Buy The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye
So, I’ve got some friends who are dead freaks for this show and I was hanging out with one of them the other day and we had some time to kill and he said why not queue up the first episode of the show and let me see what all the fuss was about it. Well, he did and I did. It’s a really fantastic pilot. The episode starts with a low-key, quiet suspense sequence at an abandoned gas station and when it goes violent it does so in a really shocking way. The show signals immediately what the tone is going to be; get with it or get out. I liked the central conceit of the main character waking up from a coma in the aftermath of the apocalypse. The long first act, in which he slowly wanders the halls of an abandoned hospital, finding more and more horrific clues the farther he goes, is a masterpiece of suspense based horror. The show is packed with great images; a zombie with no legs slowly crawling through a park, a man riding a horse into an abandoned Atlanta, a pale hand slowly reaching through the crack of a chained door. It definitely sets things up in a really gripping and thrilling way. I could see how one could get hooked on this show. It was already on my list of shows to watch at some point, but I’m definitely excited now to get into it at some point. Unfortunately, it’ll have to wait; I’ve got too many shows already queued up to jump into this one right now. But still, what a fantastic pilot. Highly recommended. 4 stars.
tl;dr – pilot is instantly iconic, gripping and suspenseful; episode sets up the show perfectly to go in many intriguing directions. 4 stars.