I just don't get how the book and show could not address the most obvious question: wha happen? I don't even care about the answer to why are they zombies. I want to know what caused everyone to rush out of cities only to be stopped dead in their tracks.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I agree, why didnt he ask the dad some back story questions? I would be curious why the world was now filled with zombies.

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When there is no more room in hell the dead shall walk the earth

FWIW I thought it was a promising debut even if it was pretty much straight out of the 28 days later playbook. I am looking forward to them being able to get a little deeper into the zombie scenario because of having more time to tell the story without having to wrap it up in 2 hours like a movie. Still very excited to watch how this plays out.

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The comic has been around since 2003 and they still haven't addressed it. They recently ran into someone who said he knew how it happened, but he was just lying to sound important. I will say that it must be something supernatural because even dead people who were never infected become zombies once they die.

As for why there was that huge traffic jam leaving Atlanta that will probably be explained. If it isn't I'll come back here and explain it( don't want to give away unnecessary spoilers even though its really not a big part of the overall plot).

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You might be a little disapointed because they don't really ever get much deeper into the zombie scenario than what you see now. Yes, there will be some more info on how the zombies behave, but not much. Once the series gets going it will be mostly about how the survivors get by and how they interact with other survivors while living in a world where every minute could be your last.

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What you wrote here is kind of what I meant but I probably didn't explain it well enough. I think that in a movie that needs to wrap up in a 2 hour time period you can only get a burst of zombie action but the reality of dealing with it long term for the survivors is more interesting to me and something that I don't really think that zombie movies have effectively delved into yet.

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The hospital scene does resemble that of 28 days later, but you must remember, this is based on the comic. Vol 1 came out around the same time as 28 Days Later, so it could be purely coincidental. Also, from what others have said, this episode was pretty spot on with Vol 1. That being said, the first instance of "Herro Hospital & Apocalypse" was done in the 60's, though, I do not recall the name of the film.


Bacon zombie also had crazy eyes compared to the rest - we're all wondering(unless you read the comics).

They made it seem as though she just recently turned into a zombie. Her clothes weren't that messed up and she went back to the place where she actually turned.

Few others speculated that maybe they have some memories shortly after they turn and those fade with time.

Overall the show looks very promising and they did it all very well save for Mr Innocent Ed .


Oh and the match-light-stairwell was great!

oh in that case you are definitely going to get what you want.

We were very briefly introduced to some of the main characters in episode 1, one of which we only heard his voice coming through the tank radio at the very end of the show. The show will only get better and better as these characters start to become involved.


And one thing you are going to see on this show that you've never seen in a zombie movie is how living long term through a zombie appocolypse affects the mental development of small children. Let's just say if you think Dexter (from the show on Showtime) turned out fucked up from seeing his mom murdered when he was a child just wait till you see how some of these kids turn out after seeing people die violently on a daily basis.

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Shakes, you have convinced me to check out the comics on this. It sounds very cool, and who knows how long the show will go for...

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any show that starts out with a headshot on a ~10 year old girl has my attention for at least another episode or two. i didn't read the comic since i retired from comics circa 1994 (DUDE I HAVE YOUNGBLOOD #1 SIGNED BY ROB LIEFELD AND OTHERS) but like, any show that wants to ingratiate me to it by showing a headshot on a 10 year old girl, zombie or otherwise, has my attention.

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you won't be disappointed, the comics are great and a real quick read. As for how long the show continues, considering it was signed to a second season before the first episode even aired that's probably a good sign that this show has a chance to stick around awhile.

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Finally watched it. Thought it was really good. The resources AMC clearly is sinking into this series really shows. Very excited to see where the show goes now that he's stuck in a tank in Atlanta

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Team Cutler.

If that tank still works, the next episode should be pretty interesting...

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I know as you wrote it earlier in this thread. I just don't see how the readers don't demand it from the author as that is a natural and obvious question or source of conversation for the characters. As an author you'd think this would be a question you would love to answer as it allows complete creativity. However, it also may restrict in some ways.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I think it is immaterial to the story. The event happened. This is the fallout.

Of course, I haven't read the graphic novel, so I could be wrong.

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It is material as the natural inclination would be to see how to correct the problem, which you cannot do without knowing how it happened.

It would also be very natural for the characters to talk about it at lenght to some how wrap their minds around what has happened.

It's like the Penguin in Billy Madison. Not explaining its existence makes it WTF funny, but everyone wants to know WTF is with the Penguin...or to put it in horror terms the dude in the dog costume blowing the guy in the tux in The Shining....except not knowing doesn't increase the humor or horror in this story, so it is a failure.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Like I said, maybe it will eventually get told. But from watching the show, maybe no one knows. I don't know aboot the book, but in the show we haven't seen anyone who seems important enough to have that info.

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nope, you're right. The survivors are too busy trying to survive, they don't have time to give a crap why dead people are turning into zombies. Eventually, they may reach that point where they want to figure out how it happened, but as of now (80 issues into the comic) they have had such a hard time just staying alive that they haven't had any time to sit back and catch their breath.

Actually, that's not completely true. Late in the comic they do meet someone who claims he knows what happend and how he needs to get to a certain city to find if others with answers are around, but later it is discovered he is making it up so he can seem more important.

Also, keep in mind that there is no authority around, no army, no government. Even if they want answers, these people have nowhere to turn to to get them. So instead they are simply trying to survive and figure out a plan for making survival a longtime possibility.

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eventually they will run into a US senator and even he has no idea how it happened.


But, trust me, after awhile it won't even matter. The story gets going and the survival aspect gets so intense that after awhile you won't even be wondering where the zombies came from.

On top of that, when in the history of zombie movies have you ever seen a zombie explanation that wasn't idiotic in its own right? Its probably better off if they don't bother trying to come up with a "plausible" reason for zombies.

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you're gonna be very happy with the show. Except there will be a lot more main characters dying than even Lost provided.

I think we just came up with a new t shirt slogan:

ZOMBIES HAPPEN, DEAL WITH IT

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It's just not realistic to avoid the "how did we get here" question. That's basic to humans, a question we have been asking pretty much since we got here.

I'm not even talking about a major medical breakdown of the situation. I would expect people sitting around a campfire at night to want to rehash the events of that day or days that started the zombie scare. Just tell me "well one day we woke up and there were zombies" rather than completely avoid the question.

I cannot see how you fans don't view this as a major flaw. Humans ask why.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Of course the explanations are idiotic. Muscles atrophy and disintegrate quickly without blood flow/oxygen. No real life undead would be able to move within a short period of time. That's one thing I like about 28 Day Later. The zombies soon starved without food.

Like I said, the explanation could be as simple as "one day we saw zombies and no one knows why".

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

but you willingly assume they do for the story...you don't assume complete ignorance of the characters especially if this is going to be character driven.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

...which is neither asked nor answered.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

You might get that once he meets up with the other survivors. When they give him a recap/breakdown of what happened in Atlanta and how it all went to crap.

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I'd expect to hear his experience of how it began and what everyone's reactions were to it

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

That's understandable, I'd like to hear some of those stories as well. We'll probably get some of those campfire tales once he hooks up with his wife and the other survivors. In the books we don't get much of it, but it would be cool if they had some Lost-style flashbacks to some of the survivors in the early days of the outbreak and how they made it to atlanta. That would be really cool.

It would be neat to see an episode like that where we see what Rick's town looked like before the outbreak and how his wife and kid got out and got hooked up with Rick's partner.

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Okay, going to stop reading this thread so I don't keep reading spoilers.

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Team Cutler.

sorry dan, I've been conscious of spoilers in that I'm not revealing any main plot points or which characters die, but I'll filter myself even more and stay away from posting some of the minor stuff I've been alluding to.

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No worries. I was more or less blown away by the first episode so don't want to have anything ruined ahead of time.

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Team Cutler.