Today is a school holiday -- Lincoln's Birthday -- so last night I had some friends over who, like myself, were excited to see the return of AMC’s The Walking Dead. For those of you who don’t know, it's a TV series which stars Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, a police officer, who tries to survive in a world overrun by the walking dead after he has woken from a coma.
I am a huge fan of AMC’s new programming which includes Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. The last of these is much more popular as it casts a shadow over Breaking Bad and Mad Men, even though the last two are by far better in quality.
Many teenagers at my school, Polytechnic High School, can be seen wearing Walking Dead shirts and other fan gear. Just last night, Dr. Pepper announced a contest to showcase fan dedication and the winner of this would go to a Walking Dead Hollywood party. A contest like this has never been held for any other AMC show. My observations are not just made by me, but by Nielsen Ratings as well. Ratings for the first episode were astounding.
The episode had metaphors, themes and seemed to be original. I guess that scared off 1.3 million people, because the ratings went from 10.87 million to 9.55 million from the first to second episode. The pattern ensues, the more blood, gun shots and sex the higher the ratings. Last night’s episode “The Suicide King” was full of violence and death, and got the series highest ratings at 15 million.
This is in comparison to Breaking Bad, with its highest mark at 2.86 million and Mad Men with a high of 3.45 million. Breaking Bad and Mad Men share 22 Emmys and 4 Golden Globes. Walking Dead hasn’t won any, but has been nominated for earlier works.
It seems that the show is getting more and more people to watch not for storyline or characters but for the shock value that it will now write it into television history. It seems as if every episode is just a who-dies-next scenario and the plot changes very little now. A new season of Mad Men begins in March and more Breaking Bad episodes follow in July so until then I’ll join the other people resembling brainless zombies in watching The Walking Dead.
