TV Review: The Walking Dead (2010-)

By T-Rav

AMC’s The Walking Dead was a breakout hit last fall, which might not surprise you at first glance. I mean, come on. It’s ZOMBIES, people! Zombies which have to be killed using violence; lots and lots of violence! And the network gave it a Halloween premiere date, perhaps the most obvious marketing ploy in the history of television. What could go wrong? Actually, a lot could have, and the fact that it didn’t speaks to the ways in which it was designed as something more than your standard gorefest.

As many of you probably know, TWD began several years ago as a graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, before being adapted for television by Frank Darabont (The Mist). There are over a dozen installments in the series, but don’t just run out and grab some to read if you want to know what the next TV season will bring; TWD has already diverged from its written predecessor in certain ways, and the producers have indicated it will do so again. The main protagonist is Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), who has a typical small-town life in the South before getting badly injured in a shootout and spending quite some time in a coma-like state. When he emerges—in a very 28 Days Later-esque fashion—the zombie apocalypse has struck, and he must do all he can to find his family and keep them alive. In following this plotline, the story deviates from the rest of the zombie genre in several important ways.

Most zombie movies have pretty shallow content; plus, they’re a very paint-by-numbers affair, with the same subplots and conflicts recycled over and over again. You have the living dead striking out of nowhere, people freaking out and then quickly rallying to exterminate their foes in lots of inventive ways. Often you’ll see our “heroes” make a game out of it, seeing how many corpses they can destroy at once, preferably with a few comedic touches as well. There’s one or two people trying to enrich themselves in the middle of the crisis (how much sense does this make…oh forget it, it’s not like logic is a big element in these stories). Minorities are well represented, and of course they’re all strong, wise, born leaders, all those other positive connotations. And you’ll usually have a few identifiably bad guys, representing every negative stereotype Hollywood can think of—especially cold, manipulative corporate types—who you’re happy to see wind up as a fresh meal in short order. If the script is in the hands of a talented director, these villains may also serve to turn the film into some kind of broader social commentary. But it’s still made very clear who you should be rooting for and against.

Up to a point, this is okay, because most of the time, you’re watching precisely because this is such lightweight, superficial entertainment, and not social commentary. (Come on, you know you are!) But this doesn’t really work for a long-term television series, which depends on character development and so forth. What TWD has done to stand out is create interesting, realistic characters, characters we’re interested in watching even when there are no ghouls around. Also, they react to the events around them in more believable ways -- if a zombie apocalypse were to actually occur, people would not be imitating Dawn of the Dead, because that’s not realistic.

First, the realism. There are a lot of good examples of this, but there’s a couple in the pilot episode which I thought really set the tone for the show. The more shocking instance is in the opening scene: The very first zombie we see killed is a child, an eight- or nine-year-old girl with blond hair, wearing pajamas and clutching the remains of a teddy bear. This in itself indicates a more somber tone than is often the case in the genre. Those semi-comedic killing games I mentioned earlier? Yeah, not really comedic when a kid is the target. But the more stirring incident, in my opinion, occurs later. In it, Rick Grimes has been rescued by father-and-son team Morgan and Duane, had the crisis explained to him, and is setting off to find his family. But first, he sees a legless, decomposing zombie crawling through the grass. Instead of whooping it up and seeing if he can get the creature with one casual shot, Rick walks up to it, says “I’m sorry this happened to you,” and only then blows its brains out. Coupled with simultaneous shots of Morgan’s internal struggle as he tries to shoot his dead-and-turned wife, this scene made it clear the show was not to be a festival of guns and gore.

At other times, of course, we do see zombies dispatched in a more lackadaisical manner, but rarely if ever does it come across as sadistic. To me, this also seems truer to life. It couldn’t be easy, even knowing a zombie had to be killed, to put a gun to what was once somebody’s parent or child or spouse, an innocent human being, and pull the trigger. Maybe you’d get more jaded about it over time, but then TWD isn’t far along, either. It just seems to reflect more accurately how real people would behave when placed in that situation.

This realism is reinforced by how the characters themselves are developed and deepened. While there are several people we think we can describe as “good guys,” there really isn’t anyone so far that can be described as a clear-cut villain. Take the character of Merle Dixon (Michael Rooker), who appears in the second episode. When we first meet him, he appears to be another mindless racist Southern redneck, hoisting his gun and making slurs against a black member of the group. This, incidentally, became Commentarama Reason #389 To Bash Big HollywoodTM, which BH earned for running an atrocious piece bashing this episode. According to BH, this was a classic example of left-wing Hollywood perpetuating Southern stereotypes. That happens, of course, but it almost certainly was not the case here. Had the author given the episode more than a superficial viewing, he would have noticed that Dixon had no problem teaming up with said black member as long as it served “our common interests,” and beyond that, the man displays a wide range of genuine emotions, from fear to anger to regret to determination and so on. The character is not a stereotype, but a unique individual—a deeply flawed one, to be sure, but a unique one nonetheless. Again, this contributes to TWD’s simulation of reality, because we can feel like these are real people we’re watching. In fact, the episode generally seen as the weakest of the season, “Vatos,” includes a tough-talking Hispanic gang, which we quickly find out have hearts of gold and are charitable and so on. This feels formulaic and predictable—aka, not real.

Finally, I must mention the metaphorical meaning of the show’s title. The Walking Dead does not refer, primarily, to the zombies. Remember in The Terminator, when Kyle Reese stressed the need to “stay alive—in here [the head] and in here [the heart]”? (Did he say that? Ah, screw it, work with me here.) That’s really the struggle the characters in this series face; traveling through some of the most brutalizing, dehumanizing conditions imaginable, they face a daily struggle to hold on to their reason and their compassion, and to avoid becoming as cold and soulless as the corpses they flee from. It is they who are, or at least are in danger of becoming, “The Walking Dead.” Their efforts to avoid this fate are at the heart of the graphic novels, and will surely continue to be at the heart of the TV show, too.

TWD hasn’t been perfect. Some of its characters need fleshing out, and it’ll be interesting to see whether the writers can continue to keep the audience so engaged in the show in upcoming seasons. But so far, it’s off to a good start, thanks to rising above mindless gore and giving us realistic characters and plot lines and making us feel connected to the drama on the screen. Hollywood, please take note.