TheBaxter wrote:well, as someone who hasn't so much as picked up an issue of the comic, i'm not bothered by the pace at all. maybe that's a pitfall of watching a tv show adaptation of a story you already know the ending to. imagine if Lost or BSG had been adaptations of a comic that people had already read, and so they already knew that:
[Lost spoilers]jack kills smokey, and dies, and hurley becomes new island overlord
or [BSG spoilers]galactica gets to earth, but its all nuked, then they find the way to a new earth that becomes our earth 50 million or whatever years later, with the help of angel starbuck....
imagine how impatient you'd be around the time of season 2 or so, when they still haven't even gotten close to the end. i'm not sure what the "real story" of the walking dead is supposed to be or will end up being, but i'm enjoying the show for what it is right now. this is only the 3rd freakin episode, after all. sure, there's only 6 episodes total for this season (which really makes this a miniseries, which will be followed up by a true full season next year), but i think this 6 episode miniseries was always designed just to test the waters to see if the show would fly, and build a foundation on which the real show would be built when it gets its first full season.
that said, the last episode was kinda slow and dull, and if the show becomes more like the last episode, focused on the survivors with the zombies just playing a bit role in the background, and less like the first couple episodes, i might lose interest pretty fast. but it's just one episode, i'm not gonna worry that this show has lost its focus already just because of one subpar episode.
I have nearly the exact opposite opinion. Episode 3 was my favorite of the series so far. It really started focusing on the characters, and I think that's crucial. You (or someone) even made the point earlier in the thread about getting to the point, because how many times can you show zombie kills and you want the kills to be the ones that matter, in terms of the plot of the comic. That's exactly my point though. By limiting the zombie killing stuff and fleshing out (ZING!) the characters, that's where the real power of the series is. It's a fine balance, but I felt this third episode was just about perfect.
I'll be honest, Grimes has been striving to find his wife and son for 3 episodes now. When he got out of that van, and his son didn't even hesitate and just started running and screaming DAD! and they hugged... I cried. That's powerful TV, and it didn't seem like a false or fabricated moment at all. Even though this is based around the ridiculousness of a zombie apocalypse, it's real human moments like this one that are going to give this series its legs.