Todays Thoughts: The Walking Dead: The Real Survivor Show

I have never really watched Survivor, the reality show. I never found anything real about it. It is just a Hollywood made up scenario that has nothing to do with reality.
These are the times that we live in though. Made up reality to fill the void of our current reality. The masses love it and it gets great ratings. That is good enough reason for the networks. For me, it just has never cut it.

Recently, I noticed the new show The Walking Dead. I never had time to watch it before, but was aware of it. Being that it was on AMC it got automatic credit with me.
AMC, that is the network that brought us Mad Men and Breaking Bad, amongst other great groundbreaking shows.

So, I set out to watch the first two seasons of The Walking Dead, thinking I would take a week or so to do that. However, from the first ten minutes, I realized that was not going to be possible.
Quite simply, the show is so gripping, so powerfully done, that I had to watch the whole two seasons in one shot. That meant 13 episodes and more than 14 hours.
I did it, and it felt that it just flew by. As soon as one ended I had to see the next one. Not one of the episodes disappointed me.

Of course, The Walking Dead is fiction and fantasy. However, the real true survivor aspect of the show far surpasses anything that Reality TV could create. In every sense, the characters on the show are in a life and death struggle every second of every day. If it were to actually happen, you could imagine yourself as those characters and in exactly the same type of predicament as they are in.

The writing is off the chart good, and the story lines seem to flow to the point that you don't question the fantasy aspect that you might with most shows of this type.

Note: do not watch the clip below if you have never seen the show and intend to. It is the final scene of Season Two and is a big time spoiler.

In almost every way, the show delivers what television entertainment is supposed to be about. It is not real, but it seems real. That is counter to what network television has become, which is attempting to be real when it clearly is not.

The only thing I will say. If you are going to keep it real, don't hire a British Actor to do a fake Southern accent when he isn't capable of doing that.