I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t really care for THE WALKING DEAD. It’s not that it’s BAD. It’s just that it’s so FAMILIAR. And I do kinda have zombie burnout. Unlike with other supernatural creatures of menace, like vampires and werewolves, I like my zombies in a limited quantity. It wasn’t always this way. But today you can’t spit without hitting a zombie. Zombies saturate the entertainment industry. We suffer from TOO MUCH ZOMBIE.
Turns out George Romero, grand high poobah of zombieness, isn’t a WALKING DEAD fan, either. He also finds the series, both in its televised and comic book iterations, “too close for comfort.” It’s nice to have such an authority lending his voice to my own opinion. Stressing that, for him, the zombie serves as a vehicle for satire or propaganda, and that he sees little of this subtext in the TV series (I’m with ya again, George!), he calls THE WALKING DEAD a “soap opera with an occasional zombie.” Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just isn’t what he’s interested in. And it isn’t what my tastes call for, either, when I’ve got a hankering for zombies.
Then again Romero hated WORLD WAR Z, too, so it’s not like he’s ALWAYS right.