AMC has decided only two episodes into the second season that the ratings have been strong enough to go ahead and green light a third season of The Walking Dead.
Seeing that the second season premiere set records for a cable premiere, it isn’t too surprising that a third season of the zombie series. While there was a slight drop off in the numbers for the second episode of the season, it was still high and enough to make AMC decide that they were committed to the project.
Having only skimmed the first two episodes so far, I can’t say I’m seeing a whole lot of improvement over the complaints I had with the first season, but we’ll see if they can ever get this show where.
Expect the third season around this time next year.
AMC is kicking the marketing for the second season of The Walking Dead into high.
With the season premiere set for October 16th, get ready to see a ton of zombie action coming to your commercials everywhere you turn. These first two definitely show the different sides of the series: Zombie action and character development. Considering they changed the zombies from the comic (they can’t run or climb walls or stairs in the comic series), and the addition of new characters, and changes to others, who knows where they’re going with this. (add in the fact some folks have lived longer than they should have already …)
I find myself getting mildly excited for our second go around with this series, but also ready to be horribly devastated once again.
The second season of The Walking Dead is almost upon us as it starts on Oct. 16th, and that means it’s time to start promoting the heck out of it.
If a lot of this footage feels familiar, you aren’t dreaming. A good chunk of this was shown in the San Diego Comic-Con reel from back in July, but this is the first time it’s being used as the trailer.
Having just read the latest trade paperback in the series, I am reminded again of why the comic is so much better than the book, and especially when it comes to the character of Andrea. The discussion she has in this trailer about how she chose to stay behind at the CDC for certain death? The comic Andrea would have never done that. And – spoiler, spoiler – she’s still alive in the book after 90 some issues. She is one of the few remaining original characters, so that should tell you something about her toughness.
As I always say, I’ll still tune in and watch this season, but every clip just makes me that much sadder for the truly great story all of you only watch the series are missing out on.
The second season of The Walking Dead kicks off on Oct. 16th, and it only makes sense that a big promotional push would happen at San Diego Comic-Con. What I’m not sure anyone was counting on was over four minutes of footage to be shown.
Judging by what is shown in the below footage, the television adaptation will continue to mix original storylines in with what happened in the comic. The fact that the character of Shane is still with the survivors (I’m not saying if he died in the book or just left the group) tells us that things definitely are still diverging from the original story, but then we see “the farm,” and we’re suddenly pulled back into the book. (please tell me the prison and the Governor are coming up … please, please, please)
All that being said, I would say easily 95 percent of this trailer shows us things that never happened in the book, and while I’m okay with some divergence, if you’te doing to call this The Walking Dead, couldn’t we be at least a little bit closer? At this point they should have just gone with a different name and said, “Inspired by the comic book series, The Walking Dead.”
The Walking Dead season 2 has gone into production in the area surrounding Atlanta, and AMC has wasted no time in releasing some non-spoilery promo pics.
While I certainly had my issues with the first season of The Walking Dead, I’m sure I’ll be back for season 2. Sadly, the first images released are not doing anything to help my issues with the show as now it seems that whatever causes the zombies is also capable of changing their bone structure?
In this first image, check out the African-American gentleman on the right. Perhaps his flesh is rotting away, sagging so much to reveal his bone structure? Then why is the rest of him not suffering a similar fate?
If it was just this one picture, I’d chalk it up to poor make-up design, but … enlarged eyes and sockets? Sure it’s creepy looking, but since when did zombie plagues start changing us from humans to to deformed creatures?
Good job, AMC picking the creepy images, but you left me unsettled in the sense of I have no clue what you’re planning to do to annoy me this year.
The first season of The Walking Dead has come to a close, and … how is this show getting such high ratings?
[Spoiler warning from here on out]
As I said before, the show was diverging wildly from the comic book, and since that time I decided to watch it just as a TV show … and that didn’t help much. So, going to a hybrid of comic book differences/judging it as a TV show, how did it do?
Moving Away From The Comic
Robert Kirkman, creator of the comic and Executive Producer of the TV series, has stated time and time again we wouldn’t know what caused the plague, but yet we got more answers in episode six than we have in the entire comic. We also learned that the zombies are worldwide, another thing we haven’t learned in the comic series. Mr. Kirkman told TV Guide that he approved of the changes, and that we’ll never know the whole story, but he liked what was teased. Why he felt the need for this is beyond me, but it’s his to do with as he pleases.
The biggest problem I have with the changes plays somewhat into the TV problems also, but characters have had their entire personalities changed. In the comic, Rick had leadership thrust upon him, and he constantly fights with his need to be a good leader and the fact he really doesn’t want to be. In the TV series he just seems to be taking it on and not questioning it at all.
Andrea, my favorite character in the comic, seems whinier and just not nearly as interesting. They also seem to have aged her somewhat which greatly changes some of her motivations and reactions.
The visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta pretty much told me will never see the lengthy prison story arc as it borrowed ideas from that section. (specifically the quick conversation about all of the books) I understand that this show is going to interject its own take on the overall story, but cutting the prison is like removing the middle section of a book. Perhaps things will happen at a different location, but the location was almost like a character for a bit of the series, and I’m not sure how they’ll get around this. (Plus, if they want to bring in the Woodbury crew, they have to put Rick’s crew in a desirable location)
Kirkman explained to TV Guide:
Nothing in the show is going to go down exactly the same way it does in the comic
[...]
One thing that’s very important to me is that no one comes into this television show having read the comic knowing exactly what’s going to happen. We’re always going to change things up and keep people guessing.
Fine, it’s your creation, but remember the comic is what drew us into the show. Changing everything, especially motivations, makes it a lot less desirable to watch.
Shall I go into Shane/Lori? No, I won’t bother because it would be an entire essay on how badly you’ve changed these characters. I never liked Lori in the comic, and I like her even less in the TV series … thanks for that.
The zombies in the comic can’t run or climb, and you know what? They’re more frightening than the ones in the TV series that can do all that.
As A TV Show: Stop Dumbing Everything Down
The TV show is doing a great disservice to its viewing audience by assuming they need everything spelled out for them. In the comic book we never met Carol’s abusive husband, and there was no need to meet him in the series. Talk about the abuse all you want, but seeing him being a jerk served no purpose but to take up time.
On the flip side, you drop in things and don’t explain why they leave. You added the gang controlled retirement home, which I did actually find intriguing, and after Rick made peace with the leader, it just goes away. Rick’s crew needs a new home with the destruction of the CDC, will these two bands join up now? Sure that may be a season two plot point, but I doubt it since that discussion should have happened as soon as they made peace, and definitely before Rick got the idea to head to the CDC. It was a fairly secure building, and with even more survivors it would have been even more secure.
You are also guilty of building tension and then giving us no pay back for it. Go back to episode two and the whole sewer system bit. Why was that there? Nothing happened … nada … zip … zero. Oh, wait, there was a zombie on the other side of a gate they couldn’t get through any way. One or the other would have been fine, but both just felt like you were saying, “Oh, we haven’t shown you a zombie for a bit, here ya go, have one.”
Then you did the unforgivable in the finale … the ear whisper. As soon as I saw Dr. Jenner whispering in Rick’s ear, I wanted to throw a shoe at the TV.
Talk about a forced tactic to bring viewers back and to try to create buzz. “Oh man, what do you think Jenner said?!? Did you see Rick’s face?!?” Just … stop. For the love of the audience, just stop. You aren’t Lost, we don’t need a bunch of mysteries. (“Where’s Merle?” “What did Jenner say?”) You hooked us, we’re coming back, just tell a good story, don’t force stereotypes down our throats (please leave Merle wherever he is), don’t try going the mystery route, just tell us a decent story about humanity.
Personally, I can’t decide. Vacillating between anger over changes to the comic and the audience being treated like third graders, I kept coming back, but it was with less enthusiasm each week. The season finale set ratings records, so I’m obviously in the minority, but please, you can still save this show, just fix it.
Although I knew they had changed numerous things in the series from just the commercials, they are completely changing characters and their motivations. (Spoiler warning from here on out)
Lets take Shane and Lori for instance. In the comic series these two have sex once on the side of the road on the way to Atlanta. Lori is racked by the guilt of leaving Rick in the hospital back home, torn with fear and she has sex with Shane just to feel something. Although Shane wants more, Lori keeps the idea of her husband being alive in the front of her mind at all times.
In the television series we are treated to Shane being the one to keep saying, “Oh, Rick’s fine …” and then he and Lori sneak off for making out or having sex. Lori has gone from a flawed human with one indiscretion to apparently the camp floozy.
That is just one change, although I feel completely changing a character’s motivations is fairly significant. If that is all there was, I might not be so irritated, but we are swimming in new characters, completely pointless new scenes (please, the sewer scene from episode 2 was such obvious padding for time that it was actually insulting) and entirely new sub-plots such as Rick seeing a helicopter fly over Atlanta.
While I understand not wanting to do a slavish interpretation of the comic, the fact that series creator Robert Kirkman is involved leads to me being surprised. If we’re supposed to treat this as a different imagining of the story, even that would be fine, but we’re you’re tell is … well … boring. The comic is insanely gripping, and the TV series just feels like I’m moving from scene to scene with no real emotional connection to what is going on.
I’m not going to give up on it for the time being, but I’m certainly not looking forward to it each week like I thought I would. Do yourself a favor and pick-upThe Walking Dead (affiliate link) comic series if you want to see what it can be like, and you’ll instantly understand why this has been so disappointing thus far.
With excitement building for the launch of The Walking Dead television series on Oct. 31st on AMC, I decided to sit down and give the comic a try.
… twelve volumes later I can barely wait for volume 13.
The Walking Dead (affiliate link) comic by Robert Kirkman tells the story of what happens when a policeman awakes from a coma to discover the world has completely changed, the dead are walking, his family is missing and there seems to be no hope of anyone coming to the rescue. What do you do? How do you go on living, and do you even care to?
Each volume covers six issues of the series (although there are other formats that hold 12 issues and 24 issues each), and every last one of them is a page turner. While the series starts off as a seemingly typical zombie story, but as it progresses it becomes clear the zombies are very much secondary to the story of what happens to your normal, walk-of-the-mill person when the world around them goes insane. Would you be able to retain your humanity? Do the rules change? Can you survive in a world full of walking dead, and even living people who will kill you for your possessions? At what point do you become no better than the creatures that surround you daily?
I am purposefully staying away from the details of the series because it is utterly gripping, and I have been burning through them as fast as I can turn the pages. You become totally invested in the fates of these characters, and believe me, considering the circumstances they live under, that can be a mistake.
For those of you who think you can just watch the upcoming TV series and get the story, I can tell you from what footage I’ve seen that they have obviously changed a lot of things from the source material. Do yourself a favor and pick up the comic and enjoy it in addition to the TV show, and I highly doubt that you’ll regret the purchase.
You have to love when a television show that hasn’t even aired yet already has fans making things for it.
The Walking Dead premieres this Halloween on AMC, and even though it hasn’t aired yet, the show has been renewed for a second season. Where fans for this property come from is the 70+ issues of the comic book that has been published. I’ve read the first 20 or so issues now, and I have to say it’s pretty darn good, so I can see why some people are already getting excited about this.
That being said, a fan took it upon himself to create some opening credits for the television version, and I have to say that I would love to see these appear in front of each and every episode, they’re just that good.
A weekly television series about a zombie apocalypse? I can only imagine what the production costs on this thing are going to be.
Based on the comic book series from Image Comics, The Walking Dead will be a weekly series to be written, produced and directed by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile). It centers around a law man named Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) who gets injured in the line of duty and falls into a coma. When he awakens, he discovers the world has suffered a plague outbreak that turns people into zombies. (Um … didn’t 28 Days Later do this several years ago?)
Convinced that his wife and daughter somehow survived the outbreak, he sets off on a crusade to find them, encountering other survivors a long the way.
The series premieres on AMC on Oct. 31st, and as I said, I can only imagine what a show with this obvious production qualities is going to cost on a weekly budget. The make-up budget alone must be gigantic. Either way, it looks interesting enough to at least check out when it premieres.
AMC has decided only two episodes into the second season that the ratings have been strong enough to go ahead and green light a third season of The Walking Dead.
With excitement building for the launch of 
