TERROR TEE-VEE: A Countdown to Halloween (Day 21)

Since we've fallen a few days behind on our little countdown, we'll be making up this deficit over the next few days.  No need to panic, people, we've been here before.  Stiff upper lip and all that.  And on with the countdown...

THE WALKING DEAD

Based on the comic book series of the same name, the show confronts life after the dead rise to consume the living.  Survival Horror, it's called… or what happens after the credits roll in a Romero ghoul picture.

What's interesting to me, as an avid reader of the comic, is how the tv story varies from the original—they were smart enough to alter some of the basics enough that it keeps the interest of those knowledgeable about the plot.  Just the smallest changes can result in big plot differences, some unpredictable. And while it is fairly faithful, it watches like something totally different… and new. So while remaining faithful it stands on its own.

Like a Romero picture, life isn’t cut and dry.  There are politics and pissing contests, it’s more about figuring out who you can trust in a tight spot than just about bashing zombie skulls.  It should be the latter, in a perfect zombie world, it would be, but that’s not the world Romero introduced us to and that’s not the world Kirkman has put his characters in.  Which makes it worth watching, honestly.

And these characters have been given room to breathe.  They stretch and grow and sometimes shrivel up an die.  The world pulls them like taffy as politics and situations change.  They either bend and survive or snap and break in one way or another.  It’s not a pleasant place, this post-apokalypse

Too many guys like this…

 

And not enough guys like this…

And thats how you keep things interesting, while doing this kind of stuff on the side…