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The Walking Dead, AMC's hit TV series based on Robert Kirkman's comic book of the same name, made a big splash last year in its debut season, including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Television Series Drama that helped convince the network to renew the show for another 13 episode season. That new season is going to start up October 16. And to get you primed for more savage zombie action, AMC has released six webisodes showing brief glimpses into the lives of ancillary characters and zombies before and during the disaster that left the entire world decimated.

If you're not familiar with The Walking Dead, it's a series about a group of people just trying to survive in a bleak, horrific world ruined by a zombie apocalypse. It is possibly one of the most depressing literary works in history. Every time you think to yourself, "well, it IS a comic book, so I'm sure they'll come out of this scrape a little bruised but no worse for wear," a beloved character ends up getting torn to pieces by zombie claws or worse, gets their head lopped off in a field as part of a stalemate against a rival group of survivors.

(That was my very-long-winded way of warning you that even though it's a TV show the videos are scary, gory, and maybe NSFW. Watch at your own risk.)

So what are your thoughts? Are you excited for another season of zombie-fueled despair? Sick of the zombie thing altogether? Wondering why the show differs from the comic book so much? Post your thoughts in the comments, ESPECIALLY your predictions for plot points you expect to see this season.

 

This weekend, a man is leaving television. A man who did many things in his life, and yet, will always be remembered for essentially filling time. A man who saw what was a traditionally serious niche and said "No! I'm going to bring humor instead! But not edgy humor that could offend people! Instead I'm going to take the much harder route and keep things PG-13, and keep going even when everyone on the planet makes fun of me and calls me lame! And only when they've given in and I've outlasted like everybody on the staff, only THEN will I walk away! As a champion!"

Andy Rooney. Today we Woot bloggers name you our brother. More inside.

We know, we know, other bloggers are too self-centered to admit you invented the art. But talking to yourself on a regular schedule, ignoring when other people complain, charging ahead, sticking to your guns, telling yourself the right people will one day understand? Dude, that's just a few Pixies lyrics in the profile short of a Metafilter regular, and you started doing this in 1973! You're every blogger's older brother, every commenter's ur-document, and it's time someone told you to your face. So how about after all the attention dies down you stop by the offices and we can have a little party in your honor? You know, a little retirement BBQ?

We're not kidding, Andy, we'll set it up. Give us a call, you can come out to HQ and we can fire up the grill. Toon knows this place where he can buy habanero vodka shots, and wow, man. We can't handle them ourselves, but you probably have a stomach of steel. Everybody forgets you started as a reporter in World War II. One of only eight guys chosen to cover that first bombing raid into Germany, then you kept going, from the concentration camps to occupied Paris just as it was being liberated. Listen, you want to tell us some of those stories while we cook, we're not gonna complain.

And speaking of stories, what about when you got home? You wrote for TV in the 50s, when that was a top-of-the-line job! Two hits, one of them a number one show, then zip, right back to serious news as easy as you please. And we're not talking Nancy Grace news, we're talking the Edward R. Murrow era. Did Damon Lindelof ask to do a Frontline after he finished on Lost? Man, when you walked out of that, you could have done ANYTHING with your career! It was 1973, and people like you were rock stars! But instead, you chose to annoy America every Sunday night. Your opening act? A guy so serious he scared Presidents! Andy, that had to be at least as hard as making fun of coffee machines and Roombas. But you found a way.

No matter how many counter-culture comics took potshots at you for your personal style of wit, you just kept right on going. Now they're all dead from drug overdoses, and you're still center stage! You've even inspired your very own YouTube game! Can chubbo-hipster Seth Rogen say that? Of course he can't, Andy Rooney. Because he's not you.

Maybe people didn't always find you funny, but that's not the end of the world. You're still makin' 'em laugh at least once a week, same as us. Naturally it's a little worse for us because we publish daily, but if our numbers are right, that's a 28% success rate, and that's still statistically significant! It's just not worth listening to the nay-sayers and mathematicians who point out how you divided wrong. It's about being true to you.

Yes, we've also said some dumb things we've had to apologize for later, but that's the cost of exploring, right, man? When you're dealing with comedy at our level, what you say isn't always what you really believe deep down. Or is it? Guess that's something we can debate while the burgers are cooling. Hey, if you want corn, speak up, Matt's making a grocery run.

Andy Rooney, you set the standard for us noisy folks online. Without you, there might be no place for comedy that's just good enough, happening where people don't actually want it to be, overstaying its welcome and never thinking before it hits post. Even if those other websites act like they don't owe you a thing, we'll try to keep following in your footsteps as best we can. But remember, brother, if retirement doesn't work out, you'll always be family to us jerkfaces here at Woot. And we hope you'll stop by for the cookout.

For reasons that are probably obvious, the comedy of embarrassment and social ineptitude really resonates with me: Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, that sort of thing. And I'm also way into the better British sitcoms, like Saxondale, The Thick Of It, and The Office again. So how come, even though it's been on since 2003, I never knew about Peep Show until a few weeks ago?...

While it offers certain logistical advantages, it's not generally a good idea to do your grocery shopping on your way to a party.

David Mitchell and Robert Webb - who you may know from their excellent sketch-comedy show, That Mitchell & Webb Look - play Mark and Jeremy, roommates in South London. While the chubby, nerdy Mark holds down a desk at an agonizingly dull loan company and soothes his failure with women by immersing himself in World War II trivia, Jeremy imagines himself as a world-class ladies' man and an undiscovered dance-music production genius who's always one break away from stardom.

But under it all they're both uncertain, insecure, and eager to please the people around them, which generates an almost infinite variety of squirm-inducing hilarity. The characters who are happy and well-adjusted are the ones who are closest to just being themselves - something that Mark and Jeremy are too socially cowardly to grasp. The show's main visual conceit (and the source of its title) is that much of the show is seen through the eyes of one or the other main character. So a lot of the show is shot in tight close-ups on faces, for an intimacy that makes everything that much more uncomfortable. Inner voice-over monologues show us even more about the self-deceptions and pretensions that bedevil Mark and Jeremy. Again, the problem isn't who they are - it's who they're pretending to be at any given moment.

I don't want to give too much away, and the compounding deceptions and misunderstandings of each episode are too complex (and NSFW) to lend themselves to summarizing in a sentence, or a YouTube clip. Just get over to Hulu and start watching all 42 episodes free - if you can stand it. Maybe someday we'll see David Mitchell host the Oscars, too.

Yes, I know, it's Wednesday and the show aired Sunday. I'm lazy. So sue me.

If you haven't seen the show Breaking Bad, you're missing out. I also don't know why you clicked on this article, but thanks all the same. Anyway, the show follows high school Chemistry teacher Walter White as he begins producing methamphetamine to sock away enough money for his family to live on after he passes away from the cancer that's slowly killing him. It's a frenetic descent into a dark world while he clings desperately into his rapidly-diminishing morals. Season 4 just premiered Sunday night on AMC, and if you haven't seen it you should go away right now before I spoil it for you because I want to talk about a few things...

I'm a fan. Really. The show is appointment television for me, and I don't even get AMC (although maybe if I write enough of these I can get Woot to pay for the upgrade). But after Sunday I want to express some concerns and wildly speculate about what will happen this season, because that's what people do when they write about TV shows on the internet.

Where's Walter Going?

In my opinion the best moments of the show, the most nail-biting tension, and the darkest humor have come from those moments when Walter realizes he's in way over his head and tries to overcorrect before he slides any further into the world of drug production. His cause was noble: support his family, even in death. His methods were not. But now that he's cancer free, not to mention super rich, why's he sticking around? Yeah, he's tangled up in this business now, but Sunday's episode didn't show a man resigned to his fate. He had Gale killed to save his own skin, but rather than cutting his losses and fleeing he immediately wants to resume cooking meth for Gus. 

It reminds me a little of Weeds, a show I enjoyed until somewhere towards the end of season 3, when it went from "dealing pot while keeping up appearances in suburbia" to focusing more on the ins, outs, and pitfalls of drug trafficking. The show kept its personality, and the characters were still well-written, but they weren't nearly as sympathetic once they cut ties to real life and became full-on drug traffickers. Similarly, I'm not really interested in Breaking Bad becoming just another gritty show about drugs.

I want Walter White to keep digging his nails in the ground and trying to claw his way back to his normal life. Ordering a hit on his lab assistant is the sort of thing that the Walter of season 1 would have found unconscionable and even season 3 Walter would have lost his mind with panic. At first I thought we'd see a switch: Jesse's remorse at killing Gale turned him into little more than mute scenery for almost the entire show. "Ooh," I thought, "is Jesse going to become the duo's moral compass, navigating Walter back from his depravity?" Then at the end we see him happily munching pancakes with a sociopathic grin as he explains to Walter that he's learned they have a sort of drug dealer diplomatic immunity because they can kill anyone who messes with them. We saw Skyler acting pretty morally-ambiguous as well. Did everyone fall from grace?

Hank's Hell

I have to admit, Hank was my least favorite character when the show started. Not that he's a poorly-written character, necessarily, but his gratuitous back-slapping, "Hey buddy," piggish personality was so grating I cheered when he was shot. Now that he's suffering, though, he's really developed some depth. I was glad to see he wasn't just "magically recovered" at the start of the season (although that would've been impossible since they picked things up literally seconds after season 3 ended). 

He still doesn't seem to know where the money for his medical bills is coming from, though. And once he finds out Walter and Skyler are footing the bill, how long before he starts digging into where their money comes from? I'm guessing he's going to stay morose and depressed about his injury for about half the season, at which point he'll discover the truth (or a hint at the truth) about Walter's involvement in his shooting and use it to push himself through physical therapy and back to fighting shape. Look for him to be your main antagonist at the end of the season or maybe at the beginning of next season. Of course that will last until he has a change of heart because of Walter funding his hospital stay and lets him go if he promises to never do it again.

Gus Goes Nuts

I haven't really liked the character of Gus, but it's not really his fault. It's just kind of a stale archetype for me at this point: the calm, collected businessman with a double life who's willing hack people to pieces if it serves his means. His introduction felt a little too convenient, also. He just happened to have an enormous, state of the art lab, too. Still, his demand for results and the sometimes-literal gun he held to Walter and Jesse's heads to get what we wanted were great for moving the plot forward.

But after we see the flashback in which he tells Gale he wouldn't work with Walter because he "comes with too much baggage," I couldn't really understand why he would murder his nameless (did that guy ever get a name?) Mexican thug. After all, the guy seemed to have Walter's meth recipe down pat. I thought the stage was set for a tension-building episode in which Walter has to somehow sabotage this guy's perfect cook, while under Mike's constant supervision, in order to save his own skin. Instead, he didn't even get to finish cooking his meth before his throat was slit. I'm sure the writers have something on deck to explain it, but it felt a little like "we wrote ourselves into a corner." I found myself saying not only "WTF?" but "WHY TF?"

Was he supposed to intimidate them with just how crazy he is? Sure, he couldn't kill Walter and Jesse, but he was angry and needed to kill SOMEBODY to make a point. Still, why kill the guy who learned to cook meth? From Gus's perspective it doesn't make any sense. Why not at least find out if the guy can make a decent product? It would certainly solve the "too much baggage" issue Walter comes with. Like I said, the show hasn't steered me wrong yet, and I'm confident this is just my own grasping at the bigger picture rather than a sudden slide in the quality of the show, but it left me scratching my head.

So what do you think? Is this season living up to your expectations already? What do you think is going to happen this season? Who's your favorite character? Let us know in the comments!

Pictures are promotional photos from AMC and since we're using them to pimp their show we hope they don't mind.