Paying proper attention to the first episode of this season of Walking Dead. I’d forgotten how bloodily effective Daryl Dixon was. He’s like some kind of “Copperhead Road” ninja.
It’s been a while since I saw the first season. I can’t actually remember if there’s been an explanation provided for why some corpses turn into walkers and others don’t. Clearly bodies staying down is common enough that people open cars with bodies inside as if it’s dangerous but not guaranteed to be deadly–
Come to think of it, I don’t recall if a passive corpse has ever gotten up and started chewing. Possibly it’s the perfectly normal human reaction of getting twitchy around anything that looks like it could get up and start chewing, even if it won’t do it.
The show has the same oddly unselfconscious mood that I remember from the first season. Walking Dead came out in 2003; the zombies weren’t saturating the media horror tropes nearly as much as they are now. No-one’s running around talking about how it isn’t like this in the movies, or conversely how it is like this in the movies. I think that not needing to nod towards the movies and books that everyone’s heard of or seen gives the show a bit more room to develop people actually dealing with the situation, rather than just correlating it to something else.
This isn’t the “You mean the movie lied?” of Return of the Living Dead. This is the “I’m gonna board up that door, and I’m not going to unlock it again no matter what happens!” of Night of the Living Dead.
And having properly rewatched the first episode, am pleased to say that the characters are still being awesome, and flawed, and very reasonably human.