The Walking Dead has been marching on as it tears through one supposed ending after another and keeps refusing to die. This is made all the more shocking when one looks back at the very beginning of the series, and at the shambling corpse that exists in its place.
Pilot episodes, the first venture of a series that sets the tone for its future, are very rarely high points in a show's history. Typically, the first outing takes place before the series has fully found its place, or has obtained the budget to make full use of its ideas. The Walking Dead, however, destroyed expectations by creating a flawless 67-minute horror film and dropping it as the show's opening.
"Days Gone By," the show's premiere episode, opens on a well-executed homage to the beloved cult film 28 Days Later, with series hero Rick Grimes waking up in a desecrated hospital after an unknown period in a coma. After awakening, Rick takes a brief tour of zombie-ridden Atlanta, meeting survivors along the way. His encounter with bereft husband Morgan and his son Duane is a gripping and emotional journey that establishes the world's stakes in a matter of minutes. Rick's wife and son are established in their unique circumstances without overwhelming the main storyline. The final confrontation between Rick and the army of zombies he's led into concludes in one of the most powerful conclusions of the season. Rick climbs into a tank alongside a zombie soldier he's forced to put down. In his moment of need, a voice cuts through the panic, and the series' baseline is set.
It's iconic, powerful, and near-flawless horror filmmaking. It's the perfect adaptation of what The Walking Dead comics stood for. It's pure and compelling human drama, set against the backdrop of perfectly executed zombie horror. The undead are depicted with the compassion and humanity they deserve, the survivors are fascinating and varied, and the episode ends on a perfect coda. The series would be a better complete product if it ended right then and there. But it didn't.
The entire first season of The Walking Dead is solid, entertaining zombie action horror. It follows the pilot well and expands in several interesting directions. The new characters introduced throughout are fun, but it never reaches the peak it achieves in one flawless horror story. The seasons beyond the first fall short of that standard by a wider margin with every passing year.
The pilot of The Walking Dead is excellent because it was written and directed by series creator and legendary filmmaker Frank Darabont. The man behind The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist, among many other masterworks, was the visionary behind the first season of the hit show. Darabont brought a variety of frequent collaborators along with him when he pieced the show together. Original comic writer Robert Kirkman was thrilled when Darabont joined the project and repeatedly sang his praises, both as a filmmaker and as a fan of the source material. Darabont was a longtime fan of George A. Romero's zombie films and underwent a four-year-long battle to get the series to TV.
"Days Gone By" was the most-watched AMC pilot of all time. The masterful horror film that makes up The Walking Dead's pilot episode is the vision Darabont had in his head for the series he'd waited years to adapt. He had more dreams for the series, but he never got to bring them to fruition. After season one and four months before the release of season two, AMC fired Frank Darabont as showrunner.
Initially, the network blamed Darabont's inability to adjust to a television production schedule, but later reports revealed that the real reason he left the project was budgetary restraints. After one of the most successful first seasons in television history, AMC cut the budget of The Walking Dead by 20% while demanding twice the number of episodes for the second season. These ridiculous demands caused strife between the director and the studio, and eventually resulted in AMC firing their best asset — which doomed the show. Darabont was integral to the series on every level. He wrote and directed the series that spawned the monstrous fanbase. He brought in most of the cast and crew. It was his idea to adapt the show in the first place. Darabont created one of the most profitable empires in TV history, one that marches on to this day, twelve years later. Yet, was kicked off the project only a year into it, to increase profits for the network.
The Walking Dead has never and likely will never recapture the glory of what was created in its first on-screen outing. Its occasional good moments occur thanks to other creatives being handed damaged materials and piecing together what they can from the remains. This is a lesson to fans about the corporations that own the things they love. A studio is always willing to ruin its own asset on purpose, as long as it stays profitable.