No Chicago-voter jokes please, this is not a political post. It’s about the season premiere of The Walking Dead. This is the first chance I’ve had to discuss it (as it is, I’m in the Saginaw, Mich., airport waiting for a plane). My quick take: It was great.
Among fans of The Walking Dead (or at least among fans in the Goldberg household), there’s a big debate about whether last season the show got too invested in the soap-opery talky talk and languid southern suspense-building that wasn’t all that suspenseful. The correct answer is: Yes, yes it did. Sunday’s premiere went a long way to correct that. Indeed, it was so taut and action-packed, they’ve bought themselves considerable indulgence for future episodes dedicated to relationship squabbles (and the inevitable flashbacks to how the gang spent the winter).
Last year, the first item on my list of gripes about the show was:
There needs to be more talk about the best place to hide from zombies! Look, I live in a world that is not currently populated by flesh eating zombies and I seem to spend more time than the Walking Dead cast contemplating the best survival strategies to avoid zombies — as both my wife and even readers of the Corner can attest. If you actually lived in such a world, this would become something of an abiding obsession, don’t you think? People would argue about the comparative merits of boats versus arctic refuges versus sealed-off penthouse apartments all the time!
In the season premiere, they finally enter a prison which, it turns out, makes a lot of sense as a refuge from zombies — if you clear it out first. Otherwise, not so much.
They still seem determined to leave nothing to the imagination when it comes to killing the ambulatory deceased, and I will confess I sometimes think less is more on that score. But I was particularly happy to see it occur to someone that maybe immediate amputation may indeed be a remedy for a zombie bite, given the news from last season that everyone is already infected anyway. We’ll see how that goes.
I’m trying to avoid obvious spoilers while still giving commenters who’ve seen it a chance to respond substantively. As everyone knows, Bill Buckley founded National Review to provide an outlet for conservatives to stand athwart History, yelling “Stop!” — and to provide the best place for right-wing zombie discussion boards.