The Walking Dead Season 5 Finale Tonight!

The fifth season of AMC's The Walking Dead comes to an end today at 9pm with a 90-minute finale. The television series about the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse  based on Robert Kirkman's long-running graphic novel series is cable television's highest rated show. I'm still verklempt that they killed off Noah (the young Black guy) who they had barely introduced earlier this season! Combined with the departure of Tyrese and Bob and the mental breakdown of Sasha the zombie apocalypse appears to be rough on Black people. Well at least we still have Michonne. If Michonne goes, I stop watching the show immediately. There are rumors that there will be some castmembers being killed off in the Season 5 finale;  this would not be surprising because the cast of characters has become almost unwieldy in its size.

There are some "show-enders" for me, starting with Michonne. I would probably still watch the show without Carol or Rick. I'm not sure I would watch the show without Darryl or Glenn in it. I hope I don't have to find out!

Here's a sneak peek of tonight's episode:


What do you think will happen?

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Golden Globe Nominations Announced

The Golden Globe nominations were announced yesterday as Hollywood's award season is now in full swing on the inexorable march towards the Academy Awards.

Here are the important categories:

MoviesBest motion picture -- drama"Boyhood" "Foxcatcher" "The Imitation Game" "Selma" "The Theory of Everything"
Best motion picture -- musical or comedy"Birdman" "The Grand Budapest Hotel" "Into the Woods" "Pride" "St. Vincent"
Best directorWes Anderson, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" Ava DuVernay, "Selma" David Fincher, "Gone Girl" Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, "Birdman" Richard Linklater, "Boyhood"
Best screenplayWes Anderson, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" Gillian Flynn, "Gone Girl" Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, "Birdman" Richard Linklater, "Boyhood" Graham Moore, "The Imitation Game"
TVBest TV series -- drama"The Affair" "Downton Abbey" "Game of Thrones" "The Good Wife" "House of Cards"
Best TV series -- comedy"Girls" "Jane the Virgin""Orange is the New Black" "Silicon Valley" "Transparent"

Some of the notable nominations are Ava Duvernay for directing "Selma," becoming the first Black woman to be nominated for a Directing Golden Globe. People are suggesting that "Selma" may get several Oscar nominations as well. Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" was snubbed, garnering a single nomination for it's score. Both of the main actors in the reboot of BBC's "Sherlock" were nominated, for different things. Martin Freeman was nominated for his work in the miniseries "Fargo" (which I have been slowly catching up with online and it appears to be really really good) while Benedict Cumberbatch was nominated for his role as Alan Turing in "The Imitation Game."

So far of the Best Picture nominees I have only seen "Birdman" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" but I do intend to see everything in the Drama category, especially "Foxcatcher" and "Boyhood."

In the television categories I'm constantly surprised by the snubs that "The Walking Dead" (which is the highest rated drama series on television) gets from the awards. I'm glad to see that someone is recognizing the consistent excellence of "The Good Wife" and of course "Game of Thrones" is probably my favorite show.

It's not clear that the Golden Globes can have that much of an impact on the results of the Oscars (the Screen Actors Guild awards are more closely correlated since the actors' branch is the largest branch of the Academy).

WATCH: Sneak Preview of Season 5 of Walking Dead

Here is the trailer for Season 5 of Walking Dead! The new season begins on October 12.

The Walking Dead Season 4 Finale Tonight!

It's become a tradition of Spring! The season finale of The Walking Dead airs tonight and then next week my absolute favorite show Game of Thrones returns with new episodes! It's a wonderful time of the year. Also, The Good Wife continues to kick butt as well, making Sunday nights at 9pm a very tough time slot!

What are you looking forward to seeing? Almost certainly a major character will be killed off again on The Walking Dead. My odds are on Beth. Last year's casualty in the Season 3 finale was Andrea. Here's a preview:


Season 4 of The Walking Dead has not been as good as previous seasons but I think there is still a lot of material to be covered and interesting stories to be told with these characters. Here's looking forward to Season 5!

Walking Dead Season 4 Continues Tonight!

Season 4 of AMC's The Walking Dead continues today, with the last 8 episodes to be aired over the next two months. The mid-season finale was pretty shocking, with yet another death of a major character and the storytelling terrain of the series has been altered dramatically. Apparently the format of the episodes will change, with lots more flashbacks, and some new characters are going to be introduced.

The Walking Dead is still one of my favorite shows, so I am glad that it is back!

WATCH: Sneak Preview of The Walking Dead Season 4 Mid-Season Finale!

The Walking Dead - 4x08 " Too Far Gone" : Sneak...
by Llegaronparaquedarse Oh crap! I found a sneak preview of tomorrow's mid-season finale of The Walking Dead. Ywo of my favorite characters, Michonne and Hershel, are being held captive by the Governor in order to force Rick and the others out of the prison. I don't see how this can possibly end well!

WATCH: Walking Dead Season 4 Starts Sunday!

TV REVIEW: Walking Dead Season 3 Finale

The Season 3 episode of The Walking Dead was so anticipated that it poised a hard dilemma for me to respond to. The problem was that because three of my favorite shows were being aired simultaneously at 9pm on Sunday (the Season 3 premiere of HBO's Game of Thrones an episode of The Good Wife and the aforementioned The Walking Dead series finale "Welcome to the Tombs") I had to choose which to watch live and which to tape and watch later. Unfortunately, I chose "Welcome to the Tombs" (mostly because I knew HBO would be repeating the Game of Thrones episode at least twice more on Sunday night and it would also be available On Demand while The Good Wife might not be available till much later, with forced commercial watching). I also suspected the finale of one show would be a bigger deal than the premier of another. I won't be making that mistake again. In fact, I'm not completely convinced I'll continue watching The Walking Dead. It's very possible I'll start watching Breaking Bad instead (I have no intention of --or interest in--ever seeing Mad Men.)

Unlike the finales of Season 1 and Season 2 of The Walking Dead, which had very important events occur in them AND left unresolved questions as cliffhangers for the next season AND ended the story arcs built over an entire season's worth of episodes, "Welcome to the Tombs" did almost none of these. The episode was written by showrunner Glen Mazzara, who it was announced earlier would leave the show over "creative differences" and end his involvement with The Walking Dead after Season 3. Mazzara was responsible for the second half of Season 2 and all of Season 3 of what is know the highest rated show on cable. The writer of the best episode this Season was Scott Gimple, and he is the Season 4 showrunner.

The first half of Season 3 started out very promising, with the main character of the show, Rick Grimes (a former sheriff of a small town in Georgia and the leader of our band of survivors of the zombie apocalypse) starting to go crazy after multiple members of the cast were killed off in disturbing and shocking fashions. Season 2 had occurred primarily on the grounds of a rustic farm where the survivors were relatively free from immediate death from zombies and concentrated on the inner tensions between the members of the group. To me, that was clearly the best aspect of the show; I am interested in the depiction of how humans would react to an end-of-the-world scenario, not so much interested in gory zombie killing. Season 3 primarily was set in an abandoned prison over-run by "walkers" that Rick's group tried to clear and make a fairly impregnable home base.

One key aspect of The Walking Dead is that anyone in the show can be killed off (except for Rick, we presume) at any time and the producers are very good at communicating this sense of ubiquitous and ever-present danger to the characters we (the audience) is invested in. The main highlight of Season 3 was that it introduced one of the darkest villains in the series, known as The Governor, who ran what appeared to be an idyllic town called Woodbury that contained nearly one hundred survivors (a vast number of people in this post-apocalyptic age of no civilization). Woodbury had a semblance of normality with running water, electricity and community. Of course, the town also had men with guns manning the walls of the entirely encircled town, but that was presumably to keep the millions of "biters" (the show never uses the term "zombie") out there, but the viewers could immediately see that those men and walls were also keeping all the residents of Woodbury trapped in here as well.

One of the key story arcs of this season was that we got to see the moral rot at the center of the supposed paradise of Woodbury, and it became clear that it all flowed from the head of the Governor, who starts off as a maybe slightly odd man with perhaps some control issues, to a megalomaniacal, psychopathic mass murderer.

So, what happened in "Welcome to the Tombs"? The widely promoted big event of the episode was the showdown between Rick's group, which at this point had diminished to barely a half-dozen able-bodied people, against the dozens of heavily armed (mostly male) adults from Woodbury. The Woodbury crew, egged on and deceived by the Governor, attacked the prison which had served as (a mostly safe) but highly defensible location for Rick's group; but in the end there was no direct kills between the two groups of humans! So the key story arc of the entire Season (Woodbury versus the prison, i.e. humans fighting each other instead of their common existential threat of the zombies) was basically a bust. In the end, Woodbury was defeated by its psychopathic leader going on a murderous rampage and gunning down his own men because they had retreated in fear and panic in response to an ambush of smoke bombs and fire orchestrated by the newly engaged pair of Glen and Maggie.

One thing which made the Season 2 finale so good was that they introduced the character of Michonne, who in the comic books the series is a major character who carries many significant story arcs. Michonne and Andrea had spent the entire period of time between Season 2 and 3 (which apparently was several months, if not half a year) together alone, surviving in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. Michonne is also one of the vew few Black characters on the show, which piqued my attention, since the show had treated its other black characters poorly. She wields a very long sword and radiates a persona of taciturn, barely simmering rage and vengeance.

The main development on the Season 3 finale was the death of Andrea (one of the key characters who had made it through the entirety of Season 2 and was introduced very early as one of the main characters in Season 1). Her death occurred as a direct result of the machinations of the Governor who killed another character named Milton (one of his main sidekicks at Woodbury) for his temerity to thwart the Governor's sick plans to use zombies as a weapon against Rick's group during his upcoming attack on the prison. By killing Milton and leaving his dead body in a locked room with Andrea he knew that he would be killing them both and turning them both into zombies. He has the great line "In this life now, you kill or you die. Or you die and you kill." Whether Andrea would die at the hands of a person she knew well (Milton) was the "ticking time bomb" suspenseful plot of the finale, and it was successfully depicted, but in the end used up far too much valuable screen time which was NOT used for important plot forwarding or character development in the rest of the episode. Since Andrea is apparently still alive in the comic book series being written, killing her off was a major statement from the producers (maybe the creative differences that led to Mazzara leaving?) that the TV show would be very different from its source material in the future.

However, all the time spent on killing Andrea during the finale gave the viewers less time to contemplate 1) the horrifying massacre of the most valuable Woodbury residents by the Governor; 2) the decision by Rick to bring the least valuable Woodbury residents (the women, children and elderly who had been left behind at the town while the men went off to war) to the prison (which is still not fully explored and clearly still contains an unknown number of zombies); 3) the increased signs that Rick's pre-teen son Carl (the main character's primary motivation for living even with the birth of his infant daughter) is showing signs of  homicidal tendencies and a decided lack of empathy with "other people"; 4) and the escape of the Governor along with his two main ruthless henchmen to parts unknown!

These are all cliffhangers of a sort, I suppose, but they are not as compelling as the questions raised in the finales at the end of seasons 1 and 2 and there was also much less resolution of the central story arc of Season 3: the tensions between Woodbury (the Governor) and the Prison (Rick). I suppose in some sense Rick won, but we did not get the pleasure of seeing the Governor lose (i.e. die a horrible death). This was a significant flaw in the writing of the episode and makes me question whether the producers have the best interests (or desires) of the audience at heart.

It's fine with me if the television series diverges from the comic books, because I have no intention of reading the comic books, but I want to watch an intelligent, well-acted, well-written drama about characters navigating an horrific new world where civilization has effectively ceased to exist and the world is full of billions of flesh-eating zombies that are omnipresent reminders of the devaluation of human life. Mazzara was a fan of Lost (so was I) and this episode began with a clear homage to that show with a close-up on a single eye (which turned out to be the Governor's). This could be a troubling comparison to Lost, because after Season 2 Lost it can be convincingly argued that the show lost its way and it eventually became clear that the writers had written checks that their scripts did not have the richness to cash. With Lost they were able to string along viewers for four more seasons, but somehow I doubt that viewers will be willing to give The Walking Dead that much credit.

I am pretty sure I won't! What do YOU think? Are you going to watch Season 4 when it comes back in October 2013?

My Top 5 Favorite TV Shows of 2012

Arya Stark, one of the most popular characters
 in the Game of Thrones series

I have previously blogged about the five favorite books I read in 2012. When I am not reading, I watch television on my DVR (or go to see movies). Now that the Super Bowl is over, the 2013 television season

The shows that I made sure my DVR recorded every week in 2013 and which I often watched live were some of my favorite television shows from 2012:

5. The Good Wife. I first found about the The Good Wife when Archie Panjabi won the Best Supporting Actress in Television Drama Series at the Emmys in 2010. She was so striking that I thought "I should really check out that show," especially since I was shocked she had beaten out the person I thought was the clear frontrunner, Rose Byrne from Damages. I knew that the show starred an alum from ER, Julianna Margulies but I think I saw it as a cheap knock-off of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. (The show follows the travails of the wife of a politician who admits to an affair and the "good wife" stands by her man.) I have actually never seen the first season of the show but I got hooked towards the beginning of the second season and have not looked back. It basically is an update of David E. Kelley's LA Law and The Practice with less sex, but more interesting cases, and with local politics thrown in. Margulies is very good and bring a lot more nuanced to her role as "the good wife," as does Christine Baranski in a dramatic role. They used to have Michael Boatman in a more prominent role but now the show's cast is almost overwhelmingly white but I'm still hooked. Besides, both Josh Charles and Matt Czuchry bring enough "cute white boy" energy to keep the casual gay fan engaged. 

4. Modern Family. This is simply the best comedy on television, taking the overdone format of a sitcom about simple domestic living and turning it on its head by trying to represent as much family diversity as possible. So, there's the family with the hot Latina trophy wife Gloria (Sofia Vergara) and her pedantic son Manny living with the rich and grumpy curmudgeon (Ed O'Neill) Jay; the very gay couple Cameron (overweight,dramatic & queeny camer Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (red-headed, dramatic & queeny Jesse Tyler Ferguson) raising their adopted Asian girl toddler Lily; and the "typical" nuclear family consisting of a pretty, neurotic mom (Julie Bowen) Claire and a childlike father (Ty Burrell) Phil with their three kids Haley, Alex and Luke. It should be noted that despite the astonishingly good writing and uniformly good acting (the entire adult cast regularly gets nominated and Best Supporting Actor has been won by a Modern Family castmember every year it has been on television) this is another show which does not have a regular African-American castmember, even though the producers have clearly tried hard to represent the wide spectrum of diversity present in America. One extra thrill for me while watching the show is knowing that is filmed in my home town of Los Angeles and from time to time recognizing some of the locations that the characters are in. The unapologetic portrayal of a "real" gay couple is one of the clear highlights of the show, but Burrell, Bowen, Stonestreet are also comedic actors performing at the top of their game. 

3. Homeland. The first season of Homeland may be the best first season of a television drama, ever. (Although I think the producers of The Wire, Battlestar Galactica and Lost may quibble, and I would add the first season of 24, Alias and Six Feet Under to that list. Homeland has the DNA of 24 through producer Howard Gordon but stars Claire Danes and Damian Lewis as the co-leads. Both of these actors are infinitely superior to Keifer Sutherland, but when you throw in Mandy Patinkin there's no contest. But the key to Homeland is its writing, and in the first season the writers conceived and executed a perfectly timed, insanely suspenseful sequence of realistic events involving lifelike, complicated characters that it was simply breath-taking to behold. Although they were unable to maintain that high level of excellence through the second season (which also happened in 2012), even a slightly flawed Homeland was still better than 99% of everything else on television. 

2. Walking Dead. I had heard about this new show about the zombie apocalypse based on a series of popular comics graphic novels airing on cable but since I don't read graphic novels I was somewhat uninterested in watching it. I'm not sure what convinced me to watch the first episode, but I happened to run into it a few weeks before the debut of the now-infamous second season and was immediately hooked after seeing the pilot and devoured the entirety of the rest of the first season (only 5 1-hour episodes) in the next twenty four hours. The brilliance of Walking Dead is that it works on many levels. If you are interested in blood-spattering gore and violent situations then you will get more than your fill of both, basically in every episode. If you are interested (like I am) in emotionally-laden, nuanced situations that complex characters have to navigate in a dangerous, difficult world extrapolated from our own then you will also see a lot of that in every episode. The show is based on very popular material from another medium from which it is slightly deviating (with the approval and participation of its creator Robert Kirkman) that brings along another whole fan base. It's this combination, plus the ruthless policy of the producers (enacted to maximal effect multiple times already) that literally no character is safe from extinction that makes and made Walking Dead the most watched show by the most coveted audience (18-49) on cable television.

1. Game of Thrones. The top two shows on my list are similar, in that they are genre pieces of fiction (Walking Dead is based on a horror-speculative fiction graphic novel while Game of Thrones is based on one of the best selling swords-and-sorcery fantasy series of all time) that also have participation from the creator of the original work. Game of Thrones airs on HBO which means that both the budget of the show is much larger (rumored to be on the order of 50-60 million dollars per season, or more than $5 million per episode) while its audience is relatively smaller (Walking Dead averaged about 5 million and 7 million viewers per episode in its first two seasons while Game of Thrones averaged about 2.5 million and 3.5 million in its first two seasons). Because it's on premium cable, Game of Thrones is also able to be more sexually explicit than its rivals (this also applies to Homeland which airs on Showtime) and it uses (some would say abuses) this ability, primarily by including lots of female nudity. For me, the reason why the show is a must-see is that I am a fan of the underlying source material, and I am curious to see how the producers are going to bring the books to life on screen. But, the reason why I am a fan of that material (as well as the show) is that it is fascinating political drama, based around compelling characters that we have come to care about, put in harrowing situations. One could really argue that the television adaption is taking an already great series of books and improving on them by making use of the medium to highlight and create nuances and meanings which may have either escaped notice while reading (or may not have even been there in the original text!) And the exciting thing about the series is that although we know what happens in the first several seasons of the show because they are based on the first few books, George R.R. Martin hasn't finished writing the books yet so no one knows the ultimate resolution of any of the fates of the characters. Similar to Walking Dead, Martin is also fairly ruthless about his characters and many, many heads roll, even of characters that the audience loves (and some that they hate). Another key feature that separates Game of Thrones from its rivals is the sheer magnitude of the cast of characters. They are numerous and multifarious, providing different kinds of viewers with people that they can cheer for and root against. My favorite is Tyrion Lannister (played to Emmy award-winning perfection by Peter Dinklage) who happens to be a "bad guy" in the series, but he is also (one of) the smartest person in the books, while also being an amoral, brutally scarred dwarf scion of the richest family in the Kingdom. Even if you have not read the books (as my Other Half has not) you can still quite enjoy the series, although I think if you have read the books it gives one an extra frisson of pleasure.

Honorable Mentions
The Big Bang Theory, True Blood, Happy Endings, Boss and Alphas. Guilty pleasure: Scandal.

The Walking Dead Renewed For Season 4

AMC's The Walking Dead is on its mid-season break in the middle of Season 3 but will return on Sunday February 10, 2013. The show has been gaining viewer this season and is now the #1 show among viewers 18-49, the segment most prized by advertisers. It is a must-see show for me, along with Homeland on Showtime and The Good Wife on CBS (which are basically all on at the same time on Sunday nights!)

AMC rewarded the show with an early announcement of a 4th season renewal that included a surprise that the hit show will also get a new executive producer/showrunner:

 “Today, AMC announces the season 4 pick-up of The Walking Dead. AMC also jointly announces with Glen Mazzara today that for future seasons, the two parties have mutually decided to part ways. Glen guided the series creatively for seasons 2 and 3. AMC is grateful for his hard work. We are both proud of our shared success. Both parties acknowledge that there is a difference of opinion about where the show should go moving forward, and conclude that it is best to part ways. This decision is amicable and Glen will remain on for post-production on Season 3B as showrunner and executive producer."

Ruh-roh! The show has only been on for 2 1/2 seasons so far and it has already had two dismissals of showrunners for "creative differences" with the network. After the end of the phenomenal first season (which was just 6 episodes long) co-creator Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) was fired. Now comes word that Glen Mazzara who led the show to record ratings for the network has parted ways with The Walking Dead.

The good news is that the show is based on the graphic novel written by Robert Kirkman and the author continues to be involved creatively with the show, even though the show and the comic have diverged in significant ways (even more so than the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones, which is more faithful to the text even though the author George R.R. Martin is actually less involved with the show)

If you missed any episodes from Season 3 there will be a marathon of the entire season on Monday December 31st.

Walking Dead Returns Tonight for Season 3!

It seems like it's been quite a long time since the stunning Season 2 finale (on Sunday March 18th) of one of the most emotionally harrowing shows on television, the AMC's zombie drama The Walking Dead. There was a trailer for Season 3 released over the summer but i have kept myself relatively spoiler free.

With The Walking Dead, Emmy-award winning Homeland and The Good Wife all airing on Sundays one after the other it's a good reason to stay in before the week starts. Set your DVR!

WATCH: Trailer for Walking Dead Season 3

Seems like it wasn't too long ago that the amazing last episode of Season 2 of Waking Dead aired on AMC, but the trailer for Season 3 of the hit cable television show about the zombie apocalypse is available now!

Walking Dead Season 2 Finale: A-mah-zing!

Last night was the Season 2 of AMC's The Walking Dead and it did not disappoint. The producers had been leading up to the final episode by killing off major characters in the last two episodes so that the audience was primed for a wholesale massacre of their favorites who have so far survived two season of living in a post-zombie apocalypse America. The producers have made it clear that basically every character in the show can potentially be killed (except for the main star) Rick Grimes played by handsome English actor Andrew Lincoln.

According to Nikke Finke's Deadline Hollywood TV the ratings for the finale were excellent:

Last night’s Season 2 finale of the zombie drama posted 9 million viewers and 6 million adults 18-49, hitting series highs in total viewers and all key demo categories. Vs. the Season 1 finale, The Walking Dead was up a big 51% in total viewers, 50% in adults 18-49 and 50% in adults 25-54 (5.3 million). The series  eclipsed its previous highs, 8.1 million total viewers, 5.4 million in 18-49 and 4.4 million in 25-54 logged by the second season premiere. Those 18-49 and 25-54 deliveries were the highest ever for a basic cable drama series. Now they will be replaced in the record book by last night’s deliveries. The Walking Dead ranks as the No.1 drama series in basic cable history in such key demos as Adults and Men 18-34, Adults and Men 18-49, and Adults and Men 25-54. For season 2, the series averaged 6.9 million viewers, up 32% vs. season one, 4.6 million in adults 18-49 (up 32%) and 4 million in 25-54 (up 32%). 

Creatively, the series also went to new heights, and many fans were thrilled with the introduction of the Michonne character, a samurai-sword-wielding Black female who has two armless zombies attached to her by chains as an undead retinue.

The main tension of the show is in the depiction of a group of people would manage the day-to-day details, travails and decisions of living in a post-apocalyptic world where basically all technology is non-functional, you are surrounded by flesh-eating zombies and it appears as if 99.99% of civilization is dead and gone. (The "walking dead" in the series title refers to the surviving humans, not the shaking, stumbling zombies.) Rick was a sheriff deputy (before the zombie apocalypse arrived) and is a strong alpha-male kind of guy so the group has generally gone with his decisions as Rick has tried to maintain a semblance of humanity and democracy. However, in last night's finale Rick revealed that he had killed someone (another one of the major characters) and that he no longer felt that the group should be run as a democracy, and whoever didn't like that siutation could leave.

It will be interesting to see how the group dynamics develop in Season 3, where apparently we will be introduced to not only the very strong Michonne character, but also one of "the most intimidating villains in recent pop culture history" in The Governor.

I am happy that the producers have not killed off the one Black character in the sea of milky whiteness (Glenn the nerdy Asian guy is hardly a deviation from the decidedly Republican demographic that is over-represented in the cast). It would be great if T-Dog outlived everyone, even Rick.

One quibble I do have with the series, and it's a relatively big one is that the producers are shockingly inconsistent in depicting the physical abilities of the zombies "walkers." Generally, they show most walkers not posing a real physical threat because they basically shamble along at a very slow pace, reacting to the stimulus of sound or light as a potential source of live flesh which presumably is their only source of nourishment. So, most humans can generally out-run and really even out-walk most walkers. But every now and then the producers will show a sudden lightning-quick attack by a walker, usually burying their teeth into the soft flesh of a living character, dispatching them to a horrible death and their undead career.

I understand the tension the producers have, they need to make the walkers threatening enough so that the characters are in constant danger from the walkers, but they can't make the walkers powerful enough so that any close encounter between a live human and a dead walker results in two dead walkers. My main problem is with the unfortunate inconsistency in the portrayal; it comes across as unfair and arbitrary instead of scary and threatening.

With that one caveat, I would still have to say that I am very impressed with  The Walking Dead and I am in no way shape or form a horror fan, I like the show for its depiction of an alternative reality and its focus on the characters and their motivations and interactions.