CarterMatt’s Scare-O-Ween: How ‘The Walking Dead’ has (and could) utilize Halloween

There are few shows out there as synonymous with Halloween as “The Walking Dead.” After all, this is a series that originally premiered on October 31 on AMC, and leveraged it to score some fantastic numbers for the time. Since then, the show has become the biggest scripted show on TV, started an aftershow movement with “Talking Dead,” and created many more Halloween costumes (not to mention cosplay) than we can count.

Content-wise, the show has also introduced many episodes that could make you feel like you are celebrating Halloween no matter when you watch. You’ve got zombies, scary moments, more zombies, cannibals, and of course, more zombies. It’s one of the truly great “monster shows” that have ever been created.

So when it comes to what the show could to introduce the themes of Halloween (which is something we’ve been focusing on throughout the month in our Scare-O-Ween series), there’s really not much. This show is already for the most part hitting things out of the park.

So how could the show celebrate more? We think the better question here is something that applies to almost any holiday. Should “The Walking Dead” introduce the concept of holidays more than they do? We see an argument both ways.

The case for more holidays – We can sense an argument in giving these characters a chance to do something a little more human. We’re not sure anyone really remembers what day it is most of the time, but this show spends so much time in survival mode, there is not often time for much self-reflection. Of course, another part of the problem here could be that it is pretty hard to celebrate Thanksgiving without much a family, the last thing people probably want to do is celebrate Halloween, and it doesn’t air around Christmas.

Still, this is a chance to find out more all about where these people came from, and how they spent their holidays before the apocalypse. So long as it is not a full episode, we think that this could be fun as a side-story.

The case against it – It’s pretty simple: You want to live in the moment. You’d rather watch people kill walkers and deal with conflict in the present than spend some inordinate amount of time dwelling on the past. We cannot really argue with anyone who feels this way, mostly because this show does get a lot of mileage out of being one of the most fast-paced / intense programs out there. Not everyone loves holidays, and wants to see time wasted on them.

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