RIP to The Walking Dead
Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. For those who know me you know about my love for horror films so once a month I’m going to review and discuss a scary flick. We’ll look at the classics, some new films, and I want your suggestions on what I should review. I’ll do my best to cover all the different genres within the genre – slashers, ghosts, monsters, etc.
SPOILER ALERT! – These will be reviews so if you haven’t seen the movie you’ll want to watch it first before you read this. Let’s do this.
RIP TO THE WALKING DEAD
I suppose the history of television includes shows like MASH, The Simpsons, and Seinfeld. Now that it’s over, I’m officially adding The Walking Dead. No? I realize I’m biased, but I think it can be included in a longer conversation on the topic. 11 seasons for a television show is a long time. Some shows don’t even get through one season. I’ve heard the naysayers over the years but know just as many, if not more who loved the show – although many jumped ship after unfortunate incidents during the season 7 premiere (more on that later) Just the other day someone said to me “that show is still on?!” which I think speaks to how long it has been on but also that people did lose their interest.
October 31st, 2010 (the greatest day of the year!) I heard about a new zombie show called The Walking Dead was going to premiere on AMC. Love their movies and they did a great job with the show Mad Men so I had to check this out. As cheesy as it sounds, I’ve been watching it ever since so the rest as they say is history. Season one was a raw, quick six episodes and is probably the best season. It’s tense, it’s violent, it makes you squirm in your seat a little. It’s so interesting to watch and compare the evolution of characters from day one to now (if they survived) It’s certainly not perfect. Composition isn’t great sometimes, colors are bad, but I’m really being picky. My favorite video game is Resident Evil 2 and this first season really reminded me of the game. I got vibes of Dawn of the Dead too. Once the public said, “oh wow, this show is great!” the big budget money came. AMC knew what it had here and kept this thing growing. For a while that network was spitting out some of the best programs on television. I do wonder how this show would have done on one of the big networks. CBS for example. Nowadays streaming is king and a lot of people cut cable. Maybe the days of watching a show on a channel or network in a weekly episode format are done. Stream when you want now. The production was just SO good. Acting, story, editing. All so tight and pleasing. A lot of episodes seemed to never even be about zombies but you didn’t even care (or notice?) A lot of love needs to go to Greg Nicotero. He started out doing FX for George Romero and brought his talents to this show then ended up producing and directing a good number of episodes.
I need to mention here that The Walking Dead was originally a comic book, and the television show is based on that. The comic ran for 16 years and almost 200 issues. I’ll admit I’ve never read it but heard plenty of the storylines and do know that the show doesn’t follow the comic completely. From what I hear the show could have gone on for many more years based on the plotlines and characters. The main characters and story are faithful enough though.
The show caught on after season 1 and by season 3 was on fire and really became a cultural phenomenon after that. Back when offices had watercoolers, this was what you talked about. 9PM EST on Sundays was appointment television (don’t you miss actually watching shows when they aired?!) I remember on Mondays being angry at someone who didn’t watch the night before because we couldn’t talk about it with them. There was a Monstermania in Philly in 2015 I think that had a few cast members and the place was a total zoo. Hours in line to get an autograph. Everyone you knew watched. I mean everyone. I’ve had in depth conversations with people in their 70’s about it.
Rick Grimes, his family and a group of survivors are finding their way through life after the zombie apocalypse. Not sure that’s the tag line but close enough. Zombie movies are amazing but are only two hours and don’t go deep enough. Here, we learned about how life was after the end of the world. What to do for food, shelter, and how to deal with people. That was the most interesting part for me. Once the world ended, how did people behave. This show really focused on that. I think that may have been a turn off to some people, but it was a great story. George Romero once said about Night of the Living Dead that the neighbors were the most dangerous. Season after season we watched the characters grow and add to their group. A group that we learned to love that was always getting caught in sticky, nerve wracking situations. Glenn once fell behind a dumpster full of walkers and had to have been eaten right? That was the best part of the show. They did such a great job of teasing you. Is he dead or not!?!? We had to wait a few episodes to find out and I lost $5 to a friend betting for sure he was dead. Some characters came into the show and only passed through. Some stayed around for quite a bit, and you may not have missed them if they died. Every week you wondered will someone die on tonight’s episode?? Sadly, some we really learned to love lost their lives. Beth, Sophia, and Hershel to name a few. We met awful people like the Governor, Alpha, the Whisperers, and of course Negan. Negan’s role was huge as the character turned a lot of the audience away unfortunately. Season six gave us a cliffhanger ending as the group was surrounded and some would surely be killed. Season 7 began with Negan brutally beating Glenn and Abraham to death with his barb wire studded baseball bat affectionately named Lucille. I know a lot of people who said no mas after that and gave up the show. It was either too brutal, too heartbreaking, or both. Risky move maybe but it kept going. I will admit they did kill off a few too many characters and then losing Rick and Michonne was the beginning of the end. They were smart though to not kill off Daryl as that may have really pissed off the audience. We loved this group despite their flaws. Trying to navigate life after the world ends sure isn’t easy. Hard decisions always had to be made. It’s interesting that for all their good intentions, they always seemed to end up screwing things up and wrecking a good thing. The spot in the woods in season 1, the farm in season 2, then the prison, etc.
What can you do though right? The show became a hit no one saw coming and the actors moved on. It’s television. I was sad watching the finale appropriately named Rest in Peace but was SO glad I got to go on this ride for 11 years. In the last few years, we’ve had Fear the Walking Dead and other spin offs and now there will be two new shows. This kind of makes it feels like a hollow series ending in a way but there is still a lot more to squeeze out this sponge. So, from Days Gone By to Rest in Peace and all 175 episodes in between, The Walking Dead has made its mark on television history. You either watched it, or you knew about it. It wasn’t airing in a vacuum. I say the world is better for it being around and I’ve convinced myself that I am now prepared for the zombie apocalypse. Now all that’s left to do is watch it all over again!