The Walking Dead Season Premiere

Is AMC slowly killing off HBO’s long clever (and accurate) slogan “it’s not TV…it’s HBO”?

If they keep it up they are.

AMC’s newest venture – written, directed (pilot only), and executive produced by Frank Darabont is an ambitious well-funded adaptation of The Walking Dead comics series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard.  This first episode is full of gorgeous gruesome special effects and nail-biting moments that frankly, put the last season of HBO’s True Blood to shame.  Though True Blood can get away with more because it’s campy where The Walking Dead is serious, from a production values standpoint, The Walking Dead wiped the floor with True Blood this week and helped call into question HBO’s long held status as producer of the best original series.  AMC, with critical and ratings hits like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and now the new completely bold Walking Dead series, is taking a serious bite out of HBO.

The Walking Dead, a story about County Sheriff Rick Grimes who wakes from a gun shot wound coma to find himself plunged into a horrific apocalyptic nightmare, where nearly everyone is dead, and nearly half of those dead – still walk.  The Walking Dead is equal parts horror, action, and drama as Grimes tries to locate his wife and child while staying alive.   Taking all of the best zombie tropes and doing solid, if not revolutionary things with them, there was a lot to like in this first one and a half hour premiere.

The Walking Dead takes its time introducing you to its characters and world and that works in part because the effects of that world are so off the charts phenomenal.  The other big strength of the episode was that the few scenes that were intended to elicit real scares (or anticipation of a scare) were nail-bitingly tense – from Grimes walk through a pitch black stairwell in bare feet with only a pack of matches to occasionally (barely) light his way, to a horrific scene in which Grimes is under a tank, impossibly trapped on all sides by the dead that are trying to eat him alive, as they did his poor horse, mere moments ago.  The Walking Dead pulls no punches in the gruesome regard, and I’m actually not entirely sure they needed to take it as far as they did as it sometimes seemed a tad unnecessary and maybe a bit off putting to fans that are not rabid horror/zombie/gore fans.  But I cannot say that there was a single violent scene that looked bad – they were stunning…if such ugly stuff can be stunning.  The premiere sticks closely to the original source material, which is good, and deviates when necessary, which is also good, as it shows a real awareness on Darabont’s part that the medium is equally as important as the material.

So what didn’t they get right?  Well, the dramatic scenes skew too hard toward melodrama…feeling over wrought and overly earnest.  Some scenes, particularly the flashbacks, felt poorly written and badly acted.  However, I suspect those are things that can be ironed out with time.  Performance especially is something that improves dramatically episode by episode as the cast gets comfortable and begins working as a well oiled machine.  The writing might not get any better, but I’d like to think that it will and even if it doesn’t better performances can easily save some of the less on point material.  A frustrating flashback scene of a car chase didn’t actually make much sense technically and made Grimes and his fellow officers look fairly incompetent, which is not a great look for the your hero character.

Additionally, there was a pretty anti-woman tone to this first episode in that there is only one tiny scene that even has a woman in it, and in it she’s getting scolded hard (and pretty inappropriately) by a man, but the lack of women is fairly accurate to the first arc of Kirkman’s story, so I can’t fault it there.  The anti-woman vibe however was unfortunate. Darabont and his people are driving pretty hard to make one of the main characters, Shane, come off as a sexist jerk (they’re doing a great job) but since he’s significant in at least three major scenes in the pilot, at some point it begins to feel like the whole episode has that attitude.  It was frustrating, but I’m willing to give this episode a pass in the hopes that there will be a bit more balance in the next episode.

Overall, I think The Walking Dead was a wild success.  As a longtime fan of the comics, I think I come to the material with some unfair expectations and hopes, but for most fans looking for something new and interesting, and not like every other thing on television, this is it.  For me the material does not feel as fresh because I’ve been reading the series for years, but the reality is that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like this on television before – which can only be a good thing as viewers get tapped out on bad reality shows and whatever the latest police procedural or doctor drama of the year is.  This is terribly unique for a television series and I suspect that any fan that can stomach it will enjoy the hell out of it – just don’t try to eat dinner while watching…big mistake…huge!

The Walking Dead premiered Sunday, October 31st at 10:00pm on AMC, and future episodes will be airing Sundays at 10pm on AMC.  If you missed this episode you can catch it in reruns on AMC over the next week, and find out more at the AMC/Walking Dead website here.  If you’d like to read the comics, they’re available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and in bookstores and comic shops everywhere.