AMC's The Walking Dead

I don't the show is about the zombie apocalypse. Not anymore.
To wit: The episode after they rescue Maggie and Glenn and they are arguing over Merle and Michonne. They are arguing in the middle of the road surrounded by abandoned cars and wandering zombies. The zombies were of no concern. None. They are part of the landscape.
The zombies are an ever-present danger but the real threat is their fellow humans and that conflict is the drive of the show. The fighting zombies was/is cool and all, but it gets stale. How long are we gonna watch them bash mindless zombies without a real villan? Not long, I suspect.

 

I think that is a failing of the show. They have made these people too efficient. At this point, it's hard to imagine taking seriously the scene in which Shane kills Otis because of how weak they've shown the zombies to be.

If That Bitch Andrea can fight off four at a time, why the hell did we lose so many people to them earlier? I suppose they're showing character growth by making everyone smarter and better at fighting.

 

Aren't we supposed to believe, in zombie protocol, that the walkers are getting weaker, slower and more soft-tissued as their rotting continues? If so, then what would have been pretty damn threatening to Shane and Otis now might be relative pushovers. Unless there are some new folks turning.

 

I never considered that. I figured the rot stopped when they reanimated. It's an interesting theory, though. So the zombie problem would cease to be a problem eventually?

 

I believe so. I'm just going on the logic that the show-runners have said, time and again, that they're intentionally making the zombies look worse and worse each season to show that decay.
So, yeah, while a big ass zombie gang in Season One meant you were done, now I'd imagine you have a much better chance of getting by then, particularly if you're like the people in Rick's group who are not only battle-tested, unafraid and experienced but, apparently, somehow well-fed and in good shape.
Plus, you've got to figure that at some point during the invasion, there are going to be a hell of a lot more zombies than humans on the Earth, meaning that at some point the number of fresh zombies falls and, those humans who survive, would at some point not really have much of a zombie problem at all.
It's not like the zombies can reproduce. Eventually, evolution would kick in and, you would think, humans would take back over.

 

If you look closely at the zombies, some of them look darker -- they said on one of the Talking Dead episodes during this season or last that zombies continue to rot and some of their skin tone has gotten grayer.

Case in point, the kitchen zombie Michonne killed in "Clear." There was no zombie gore that flew when she sliced its head off, just a lot of dust.

The older zombies get slower the longer they're "alive."

Look at Zombie Shane. See how fresh he looks?



Now check out the crawling zombie from Season 1. See how decayed she looks?



That's the effect they're going for.

 

I figured the crawling zombie may have been dead for a while before the reanimation.

 

Zombies can't reproduce? This one has two children, on the record.

 

And the son of another one owns the Raiders.

 

Not really, Rick has said that everyone has the "zombie virus" or whatever you want to call it. So every time someone dies, you get a new zombie. Basically, the world is doomed until the entire population dies and does not reproduce (in theory).

 

But everyone splits heads of the dead now.

 

Right, but somewhere on Earth, there are people bumping uglies and starting a new generation of future walkers.