Walking dead tv show with spoilers. Please mark comic spoilers.

I thought it was great, looking forward to the rest of the season, but why do you not have AMC in HD, DirecTV? You suck!

...Guess I'll just procure the HD version via alternate methods on Monday evenings.

The acting is what will make or break this show. So far it looks like they got a solid team but they still have a large cast to introduce and kill off. I wonder if they will be bringing in the younger kids. There aren't that many kids at that age that can act.

Yeah... even in that brief scene with Carl, I was watching him like a hawk for any sign of him being able to convincingly handle what comes down the road... at least in the book.

Watched the second airing last night.

AWESOME!

I haven't read very deep into the comic, but that's going to change.

The thing that was most striking to me is how "hands off" AMC is. This is the old movie rerun channel, right? That first scene took balls to air. Even on basic cable.

Looks like the second season is already greenlit, might be talking about a third if ratings hold at the end of this one.

Good news. It got great ratings.

AMC's The Walking Dead premiere ratings are enormous: The 90-minute Halloween night debut delivered 5.3 million viewers and a 3.3 adults 18-49 rating.
That's the largest demo audience for any series premiere on any cable network this year.
It's also the highest numbers for any series in AMC's history, and beat most non-sports programs on broadcast Sunday night.
MannishBoy wrote:

Good news. It got great ratings.

AMC's The Walking Dead premiere ratings are enormous: The 90-minute Halloween night debut delivered 5.3 million viewers and a 3.3 adults 18-49 rating.
That's the largest demo audience for any series premiere on any cable network this year.
It's also the highest numbers for any series in AMC's history, and beat most non-sports programs on broadcast Sunday night.

Good to hear.

Do we need to go ahead and make this the Catch All for the season?

Amazing Show! Just grabbed the season pass off of iTunes. It comes with the motion comic which I'll be checking out as well.

MannishBoy wrote:

Good news. It got great ratings.

Kick ass. It's kinda weird though, usually when I like a series it dies a quick death.

There is a great article on EW with the author of the comics, who is working on the show also.

'The Walking Dead': Comic book series creator Robert Kirkman answers our questions about last night's shocking pilot
by Clark Collis
Categories: Fall TV, Horror, Sci-Fi, Television, The Walking Dead, Zombies

Last night, AMC screened the pilot of new show The Walking Dead, in which Andrew Lincoln’s small town Georgia sheriff Rick Grimes desperately attempts to reunite with his family in a zombie apocalypse. The result was an epic start to this adaptation of Robert Kirkman‘s long-running comic—and an amazingly horrific display by TV standards.

How did pilot director Frank Darabont get away with featuring so much bloody mayhem? Will a knowledge of the original comic series help viewers guess which characters are going to live and which become undead chow? And was that really Jim Carrey cameo-ing as a zombie?

After the jump, Robert Kirkman—who is also one of the writers on the show and a Walking Dead executive producer—tackles these questions and more. Though, be warned, at times the conversation leans toward the gory and, if you haven’t yet seen the pilot, spoilery.

Entertainment Weekly: I’m guessing the Walking Dead pilot is the first to open with the hero shooting a cute—if admittedly zombiefied—little girl in the head.
Robert Kirkman: That could be a first possibly, yeah.

EW: Even your original comic didn’t kick off in such a brutal fashion. Was there much discussion about that whether that was a good idea?
RK: You know, it was just something Frank put into the script. At no point did AMC say, “Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.” So I guess because it was treated like it wasn’t a big deal, it didn’t really occur to me how bold that was until I was on set. It was always a question as to how much of that they were going to show, and AMC has surprised us with everything that they’re allowing us to do. There was a plan at one point to shoot a lot of gore—which is what we did—but the original plan was to have re-edited versions of the episodes, that would go on DVD. But at this point, AMC hasn’t really made us pull anything.

EW: The kid was wearing rabbit ear slippers, for goodness sake!
RK: Well, Frank is very demented.

EW: Then the show cut back in time to a long conversation about women between Rick Grimes and his fellow cop, Shane (Jon Bernthal). It’s like the first scene was saying, “Hey, if you don’t like zombie movies, then switch over to Brothers and Sisters, but the second sequence made clear that this is not just going to be a show about people plunging axes into zombies’ heads.
RK: Yeah. It’s a very cool juxtaposition [that explains] what this show is going to be. The show is going to serve a lot of masters. There’s going to be very straight human drama stuff, and then there’s going to be very graphic, crazy zombie stuff. And it’s neat that in the first minutes of the first episode you get a sense of exactly what the show is going to be bringing you, week after week.

EW: I suspect a lot of people who are coming across the story of The Walking Dead for the first time would have thought that the guy-wakes-from-coma-to-discover-that-the-world-has-been-overrun-by-zombies plot was very similar to 28 Days Later. Presumably you had seen that film when you wrote the first issue of the comic?
RK: No. Welcome to my life seven years ago. It was complete coincidence. I saw 28 Days Later shortly before the first issue of Walking Dead was released. That first issue came out in October of 2003 and 28 Days Later was released in the States in June of 2003. So we were working on our second issue by the time I saw it. It was going to be a matter of somehow trying to restage the entire first issue, because it was a very similar coma opening. I made a decision—which I pretty much regret at this point—I said, “You know what? It’s so different [from that point on], I will probably never hear anything about this.” And I was wrong.

EW: So when you saw the movie you must have thought, “Oh s—!”
RK: Yeah. It was a little annoying. But great minds think alike, right?

EW: A colleague of mind who saw the pilot, and is unfamiliar with the zombie genre, couldn’t believe that Rick didn’t spend more time going “So, what exactly happened while I was in a coma?” He doesn’t seem to show a lot of interest in the details of how the entire world fell apart.
RK: Well, he has a lot distracting him. He has a wife and son that’s out there and right now he’s focusing on that. As the show progresses, you’ll see that Rick is a very one-track-mind kind of guy. He’s not going to stand around and go, “Well, I’m going to find my wife and son, but first we need to find out what all these dead people are doing.” Plus, if something like this were to really happen, the people in Georgia aren’t going to walk out of their houses and say, “We need to get to the bottom of this!” Pardon my French, but that’s like a bulls— action movie kind of stance. That’s not how it would be. The main worry would be, “How are we going to survive today? How are we going to find food? How are we going to protect ourselves?” People would just assume that the government was trying to do something. Or they would just assume that there was nothing we could do.

EW: It’s interesting, because Rick’s a cop, but he’s clearly not John McClane.
RK: Rick is a much more realistic police office. I always kind of pictured that Rick Grimes was not a police officer that had used his gun very often. He was just one of those guys that basically just walks by the local malt shop and made sure the kids were getting home on time.

walking-deadEW: There was one zombie in the show that looked just like Jim Carrey, who worked with Frank Darabont on The Majestic. Can you confirm whether or not that was a cameo from Ace Ventura?
RK: It’s not Jim Carrey at all. And dammit, most days I remember that guy’s name. He’s a great guy. I’ve met him a few times. He works for [visual effects company] KNB. He appears like maybe four times as different zombies in the six episodes.

EW: Also, one of the first zombies we saw in the episode had no legs. Was that CGI or did you use an amputee actor?
RK: That was completely CGI. The woman was wearing basically blue stockings and then everything was cleaned out. There is an alarming amount of CGI in the pilot episode and in the whole show, and you would never know it. The company, Stargate, that does it, does a lot of CGI for television, and they do an amazing job. There’s a shot where Rick is riding off on the horse and his hat actually blew off, and they really liked that shot, and so they had Stargate go in and digitally put the hat back on his head.

EW: We also discovered in the pilot that zombies love eating horses, which is a departure from the undead mythology as set out in George A. Romero’s zombie films. In fact, as I’m sure you know, in Romero’s most recent zombie movie, Survival of the Dead, they spend a long time trying to persuade one of the zombies to eat a horse.
RK: Yes, that is true. Anecdotally, that is actually the exact same horse.

EW: Really?
RK: Yeah, yeah, the trained horse in the Walking Dead pilot and is the exact same horse from Survival of the Dead. But again, similar to the 28 Days Later situation, the zombies-eating-the-horse thing was in The Walking Dead seven years ago. So, screw you George Romero! [Laughs]

EW: In the comic book, the affair between Rick’s wife Lori and Shane is over by the time we catch up with the characters. But in the show, they’re depicted as still together. Why?
RK: Well, I didn’t know how long the comic book series was going to last. I hoped that it would become a success and survive for years and years. But at that time in my career, it was very early, I had had a lot of books canceled, just because of poor sales. So early on in the book I would move past storylines very quickly. I set up this love triangle and I resolved that story and moved along within the first [few] issues. But there’s a lot of story potential to mine there. One of the things that the TV show is able to do is to look at the comic book series with hindsight and go, “This would probably be something that we could explore more.” And that’s what we’re going to be doing. So we’ll be seeing a lot more of the Lori-Shane-Rick love triangle.

EW: I’m very familiar with your still ongoing comic series. So, how confident should I be that I know which characters are going to survive for a long time?
RK: Not. Confident. At all. One of the best aspects of the comic book series is, when you sit down to read an issue, you really have no idea what’s going to happen. Anybody could go at any moment. There’s really no sense of safety in the comic book at all. And I wanted to preserve that for the television show. If people on the show have ideas for different things to happen, I encourage that. I want people to be as surprised by the show as they are by the comic book series.

Check back next week, when Kirkman answers our questions about the second episode of The Walking Dead.

Did you watch the show last night? What did you think? And check out the latest TV Insiders podcast in the video below, featuring an interview with Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and star Andrew Lincoln!

Jayhawker wrote:
PandaEskimo wrote:

Do they hate women as much as the comic? I tried to get into the comic and it was somewhat interesting, but I couldn't stand all the woman hating that was in there. Does it seem to be following the comic pretty closely?

What do you mean by women hating? I'm reading the fourth TPB, so I'm better than 20 issues into the series. I'm not getting a sexist feel from the comic at all. I'm not saying women haven't been portrayed negatively, just that so have pretty much every male character. Heck, even Rick comes off as a pretty big ass.

I'm not going to derail the thread and be a total hater-face here, so I'll just put in a few sentences.

The wife character, really one of the only woman for the beginning of the series (first book, start of second), is constantly shown to be wrong about everything and eager to do stereotypical things like

Spoiler:

cheat on her husband, etc. There is also a big plot point in the book about giving the son a weapon and teaching him to use it where the wife argues against it and the main character for it. The kid then ends up saving someone's life by shooting a zombie in a clear message of, "see, that woman was wrong." sort of way. I think it's also the tone of a lot of things and the set up of having tons of these women in horrible conditions compared to the men. There are the set of girls hanging out with the old guy for "safety" and some other instances of similar things.

In the end, I got a very, "women are stupid, weak, and can't be trusted" vibe from the first and second books that made me stop reading.

I will be watching this every week until I win a walk on spot as a zombie

PandaEskimo wrote:

I'm not going to derail the thread and be a total hater-face here, so I'll just put in a few sentences.

The wife character, really one of the only woman for the beginning of the series (first book, start of second), is constantly shown to be wrong about everything and eager to do stereotypical things like

Spoiler:

cheat on her husband, etc. There is also a big plot point in the book about giving the son a weapon and teaching him to use it where the wife argues against it and the main character for it. The kid then ends up saving someone's life by shooting a zombie in a clear message of, "see, that woman was wrong." sort of way. I think it's also the tone of a lot of things and the set up of having tons of these women in horrible conditions compared to the men. There are the set of girls hanging out with the old guy for "safety" and some other instances of similar things.

In the end, I got a very, "women are stupid, weak, and can't be trusted" vibe from the first and second books that made me stop reading.

Interesting take, however

Spoiler:

for all intents and purposes, Lori thought Rick was dead when she was hooking up with his partner, and it had ended well before she discovered he had survived. As teaching Carl to shoot, while logically it was the correct choice, giving children firearms isn't going to be high on the list of "good ideas" for most people, and whereas Carl does end up protecting someone by shooting a zombie, later in the series he shoots a survivor he doesn't like, so the point is rendered moot anyway.

PandaEskimo wrote:

I'm not going to derail the thread and be a total hater-face here, so I'll just put in a few sentences...

As the series progresses some of the strongest characters are women, and horrible situations are dished out to men and women in relatively equal measures. Lori does some stupid things, sure, but that's just her character. It's not indicative of any overall sexist themes.

PandaEskimo wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:
PandaEskimo wrote:

Do they hate women as much as the comic? I tried to get into the comic and it was somewhat interesting, but I couldn't stand all the woman hating that was in there. Does it seem to be following the comic pretty closely?

What do you mean by women hating? I'm reading the fourth TPB, so I'm better than 20 issues into the series. I'm not getting a sexist feel from the comic at all. I'm not saying women haven't been portrayed negatively, just that so have pretty much every male character. Heck, even Rick comes off as a pretty big ass.

I'm not going to derail the thread and be a total hater-face here, so I'll just put in a few sentences.

The wife character, really one of the only woman for the beginning of the series (first book, start of second), is constantly shown to be wrong about everything and eager to do stereotypical things like

Spoiler:

cheat on her husband, etc. There is also a big plot point in the book about giving the son a weapon and teaching him to use it where the wife argues against it and the main character for it. The kid then ends up saving someone's life by shooting a zombie in a clear message of, "see, that woman was wrong." sort of way. I think it's also the tone of a lot of things and the set up of having tons of these women in horrible conditions compared to the men. There are the set of girls hanging out with the old guy for "safety" and some other instances of similar things.

In the end, I got a very, "women are stupid, weak, and can't be trusted" vibe from the first and second books that made me stop reading.

I can understand what you are saying, but I think were a little selective in what you read.

Spoiler:

Herschel was in a similar position where his action were shown to be wrong and dumb, when he refused to kill the zombies. They eventually killed a couple of his children, and it was a very similar moment in which he had to admit he was wrong. Later, Tyreese allows himself to be seduced by Michonne (but maybe that is racial). Over and over, all of the characters are shown to be extremely flawed. Rick is a weak leader, and is eventually replaced by a committee because they view him as having bloodlust.

And I'm not sure how you can't call it hating on the men wit the way they portray Shane, Dale and Chris. So while there are negative examples of women, I'd say there are an equal amount of examples of men being weak. I'm not disagreeing that many of the women are shown in a negative light, but I don't think anyone is really shown in a positive light, to tell the truth.

In fact, the best shooter is Andrea. Michonne saved Otis' life before they even knew each other, as she was just an overall badass with a sword, finally being forced to improvise with a shovel.

I think TWD is really just a very brutal story of survival in which people's actions (men and women) come back to bite them and their friends in butt over and over.

muttonchop wrote:

As the series progresses some of the strongest characters are women, and horrible situations are dished out to men and women in relatively equal measures. Lori does some stupid things, sure, but that's just her character. It's not indicative of any overall sexist themes.

Michonne keeps zombies as freaking pets.
IMAGE(http://tonymooreillustration.com/v-web/gallery/albums/album01/wd_19_cov.jpg)

I really enjoyed the first episode.

I had a "Holy Sh@t!" moment when he turned his horse around that one corner.

My only problem was...

Spoiler:

with when the main guy wasted a bullet on the crawling zombie. I know it was a sort of cathartic moment for him, going back and killing the first zombie that he really encountered, but a simple bludgeoning would have sufficed. He had just had the conversation with the father about gunshot and noise attracting others.

Just a small question that lingered in my head, I still loved it.

Also, I noticed that the crawler seemed to be slow and sluggish, even by zombie standards. I assumed that maybe it hadn't fed in sometime, is that a fair assumption? I haven't read the comics, is anything regarding the science behind the zombies ever brought up?

HansomB1derful wrote:
Spoiler:

Also, I noticed that the crawler seemed to be slow and sluggish, even by zombie standards. I assumed that maybe it hadn't fed in sometime, is that a fair assumption? I haven't read the comics, is anything regarding the science behind the zombies ever brought up?

Not super spoilery, but

Spoiler:

the science is not discussed, as it is just speculation. They do figure some stuff out about how to become one later in the story. But they do come to refer to the zombies as roamers or lurkers to describe their activity. The lurkers kind of just say put and come after them when stumbled upon. The roamers, well, roam around looking for food.

HansomB1derful wrote:

My only problem was...

Spoiler:

with when the main guy wasted a bullet on the crawling zombie. I know it was a sort of cathartic moment for him, going back and killing the first zombie that he really encountered, but a simple bludgeoning would have sufficed. He had just had the conversation with the father about gunshot and noise attracting others.

Spoiler:

He was leaving town, and it wasn't in the area with the father and son. I don't see why slowly drawing zombies to an area you are leaving in a car would matter.

MannishBoy wrote:
HansomB1derful wrote:

My only problem was...

Spoiler:

with when the main guy wasted a bullet on the crawling zombie. I know it was a sort of cathartic moment for him, going back and killing the first zombie that he really encountered, but a simple bludgeoning would have sufficed. He had just had the conversation with the father about gunshot and noise attracting others.

Spoiler:

He was leaving town, and it wasn't in the area with the father and son. I don't see why slowly drawing zombies to an area you are leaving in a car would matter.

Oh, I know...I was merely thinking about what I would have done in that situation.

Spoiler:

I wouldn't have wanted to be one bullet short on the next wave of zombies while thinking to myself, "Man...I should have just clubbed that crawling Female Doggo."

HansomB1derful wrote:

Oh, I know...I was merely thinking about what I would have done in that situation.

Spoiler:

I wouldn't have wanted to be one bullet short on the next wave of zombies while thinking to myself, "Man...I should have just clubbed that crawling Female Doggo."

Spoiler:

Going back was more sentimental than rational anyway.

HansomB1derful wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
HansomB1derful wrote:

My only problem was...

Spoiler:

with when the main guy wasted a bullet on the crawling zombie. I know it was a sort of cathartic moment for him, going back and killing the first zombie that he really encountered, but a simple bludgeoning would have sufficed. He had just had the conversation with the father about gunshot and noise attracting others.

Spoiler:

He was leaving town, and it wasn't in the area with the father and son. I don't see why slowly drawing zombies to an area you are leaving in a car would matter.

Oh, I know...I was merely thinking about what I would have done in that situation.

Spoiler:

I wouldn't have wanted to be one bullet short on the next wave of zombies while thinking to myself, "Man...I should have just clubbed that crawling Female Doggo."

Well...

Spoiler:

The look on his face seemed like one of compassion, it's hard to bludgeon someone compassionately.

Absolutely phenomenal. I love Darabont's attention to detail.

Seems like how Stephen King would write a zombie tale.

On how characters are portrayed. The biggest credit I give to Kirkman is bucking stereotype. If you watch Romero(save Dawn of the Dead), people are not redeemed by the trial of the Zombocalypse. Self centered jerks, are self centered jerks under extreme stress. Even 28 Days Later sticks to that stereotype.

A crazy woman with abandonment issues, is still crazy. A husband and wife on the rocks, are still on the rocks. Petty issues are not set aside for the greater good, they explode.

Still haven't watched it but I have high hopes which is weird - I don't like movies about zombies (unless the movie is based on L4D!) and I couldn't care less about comic books. I think it has something to do that it's a TV show, which I love.

liquid wrote:

Still haven't watched it but I have high hopes which is weird - I don't like movies about zombies (unless the movie is based on L4D!) and I couldn't care less about comic books. I think it has something to do that it's a TV show, which I love.

AMC is building quite a strong reputation for itself. the seem to be investing in smart TV. So when TWD was announced for them, I decided to read the comic books. I'm enjoying them, but don't consider them a must read by any means. But the TV show is about people. It just so happens they are dealing with a zombie apocalypse. I think it will live up to you expectations.

Jayhawker wrote:

...don't consider them a must read by any means.

You shut your filthy whore mouth!

Edit: I know tastes vary, but Kirkman's work in TWD is some of the best stuff to come out of comicdom in ages. TWD is a story about regular, flawed people facing incomprehensible stress and torment, not steroid pumped superheroes facing fantastic creatures and enemies, and I appreciate that. I enjoy superhero comics as well, but there is such a glut of those on the market they all blend together.

Can't wait to watch this tonight.

PandaEskimo, these guys are right... some of the best, strongest characters later in the books are female. Michonne is one. I really like Andrea myself.

MannishBoy wrote:

Good news. It got great ratings.

AMC's The Walking Dead premiere ratings are enormous: The 90-minute Halloween night debut delivered 5.3 million viewers and a 3.3 adults 18-49 rating.
That's the largest demo audience for any series premiere on any cable network this year.
It's also the highest numbers for any series in AMC's history, and beat most non-sports programs on broadcast Sunday night.

It beat Mad Men? I'm astounded.

Jayhawker wrote:

AMC is building quite a strong reputation for itself. the seem to be investing in smart TV. So when TWD was announced for them, I decided to read the comic books. I'm enjoying them, but don't consider them a must read by any means. But the TV show is about people. It just so happens they are dealing with a zombie apocalypse. I think it will live up to you expectations.

There are actually several cable networks with quality shows these days that push boundaries more than most of the broadcast networks do. AMC, FX, and even USA to a degree come to mind (although USA is more like broadcast-lite).

they never really touched on how long he was in the hospital, but by the looks of it, it was a LONG time.

According to an article i read, tehy are diverting from the comics to make it fresh. i've never read them so I cant say for sure but some people who die in the comics live on in the show and vice versa.

I have not watched a series except the odd family guy/simpsons/clevland shows in the past 6 years.

GAmign, movies and not watching tv has gotten in the way due to my hectic schedule and not being able to decide what to watch.
tHIS show is different. its now on my PVR and I will watch it every sunday or monday evening.

Thank you AMC. Thank you.
Ottawans, Channel 59 and 328 on Rogers.
IMAGE(http://splashpage.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/zombie1.jpg)