Each Sunday is a tedious crawl to 8 p.m. It’s not because Sundays are bad — quite the opposite. I get to write these columns, meet with my editor/Lil B aficionado Nassim and enjoy a tasty sandwich at Subway (thank you, BasedGod). But what happens at 8 p.m. each Sunday night simply trumps any possible combination of meat, bread and “Wonton Soup.”
“The Walking Dead” is on.
For those unfortunate enough not to know, “The Walking Dead” is the best show on television. The hour-long AMC program follows a group of people led by former Sheriff Rick Grimes surviving in my favorite type of apocalypse, the zombie apocalypse. The beauty of this zombie TV show is that it goes where movies, limited by two-hour running times, can’t.
Although I still love a great zombie movie, it usually plays out the same way. The outbreak happens, chaos ensues, the main character bands together with either complete strangers or best friends, the group bunkers down somewhere they end up having to leave, they fight the zombies and a resolution is made within a few days of the initial outbreak. The resolution is either the military coming in to save the day (“Shaun of the Dead”), certain death (“Dawn of the Dead”) or certain death courtesy of the military (“The Crazies”).
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But why should we expect everything to happen so quickly? It took the United States more than eight years to complete the war in Iraq. It’s unrealistic even in the world where zombies exist to think the same military could completely subdue a hoard of disease-infected, flesh-hungry monsters in a time period quicker than Kim Kardashian’s marriage.
“The Walking Dead” doesn’t live in that fantasyland. The group struggles week after week without a sight of military intervention. They have to travel between hideouts. They have to worry about ammunition (something that’s somehow unlimited in every movie). They have to worry about real-world problems escalated in such a volatile environment.
Pregnancies are tough enough for a couple, but the show demonstrates the further complications brought on by surrounding zombies with questions like, “Do we want to bring a baby into this world so he’ll be continually running for his life?” or the one stuck in my head, “If crying babies are annoying on airplanes, how annoying will they be while hiding for your life?”
Beyond what the show does, “The Walking Dead” is also important for what it represents: the last remaining horror creature that hasn’t lost its allure.
After the intertwining of romance and vampires thanks to “Twlight,” “The Vampire Diaries” and “True Blood,” bloodsuckers have become more played out than Nickelback and the NBA dunk contest. Yet somehow, all three remain prominent and popular. This phenomenon constantly leaves me on the couch scratching my head and thinking, “If I know this is going to suck, why am I watching it?”
And mummies? You can forget about those. That genre is as dead as Brendan Fraser’s career. During my research, I learned that another “The Mummy” movie was released in 2008. Not only was I completely blindsided by this fact, but I also threw up in my mouth a little while reading the plot synopsis.
Fortunately, the hands of Hollywood haven’t dolled up zombies or “The Walking Dead.” Each “walker,” as they’re called in the show, is creatively gory and looks nothing like the supposed monster Edward Cullen. My personal favorite was a man who hung himself on a tree and became undead after walkers gnawed away his dangling legs.
That right there is the beauty of “The Walking Dead” and the beauty of my Sunday nights — no glitz, no glam, just gore.
