The Walking Dead - Season One

I was impressed when I watched the pilot about a year and a half ago, but I didn't get around to watching the entire season until now. What I like most about this show is that it doesn't rely too heavily on the horror of zombies; they're more a part of the setting than the subject of the show. Upon seeing the rest of the season, I'd place it as a drama about people trying to survive in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, not a horror about people gradually being killed by them. The latter would have been boring to me.

I think I'm also drawn to the scenery of the abandoned cityscape, like in the poster above. There's something fascinatingly haunting about a city that stands still when I normally associate cities with liveliness. Other apocalypse movies have this, but this one just feels like it has more empty space. Maybe because there isn't as much rubble. Not a lot of buildings were destroyed, there's just corpses and abandoned vehicles everywhere.

The season was a short six episodes, so I don't have a lot to say about the actual story and characters, but I think it was well done in terms of depicting how people act in desperate situations. The group of survivors had its share of douchebags, cowards, heroes, and lunatics, which I suppose are the four behavioural extremes of life-threatening situations. Obviously they're not having an easy time, but I like that they were given moments of happiness here and there so that the show didn't get too morbid. But at the moment nobody in the cast stands out as being a favourite character. I need more time to warm up to them.

Best Episode: The second episode, "Guts", in which Rick escapes both a tank and a department store with some newly discovered survivors, one of whom is left to die and one of whom steals a sports car.

This Week in Television - Nov. 22-26, 2010

It's a short week this week due to the American Thanksgiving, so just this once I thought I'd extend the post by adding my thoughts on three pilot episodes I downloaded during the week.

Glee
Sue marrying herself was awesome. Even though there are already at least one or two movies with that very plot, I still found it funny because it's Sue Sylvester. How can you go wrong with a track suit dress? Also very cool how she handled the situations with Kurt and her mother. I'm indifferent about Kurt leaving (I don't believe that he'll be away for long anyway) because, although he is apparently a fan favourite, he is an uninteresting stereotype to me. Bonus points for having a throwaway line about Lost guest stars and then having an actual Lost guest star on the show.

Survivor: Nicaragua
Recap episode this week.

Mad Men (Pilot Episode)
The written introduction about the advertising executives coining their own nickname tells us everything we need to know up front: these guys are confident, motivated, smooth-talking alpha males. The interesting thing about the pilot is that it pretends to set up Don Draper as being slightly different from the others - a more morally sound and socially conscious ad man - but it turns out that this, too, is only a dishonest image being sold to the viewer. At the end of the episode, Don proposes a shady marketing angle for cigarettes and then goes home to his wife and kids, who until that point we didn't realize he was cheating on. The show itself becomes the ad man and we are the consumer. Well played, Mad Men. Well played.

The Walking Dead (Pilot Episode)
I'm not huge on zombies but I'm starting to enjoy them after recent experiences (Zombieland, Dead Rising). I liked that, in this one, we skipped all of the initial craziness and carnage and came upon the zombies slowly, as our main character was in the hospital and only awoke once the zombie apocalypse was already over, and even then he was only coming upon the walking corpses one at a time at first. Also the zombie makeup/effects were very well done. Good production values all around, basically. I don't know if I can say the pilot has hooked me, but I am interested enough to watch another episode.

Eastbound and Down (Pilot Episode)
When it comes to comedy, you can't go wrong with a main character sporting a mustache and a curly mullet. Danny McBride plays a former baseball star who becomes washed up and has to teach gym at an elementary school. I liked the montage of his deteriorating skills as we see the speed clock measuring his pitches getting slower and slower over time. Like a lot of great characters, Kenny Powers is another of those who would be far from likable in real life but makes a hilarious TV character. He is arrogant, obnoxious, lazy, and dumb, but we root for him because he's funny and because his life has become really sad and pathetic after he once lived the dream.

Hero of the Week: Sue Sylvester from Glee. Even though I generally praise her every week, this is her first time making Hero of the Week.

Douchebag of the Week: Pete from Mad Men, because he already seems like the douchebaggiest of all the "mad men".