Braaaaiiiiiiiins.

Have you seen The Walking Dead yet? It's on Sunday nights on AMC, and you can catch last week's pilot on On Demand and AMC's website. It's good. Really good.

I'm not really a horror movie aficionado, but it's about a zombie apocalypse. A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. There's no way that wouldn't be awesome, right? That's so awesome I'm starting a band and calling it Zombie Apocalypse, and our first single will be "I'm Not Even Hungry (But You Taste So Good)."

As I was watching the pilot, it actually reminded me of my beloved Deadwood in more than a few ways: for one, this looks like an HBO show. The production values and the acting (save for a few iffy Southern accents) are terrific. But mainly, it struck me as a zombie show for people who don't like zombies. I never cared for westerns that much, but Deadwood was so much more than that and I'm seeing the same sort of promise in TWD.

"Boy, am I chapped. Got any lotion?"

Don't get me wrong: there's plenty of gore, a zombie horde, and an undead guy getting walloped repeatedly in the head with a baseball bat. But it also manages to be quiet and thoughtful, which I expect from Frank Darabont and AMC and was not disappointed. I'd hate to think what a broadcast network would do to this show -- can you imagine it on FOX? There'd be way more boobs and the actors would be pretty but insufferable. Not that boobs aren't awesome in their own right, but still. Most networks would be too in love with the premise to actually give it the characters and pacing it deserves to make it truly interesting (see: The Event).

But there's none of that going on here. The only major problem I see is that there'll only be six episodes this season. And now I'm really hungry for a steak.