The Walking Dead (Series Premiere)

Forget about parades, parties, and costumed kiddies on the doorstep--the highlight of Halloween 2010 was the much-anticipated debut of The Walking Dead on AMC.  Despite nearly a year-long build-up, the 90-minute pilot episode did not disappoint.

The Walking Dead is American Gothic television at its best.  In this first episode, sunshine blazes down on primarily rural settings (shades of The Crazies) that are rendered grotesque by the incursion of the moldering undead.   For example, one of the more memorable scenes presents a bucolic park where the stretch of vibrant green grass contains a hideous, legless zombie dragging itself along determinedly in search of sustenance.

To be honest, the plot (drawn from Robert Kirkman's graphic novel series) here is not terribly original.  The set-up of a protagonist waking up in a hospital only to discover that civilization has been decimated has been seen before, in the opening of the film 28 Days Later.  Likewise, the notion of a father trekking across a blighted landscape in search of his family has been previously employed in novels such as Brian Keene's The Rising and Stephen King's Cell.  Still, any familiarity of plot is offset by the depth of characterization.  Viewers are offered three-dimensional figures rather than regurgitated stereotypes.  Protagonist Rick Grimes might have been a deputy sheriff in the former state of the world, but in the aftermath of apocalypse he does not merely transform into a shoot-from-the-hip killing machine.   

That is not to say that the episode does not include some spectacular zombie head-shots, the graphic violence of which no doubt pushes the boundaries of basic cable television.  But while there is enough bloody mayhem here to satisfy the most hardcore members of the Fangoria crowd, The Walking Dead makes its deepest impression by presenting the zombies (stunningly designed by special FX maestro Greg Nicotero) as more than just hand-canon fodder.  We are reminded that these are not anonymous monsters, but former human beings, and in some cases, recently-deceased loved ones.  As such, their shuffling, cannibalistic existence is as heartbreaking as it is horrifying.

Perhaps one of the more ingenious tactics of the pilot episode is the fact that throughout most of the 90-minute run, the zombies do not appear as the cliched marauding horde.  If anything, these scattered figures are sluggish and almost pathetic.  But this approach only heightens the impact of the zombies' climactic onslaught (that poor horse!) in the city street.  The episode concludes with a cliff-hanger that strands Rick is some overwhelmingly dire straits, which has left this viewer dying to tune in again next Sunday night and fall in with The Walking Dead.