bust out laughing at the sheer absurdity of the main character riding a horse downtown with pistol by his side and a frickin' cowboy hat on (yes I know he's a sheriff, but I wonder if they made him one JUST to put that scene in the show, I know I would).

There's really not much you can do within the confines of the zombie genre that hasn't been done any number of times before, particularly if you aren't doing on of those "it's a zombie movie that breaks all the rules" movie. Like, Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula probably isn't going to surprise you much, but Twilight might [and not in a good way].

It's well-made and well-acted, which certainly goes a long way in smoothing over whatever cliches there might be in the script. I think as it goes, though, it'll start to diverge more from other zombie works as the focus moves more towards the characters.

[Dark Jaguar]

So I read it's based on a comic book?

[Great Rumbler]

Yeah, the comic series has been going for the past seven years.

[alien space marine]

[Dark Jaguar]

Oh one other thing. It seems this is yet another modern zombie thing where the z-word is forbidden. Everyone calls them "walkers" apparently. That's kinda odd, because you can bet if zombies showed up in our world, zombie is EXACTLY what every single person would be calling them.

[alien space marine]

Oh one other thing. It seems this is yet another modern zombie thing where the z-word is forbidden. Everyone calls them "walkers" apparently. That's kinda odd, because you can bet if zombies showed up in our world, zombie is EXACTLY what every single person would be calling them.

Is it how they differentiate, Between the slow Lumbering depressed walking Zombies and the angry pissed off running zombies?

or does somebody own the rights to the word zombie or something?

[Great Rumbler]

The Walking Dead has two types: roamers [that roam around during the day] and lurkers [that don't move until they are disturbed]. They probably don't use the term zombie because it's so generic.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well now NOT using the word zombie comes off as forced because you see it in everything. Zombie may be "generic", but it's accurate. I mean I don't call my cat a "stalker" or "prowler", I call it a cat, and movies about killer cats call them cats too. Everyone calls them zombies these days, and I can't think of anyone who can't take a zombie story seriously if they use the word zombie. I mean this isn't 28 days later. There was a rotting bifurcated zombie dragging its guts across the lawn. There's no confusion here.

It's like how in the 90s, they stopped saying the v-word to describe vampires, calling them "night walkers" and stuff for a while. Eventually, that got old and now we're back to calling them vampires again. Same with werewolves. For a while people tossed out "lupines" and "licans", but now it's back to wolf-man and werewolf as god intended. I mean I'm willing to allow for a growing and changing language, but when they just sort of come up with this stuff out of nowhere, and at the same time expect us to think it's all happening in a version of "our world", it kinda falls apart, because our world is fully aware of zombies, vampires, and werewolves and has words we use right now to describe them.

Perhaps this Penny Arcade comic will make the point clear.

<img src="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215546869_oiifJ-L-2.jpg">