It's great that you enjoyed the pilot, Prof., and I don't wish to take anything away from that enjoyment. Critiquing TWD has nothing to do with Romero, however, and the series should be able to stand on its own merits. It was good and I'll tune in again, but in no way shape or form was it brilliant. I've based my viewpoint on what was shown and not on what I've read in TWD comic, on any comparisons to Romero's past work, good or bad, and certainly not on whether anyone agrees with me.
I also love Frank Darabont's work, but would never think to concern myself with who happens to be reigning "king" of zombie moviedom. Come on, wouldn't you agree that's best left to the real fanboys? 
I liked the father and son characters, and Morgan clearly had the strongest scene in the pilot. Their story is interesting and you want to see them survive, but lo and behold, the "hero" has already left them behind. The bicycle girl corpse, on the other hand, was just silly and Grimes' dialog made putting her down even sillier. What was his attachment to this particular dead thing? Grimes gave less of a crap about one of his own deputies. He didn't even show one-tenth of concern before blowing the little girl away. Did he become numb to it all? There was also nothing about the bicycle girl that elicited sympathy; she just looked like an effect in which they were trying really hard to hide the fact that there was a human being under the make-up. Being reminded that dead are/were human beings is important.
Grimes was a real dingleberry considering his foresight to caution a distracted deputy at the road block. He turned his back on an overturned car with armed criminals, he carelessly wandered into a gas station/rest stop (without his weapon drawn) where it would be very easy to be taken by surprise; he openly approaches an unfamiliar house while calling out to the occupants inside without any idea if they may be alive, armed and want to blow his head off; he rides a horse directly into a city even though prior experience should have to told him the animal could become easily startled and impossible to control if panicked. Why didn't they take turns showering so that at least one person was on guard the entire time? Very lazy screenwriting that did little to intensify the threat of the undead. It actually takes away from the suspense.
On a related note, I really like those dead that looked like regular people with tortured expressions (one of them was crawling under the tank). The Kevin Bacon-looking walker was great (again, because it had human expression), but what I didn't care for was the white, pale faces sporting healthy flesh-tone necks.
Oh yeah... absolutely horrible, horrible, horrible suggestion that Romero direct any episodes of TWD. You'd think nobody has ever viewed his films to know that this one is simply not his style.
 Originally Posted by ProfessorChaos
DC, i gotta disagree with you on this; with all due respect, i think you've got your fanboy hat on a little too tight and it's affecting your thinking....romero's earlier works are good, but he's a terrible director compared to darabont. there's more emotion in those 2 scenes with morgan trying to put down his wife and rick putting bicycle girl out of her misery than any single romero film in its entirety.
blame it on budget, acting, whatever you want, but it's all a matter of opinion, and it seems the majority of opinions point towards the fact that romero's been dethroned. of course, everyone's entitled to their own opinion and you've made yours clear, but i don't think you're gonna find many who are in agreement.
by the way, aside from going further into the city once it became obvious that it was overrun with the dead and crawling under the tank once he was about to get devoured, what sort of mistakes did rick make in the pilot?
---------- Post added at 12:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 AM ----------
Originally Posted by thxleo
As for seeing the first 3 episodes, I was fortunate enough to be placed on the media/press list for screeners. 
You bastadge!  As I've said, I don't wish to deride anyone's enjoyment of the series thus far. If TWD has made some of friends here happy, then that is good enough for me. I started this thread to offer a dissenting critique so that the intelligent viewers here might wish to discuss and debate it. The other thread has already sunk into a bevy of name-calling and infantile insults, so let's hope this one remains the nicer alternative (or I'll be forced to post that baby picture again).
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really, the way i looked at this was she was the first real zombie he'd seen and assuming he had to go that way on the way out of town, he probably decided to stop and put her out of her pathetic existence. perhaps he was trying to come to terms with what he was about to be facing and had the desire to remind himself just how horrendous and disgusting of creatures he was about to encounter.
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