Tuesday, November 23, 2010

AMC's The Walking Dead - My First Take

When I first heard about a TV show about zombies I got pretty excited.  Think of the possibilities!  Zombies have broken through to most media now, but had not yet crossed to the small screen.  After starting in movies there are now zombie books, short stories, video games... blogs.  But a TV show, that's breaking new ground as far as I know, at least as a show being solely about zombies and not just having zombies as part of a show that's mainly about something else.
If you haven't been watching, "The Walking Dead" is a new show on the cable channel AMC that's about an outbreak (they seem to be virulent zombies) of zombies.  It centers around a sheriff's deputy from a small town in Georgia who is involved in a shooting and wakes up to find the world overrun with zombies.  Essentially the same premise as "28 Days Later."
Well, I'm not ready to call it yet because they still have the time, opportunity, and set up to make this a really good show.  Unfortunately, I'm leaning towards setting up my DVR to stop recording this show and I only keep holding on because of the opportunity and set up that are there.  The biggest problem, though, is that this show is more of a chore to watch and less of a pleasure and the biggest reason for that is simple: not enough zombies.

---SPOILER ALERT---

If you have been watching you may feel like me in that there is way too much talking on this show and not nearly enough brain eating/shooting.
The zombies are good.  They're your basic, virulent, Romero style.  The makeup and shuffling are good and overall I'm very happy with the zombies on this show, just give me more of them please.
Other than the lack of zombies, here's a list of questions that I have about the show that I'll need answered before I can really get onboard with it:
Seriously, who wanders into a major metropolitan area after seeing that the army couldn't handle the outbreak in a little podunk, hillbilly town?
Why didn't the zombies eat that dude?  Can you keep them from eating you by laying down and closing your eyes?  Will they not eat you in your sleep, apparently?
Do the writers of the show realize that military, police, and citizen's band radios all work on different frequencies and are not interchangeable and do not work together?
What supplies were they getting at a department store?  Blazers and dishwashers?
Where did they pick up every racist, misogynist d-bag in the Atlanta area?
Why do they need to wash their clothes every day?  How many clothes are they wearing that it takes 4 women all day, every day to wash them?
Why is there only one person hunting?  Why is he hunting alone?  Why isn't anyone else helping him to make sure that they can keep what he kills?
What do all the guys in the camp do all day?  Sit on their asses and complain that their RVs don't run?
Why would you go all the way into Atlanta to get supplies?  There aren't any stores on the outskirts that have the same things?  Did they need to pick up the symphony or something?
Why aren't they farming anything?
All these trees around and nobody can make a fence around their camp?  Well I guess if the zombies won't eat you in your sleep there's not much need for a fence, right?
Why are they all such jerks to each other?  As far as they know there's only 20 or less people in the world and they still can't work together?
They brought like 6 people into Atlanta to get supplies and they leave with one backpack full of stuff?  Even if their plan gets messed up can't they find more than a backpack full of stuff to bring back?  Maybe some more clothes so they don't have to wash them all the time.

I really am sorry to get so nitpicky about this but every time I watch the show I end up with more questions than answers.  Maybe the writers could take some more time to make sure that the character's actions are realistic and a little less time trying as hard as they can to pump in as much fake emotion as they can.  I could even deal with fewer zombies if they just made things a little bit more realistic.  Not all the characters have to be liars, murderers, wife beaters, klan members or whatever other character flaw d'jour they wish to inject into the show.  I'd much rather see a zombie show that's about man vs zombie instead of man vs man and I think that most zombie fans will agree with me on that.

Bottom Line:  I'm not ready to stop watching yet but I'm much closer than I was after the first episode and that's not a good thing.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

I guess they were right


Steve put his foot up on the ledge, resting his hands on his knee, “Yeah, I see her.  What’s your point?”

“Man, come on.  Someone that young walking around, it has to be over,” Lex pulled off his dusty, worn-in Budweiser cap and slapped it against his thigh.  “Look at that, she’s got her little teddy bear and everything.”

Steve shot back around, a scolding finger ready, “Quiet there.  It’s just one of them and having a Goddamn teddy bear with it doesn’t mean a damn thing and you know it.”  He kicked off the ledge and picked his rifle back up, heading back across the roof to the ladder.  His dirty, button-down overshirt ruffled in the nighttime breeze as he muttered to himself under his breath.  Lex was starting to crack; it was the only explanation.  Hell, after three months cooped up in a warehouse store just about anyone would be, especially without any human contact for the last two (and that’s generously counting those things as humans).

Steve plopped himself down in a cheap plastic chair as soon as he hit the break room, leaned his rifle against the table.  He doubled over and poured his head in his hands.  I’m gettin’ too old for this shit.  And it was true, at 53 he should have been barking orders at some kid who just graduated college like he used to.  He was built to be a middle manager too, at least physically.  Average height, slightly overweight with hollow brown eyes and thinning brown hair, he definitely looked like the boss at your first office job.  Then again that didn’t matter in the last three months; since then if you’re heart was beating you just looked like food.

Not that that was even a big problem anymore.  Staying alive wasn’t a problem for Steve and Lex, the problem was wanting to stay alive.  Maybe that’s all that got into Lex, he just wanted to believe in something, believe that it’s finally all over.

“Hell, maybe I should indulge the kid,” Steve finally announced to the table.  Figuring out whether or not that girl was still a girl might be a good thing.  Hell, if she was still a girl that’s a great thing, it would mean that those things were gone. But how to let her in safely?  Both men were still too leery to venture outside.  It didn’t matter that it had been over a month since they’d seen one.  Once you’ve seen one you’ll stay just about anywhere for a year before you’d ever consider dealing with them again.  He grabbed the radio, “Hey Lexy, come on down here.”

The thinner, younger man soon walked into the room, “What’s up, Steve?”

“You’ve been watching that girl for a few nights now, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I have,” Lex dropped his hat onto the table.  “She walks a little slow but I think that’s just because her leg is hurt.  I’m tellin’ you, man, she’s still alive.  What would a 5 year old girl thing be doing around after the rest of them have died out?”  You could see him getting excited as he talked about it, he really thought that this whole mess was over.

Steve put his hands up defensively, calmly, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to argue with you.  I just wanted to ask if she ever walks around back.  You know, by the loading dock.”

“Yeah, she comes that way every night.  I think she walks across the street to the supermarket to get food and water,” he was a little dumbfounded.  Steve had never acted like this before, maybe he was cracking too.

 “Well, sit down, I got a plan.”


Steve stood to the right of the door and held the chain tight, “Remember, don’t do anything stupid and for the love of God do not put your gun down.”  He then patted the revolver on his hip to make sure it was still there.

“Come on, man, would I still be alive this long if I did stupid shit?” Lex pulled the lock open on the loading door.

“Yeah, you would with me around,” Steve started reeling the chain, pulling the door open from the floor up.

Lex held about 10 feet shy of the door while it opened, semi-automatic pistol at the ready.  With the door about 5 feet up Steve stopped the chain and wrapped a section of it around his left hand before he pulled out his revolver with his right.

They waited.

In about half an hour Lex spotted her and started inching closer to the edge of the dock, “Hey there!  Come on over here!  We’re alive!”

They waited.

Finally Steve could see her from his poor vantage point.  He stood motionless, squinting, studying her like a man trying to remember which combination of stripes on a snake means it’s poisonous.  It had been so long since he’d had this kind of worry that he lost himself in the moment.  He didn’t notice that Lex had inched all the way up to the door and was crouching down, his arms stretched out the door and his pistol lying on the concrete.  “Lex!” he shouted.

Lex turned and looked up just as the little girl grabbed his right arm and chomped in on it just below the elbow.  Instinctively, Lex sprang back but her teeth were in too deeply.  The skin peeled down his arm as he fell back onto the floor, flailing his other three limbs vainly and smearing his own blood on the loading dock.  The little bloodsucker climbed onto the dock with the skin still in her teeth.  When Steve yelled again she turned to face him, ripping the skin clean off up to the poor man’s wrist.  He laid on the floor and writhed in agony, grabbed his exposed, loosely connected muscle and cried out.  Steve had to turn in disgust at the sight: a sweet 5 year old girl still wearing her PJs, now stained with blood, and that damn teddy bear still hanging from her dead, soulless fingers.  Her eyes were sunken and cold as she looked upon her potential meal, a long, ragged pelt hanging from her teeth.

Steve had let go of the chain as he turned away and let the steel door come crashing down to the concrete floor with a raucous clamor.  The sound startled the little girl and she turned back to her first target.  She descended on Lex and dug her dirty teeth deep into his throat.  Blood came gushing out his neck and with his good hand he tried to bat at the little terror to no avail.  Steve regained his composure a little too late.  He grabbed the girl by the collar and threw her up against the steel door.  The walls of the large, empty room rang with the shot as the now faceless girl sank down to the floor.

Steve rubbed his hand over his face and breathed a sigh of relief.  Good God that was a bad idea.  He heard a gurgle and a moan from behind him.  He turned and immediately knew that Lex was gone but couldn’t be forgotten.

Steve lowered his boot onto the man’s throat, blood still gushing from it.  He looked down despondently as what used to be Lex started scratching at him, the muscle dangling from his arm.  “Well I’ll be damned,” he murmured as he lowered the sights of his revolver to between what used his friend’s eyes.  “Hall and Oates were right,” he said as he pulled the trigger, “she’s a maneater.”

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Time Burial

Tonight I would like to talk about a short story I recently read.  It's called "Time Burial" by Howard Wandrei and is compiled in a book of the same title by the same author.  I believe it was written in the 1930s and as such is not specifically labeled as about zombies but gives some zombie feel nonetheless. 

It's about a guy who finds an immortality serum while searching for a cure for the common cold.  This serum keeps him free from disease and allows him to not age in perpetuity as long as he drinks a bit of the concoction every few weeks. 
SPOILER ALERT

Without getting into too many non-zombie details I'll say that this guy lives for over 2000 years on this serum and only tells one person about it in that entire time (which is in the beginning of the story).  In these 2000 years he never ages a day and never even catches the sniffles; he never needs to sleep or eat, either.  There are down sides though, one of which is that anything he eats never leaves his body so he just gains the weight of everything he ingests pound for pound (I'm also guessing that that would mean he couldn't drink much booze either). Also, his heart has slowed to the point where his circulation is so low that his skin is cold to the touch.  He also lives a transient life so nobody will ever find out that he's immortal.  In the end he runs out of the key ingredient for the serum and fails to buy more before he needs to; he dies and ends up as chalk, falling away onto the floor as nothing.

What I find interesting about this is that he has almost no pulse and needs to neither sleep nor eat.  These are reasons why I think of him as a kind of zombie.  Granted, not a Romero style, brain eating zombie nor a single minded, goal serving voodoo zombie.  But he does seem to me to be a kind of chemically induced zombie, one who's only real mission is to serve his own serum.  He never allows himself to love or to ever truly live because he's too afraid of others finding out about the serum.  He must always end up drinking it for the risk of death, almost in the same way that a Romero zombie lusts after brains.  He needs neither food nor sleep, both hallmarks of zombies whom may strike at any time or may horde around holed-up humans for months on end.
Really the only difference between the man in this story and a traditional zombie is that this man is seemingly rational and cognizant.  He actively makes the decisions that enslave him.
The biggest reason, though, why I think of him as a zombie is that the way the story is written insinuates that he loses his soul to this serum.  In my mind this is what separates men from zombies: a soul.  If, as I think, the man in the story chooses to give his body and soul to this serum, then he truly is a zombie.  But if not, then perhaps he's just a wayward man, lost in his own creation.


Bottom line: not a bad book, this particular story is pretty good.  I consider the main character to be a cognizant, chemically induced zombie who chose to become what he did.