Walkers, Geeks, and Zombies, Oh My!

How do you think you'd fare if the world were ending?

Yeah, I like to consider shit like that.

I seriously think it's one of the reasons I work out. I need to be able to run fast and maintain that pace. Endurance, my friends. It's all about endurance.

Well, that and being able to jump a car and fire a gun. (Note to self: learn how to jump a car and visit the firing range, soon.)

Now, if the apocalypse comes and it's divine in nature, we're all pretty much screwed. I may see you in heaven, or I may see you in that other really hot place I'd rather not spend eternity in.

But if the end time is purely a human creation (as is VASTLY more likely -- I'm looking at you global warming deniers!), do you think you'd survive, at least for a little bit of the post-apocalyptic nightmare?

Now that Lost is over and I feel like Damon Lindelof and J.J. Abrams unsatisfactorily screwed me for six seasons (Thanks guys! Glad I put the time in!), I've been looking for another drama to take its place.

And I found one, though I'm not exactly sure you could accurately call it a drama.

(You won't find these guys on Grey's Anatomy!)

When I heard AMC was creating a TV show based on the comic book series The Walking Dead, I was all over that shit.

Out of all the horror genres, zombies have to be my favorite. Who can forget the cemetery scene in Night of the Living Dead? Or the remake of Dawn of the Dead, where the survivors holed up in a mall head up to the roof to see the building completely surrounded? Or the driving scene in the funny Shaun of the Dead, where the car full of people keeps driving into zombies littering the roadway?

Shaun of the Dead even has Dawn in it from BBC's version of The Office.

(Spoiler alert: She doesn't make it. Very sad!)

So AMC's The Walking Dead is kind of like a horror/drama with a teensy bit of dark humor thrown in. You know, if you find jokes about organ donation -- while the survivors are coating themselves in zombie entrails to avoid smelling like the fresh human meat that they are -- humorous. Which, I completely do!



The show's hero, a police officer named Rick Grimes, wakes in a hospital bed after being shot by a criminal he was pursuing. How much time has passed is unknown. When he walks through the corridor after stumbling out of bed, you get a feel for how much has transpired while he was comatose.

Corpses litter the halls, the hospital looks like a war zone, and one set of double doors is padlocked shut, with painted-on words warning "Don't open, dead inside."

("Oh shit, what did I miss?")

Outside, the scene isn't much better. Military vehicles sit unoccupied, piles and piles of bodies are covered with plastic, and no one is around to tell him exactly what is going on.

Rick manages to find with some survivors, a father and son, who fill him in as best they can. Looks like something bad has happened. Like, really freaking bad, and there aren't many living people left. There are, however, a lot of these guys.

(These folks are totally NOT bringing you brownies to welcome you to the neighborhood.)

The zombies are ever present, and truly frightening. They stagger along, shuffling and stumbling, looking for food. If they catch a whiff of you, all sweet-smelling and alive, they'll pursue.

And it's terrifying.

There's a great scene where Rick rides a horse into Atlanta, thinking that he can find help there, and perhaps his wife and son, who are missing.

(Welcome to Atlanta! Spoiler alert: the horse doesn't make it. Again, very sad!)

He does manage to stay alive and hook up with some other survivors, some of whom are very unsavory.

And here we find the crux of the drama. What happens to people in complete crisis mode? Supplies are limited, or unattainable. Hideouts will most likely be discovered, eventually at least, by the walking dead. Who takes charge? How is society to be reorganized? And certainly, not only decent, law-abiding people have survived.

(The guy with the gun pointed to his noggin is an asshole. Trust me.)

So how do you not only survive the zombies, but each other? Well, guess what guys, I'm psyched to find out, and hopefully, the series will prove to be more satisfying than that other one about a plane crashing on a mysterious island. Because I'm totally holding that grudge.