Review: The Walking Dead- The Good, Bad and... The Dead People.

I'm going to make a disclaimer first:  I'm not a zombie flick fan.  That said, I wanted to give a review on the pilot episode of Season 1 of The Walking Dead.

First, I missed The Walking Dead when it first aired.  I also missed the marathon that AMC had about a week ago.  But my composer friend, Hans Karl, mentioned that I should check out the show because he saw some similarities between it and AWAKENING.  (No there's no zombies in AWAKENING, all my dead people stay dead).  But there are a few similiarities.

The pilot episode titled, "Days Gone By" clocks at about 1hr 7 mins.  Compare that to the pilot episode of LOST that was 42 mins for Part I and 42 mins for Part II.  The opening of both LOST and  The Walking Dead pilot episodes both start off with the great concept of throwing the audience and main character into the middle of a big concept by having them wake up.  With The Walking Dead he doesn't wake up on the first shot, but eventually that's what happens.

The Good. One of the things that drew me to see the pilot episode of The Walking Dead was the epic scale of this concept.  Like LOST, the pilot teasers and screen shots didn't look like the "traditional" TV show but more like an large scale movie-like TV show.  I liked this as a concept.  This was the high point of the TV show... But....

The bad part of the pilot was the fact that even though there is this large scale epic feel to the TV show, we don't get to Atlanta until the end.  The beginning started pretty big with the character waking up in the hospital and discovering that he woke up to something unbelievable.  But that middle section is where things drag.  This is also the part that makes the pilot go from the 42 minute long episode length that it should have had to the 107 minutes that it is.  I feel that they could have kept the dad and son that find the main character to just simply characters that push the story plot forward.  My thought as a storyteller was, "get the main character to Atlanta ASAP!".  Give me the big stuff.  The reason I'm watching is to see where he's suppose to be going.

They could have really developed the entering of Atlanta.  That shot of him on the highway going into Atlanta was cool.  I wanted to see that.  But it was basically just a couple shots.  They didn't really develop that part.  There wasn't really much of a development of the urgency to warn him not to enter from the group outside that heard him on the CB.

My favorite part was the when he entered the city.  The ending was great.  It was intense.  I wondered if he was going to surivive, even though I knew that he would.  The whole thing with the tank was a great and even the last piece with the voice.

But my concern goes back to the length of the middle section between when he woke up and getting to Atlanta.   There was also the opening scene with the child zombie that I debated whether that was necessary either.  I wonder if the producers were concerned that it would be compared too much to a LOST opening if they started right off with him waking up.  But my feeling was that the child zombie scene was either in the wrong spot or was unnecessary.  I know the it would have been seen as a "shocker moment" for television.  But the problem was that by the time I saw the pilot episode that specific scene had been shown so much on youtube by fans that it lost it's shocker effect on me.

The Ugly.  My serious gripe is not with the show.  I thought over all the shown was spectacular.  I would never had watched a zombie TV show if they hadn't done something unique with this story.  But it's what they did with the show after it aired that bothers me.  The producers of LOST and ABC did an brilliant move with their episodes.  Right after airing they would be available online, for FREE, with limited commercial interuptions.  This service is provided by Move Networks.  By doing this LOST continued to build a larger and larger fan base online for each season.  Even now people in other parts of the world are finding episodes and watching them.

But AMC made a serious mistake.  If you want to watch any of Season 1's episodes you have to go to Amazon or itunes or Cinmea Now's site.  It cost about 1.99 per episode.  First I tried Cinema Now, I paid the 1.99 download fee.  Then went through the pain-in-the-butt process of trying to watch the thing.  At the end I got frustrated and sent them an email about my frustation.  Then I went to Amazon and finally watched on their streaming service.

Here's my beef with this process.  First, by creating a pay wall you seperate an potential fan of season 2 from getting addicted to the show.  Second, I already get cable.  I'm paying about $25 for my cable, which includes AMC.  Why do I have to pay another 1.99 per episode, to download,  so I can see what I missed?  Why can't they offer a streaming service option like ABC does by working with Move Networks.  I'm pretty sure Move Networks advertising would equal the 1.99 per episode fee that I had to pay to Amazon or the other options.  I didn't want to own a copy, I just wanted to see if the show was worth all the hype.  AMC should have made a sizeable profit of the advertising from the original airing that any money after that is just extra.  Wouldn't it be of greater value to the show to multiply their fan base by offering a FREE, with limited commerical interuption, option, then "nickle-and-dime'ing" customers over a 1.99 per episode charge?  I would think fans for the next season were of a greater value.   Maybe I'm wrong.

This is my review of the pilot to The Walking Dead., Season 1.