Ploumis Reviews AMC’s “The Walking Dead”…if my goal is to talk about the great stories in entertainment, then I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the GREAT story lines happening on TV right now.

Seriously, television has never been more beautifully layered with drama and peppered with smart comedy than it is right now.

The Walking Dead (2010 -)

Created by: Frank Darabont

Get past real-housewives-of-somewhere TV and the contestant- challenge-everybody-vote-now tearjerker, and dive into prime time! It’s an upward trend that has networks turning their attention towards stories that are both compelling and original!

AMC hits it out of the park with The Walking Dead

Let’s take, for example, the AMC network. Known mostly for nostalgia-based movie marathons (I personally spent treasured weekends watching all the Rocky and Planet of the Apes), AMC has one of THE MOST SUCCESSFUL original series on television right now. This is amazing, because despite the fact that the network was in territory that was totally uncharted for them, the characters in this hit series actually served as a theme around which a cult/comicon/pop culture frenzy was created. I am talking, of course, about The Walking Dead (2010).

Have we seen scary monsters on TV before? Of course we have, but not like this. This isn’t just horror; this isn’t just action or adventure. Imagine if Lost had a baby with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that baby married a classic Homeric hero. THAT is The Walking Dead. No exaggeration, everyone watches this show – all walks of life with all kinds of interests. This can be attributed not only to the storyline, but to the ethnically and morally diverse characters. In case you’ve haven’t jumped on this bandwagon yet, here is a brief story breakdown. Zombies or “walkers” have taken over. Once bitten by a zombie, you will die and turn into one yourself. Better yet, as the show goes on, we realize EVERYONE is already infected and will turn once they die.

The only way to kill a “walker” is to destroy the brain. Those are the rules of the Walking Dead World. The cast of characters (of which there are many) is headed by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). The pilot episode has Rick waking up completely alone in the hospital after being in a coma. He has no idea how long he’s been sleeping or where his family is. When he makes his way outside, he sees THEM. At this point we are treated to a great shot where we, along with Rick, are learning about the “walkers” for the first time. Rick must now survive the untold thousands of zombies and find his family. The gut-wrencher is that Rick’s family has moved on without him. Oh… and did I mention that during this time Rick’s wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) took comfort in getting with his best friend Shane (Jon Bernthal)?! Yeah – shady stuff. As far as great pacing and tension-layering combined with grueling-sights-never-seen-before go, there is no touching this pilot episode.

Ploumis Reviews AMC’s “The Walking Dead”

The master craftsmanship behind the look of the zombies can be likened to the moment you first see the talking monkeys in The Planet of the Apes. Simply revolutionary – they look so real. I mean to be honest, yes, they do explode and bleed in a way that is cartoonishly excessive. They chomp on people and rip them apart ridiculously easily. But we forgive the absurdity because we have already been visually appeased by the intricacy of their decay and movement.

Flash forward to now. Rick must lead his gang of survivors in the hopes of finding a safe haven away from the “walkers.” A safe haven means something different to each character. For some it means a CURE, for others it means a home, and for the rest it means finding others out there who are just like them. So please do the right thing.
Make sure you are ready for the show to return Feb 8th. If you are behind and haven’t seen the show before please get to streaming and binge out in time to start enjoying new episodes when they appear. You know where I’ll be Feb 8th – geeking out – hard. I invite you to join me!