Walking Dead

Man, am I hooked.  For the past year, both kids have been exhaustively seeking out every zombie movie out there.  JJ even got a reference book on the history of zombies from the black and white George A. Romero classic "Night of the Living Dead" to the funny "Shaun of the Dead".  But this weekend, we got the first season DVD of the AMC series "Walking Dead" and even I watched intently every episode in the first season as well as both Season 2 episodes aired tonight.  Walking Dead is different than most zombie material out there because there is somewhat of a story between the main characters, not unlike most drama out there -- except there's the backdrop of "walkers" that can emerge from anywhere at anytime. Walkers, obviously in reference to the fact that these zombies' body involuntarily move in response to human scent.  There are crawlers too and in tonight's AMC episode, one was referenced as a swimmer -- a zombie trapped in an water well.  What's really memorable about tonight's episode is that as the humans were trying to pull the zombie out of the well with a rope attacked to its upper torso, its lower body just cut in half from the fact that the tissue and bone structure cannot support its hanging weight.  I don't know if Walking Dead will ever bring to zombies what X-Files did to aliens but these first 2 seasons had been very well written and acted -- so far.  Several episodes had been adhering to the formula plot of a few of the lead actors/actresses go off into zombieland to retrieve something (guns, food, medicine, a redneck cuffed to a pipe) and in the process, the rest of the story develops -- usually something typical of a drama, the human side.  If you can get over the fact that zombies are fictional, at best, then Walking Dead is the most unusual of all dramas that television had ever produced.