Last night’s episode of The Walking Dead was a fairly gore-free zone, by the standards of AMC’s hit zombie show. True, we did get to see one of the undead chowing down on the insides of a deer before being beheaded — and then arrowed through the brain by a new character, Daryl Dixon, played by Boondock Saints star Norman Reedus. And the episode concluded with the image of a recently severed hand belonging to — or, by that point, not belonging to — Daryl’s brother Merle (Michael Rooker). But compared to the mayhem of last week’s let’s-wear-intestines-like-a-scarf, blood-a-thon Guts, this was a veritable Merchant-Ivory-esque yakfest — albeit one not short of incident as Rick was reunited with Lori (who thus discovered that Shane had been lying about her husband’s demise) and the hotheaded Daryl was informed that his sibling had been left to perish on the top of a building in Atlanta.
Regardless, it almost seemed like, having presumably repelled all the people who don’t like zombie movies with the first two shows, the behind-the-scenes team had decided to get rid of everyone who does enjoy a good undead flick with the third episode. “We’re really trying to burn through this audience as fast as we can,” laughs Robert Kirkman who writes the Walking Dead comic series and is an executive producer on the TV adaptation. “There are entirely too many people watching this show.”
Kirkman can afford to joke about ratings. The pilot episode of The Walking Dead — which was helmed by Shawshank Redemption‘s Frank Darabont — garnered an very impressive audience of 5.3 million viewers. Unsurprisingly, AMC announced a week ago that it was ordering a second season of the show, which will comprise 13 episodes, as opposed to the current run of six.
After the jump, Kirkman talks about last night’s episode, “Tell It to the Frogs,” the Rick-Lori-Shane love triangle, and, why he can’t be blamed for that Miss Piggy-oral sex gag.
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