Across the Universe: Previewing 'The Walking Dead'

"The Walking Dead" returns this Sunday night (Feb. 10) to resume its third season after a two-month hiatus that left things in a very precarious state: Brothers Merle (Michael Rooker) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) were finally reunited, albeit as potential walker food, while the invasion of Woodbury by Rick's group to rescue Maggie and Glenn will undoubtedly have deadly repercussions. Injured in his fight with Michonne (Danai Gurira) and with his undead daughter now destroyed, it's only a matter of time before the Governor (David Morrissey) retaliates against Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the inhabitants of the prison.

The prison itself, meanwhile, has its own problems, as Carl (Chandler Riggs) suddenly finds himself with a whole new batch of survivors on his hands, led by Tyreese (Chad Coleman). Can Tyreese's group be trusted? Will they join Rick and the others in the inevitable showdown with the Governor?

After spending most of its second season spinning its wheels on Herschel's farm, "The Walking Dead" has rebounded nicely in its third year, with the situation growing more uneasy and complex as the zombies almost take a back seat to the very dangerous human conflicts playing out front and center. Rick, Carl, Andrea (Laurie Holden) and other characters have evolved in different ways as circumstances dictate, and the series' gradual drift in its own narrative direction, instead of just being a literal adaptation of the comics, has given the show's writers a much freer hand in determining who dies and the context of their deaths.

Of course, we are very troubled by the abrupt exit of Glen Mazzara as showrunner. AMC seems unable to have a good, steady relationship with the creative forces behind its hit programs. While Mazzara has been able to stay around for the completion of Season 3, we don't know what his absence will mean for the fourth year of the show. He seems to have certainly been a critical component in getting the show on track this season.

As for the rest of the season, we'll be watching to see how far the Governor goes in his fury, whether Daryl and Merle can survive and where their allegiances will fall, and if Rick continues to lay down the law and maintain his "Ricktatorship." We'll also be looking to see where Andrea and Michonne both end up, and whether the new arrivals at the prison can become functioning members of the larger group. In other words, it's going to get very lively on "The Walking Dead."

Yes, "The Walking Dead" is alive and kicking. But what about the zombie genre as a whole? There's a classic scene in Lucio Fulci's 1980 masterpiece of gore, "Zombie" (aka "Zombi 2" -- it's too long to go into here), where a zombie fights a shark underwater ... and wins, chowing down hungrily on the deadly predator. Somehow we're getting the feeling that the same zombie in 2013 might not have that same success.

The zombie movie has been with us for decades, yet it's never been more popular than it is now. For years, the films were relegated to B-movie or cult status. Even a landmark like George A. Romero's 1978 "Dawn of the Dead" took a long time to be appreciated as the classic it is, and while it made money, it was generally an anomaly in the genre. No, the zombie genre was mostly underground, beloved by horror fans who enjoyed its many excesses (especially in movies coming out of Italy), but not worming its way into pop culture.

Two films began to change all that: "28 Days Later" (2002) was helmed by an art-house director (Danny Boyle) and acclaimed as an indie film -- even though its monsters were not technically zombies -- while "Dawn of the Dead" (2004) took Romero's original vision and watered it down just enough for consumption by a larger audience. "Resident Evil," the first successful franchise inspired by a video game, also pushed zombies further into the public eye. At the same time, books like Brian Keene's "The Rising" (2003) provided the template for a whole new subgenre of horror literature that itself was more cinematic in nature.

"The Walking Dead," however, was a real breakthrough, featuring most of the gore and rot of a Romero or Fulci film but all shown on basic cable TV. The zombie mayhem shown on "The Walking Dead" would have been unheard of on a TV series just a few years ago, but now that it's here, and incredibly successful, zombies have become more popular than ever.

Hollywood is a vast, hungry beast, and when it has any kind of success, it just wants more. With "The Walking Dead" more popular than ever, it stands to reason that the suits running the studios and networks want more eyeballs on their products, but not everyone is into the darkness and despair of "The Walking Dead." So how to get more people on board?

A movie like "Warm Bodies" is the answer. A teen take on "Romeo and Juliet" -- with Romeo being a walking corpse -- is almost the next inevitable step toward the ultimate mainstreaming of the zombie genre. It's rated PG-13, the gore is kept to a minimum, even the zombies are not so ghastly-looking, and there is a note of hopeful, romantic optimism at the end, instead of the usual bleak finale that is standard issue with zombie fare.

It's funny, it's charming, it seems to be going over well with teenage girls, but "Warm Bodies" is a long, long way from the grimy horrors of "Day of the Dead," "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" or "Hell of the Living Dead." When you can end up with a zombie for a boyfriend, you know that somewhere along the line the genre may have indeed jumped the shark -- and it was just 30 years or so ago that that shark was being eaten instead.