The Walking Dead!

[Rudi von Starnberg]

Still haven't watch 'The Wire' yet though, but I feel it's been hyped up so much it'll only be a letdown.

You should definitely watch it. You may take a while to get into it, or even to fully understand what's going on, but I'd eat a hat of your choice if it didn't hook you at some point in the first season (the halfway point is usually cited, although I was personally hooked after the second episode).

[mushashi]

Watch The Corner before watching The Wire, superb 6-part mini-series based on a book by David Simon who then went on to make The Wire, it's basically a companion piece to it, unless your one of those people who can't stand a bit of real-world pain & misery in their filmed drama.

[Cthulhu Steev]

EP6 Spoiler:

Amazing that the explosion leveled the entire building but the shockwave didn't turn the survivors in the cars parked just outside into corned beef, or even shatter the windows.

They were safe because they ducked down behind the dashboard!

So with that done, how many comics can I now check out without spoiling anything that may come up in following tv seasons? or is that not such a simple question?

I'd say just read them all because it seems like the TV series is going down a completely different track, it's made no difference to my enjoymentt. You'll get a whole new level of surprise playing spot the difference.

[snowbind]

Wank.

Rick actually gets on my tits in this and I think Simon from Teachers is a legend.

Daryl and Glenn buddy cop spin off please.

Very disappointing, the CDC plot seems like it was ripped from L4D2 graffiti.

[DarhkFox]

thought ep6 was alright personally.. bit predictable though.

[Harmunt]

This has got worse as the weeks go by...

Starting to lose interest now.

[CandyBob]

This has got worse as the weeks go by...

Starting to lose interest now.

Absolutely. If you are going to remove yourself from the source at least make it worth it. I haven't seen Ep 6 yet but the whole

mad scientist stuck in hi-tech bunker generic shit pretty much ruined it for me. Ep 6 seems to contain some kind of crack soldier types weilding automatic weapons from the trailer? Holy smoke.

[jon_cybernet]

Having been a fan of the comic, the last episode just had me spitting teeth. SO furious, but I don't know why. I wonder what it says about me as a person that a poor adaptation of material I enjoy got me so riled up.

Does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity at this point, but hey ho, no reason they couldn't set things back on track in the first episode of the new series if they have a mind to.

[DeadRussian]

Promising premise, decent source material, big budget, quality TV network doing the promotion, result? Utter shite TV show, full of hackneyed writing, tedious characters in unspectacular settings and for the most part it's just cliché ridden nonsense. I actually quite enjoyed the first episode and parts of some of the later episodes, so there is promise there, but if they're not firing all the writers, they really should.

[Goose]

I was with it all the way but then we hit episode 5 & 6 and it really fell flat. What made it worse was the opening section was really good, nasty and violent and a bit like what you'd expect to happen in such a situation. But then they slammed the breaks on hard. We even had a mini fucking montage!

I can understand them filming and not knowing if they had a second season but surely they could have come up with a better ending than that? I mean, if that's your one and only stand alone season, you want a huge finish - you don't need a climax or cliffhanger, but you need a really big finish. I kept trying to double guess the scientist guy and all the way through my ideas kept being better than what happened (and trust me, my ideas were predictable lame crap).

I was sure

It was like they were pointing to something. The fact the Genner joklingly said he needed to keep an eye on Rick's son. Then at dinner, at first, it was Rick's son who wasn't drinking. I was SURE they were going to wake up, having been drugged, and find themselves tied to operating tables, with Genner attempting to get live brain samples that he could mix with infected ones and see how it worked from that very first contact of healthy/infected, with a hope of finding a cure.

Kick people right in the stomach - have them waking up to find one of their own already dead from a failed attempt. No fucking screaming send off or tearful stuff, they wake up, they're tied up, the blonde girl is already lobotomised.

Another person would die, obviously, but he'd justified that death by saying the cure could help so many others - he just needed to keep going until he found the right brain sample. He could then tell them that he sacrificed his wife to the cause. Then Rick's kid, who wasn't drugged but had simply fell asleep, manages to get Rick's gun and kill Genner just as he's going to cut open Rick's skull.

That would have been better than the disappointment I felt we got. I think what makes it worse is that as it stood, it wasn't that bad an episode (certainly no poorer than some of Lost's filler eps) but the fact that that's it for at least a year really left you feeling short changed. What worries me now is this - I get little time to invest in a show, come next year when it returns I'll have a second child to help look after. The drop in quality as the show went on makes me wonder if it's going to worth investing time in it. Especially when they'll have 13 episodes so would be able to slow things right down and spread them more.

And it started off so very well. I love the opener and episode 2 & 3. 4 started to lose its way but had some great moments but then...

[Yix]

In the midst of all the [fully justified] complaining and second-guessing, I am compelled to say that the handling of Shane has been tenfold better than the left bollock delivered in the comic. Here he's a constant threat, a background noise that is both relied on and dangerous. He isn't a shouty loose cannon like Daryl, nothing nearly as obvious; he's trusted, needed, borderline rape'y and, most importantly, still bloody alive.

Edit: Also, the Lori/ Shane relationship was much more interesting when she was less sympathetic. Rick's speech about her behaviour in-front of their ugly kid pre-geekfest set up the conflict and unease perfectly (that and it was more than refreshing to see a disloyal wife portrayed without suggesting audience support). Suddenly it's entirely on Shane's back - ho ho ho, Middle America. Very safe. This is also shit in the comics.

[spanky debrest]

I'm looking forward to being incredulously baffled by the finale.

If AMC hadn't produced this, Egg wasn't in this and I didn't manage to catch the pilot there's no way I would have sat through much of this lame series.

[a big boy]

The Wire's hyped up for a reason. I'm a fan of The Walking Dead, apparently much more so than many in this thread, but between the two there's no comparison.

[CandyBob]

In the midst of all the [fully justified] complaining and second-guessing, I am compelled to say that the handling of Shane has been tenfold better than the left bollock delivered in the comic. Here he's a constant threat, a background noise that is both relied on and dangerous. He isn't a shouty loose cannon like Daryl, nothing nearly as obvious; he's trusted, needed, borderline rape'y and, most importantly, still bloody alive.

Edit: Also, the Lori/ Shane relationship was much more interesting when she was less sympathetic. Rick's speech about her behaviour in-front of their ugly kid pre-geekfest set up the conflict and unease perfectly (that and it was more than refreshing to see a disloyal wife portrayed without suggesting audience support). Suddenly it's entirely on Shane's back - ho ho ho, Middle America. Very safe. This is also shit in the comics.

+1 for the Shane stuff. I wasn't keen at first but as it has gone on I'm finding his brooding presence quite edgy, wondering what he is going to do next. Other than the first episode the best thing about the series.

Dale's permanent shocked look is also quite something.

[Kinketsu]

I would have much rather have seen Goose's episode.

I'm also on board with Shane, I think he's a very interesting character along with the hillbilly brother. I heard Shane doesn't appear in the comics that much and the brother isn't it at all, but they are my most watched characters because they provide most of the tension and interest in the soap opera parts.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

Glenn and Darryl are easily the best characters.

[CouldBeWorse]

Overall good final episode. Shame it was only a short series but saying that, it felt like they didn't have enough content for a 6 45 minutes episodes. Felt like a film stretched poorly into a series.

[K]

That was fucking terrible. There was absolutely no narrative force to it; it just drifted along for half an hour or so, then suddenly the old man notices a clock on the wall.

It's counting down to everyone being killed, the scientist tells them immediately. Well, that's that mystery solved.

I can't help thinking it would have been better if they'd taken a few lessons from videogames, and had the base abandoned when they found it. That way, we could have followed our heroes figuring out what happened to the scientists from what they find there. The clock counting down would have been a mystery to be figured out over the course of the show, i.e. a narrative hook, rather than something the writers pulled out of their collective arses at the last minute.

The MRI bit might have been interesting if it was a piece of footage they'd found and watched without the scientist offering his fascinating voice over where he explains to us what a brain is and what it does.

I think a big problem with the show is that it's a character-based drama, rather than the plot-driven thriller we were all expecting after the first two episodes. The trouble is, the characters are largely boring nobheads.

[ZOK]

It was a really dopey final episode, but what can I tell you, I loved it. Even though a ten year old could have come up with a better plot.

'When I was washing your trousers, I found this hand grenade' or whatever she said...just brilliant!

[Tunisia]

I didn't really like that last episode, very disappointing that it was the finale- what an anticlimax. They walk into a facility, they walk out again. Nothing changes, except the loss of a minor character I didn't know/ care about anyway.

[NecroMorrius]

Why are people comparing this to The Wire

They both spill forth from a box in your living room but that's about all they have in common.

[CGMF]

I don't really agree with holding up characters from Lost as an example of charismatic personalities, but that's another argument best saved for the lost thread.

[NecroMorrius]

He's having a staring match with this:

[idiwa]

I didn't really like that last episode, very disappointing that it was the finale- what an anticlimax. They walk into a facility, they walk out again. Nothing changes, except the loss of a minor character I didn't know/ care about anyway.

This. I was expecting them to at least come out of the CDC with fuck loads of weapons/ supplies/ monkey bikes...but nada. And what the fuck was this the Pantene "Here comes the science bit" powerpoint presentation? I like the fact that they'd not have scooby what caused it or where it originated from. Better to go with what was suggested about finding research and working it out themselves (due to character X once working in ASDA's photolab and knowing about chemicals and shit) rather than being soppon fed by Professor Monkey-For-A-Head in some fucking pony ass Umbrella facility with SAL9000 cranking out the clichés, hit after hit.

They've fucking raped the book and I don't see why they had to deviate so massively from it's plot. I'm just rather bored with the whole thing.

[idiwa]

I've stuck with The Event, but I don't know why it's been shit up to now

Yeah I downloaded the first 6 and it started OK and then juke became a fucking joke. Don't get my started on V (the cheapest looking bit of scifi tat ever) I really don't know WTF noob sees in that shit (and I fucking watched the first seasons all the way through waiting for it to kick off).

The collected volume of walking dead. Is that books 1-8? or is it 1-9? Cheers.

EDIT: 1-8

[Davros sock drawer]

I'd love to say I continued to enjoy this, but as others have said it went downhill pretty fast, particularly in the last two episodes.

[a big boy]

Why are people comparing this to The Wire

They both spill forth from a box in your living room but that's about all they have in common.

No one was even comparing other than to say how much they enjoyed them. But yeah, you're right. The two allegorical, dystopian and character-driven TV dramas obviously have nothing more in common with each other than an episode of Newsnight and a Justin Bieber video.

LOL, FACEPALM, etc.

[NecroMorrius]

Don't be silly.

You said yourself there was no comparison between the two, a few posts ago

[spork]

So do we know when this is going to return? Will we have to wait until this time next year or is it possible it might start a little sooner?

Also, I've never read the comics but if I had I'd be seething that they could take something so good and make changes to it that result in the last few episodes.

[idiwa]

So do we know when this is going to return? Will we have to wait until this time next year or is it possible it might start a little sooner?

Also, I've never read the comics but if I had I'd be seething that they could take something so good and make changes to it that result in the last few episodes.

October I think, though I can't remember where I got that from. Get the comics read.. they're fantastic. The collected 1st compendium is around 40 quid rrp and Amazon are doing it at 25 quid just now.

LINKY

Edited.