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Author Topic: The Walking Dead: The TV Show  (Read 9474 times)

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Lottel

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The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« on: January 20, 2010, 08:20:09 PM »

So uh... Walking Dead the TV Show, eh?
On AMC?

Soooounds good

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/01/20/amc-orders-pilot-for-the-walking-dead-tv-series/
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Niku

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Re: Re: Funnybooks
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2010, 10:13:54 PM »

You forgot the important part: directed by Frank Darabont.  I have been so hyped for this ever since the first announcement.
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Thad

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The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2010, 09:48:33 PM »

So I've mentioned more than once that The Walking Dead is one of the best comics of the past decade.

And if the first episode is any indication, it could be one of the best TV shows, too.

Quick thread rules: I'm approaching this as somebody who's read all 78 issues of the comic, but I know there are bound to be people here who haven't.  As such, I'm going to spoilertag anything that's happened in the comic but hasn't happened in the show yet, even if it happened 5 years ago.  (You know, like real spoilers.  If I were to say something like "I wonder if Michonne will show up before they get to the prison in this version?" I don't think that's very spoilery.)  So yeah there'll be some minor spoilers of both the comic and the show coming up (like how far along in the story the first episode goes, which characters show up, that kinda thing), but I'm going to keep it pretty general.

Anyhow.  An overview: the show nails the atmosphere.  It's not afraid to be quiet -- the music gets a little overbearing in a couple places, but for the most part (and for what seemed like entire minutes at the very beginning) it's perfectly comfortable with silence.  Well, "comfortable" isn't really the right word as the silence is hair-raisingly foreboding, but at any rate it shuts the hell up when it needs to.  The very first scene has Rick talking about how his wife wishes he wasn't the silent type, and he bears it out for most of the episode.  The pace of the show is deliberate but it never feels slow.

And then there are the visuals.  The Walking Dead is a character-centric enough book that it might succeed even if the zombies sucked and there were no sense of desolation, but fortunately the zombies are awesome and the world feels empty.  The zombies never take you out of the scene; the makeup is superb and the way they move is creepy.  And the violence -- yeah, if you were worried about that, don't be; there's blood and entrails and you've probably seen the shot by now of the zombie who's missing the bottom half of her body.  And as for the desolation, well, there's a wonderful shot when Rick gets to Atlanta.

Of course, what the show's ultimately going to live or die on is the cast.  Andrew Lincoln is going to have to carry a lot of the burden, and he's excellent so far.  There's one moment in the show -- where he looks at one of the zombies with pity -- that I think nails Rick as a character (and, for those of us who have watched him become a harder person in the comic, a contrast between who he is in the beginning and who he becomes).

But really, Morgan stole the show in this episode.  We get a lot more of his character here than in the comic, and it's very effective.  He's not just the guy who handles the exposition, he's the strongest character in the piece even though he's only in 20 or so minutes of it.  And it occurs to me we haven't seen him in the comic in awhile [spoiler]and I hope he gets a bigger role in the coming issues.  And those of you who've been reading -- man, there's a whole lot of foreshadowing there, isn't there?[/spoiler]  This shows some potential for even minor characters to really shine in this show.  Which is good, considering most characters' tendency to die after a few issues.

We catch a glimpse of a few other folks -- Dale and Andrea don't get much to say but my God their few seconds onscreen are DELIGHTFUL.  Straight off the page.

Lori and Shane aren't immediately easy to like, though, and that could be a real problem.

Oh, and [spoiler]just a little bit of Glenn at the end.[/spoiler]  Nicely done.

There's still the question of how far into the story the season's going to go.  I suspect it'll end in the same place as the first trade, as that's a natural climax, but it could go a bit farther -- I'd have expected this episode to end in the same place the opening scene occurs, and I expect it would have if it had been an hour instead of 90 minutes.

Regardless, I'm along for the ride.  There haven't been any major deviations from the comic yet, but there are bound to be a few -- I hear there are some new characters next week.  And I doubt they'll spend as much time at the prison once they get there -- but that strikes me as probably the middle of season 2.  Still, while there were no major surprises, there were plenty of little ones, and they were pleasing.  It's nice to have the show keep me on my toes even though I've read the comic.

I'm very pleased with the first episode, and looking forward to next week's.  Highly recommended.  And I'm interested in hearing what people who haven't read the comic think.
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Mothra

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #3 on: November 02, 2010, 07:53:26 AM »

This is well-done and all but honestly I liked the ten minutes of pre-apocalypse stuff at the beginning more than anything else in the rest of the episode. Once survival comes into it, everyone is just working to get back to normal. They're not really building anything, they're just rebuilding what they lost, and it's weirdly uninteresting that way.

Also what the fuck kind of show starts off with a guy executing a ten-year-old zombie girl at point blank? How exactly was this a good idea?
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Büge

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2010, 08:27:19 AM »

Also what the fuck kind of show starts off with a guy executing a ten-year-old zombie girl at point blank? How exactly was this a good idea?

You're gonna love A Game of Thrones.
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Rico

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #5 on: November 02, 2010, 11:21:40 AM »

I had just read the series a month or so ago, so it was very fresh in my mind.  The first episode did an amazing job of filling in the gaps between panels while still feeling like it was a faithful adaptation.  The hospital scene is only a page or two long but didn't feel stretched out on air.  The little stylistic touches that were purely added in—the flowers, the couple of instances of writing on doors/walls, the pile of corpses outside the hospital—felt great and really added some depth and a sense of timeline to the world.  The rewrite of Morgan and Duane's intro was brilliant.  The paranoia about Rick's injury felt dead on and all their scenes were well acted.

If this keeps up this is going to be a classic.
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Thad

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #6 on: November 02, 2010, 03:02:12 PM »

Once survival comes into it, everyone is just working to get back to normal. They're not really building anything, they're just rebuilding what they lost, and it's weirdly uninteresting that way.

Stick with it.  Central to the series is that there's NO getting back to normal, there's NO rebuilding what they've lost, and any of them could die at any time -- and what that kind of world does to a person.

Also what the fuck kind of show starts off with a guy executing a ten-year-old zombie girl at point blank? How exactly was this a good idea?

Again, this is a story about what the collapse of civilization DOES to people.  You'll see Rick do a lot worse before it's all over -- but if the show's as good as the comic, you'll still like him.

Also, it's a great way of grabbing the audience's attention and saying "Yeah, this is what we're gonna do on this show."

Frankly, the way I see it, Shane's opening torrent of misogyny is a lot likelier to turn off a potential viewer than the little girl zombie.
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Thad

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #7 on: November 08, 2010, 09:54:59 PM »

Damn.

I've mentioned before that The Walking Dead is the only comic that actually makes my heart race, and the show managed to do it too this week.

A few curves; a whole lot of new cast members.  Enough to keep me guessing.

Wasn't a perfect episode -- the whole Racist Cokehead Redneck thread seemed pretty cheap, particularly the ending -- but it was still pretty great.  Going to have to get used to Andrea being so much older than in the comic -- the "wise beyond her years" thing is really one of the defining things about her in the book --, but she did a great job.

Also, it settled one of the niggling details from the comic -- the trick they use to avoid the zombies in this episode cropped up in an early issue, and in the 75-or-so since they've never done it again.  That seemed odd up until I actually saw it in this episode, at which point it became very, very believable that they wouldn't give it another shot.

As far as the graphic gore -- Jesus, I can't say I've ever seen anything like it on basic cable.  "Guts" lived up to its name.
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Ocksi

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #8 on: November 09, 2010, 12:00:26 PM »

My biggest complaint is how much more agile/able the zombies are.  Climbing fences and ladders, using tools.  Just felt somewhat wrong.
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Pacobird

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #9 on: November 09, 2010, 01:48:08 PM »

I just watched the pilot last night.  I was unaware it was an adaptation until opening this thread 15 seconds ago and I would be lying if I said I didn't find that a little disappointing, but I really enjoyed it.  I'd thought we'd basically run out of ways to tell The Serious Zombie Story but the sound editing alone should give this a little life (nyuk nyuk). 

The old lady enjoyed it, too, and she usually hates serious zombie movies (for her, Zombieland deconstructed the serious zombie genre to the point that she couldn't enjoy it even if she ever had).

We both agreed that it was pretty suspect that a protagonist as supposedly smart and capable as this one would, upon learning the world was destroyed by a highly contagious and fatal disease, march right in to a major city, though.
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Thad

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #10 on: November 09, 2010, 02:30:09 PM »

I find it plausible that he'd believe the "Everybody evacuated to Atlanta" line -- it's perfectly believable that major cities might have better support than rural towns.  (And indeed they did -- there was a tank, after all.)

Riding headlong into a herd was a bit of a stretch, though.
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EvaKisu

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #11 on: November 09, 2010, 03:11:02 PM »

Well, he didn't really know there was going to be a herd. I think riding a horse period was a bad idea. Sure, he could get around...but he was so open.

I forgot about the comics when I started watching this. During the first episode I was like Oh! Yeah. Now I want to reread the comics. So far they seemed to do really well in the casting.
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Thad

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #12 on: November 09, 2010, 04:14:14 PM »

I don't really think the horse was a bad idea.  He had a lot of ground to cover, he was out of gas, he didn't want to leave it to die, and really he could have stupidly torn around that corner on foot, too.

But I'm curious about the chopper.  Nobody else saw or heard it.  That seems pretty fucking odd.  Could Rick be hallucinating?
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Mothra

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #13 on: November 10, 2010, 05:49:43 AM »

Definitely enjoyed the season episode a lot more than the first! Good to see the general from Generation Kill getting work again~

MAN, that corpse-gutting scene though.
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Thad

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #14 on: November 10, 2010, 04:50:29 PM »

On the whole I preferred the first (though I think it should have cut off after the second act and left act 3 as its own episode), but I think the second did a great job.  Glenn's perfectly cast (and a fan of the comic from what I've read), though the rest of the supporting cast leaves something to be desired.  Evil Racist Man was very well-acted but a shitty and nonsensical character, Shane and Lori still aren't likable, and the rest are forgettable.  (Well, Dale is perfect and I think Andrea's going to be great -- though I'm still getting used to her age --, but I don't think they would have left any impression on me if I wasn't a fan of the comic.)

I suspect Evil Racist Man will be back (this is conjecture, not spoiler; he's not in the comics at all so I'm just guessing as someone seeing this for the first time), and hope he'll be a slightly more nuanced character by then -- but I kinda doubt it.
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Ted Belmont

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #15 on: November 10, 2010, 05:34:06 PM »

The previews for Ep3 have [spoiler]Evil Racist Man's brother all pissed off cause they left him, and Rick saying he's going to go back for him[/spoiler], so I'd say you're probably right.
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Mothra

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #16 on: November 10, 2010, 06:24:17 PM »

Everyone I'd talked to who had seen the episode before me really was not too pleased with Token Racist Redneck, so I came into it kind of bracing myself for the most epic dickbag ever and ended up weirdly alright with him. It is just utterly amazing how he never even begins to seem like someone who would ever actually exist in the real world, slinging more froth after he is taken hostage and chained to a pipe. A good chunk of his scenes I spent trying to think of some excuse as to why someone would continue to mercilessly antagonize their captors when he very realistically might get killed or left behind without them. I mean do they expect me to believe that a guy like this has absolutely no sense of self-preservation?

That said though, I guess I just liked that they developed a character (T-Dog) without needing the main guy to directly work with them. One of the things with progressing the plot mostly through one main guy like Rick is that these tangential plotlines with different folks don't crop up. Interactions completely independent of this moral anchor in direct power.

I'm sure we'll see more of that as the show goes on, but I guess one of my few issues with the comic was that Rick was the one we followed and his bigger picture approach to everything made it harder for folks to realistically come into conflict with him without just coming off as irrational.

I notice I like this show a lot more when there's some sort of talking going on, and talking not based around survival. I think I'm just not terribly interested by the zombie apocalypse so much as these random groups of people getting hurled together rapidly.
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Thad

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #17 on: November 10, 2010, 08:39:11 PM »

It is just utterly amazing how he never even begins to seem like someone who would ever actually exist in the real world, slinging more froth after he is taken hostage and chained to a pipe. A good chunk of his scenes I spent trying to think of some excuse as to why someone would continue to mercilessly antagonize their captors when he very realistically might get killed or left behind without them. I mean do they expect me to believe that a guy like this has absolutely no sense of self-preservation?

Well, you COULD explain that away with the drugs, but you're still left with the question of why anyone would bring him along.

It could have been played much more sensibly -- they don't like this guy but he's got a particular skill so they bring him along; he doesn't like them either but he knows they're his best shot at survival too.  Uneasy alliances between people who don't really trust each other are a big part of this world.

But instead we just got a crazy screaming guy.

I'm sure we'll see more of that as the show goes on, but I guess one of my few issues with the comic was that Rick was the one we followed and his bigger picture approach to everything made it harder for folks to realistically come into conflict with him without just coming off as irrational.

Don't know how far along you are in the comic but I'd say they're well past that stage now -- Rick's still very much the leader and the hero, but he's gone too far on more than one occasion and many of the supporting cast -- Tyrese, Dale, Michonne -- have come across better for calling him on it.

But it's way too early for the show to be doing that.  We need a year or two to really get to like and trust Rick before they can start playing up his frailties and weaknesses.

I notice I like this show a lot more when there's some sort of talking going on, and talking not based around survival. I think I'm just not terribly interested by the zombie apocalypse so much as these random groups of people getting hurled together rapidly.

And of course that's what it's really all about.  The zombies are the backdrop, but it could be ANY collapse-of-civilization story.  This is a character piece.
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Friday

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #18 on: November 12, 2010, 11:12:03 AM »

Quote
And I'm interested in hearing what people who haven't read the comic think.

Caught the first two episodes. Haven't read the comic. Huge fan of zombies and apocalypses in general.

I agree with Thad that the first episode was stronger than the second, (though the second wasn't bad) and that Morgan really stole the show. I'm hoping he becomes a major character.

Glenn is pretty swell.

Redneck asshole was a bit too much.

Zombies are all about the atmosphere and this show so far has been pretty damn good at nailing it.

It's too early for me to tell yet, but they could do some interesting things here.

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Pacobird

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Re: The Walking Dead: The TV Show
« Reply #19 on: November 17, 2010, 10:40:51 AM »

I find it plausible that he'd believe the "Everybody evacuated to Atlanta" line -- it's perfectly believable that major cities might have better support than rural towns.  (And indeed they did -- there was a tank, after all.)

"Everybody evacuated to Atlanta....and then died horribly because the population density is like 20 times what it is out in the sticks that's how diseases work"

But, well, I guess it's pointless to argue because showing HOLY SHIT ZOMBIE HORDE is more important to the narrative than the protagonist coming across as subtly shrewd and analytical.
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