“The Walking Dead,” what hath thou wrought?
This is not a screed on last Sunday’s season premiere, even though it was one of the most emotionally wrenching, horribly graphic and most unpleasant hours in recent TV history, including the six previous seasons of “Walking Dead.”
Rather than a review of the premiere, let’s talk about the long arm of the show’s influence.
The TV and movie industries have always been a place of imitation. Let a TV show or a movie do well, and loose the hounds – here comes a slobbering horde of similarity. Let’s take a tight focus on TV, whose programs are far cheaper to make than movies, so it’s easier to chunk more into the blender to see whether it comes out tasty.
Riffing off “The Walking Dead,” look at the number of supernatural/horror shows on TV – both broadcast and cable. You can’t include “Supernatural” (getting long in the tooth) or the “Vampire Diaries” (“Beverly Hills 90210” with fangs) since both began before “The Walking Dead.”