How much life is left in “The Walking Dead”?
That’s a question I raise whenever AMC’s zombie sensation enters a new season, as it did Sunday.
After all, how does a series that constantly relies on shock and awe keep the suspense percolating? How many times can you put its gutsy little band of survivors on the run, or in ominous peril, without feeling repetitive? And, really, just how many fresh, imaginative ways are there to bludgeon a reanimated corpse?
But I’ve learned to never bet against this show, which just keeps scaring up bigger audiences. In fact, AMC has just announced it has ordered a sixth season.
“The Walking Dead” burst onto TV in 2010 with 5.3 million viewers. At the time, it was AMC’s highest-rated premiere. Little did we know how monstrous it would become. When the show aired its Season 4 finale in March, 15.7 million viewers tuned in.
Can the “Dead” rise again in Season 5? The ratings show 17.3 million viewers tuned in to Sunday’s season premiere.
It certainly had a tremendous jumping-off point. When we last saw Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and their comrades, they had followed some railroad tracks to the mysterious outpost of Terminus, a community that promised “sanctuary for all.”
It was an appalling case of false advertising. Shortly after their arrival, our survivors were taken captive and imprisoned in a train boxcar. But why?
In Sunday’s season opener, we got some answers very quickly, and it wasn’t pretty. The opening minutes, in fact, might have delivered the show’s most gruesome sequence ever, and for “The Walking Dead,” that’s saying something.
Indeed, cast members and producers have revealed in various interviews that the show is upping the ante this year in terms of blood, gore and full-throttle action. It’s a more “grown-up” series, they say.
There will be no major spoilers here. I’ll only say that the opener picked up just moments after March’s cliffhanger, when Rick snarled that their captors “are screwing with the wrong people!”
What ensued was a dizzying, turbocharged confrontation designed to keep your nerves in a vise (or your stomach in knots). Of course, it’s all punctuated with the violent reverie of an all-out zombie splat-fest. So, basically, it’s “The Walking Dead” on crank.
Alas, the episode did ease up long enough to offer some hints as to how Terminus evolved from haven to hellhole. There were also a couple of emotional reunions, and even a little more intel on why scientist Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt) might have the cure for the zombie apocalypse.
Is it enough to keep the masses watching? AMC and the people behind the show certainly are counting on it.
Robert Kirkman, an executive producer and creator of the comic book series on which “Walking Dead” is based, recently told Entertainment Weekly that he doesn’t plan “on stopping anytime soon.” And a “Walking Dead” companion series is expected to debut sometime next year.
It’s tempting to think they’re overplaying their hand — that they’re about to milk a phenomenal franchise to death. Then again, let’s not underestimate the appetites of “Walking Dead” fans. They might just be as insatiable as the on-screen zombies that haunt their dreams.
Without the success of “The Walking Dead,” you likely would never have the “American Horror Story” anthology series, which launched its fourth incarnation — “Freak Show” — last week (10 p.m. Wednesdays, FX) and immediately creeped me out with a two-headed version of Sarah Paulson.
And you certainly would not have “The Strain,” which recently wrapped up its crazy, terrifying, fang-filled first season, and has already been renewed for a second season. Or even “Grimm,” which returns to NBC on Oct. 24, just in time for Halloween.
There was a time when the mere idea of macabre horror stories made TV programmers squeamish. Not anymore.
