This paragraph reminded me of my very first introduction to zombies, a short story which at that age I had no business reading. Never heard of zombies before, nor did I have a picture of some of the body parts mentioned, which made it even more surreal. Various lines and images stayed with me till this day, including this, for some reason:
Calcutta was a city relatively unsurprised to see its dead rise and walk and feed upon it. It had seen them doing so for a hundred years.
Here it is online, if anyone’s interested. It’s Calcutta, Lord of Nerves by Poppy Z. Brite.
True, if it’s a virus, where did it come from? I thought that the film Contagion (the epidemic film with Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet) did a good job with that.
As to the pilot episode, I rather liked it, especially the final scene where the two older adults come to realize that something really freaky is going on.
They should have set the show in San Diego during Comic Con. The walkers would have had an entire week to wreck havoc and everyone in the city would have thought it was just those crazy Comic Con people up to their usual wackiness.
We’ll never find out because “Walking Dead”, but I’d be really curious to discover the reason the “zombie switch” gets thrown for the whole LA area all at once.
Hopefully it’s because of a release of Trioxin gas.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the episode, by pilots generally suck. Pilots in established SF/fantasy settings have it even worse: they need to be geared to new viewers, but for existing viewers, there’s little surprise or world-building.
It’ll probably take a few more episodes to get over the initially intro bits and then it’ll be time to judge the show on its merits.
I liked it well enough. Not as strong as the Walking Dead premiere, and it took waaaaay too long to introduce the cast. I would have preferred a larger cast with several “Point of View” switches leading up to the survivors within the POV’s meeting up (around episode 5 or 6 maybe) and going from there as a big group dynamic. But that’s not what we got, and I’m happy enough to keep watching and see where it goes. For now.
Absolutely outstanding first episode. I really enjoyed the slow burn, the blending of normal life with the beginning signs of the impending outbreak, the glimpses of the first wave of walkers. So much goodness. Can’t wait for the second episode.
I hate shows that pop around to nine million different characters who ultimately for some strange reason all seem to magically find each other. I hope the show goes for a phased character intro, where the beginning group meet up with other show characters in realistic ways.
I don’t think that’s magic. The narrative focuses on those people because they will meet each other. It’s a form of narrative flashback, just shown in order.
I prefer the snowball method. Start with a small group of characters and follow them. Add in new characters as the original group encounters them. Eventually you will have introduced your core cast and then the show progresses normally. In any event, quality story lines and acting is the ultimate key.
Just finished watching this, and I liked it for the reasons others have listed. While I don’t feel a real connection to any character besides the dad yet, the slow build and ignorance of the main cast was entertaining, as were glimpses of the growing crisis in the background. I hope they explore asymmetry of information in future episodes. The hospital doctors and nurses seemed clued in that something was happening, for example, as did the kid with the knife. I’m also looking forward to scenes of societal collapse–the failed struggle against a rising tsunami of walkers has the potential to be great. But as Telefrog mentioned in a previous post, I hope the series ends at that point. We don’t need a second version of The Walking Dead covering the same post-apocalyptic ground in a different setting.
I prefer the snowball method as well. Mainly because the multiple POVs that meet up later method is only really worthwhile if all the POVs are compelling, which they rarely are. The snowball method means maximum screen time goes to the snowball storyline, it has the best chance of getting the audience invested. If you have POV 1, POV 2, POV 3, and POV 4, every minute of screen time each POV gets is one less minute of time for the other ones. What happens if 1 and 2 are good and the other ones boring?
Really liking the slow build. I hope they keep with that. I actually was impressed at how realistic the world-building felt. Little things that added up. One of my favorite bits was the kids in class saying that the traffic incident video was obviously fake. And “he needs to be downstairs, now.”
I’ve lost interest in the main Walking Dead show over time (it’s still good, but not enthralling), but this one has captured my attention with the change in setting and timeframe.
This is going to be weird season for me because I’ve always been a Netflix watcher for Walking Dead, so I could never watch them live because the previous season never goes up until the live season is almost over.
But my copy of last season of Walking Dead just arrived today, so I’m going to catch up this week and be ready to watch live with my friends this time. So now I’m going from occasional Walking Dead Netflix binges to watching both series live for the first time. I’m very curious how it holds up when I have to wait a week, for both shows.
I’ve been watching TWD “live” the whole time, so I’ve probably forgotten a lot of what’s happened over the years… is there a recommended episode-synopsis site out there where one can refresh one’s memory?
I finally got around to watching this; I liked it a great deal.
I actually gained some affection for the main characters, which surprised me based on everyone else’s comments in this thread. I thought the father was very likable, even when he more-or-less gave up with his (natural) son. I thought the mother was acting very naturally; maybe she’s a bit of a hyper do-something-NOW type of person, but I believed that in the moment. The daughter was not particularly well fleshed-out (no pun intended, but let’s roll with it), but the episode wasn’t really about her.
The actors all seemed pretty good, especially the junkie son: he did “wasted and drying out” pretty well and conveyed a wide range of pretty genuine-seeming emotion; I have hope for great things.
I also liked a lot of the little touches mentioned above:
[ul]
[li] The first scene with the junkie son staggering around in a very zombie-like fashion was nice, as others have pointed out.
[/li]
[li] The self-absorption while the world semi-obviously goes to hell around everyone was delicious. The constant sirens and helicopters that no one seems to notice, the video that everyone thinks is fake, the shooting that is an annoying inconvenience while the main characters are dealing with their family drama. Great stuff.
[/li]
[li] The music in the second half was very similar to the merciless beats in 28 Days Later and Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead. It’s an interesting contrast to the background tones they use in TWD.
[/li]
[li] There was what might have been an interesting throw-away line with the black boyfriend while he and the daughter were cuddling on… whatever the hell that thing was. He said, “Do you think I’m magic?” more-or-less apropos of nothing. Time will tell if that is supposed to be a wry commentary of black characters in TWD universe or not, I suppose.
[/li][/ul]
All in all, I’m looking forward to the short season.
This sounds interesting: Zombie Mile-High Club. Wait - no, that’s not the image I was going for. Undead Airlines? That’s probably better. Apparently “Flight of the Living Dead” has already been used.
Anyway, this get a little confusing: AMC has done web-only content that links into The Walking Dead before, showing the back-story to a little vignette glimpsed in the show, but this looks to be something a bit different.
Here’s the plan: EW has exclusively learned AMC is producing a half-hour special that will tell a stand-alone story following a group of passengers facing a walker attack on an airline while in flight. One character who survives that encounter will then join the cast of Fear the Walking Dead in season 2.
[…] The airline attack story will debut online, and will unfold this in chapters that will air during Walking Dead’s on-air telecasts. In other words: You’re watching The Walking Dead, AMC cuts to commercial break, then you get a chapter in the as-yet-untitled stand-alone airline attack drama.
Got that? I’m not sure I do. FTWD will finish its run, and the “normal” TWD will start airing in October. During TWD episodes’ commercial breaks, you’ll see little segments of this half-hour special showing how well zombies and crowded airline cabins mix. Or maybe the half-hour thing is on-line and the bite-sized parts are during the show for something larger. Dunno. Anyway, at the end of the thing, at least one of the airline-peanut-packets-for-zombies will survive and will go on to join the cast in FTWD during it’s second, 20-episode season.
This kind of gimmick could be cool if they used it in over the top ways. Instead of the relatively boring airplane scenario, what if during the running of the bulls a zombie attack happened? So someone has to survive the bulls and the zombies! What if during a marathon, like in Los Angeles, since the new show is set here, a bunch of zombies start going after the runners? At first everyone thinks it’s just people disrupting the event, then maybe it’s terrorism…but no it’s zombies!
