Fight the dead, fear the living
I found myself in a debate earlier this week with a friend concerning the plot of AMC’s The Walking Dead. My friend believes that the show is about killing zombies in every possible brutal way, and is slowly losing interest in the later seasons as the focus has shifted to drama between the living survivors. He is not wrong. For those of you looking for a mindless zombie killing frenzy, you probably will not be wholly satisfied with The Walking Dead, due to the fact that it focuses more on an allegorical story of morals and what it means to retain one’s humanity when faced with death.
Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), the primary character of the series, is the Deputy-Sheriff of a small town outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and leads a pretty ordinary life with his wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), and son, Carl (Chandler Riggs). One day as he is chasing down a suspect, he is shot and falls into a coma, left on the brink of death.
A couple of weeks later, Rick awakens in what appears to be a war torn hospital. As he walks out he discovers he is still in his hometown, but everything has taken a turn for the worse. The town appears abandoned by humans and overrun by the living dead, who Rick begins to call “Walkers.” Rick must now search for his family and friends while struggling to survive and accept this new post-apocalyptic world he has awoken to.
The show first started in Oct. 2010 and is still going strong. Currently, it has three seasons completed, with the fourth ongoing, and a grand total of 44 episodes aired to date. It does not look like the zombie-craze is ending anytime soon. The viewership is continually growing, as a reported 16.1 million viewers tuned into the season four premiere, shattering AMC show records. It has won numerous awards, and was nominated as Best New Series for the 2011 Writers Guild of America Awards, as well as Best Television Series-Drama at the 68th Golden Globe Awards.
As good as it is, this show is truly not for the faint of heart. Of course it contains the regular ‘viewer discretion is advised’ due to the mature themes, coarse language, sexual content, and violence. However, the blood and gore in the show deserves some special attention. The truth is that killing zombies realistically produces a whole lot of blood spatter, and the show really is not shy at all in portraying many creative ways of killing off the walking dead. If you can stomach all the gore, you are in for one hell of a ride.
At the surface, The Walking Dead is a zombie-killing-human-drama hybrid, but the writing of the show is so brilliant that it manages to engage its audience on a very personal level. A common question the show tends to ask the characters is if they are willing to do whatever it takes to survive in a world with no future at the cost of their own humanity and morality. Although the characters are the ones answering, this also forces the audience to question their own morality and if they would be able to make the same decisions in order to survive. I know that I’ve stayed up multiple nights after watching an episode and wondered what I would do in those same situations. That is what makes this show so awesome.
Needless to say, The Walking Dead is Overview-approved, if not for the sole reason that it mentally prepares you for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.