Since its debut in October 2010, The Walking Dead has been AMC’s undisputable savior. Sure, AMC has had an incredible streak of
original scripted programming, including such towering TV greats as Mad Men and Breaking Bad. (Heck, I’ll even vouch for the dearly-departed Rubicon!) But The Walking Dead has been the channel’s breakout hit, pulling in
record ratings for basic cable while cultivating a rabid fan base composed of both
longtime fans of the Robert Kirkman graphic novel, as well as full-fledged Walking Dead newbies.
Now, AMC certainly knows that it has a ginormous hit on their hands…
and in the past year or so, it’s become painfully evident to viewers that AMC
intends to milk their cash cow dry. It
began just months after the first-season finale, in March 2011, when AMC and
Anchor Bay released a quick, nearly-bare-bones version of Season 1 on DVD and
Blu-ray… only to release a jam-packed Season 1 Special Edition the following
October. Then, AMC announced that it
was planning to split The Walking Dead’s
thirteen-episode second season into two batches: the six-episode first half
aired in October and November (to tie in with AMC’s annual FearFest), followed
by a 2.5-month hiatus, with the final seven episodes starting in February. (Now, one would think that a huge break in
the airing schedule would cause the show to lose momentum, but in fact, the
show’s midseason premiere garnered the series’ biggest ratings to date... only
to be topped by the season finale itself!)
On top of that, The
Walking Dead has been used a platform to increase and promote AMC’s other
original programming. If you wanted to
see a clip from next week’s episode of The
Walking Dead, then you’d have to watch the episode of Hell on Wheels or Kevin Smith’s reality show Comic Book Men in order to get it. (In fact, AMC is pulling this
trick again next week: In order to see the premiere of the 4-minute Season 3
trailer, you’ll have to endure the premiere of AMC’s crappy-looking new reality
program, Small Town Security. At least I can DVR the show and fast-forward
through all the cameltoe.)
And then there’s Talking Dead.
Starting with the Season 2 premiere, AMC decided to stretch out the
viewing experience of The Walking Dead
by putting together a live post-episode discussion series hosted by Nerdist podcaster (and current
pop-culture emissary) Chris Hardwick.
The setup is simple: cast and crew members from The Walking Dead, along with random celebrity fans (such as Patton
Oswalt, Kevin Smith, and Zachary Levi), sit down for 30 minutes to discuss the Walking Dead episode that just aired. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s certainly
enticed fans to stick around on AMC after their weekly zombie fix…
…which brings us to tonight, and this weekend on AMC in
general. Season 3 is currently in
production down in Atlanta, so to tide us over until the season premiere in
October, AMC has put together the “Season 3 Preview Weekend”, in which they
re-ran the series’ first two seasons (19 episodes total) marathon-style,
leading into a special hour-long Season 3 preview episode of Talking Dead, followed by a special
black-and-white airing of the pilot. On one hand, I was excited to see some juicy sneak
peeks of Season 3 on tonight’s Talking
Dead… but let’s be honest here: what we got was a painfully stretched-out
hour of television, aimed at giving us as little of substance as possible while
still ensuring that we kept our eyeballs glued to the TV for 60 minutes or so.
Let’s get the good stuff out of the way first: The Michonne
scene was absolutely worth it. Even though it was only a meager 54 seconds
long, it delivered the gory, katana-wielding goods. At least AMC had the good sense to air a
scene that they knew would get the fan base rabid and excited. Here’s a random
YouTube capture of the scene in question; if it’s missing by the time you read
this, I’m sure there will be a zillion copies on the Internet:
In second place was the tour of the prison set with Steven
Yuen (aka Glen). I’ve gotta say that the
Walking Dead production team has
cooked up a heck of an elaborate set (Hardwick and Yuen were keen to point out the
blood spatter on the walls). The other
segments from Hardwick’s week on the Atlanta set (including visits with makeup
guru Greg Nicotero, the show’s propmaster, and a brief moment with Laurie
Holden) were alright, but the set tour dwarfed them all.
However, all that aforementioned footage took up no more
than 10 minutes of tonight’s 45-minute program.
The rest was a classic case study in diversion tactics and padding for
time. Sure, there were a few, extremely
sporadic juicy tidbits: for example, Merle’s returning in Season 3! (And he’s
full of “anger and racism”!) But Hardwick’s continued visible frustrations at
asking Glen Mazzara, Gale Anne Hurd, and Peter Alpert for insight into Season 3
– and the non-answers he received in the process – didn’t make for compelling
television. And then, there was tonight’s
celebrity super-fan… Drew Carey!?!??! Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m quite fond
of Drew Carey from his Drew Carey Show/Whose Line? days, but he seemed a wee
bit out of place here. The low point was
when Carey mentioned that he gave up on Lost
because that show’s characters made stupid decisions… something which he
claimed the characters on The Walking
Dead never do. I’ll refrain from any
further comment. ;-)
Plus, there were all the plugs for Walking Dead merchandise: the 2013 video game; Wednesday’s 100th
issue of the Kirkman comic (complete with eight – count ‘em, eight! –
collectible covers!); the exclusive Comic-Con obstacle course cover; other
promotions for the show’s Comic-Con appearance this coming weekend… you get the
picture. Like I said, I'm very aware that the show is a cash cow, and I am aware that the hour we watched tonight was nothing more than a commercial for the new season, but I didn't need the entire show to feel like an advertisement. (Although, in their defense, AMC has to pull in a bunch of money to pay for Mad Men somehow...)
Maybe I'm being a wee bit too hard on tonight's Talking Dead episode... in fact, I'd say I certainly am. But still, I couldn't help but want a decent amount of substance. Perhaps if AMC didn't feel the need to rush a preview special onto the air as soon as possible, and waited a month of so, when they would've had more episodes of The Walking Dead in the can, it could've been something special. But for now, I'll just rewatch those 54 seconds over and over again. I mean, that slice-and-dice sound mix is pretty awesome, you know... :-)
Random notes:
- FYI: Season 3, which (again) will begin airing in October, is going to be 16 episodes long! Given the traditional cable TV season for a scripted series is 13 episodes, that’s a staggering vote of confidence by AMC.
- I don’t plan on discussing the black-and-white version of the pilot… mainly because it was on the Season 1 Special Edition DVD and Blu-ray that came out last October. (The black-and-white version, which was meant to emulate the comic book, was put together by the show’s creator, Frank Darabont for the video release; Darabont did something similar for the DVD release of his 2007 flick The Mist.)
-
I can’t believe that Chris Hardwick made a Shawshank joke during tonight’s show, given AMC’s attempts to distance Shawshank director Frank Darabont from the series he created... and which he was unceremoniously fired from last summer. Hopefully, they won’t fire Hardwick, too, as a result of his gaffe. ;-)
- Speaking of Frank Darabont: His new cable series, L.A. Noir, which stars Shane himself, Jon Bernthal, is expected to get a series order very soon over at TNT. (And no, the series has nothing to do with that video game from a couple of years back... just so you know.)
- Chris Hardwick with a machine gun… that is all.
- Seriously, just a single still picture of David Morrissey as the Governor? Let’s hope next week’s trailer gives us a more substantial peek… let’s hope.
- Season 4: The Game of Thrones/Walking Dead crossover you’ve all been waiting for! ;-)
- Another quotable phrase from Chris Hardwick: “serious nerd boners”.
- We’ll be returning to AMC next week to begin coverage of the fifth and final season of Breaking Bad. Please join us!
No comments:
Post a Comment