The Walking Dead: The Series So Far

AKA: Because man cannot live off of bread alone. All politics all the time does get a little dry at times.

The show centers around Rick Grimes as he awakes from a coma and tries to find his wife and son in a post apocalyptic world filled with zombies.

As with 28 Days Later, some of the scarier situations don't pertain to the zombies but to society breaking down. With Frank Darabont at the helm, many of the characters are turning out to be rather thin. Racist redneck brothers Merle and Daryl cause most of the tension within the rest of the camp. They make a sheet of paper seem deep and complex.

Of course the stray zombie or two still adds to the drama.

***SPOILERS BELOW***

If you have stayed with the series so far, Rick was finally reunited with his wife last night. With another level of drama, conflict and tension waiting to erupt there without giving too much away.

Now that the warning is in place, I need to pick at this nit.

Last week-- because Merle was either an enraged redneck or crazed hillbilly-- he was handcuffed to a vent pipe-- support on the roof. Shooting at the zombies only brings in more zombies to investigate. Soon, a rampaging horde is gathered at the doors, waiting to break them down. And was left up there at the end of the episode. The handcuff key being lost, he was left on his own to try to hook and drag a hack saw that was left behind with his own belt. And with his three options of what to saw through, the handcuff chain, the threaded rod on the support or his own hand, what did the one dimensional character Merle cut through? His hand, of course. Because that would add to the drama, conflict and tension of the show.

The threaded rod would have been the easiest and quickest to cut, by the way.

Why would the producers go out of their way to show one lane of the highway full of abandoned cars as Rick rides his horse into Atlanta and as Glenn (the kid Rick bumps into while in Atlanta) is on his brief joyride back out of town in a Camaro. But the group at the camp scrounges for car parts? Dollars to doughnuts, there will be scene at the survivor camp when they have to leave, it will be a rag-tag convoy of broken down vehicles. Instead of their choice of rides from the smorgasbord of transportation available to them. Did they not see Zombieland?

The nitpicking behind me, the first episode set the series to a very high bar. Episode Two fell short and Episode Three fell even shorter still but it is looking up. Three left off with a handful of the survivors in town, looking out for the one handed Merle and the duffel bag of rifles Rick dropped a while ago.

Best guess to what happens next week? They find Merle and the duffel bag at the same time because Merle recovered it first. Shots fired bringing about zombies onto their location (because they are attracted to the noise) and they have to make an uneasy truce to get out of the situation.

In for a penny, in for a pound (of braaains). It's only 6 episodes long so I'll be checking out the rest of the series. So far, 7.5 out of 10. It can only go downhill from here.