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Tony Kollath: Thumbs up for me...aside from the decision to bring the horse along (?!?!?). It laid a lot of groundwork, and I know that a lot of viewers had issue with the lack of excitement, but all of Darabont's stuff is very deliberately paced. I appreciated that the filmmakers didn't feel the need to go into the whys and hows of the apocalypse.

One touch that was sort of interesting was that the zombies seemed to have some level of recollection of their prior lives. The little girl stopping to pick up the stuffed animal (whether or not it was originally hers)....the zombie wife wandering up the stairs of the house....the Walking Dead seem to be able to recall some basic stuff from when they were alive.

Max Braden: Kim brings up something that bothered me that contradicts what Matthew said. For a cop, he wasn't very safe or prepared. He assumed the little girl was alive, he didn't check the back of the farmhouse truck for danger, he didn't scrounge the town for food/water/clothes/resources (unless I wasn't watching during that scene), he didn't leave any written signs of that he was alive and headed somewhere, he took off in a heavyweight vehicle without any concern for fuel, he got himself trapped by a bunch of slow walkers, and he didn't shoot the soldier on sight. (Though this makes me wonder about the state of the bodies laying outside the hospital). That kind of absentmindedness is human and will get the character into situations that will make for good TV, but it can get pretty annoying. When the haunted house says "Get out!" you get out, you don't go into the basement.

David Mumpower: With regards to Kim and Max's criticisms, we should keep in mind that he had been drugged out of his mind for an indefinite period during his hospital stay. His decision making would be impacted somewhat by his muddled focus. Of course, if that's the explanation, he should also go through a period of withdrawal, which may or may not be taken into account in a later episode. When the pilot fractures time, this is always a possibility. Of course, I'll say the same thing now that I did when I watched The Event. The pilot just didn't grab me enough.

To be fair, I probably did the show the same disservice that Kim did. In re-watching Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later over the weekend, I set the bar high for zombie entertainment. The Walking Dead can still be a good show without matching the lofty heights of those two features. While I admire AMC's demonstration of confidence in the television series by slotting it after them, all this did was remind me of how deadly dull this film is, especially compared to the dexterous pacing of Zach Snyder and Danny Boyle's works.

The fallout from turning a lot of the pilot into a one-man play is that I spent a significant period of time trying to remember how I knew the actor rather than being drawn into his post-apocalyptic experience. Presumably, this happened because he was over-acting a lot and it was bugging me. Eventually, I came to realize that he's the poster board guy from Love Actually. If the show had engaged me more, this line of thinking would have been discarded immediately. Similarly, a BOP staff member is an extra in the tank scene overhead shot and during the time when I should have felt creeping tension and claustrophobia, I was so nonplussed by the events on screen that I was expending more effort determining which zombie he was.

Of course, there were some fine moments during the pilot. I liked the sense of dread created by the chained door. The hand-painted sign not to open it was a deft touch. I also enjoyed the voice on the radio, which hints at a key plot point from the comic book series (that I've read but didn't enjoy much). And I thought that the "save one bullet" moment when he was under the tank was the best part of the pilot. Unfortunately, that's only three strong moments in about 80 minutes of video. I need a higher ratio to hold my attention. I plan to watch the six episode run, but if the second episode doesn't improve by a lot, I'll probably watch them sequentially in one sitting in mid-December rather than on a weekly basis.

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