The Walking Dead - Season 1 (2010) Review

The Walking Dead - Season 1 (2010) Tv Show Review

****Contains SPOILERS****

This zombie apocalypse tv show has grown increasingly popular since it's inception in 2010. Based off the popular comic books, and adapted for television by show runner/ creator by Frank Darabont best known as writer and director of the successful films The Green Mile (1999) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). This show seemed to have all the right ingredients. An excellent premise, although not much different from every other zombie horror flick.

What I guess sets The Walking Dead apart is the tv show format itself and I was really interested to see how the zombie apocalypse narrative would be adapted into an episodic format. The show has all the right ingredients with a great cast, excellent production value, great special effects and good writing without much of the cheese that usually comes along in the zombie film genre. What also sets this particular zombie story apart is the setting, placing it in near Atlanta, Georgia sets it away from other major cities that have been the setting for other highly successful tv shows. The setting isn't that surprising however, as the American mid-west is a common setting for zombie films and also plays well with the elements in the show taken from the Western genre. Perhaps even taking this too far with the shot of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) striding on horseback towards an abandoned city, although it is a spectacular piece of imagery.

This show had real promise and I gave it a chance although I was wondering whether it could live up to the hype. Unfortunately after what was a pretty solid pilot episode and a great opening in the second episode it lost me by episode 3. Of course the problem with the zombie genre itself is that there are only a number of ways for it to go: you shoot your friends/ companions in the head before they turn and/or shoot yourself in the head before you turn and the rest of the story is running around with shotguns or other weapons shooting the heads off zombies with lots of gore before that does happen.

What is so disappointing about this show is that the pilot episode promised a real drama alongside the gorey zombie apocalypse with real emotional drama and rounded characters. Disappointingly the choice of hero Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) as the 'cop' or rather the 'cowboy' of this story is so overladen with moralistic compassion as to be irrational and irritating in the situation. His compassion for the 'walkers' as they are called seems bizarre although the scene where the father in the first episode attempts to shoot his undead wife is heartbreaking. There are moments of strong emotion that are really powerful, however overall the stories suffer under the writing.

While the tag line for the series is "Fight the Dead. Fear the Living" it fails to live up to that promise. The concept of fighting off zombies while exploring the conflict and ugly side of humanity is extremely appealing, but unfortunately instead of coming to fruition this theme devolved into a more superficial pseudo-moralistic drama where each episode the characters face some heavy handed "moral" conflict. Whether it's the white-trash rough neck who beats his wife or racism these really important issues become trivialised by the situation the characters are surrounded by and are almost always resolved by obvious means, thus dissipating the conflicts in unsatisfying ways.

Taking a look at the social issues of the show it definitely fails to live up to the powerful social commentaries of it's filmic predecessors such as Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero etc. While the middle-aged white-male father and husband is the genre trope, it is increasingly unsatisfying especially in current times. As the main character and hero of the show Rick Grimes started off as an interesting and complex character depicted as a compassionate man who was struggling in his marriage and working as a cop. The scene where he sobs after finding his wife and son have left and are likely dead in the pilot episode was another powerful moment. Also his "quest" to find his wife and son are another staple of the horror and Western genres and this is fine. Even the somewhat comic cowboyesque riding the horse into the "town" aka city of Atlanta was fine.

 However once Rick became the default leader of the group he becomes far too concerned with his role as "savior" and "policeman" of the apocalypse. His obvious role as the moral compass of the survivors is patronising as decision after decision he makes is both irrational and far too "compassionate" and fails under the circumstances. Playing alongside this "white knight" is his best friend come-rival Shane Walsh (Jon Berthal) is actually the voice of reason among the chaos and increasingly it becomes annoying as to why the other characters follow Rick to folly after folly.

Another irritating feature of the series is it's obvious abuse of serious social and relationship issues into trivialised melodrama. Thus the affair between Shane and Lori Grimes loses impact both because it seems trivial while there are zombies eating people everywhere and also seems to be used instead to create more melodramatic tension between Shane and Rick, thus attemtping to set Shane up as a potential antihero of the show. This seems interesting as a concept, yet is actually highly frustrating as the audience seems to be fed that we should like Rick over Shane despite Shane being the one who rescued Rick's wife and son and kept the entire group safe and nearly always makes rational decisions that best serve the group. Instead the writers chose in the favor of superical melodrama and tension by demonising Shane and his attempt to rape or force Lori after their affair ended.

Shane (Left) and Rick (Right)

Rick (Left) and Shane (Right)

Cowboy cop, Rick Grimes

Another criticism of the show is the lack of strong female characters. Like most things in the show that came in strong and quickly petered out, we are introduced to Andrea first as she shoves a gun in Rick's face, but she quickly devolves into a hysterical woman saying basically that "we're all going to die". It doesn't help that she also fits the genre stereotype as a beautiful, blonde, white woman. Even the first impression of her character as a strong agressive woman must be rejected as later during that episode Rick points out to her that the safety was still on when she was pointing the gun at him, thus ensuring a sort of retroactive impotence of her character and then conforming to the more traditional dynamic of strong male warrior as female protector and teacher. What is even more frustrating on this issue is the jokes made by the woman in later episodes about the "division of labour" between the men and women in the camp. Unfortunately this legitimate complaint is sidelined in favour of the issue of wife-beating which is unfortunately resolved by the "rescue" by Shane who beats the hell out him and the issue of women reverting to "traditional" roles is forgotten.

The Walking Dead, Rick (Left) and Andrea (Right)

Another promising strong female character was Lori Grimes (played by Sarah Wayne Callies) who was first introduced in the second episode taking a stance against Shane and defying his rule about going out alone and her strong desire to warn other survivors to stay away from the city. However it is quickly revealed that her deference to him is more to do with their illicit romantic affair, and his objections more to do with his macho possessive desire of her, than to do with reason, although it still makes sense. Even worse is that she becomes the "scarlet woman" who is not only having an "affair" after she thinks her husband is dead, it also happens to be her husband's best friend.

At first I thought this story line had promise and that it would perhaps be revealed that the affair between Lori and Shane pre-dated the apocalypse creating a more complex emotional dynamic between Lori/ Shane/ Rick and would also nicely tie in with the early scene in the pilot between Shane and Rick in the police car as they discussed their relationships. Also if the affair with Shane and Lori pre-dated the zombie apocalypse this would support what Rick was saying about the problems in their marriage. However at least in the first season there is no evidence for this, perhaps it will be further explored later or dropped entirely. It seems at least to be dropped in favor of the drama between Shane and Lori and his aggressive persuit of her and her fearful rejection of him. Lori's constant and at times idiotic support of Rick seems more to do with guilt than making rational decisions for survival, which make her seem weak and unlikable. The show also, seems to want to spin out the tension about when Rick will find out about the relationship between Lori and Shane. This dynamic isn't that interesting and is relatively predicatable, where I'm sure Lori will end up crying and begging Rick for forgivenness and Shane will plead that he thought that he was dead and that he looked after his family etc. And of course Rick's reaction will be of the modern-masculine man as his eyes soften with tears i'm sure he will still punch Shane in the face, but as the moral knight of the show, I'm sure he will show an exemplar capacity for forgiveness.

The Walking Dead, Lori

The Walking Dead, Shane & Lori

Overall I found the show to be incredibly disappointing and frustrating as the characters made idiotic and "compassionate" decision after decision while the melodramatic sad toned music played along, yet instead of feeling sorry for the characters I became increasingly more annoyed and disinterested. The characters lack development and as a zombie story, the characters are inevitably dying left right and centre so character development is either squandered or fails to materialise.

All this would have been fine if I could have embraced The Walking Dead as a pure gore-fest and just settled down to enjoy some great zombie flesh-eating and shot-gun action. While the effects are great and the first couple of episodes had some really good gore and violence, the zombies sort of got sidelined in favor of these annoying human melodramas. Failing as a social commentary and good drama series, i'd have preferred it be an honest gratuitous gore fest, more akin to True Blood which is over the top with sex and violence and gore. I say if you're going to go superficial, don't pretend to be a gritty moralistic drama like The Shield (which creator of Walking Dead Frank Daramont actually directed an episode of) just embrace the gore and don't pretend to be something that you're not. Oh and did I mention that the show was incredibly predicable so it also failed to be thrilling at all.

It is disappointing that instead of actually following the zombie horror tradition of exploring abstractly the social and cultural prejudices of the time, The Walking Dead instead pretends to be a social drama albeit alongside a zombie apocalypse, it in actuality still reflects the cultural prejudices and sterotypes still prevalent in American and Western culture. And yes, I haven't even mentioned racial issues and yes there are two African American major characters and yes there is one asian character in the group,  but this hardly makes the show a diverse representation of anything at all. The same goes for gender as well. The show still is focused around a white male character and dominated by the husband/ wife/ child narrative.

Of course this is a TV SHOW I acknowledege that, and yes it's "just for entertainment", but what is most frustrating is that this show had such potential with great acting and special effects and it really could have been a great show, but instead it is a mediocre show and isn't even that entertaining. Frankly I fail to see what all the hype about this show has been about. I'm still undecided about whether I will watch any of the later seasons, which I'm sure will becomes more melodramatic and ridiculous as time goes on.