In warm up for Halloween

Before the month of Halloween Starts, I'm warming up. I recently re-watched "The Walking Dead" and I'd like to point out some things that I liked, some things I dislike and evaluate how it held up over the year when I wasn't so excited for "Holy crap six hours of zombies!?!?!"

Things I didn't like
1) Morgan - not the character but the fact that he completely disappears after episode 1 and you never hear from him again. I was told, and I don't know how true this is, but this show was supposed to just be 1 six episode season and if that is the case then they left a plot hole that I would've really liked cleaned up. The reason I question the truth to that is they picked the show up for another season literally after the airing of the first episode and they left PLENTY of holes, it seems like they knew they'd be getting 1 more season if things went well.
2) There's some bad acting - it's not terrible but most of the actors aren't from the south and you can pick up on it. maybe a vocal coach wouldn't have been such a bad idea.
3) CGI Blood- I'm not saying they didn't use blood squibs, and the first time through I didn't notice that they even had CGI blood, probably because I was so excited and in my mode of "Holy crap six hours of zombies." One place where CGI needs to stay away from is blood, it just doesn't look right and while real blood squibs are probably pricier they're just better looking. I'll always be someone fighting for practical effects.
4) some mild complaints that are nitpicking - Why was there a zombie taking a nap in the tank in episode 1? did we see any napping zombies before or after this point? Why did he put his gun to his head then just decide to climb in to the tank in that same episode? did he just look up then and was like "oh there's a way in this tank!" How did glen know what channel Rick Grimes was on in that same tank? pretty damn good guess! Remember the Helicopter from the beginning of episode 2?I sure as hell didn't! WTF was with that?

Things I did like
This is a longer list but I'm just going to keep it to three things and I'm not going to just say "Everything else"
1) Characters- The characters are all pretty diverse, with the exception of probably the main character Rick. You have Shane, Rick's best friend who's in love with Rick's wife and torn between his loyalty to Rick and his loyalty to his penis. Lori - Rick's wife who's a slut but not such a slut that she can't fuck Rick's best friend and apparently Rick in the same day......wait that does make her a slut. you don't have any characters that don't feel real with the exception of maybe the blonde sisters who have some pretty crappy dialogue at parts but that didn't bug me to badly.
2) The make up on the zombies - That's really all that needs to be said I'm glad this wasn't also CGIed. Also when they did use fake blood, it looked good. Most of the CGI stuff is just for shots to the head which I imagine saved them money and a lot of time in reshooting, so I CAN deal with that.
3) It's well paced- I complained a bit about pacing in my earlier reviews but most of that focuses on episode 3 where they have a transition from "Zombie Horror Film" to "Character Drama" which a zombie movie with out good inviting characters gives you........well you end up with "Day of the Dead 2: Contagium" which is like the 14th worst movie of all time.

Now how does it hold up you ask? well, Horror almost always loses something when you rewatch it, unless of course there are engaging characters and something else to motivate you to watch the show. The Walking Dead does that well, if you want a Zombie movie that's good with very little to think about, watch the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, that's not what this is. This is a nice character driven drama that happens to be set in a world over taken with Zombies! When you do zombie fiction right that's what you end up with, for example, Zombieland. How many zombies were actually in zombie land? You had a story about 4 strangers who met up in a difficult situation and then towards the end they shoot some zombies to save each other. Dawn of the Dead, 4 people living in a mall and what they would do if they didn't have to worry about the repercussions of their actions.....and there were zombies there. My point is quality zombie movies have zombies in the background not in the foreground. "The Walking Dead" does that and does it well.