Walking Dead-And so it begins..

Days Gone Bye

It was about five or so minutes into the show and I already knew I’d have problems with this series. Rick, still in his deputy uniform, shoots a little zombie girl right in the head and it is shown in explicit detail, in slow motion even, crashing to the asphalt, and I come to respect George Romero even more for not lowering himself to such a degree. Sure, he thought it free to just have a stupid biker get his guts ripped from his torso in Dawn of the Dead, but we never see two zombie kids (or the nun; although, I think some of my friends on the imdb would welcome this…) eat lead when Ken Foree has to defend himself. Many love child violence, I realize this, and will applaud the decision to commit blunt force trauma right out of the gate, speaking aloud, “We are willing to go here, hahaha.”

***

Look, I know people are head over heels for Frank Darabont. I think a lot of his output deals a heavy hand, like the ending of The Mist (or the character played by Marcia Gaye Hardin, for that matter), but he seems to have a conviction in building characters and epic moments with music lifted to optimum effect (he has this “Steven Spielberg method” to his work that stands out to me, wanting to provoke emotional responses with themes, dialogue, and performance, persuasively motivated by music) and through his camerawork (Tim Robbins opening his arms as if wings and facing the heavens as rain pours in The Shawshank Redemption, such an example). Actually, speaking of that shot in Shawshank, there’s a similarly employed visual as the camera pulls up as Rick is starting to slip into unconsciousness, having been shot by a drug dealer.

..skin gave off a heat like a furnace.

While most fans are knee deep into the series now, I kind of like the fact that I’m late to the party. From what I’ve read, some consider the show great while others lament of its current woes in storytelling and character development. Whatever the case, I like the idea of being really behind. I always find it rather comforting, even though I didn’t like the murder of the zombie girl (I realize I’m in the minority, but it’s a personal thing...), that there’s at least a respect for keeping some traditions of the zombie genre in place regarding the “damage to the brain kills them” aspect. Some might have wished there was some change from the formula, but I just feel that if you are to craft a tale of the undead, keep some part of what gave birth to the genre in place.

..if you pull the trigger you have to mean it.

What I enjoyed about this episode, Days Gone Bye, was the idea to keep the story localized to basically three characters. I prefer actually for a monumental cataclysmic societal collapse to be visualized (at the beginning) in increments, not like, say, Zombie Apocalypse, which spells out what happened in opening narratives and captions, instead of building stories bit by bit. I like the initial approach here. I actually noticed the “Compendium” of the Walking Dead (the first volume) at Walmart, had some time to kill while waiting on some medication to be filled for my son, and read the opening pages of the graphic novel. I liked how the comic built the story from the beginning. I hadn’t followed the comic, so I’m not one of those who insist that the television show abide by its structure completely, but I did like the strategy of the written/artistic form from what I had a chance to follow. If I wasn’t the sole breadwinner and had some cash to burn, I would have shelled out the $40 needed to purchase it. It would be cool to read both the comic and then the early episodes to see how they differ over a period of time.

I noticed what Darabont was going for in the first episode after just the first conversation between police deputies, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and partner, Shane (Jon Bernthal) about Rick’s difficulty with his wife and how she can say cruel things around their son, questioning his fatherly abilities. It is the attempt to establish the characters and what is going on in the lives of those characters focused on. This scene wasn’t at all mentioned in the comic portion I read. Actually, the police shootout with hoods is very minor; the emphasis on Rick’s awakening to a world in ruin is of importance.

We see towards the end that Shane and Rick’s wife (Sarah Wayne Callies) are lovers, concealed from the Grimes’ son, Carl (Chandler Riggs). Conflict as such indicates that Walking Dead will veer into melodrama from time to time. Maybe they thought Rick was dead, although Shane was visiting him and then all of a sudden stopped, perhaps because “the world went to hell”. All of you probably know this already, but I will venture to guess that he’s maybe not as noble as once perceived at the onset.

I loved the major storyline going in the episode, even if it’s a “one-off” with the father-son characters, Morgan and Duane Jones (Lennie James and Adrian Kali Turner); the comic placed an importance in their building relationship with Rick. Trust is earned once confirmed that the flesh wound Rick has is a gunshot not a zombie bite. The three seem destined to travel the road together, but different agendas derail this potential team. What the Jones duo does is service the plot as information for Rick, cluing him in on what took place while he’s “under”. All that hell that broke loose is shown to us in disturbing detail (I think a solid presentation of the aftermath can do wonders at establishing the horror that lies in wait for the lead heroic character), bodies and blood and damaged structures give us a lot of detail on the bad shit that went down.

Regarding the Jones, a bit of melodrama further included in Days Gone Bye, showing us that there's plenty of moments where characters mourn the tragedy of the catastrophe that laid the world to waste (well, America, anyway.) and took family members, friends, and just people they once knew (including a deputy who was a bit of an imbecile that Rick "puts down") has the father and son having to deal with the loss of their maternal presence, the mom/wife. Morgan just can't kill her; he tries so hard at the end to finally take her out and just can't do it. And, of course, we see right away that Rick is sympathetic to one rotted zombie, absent legs, crawling across the lush green of a park, putting a bullet in her eye, dropping it immediately on impact. One thing's for certain: Darabont isn't shy about showing gun shots to the heads of zombies, no matter how sympathetic he paints them. The CGI violence definitely had me clamoring for the make-up mastery prevalent in Day of the Dead.

When Rick rides into Atlanta on a horse he found, I thought back to Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters as the undead walk towards New York City. I just wonder how Fulci would have felt seeing how enabled the show’s production was in having a complete city and the budget available to them to create such a visual dynamo as an army of the undead crowd streets and blocks, tearing into the horse, hurriedly chasing Rick (the tank was an amusing refuge, I thought). Darabont was given an opportunity so many low budget zombie gutmuncher flicks could only dream of. He certainly makes the most of having the city location, desolate except for the horde infesting every block (including a devastated bus; a cool visual as Rick, on horseback, steadily passes by), and gets happy once again with the eagle-eye view from the sky, rather a bleak portrait of the downfall of what was once called society. Anytime a city is filled to the gills with the walking dead and we get a full view of how it is now their domain, I'll cop to being impressed. I still will have a wait-and-see approach to the series' prolonged storytelling...