Although the main themes and ideas of the comic are intact the story has moved from the first episode of being a reasonable facsimile to the last episode being nothing conceived of in the printed form. Whereas the first episode actually used real material from the first few issues, the final episode has people still alive who shouldn't be gong into situations that were never in the comic. I think what we have here is a zombie IP that AMC felt they needed a pedigree to attach to it.
Having said that my only real problem with the show is the gorefest they feel they need to include; the gratuitous bloody violence that they include so they can hopefully rope the more hardcore zombie crowd in with. I'm not afraid of blood and I'm not grossed out by the mess they make doing this, but it does bother me a bit simply because it disrupts the flow of the show. There you are spending half an hour watching some meaningful character development then bang, you've got some of the most grotesque violence ever seen on TV in your face, followed by another 20 minutes of meaningful character development. Like I said, it doesn't really flow, and it's guaranteed once per episode:
Episode 1: The horse being eaten.
Episode 2: butchering a zombie corpse with an axe.
Episode 3: Shane beating the hell out of an abusive husband (by far the least gore, but it goes on a long time).
Episode 4: A zombie feasting during the camp attack.
Episode 5: Pick to the head on already dead corpses.
Did they add to the story? The events themselves did, but the gore almost outweighed the story development and I think instead of bringing the hardcore on board, who will be bored to tears during the other 45 minutes of the show, they're going to be alienating the casual viewer who otherwise might be interested. I'm talking about people like my wife; the story lines fascinate her, but she can't handle the blood and guts (and I mean literally guts). Yes the antagonist is a gross disgusting creature (all of them), but we don't need to watch them attack an already dead zombie with an axe for 2 full minutes, before watching them smear the goo on their clothing, let alone have the camera splattered with blood, to get the idea of whats going on.
As of the time of writing I Googled the show for some fact checking and found a story claiming a large chunk of the writing staff has been fired. I don't know what to make of that, but I'm hoping it means they come closer to the core material they started with. I'd also like to see them avoid such heavy handed storylines as episode 4, the "good" gangbangers; if you've seen it you know what I mean, and if not, watch the show. Yes, we know, everything's bad until it's good.
Having said all this, I do have to say it's still more than worth watching and I highly recommend it as a part of your regular viewing schedule. I certainly don't plan on missing a single episode.
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