The Walking Dead season one - brains, blood and lots of guts

I just finished the first season of The Walking Dead. I began watching yesterday. And it's not weird because the season has only six episodes. I'm not head over heels for the show, but apparently it's quite addictive and I will catch the second season, too. (It begins on August in the U.S. So I might be watching it live! Hoho! What a funny thought...)

The series builds around police officer Rick Grimes (played by a distractingly familiar-looking fellow called Andrew Lincoln, who I just couldn't make myself place without help, but he's no other than the "To me you are perfect" guy from Love Actually! I was fooled by the lack of British accent, I guess...), who one day gets shot and the next thing he knows, he wakes up in a messed up, deserted hospital, with no one around but dead people. Or undead people, however you like to look at it. Zombies, anyway. It's pretty cool that the word 'zombie' is never mentioned during the whole season, by the way! Anyway, the series follows Rick meeting other survivors, trying to find his wife and son, and killing quite a lot of zombies on the way. You know how these things work.

I'm not the world's biggest zombie enthusiast, but enough so to get interested in a series like this. The zombies in The Walking Dead are pretty cool and some impressively gross. The characters are not the strongest area of the show, as most of them feel very indifferent or even annoying, at least to me. My infamous Main Character Syndrome is at work once again: I don't really care for Rick (you should be back in London, chasing Keira, man!) and Sarah Wayne Callies's Lori is probably my least favourite character. She's cold and colourless and I don't like the look on her skinny face. Back when she was hanging out with Michael Scofield I actually liked her a bit.

A character I do like is Glenn, who answers for most of that scarce comic relief in the show. I know it's mostly the ethnicity factor, but he reminds me a lot of Miles from Lost. Daryl Dixon is another favourite, whom I've by the way named a Sawyer, just with less sex appeal than the original one. And there are many other Lost archetypes I spotted, too. It's funny how that show still sneaks in the back of my head and affects the way I look at the world. Or TV shows, at least. It's quite easy to try and find parallels with these two, as they are quite similar in nature. (Lost is better, though. Way, way better. Okay, I'll shut up.)

I was a bit surprised to go to the internet and read that people like the show, yes, but hope for more action and zombie killing, and less talk and character moments. I guess it's just my distinctive character-driven taste, because I thought that the action and the drama were in a pretty nice balance, and that just enough zombies got killed. Actually, majority of the most poignant, most memorable moments have to do with zombies, yes, and killing them, yes, but with some deeper thought or story behind the act. The mindless slaughtering with flying guts and dropping heads and splashing blood is fun for a while, but I don't like it as the main point. The word is there will be more of that on season two (because apparently I'm one of the fewer viewers who'd like to see more group dynamics and learn about the characters), so we'll see how that works for me.

Well, anyway. It was nice to watch something other than Glee for a change (not that there's anything not-nice in watching just Glee), as I gave up watching the second season of True Blood due to a total lack of interest, and I still haven't found a cut-price season three box set of Mad Men. The Walking Dead is a pretty interesting and fresh show, and I'm looking forward to the next season, however bloody it will be.

P.S. After being inside by myself all day, watching the show, I went out and imagined that all my neighbours were zombies. I had a very exciting walk to the corner shop and back.