Deliberately not reading the thread to avoid spoilers, because I'm a couple of seasons behind (not that I'm in any hurry to catch up, but I might do one day)
But it's always been a seriously-flawed show. So many things that could have been better about it, above all in the writing. Storylines full of logic and plot holes, and characters repeatedly behaving inconsistently and doing things entirely out-of-character. Plus it went on so long the story started having to be written around the wishes of the actors, e.g. writing them out when they wanted to leave, and that got really obvious as it went on. And it,fatally, lacked any overarching story-line to give it long-term interest. In that respect the series itself was always the walking dead.
But it did have a couple of things going for it that kept me watching for a long time despite all the stupid stuff. Mainly the excellent effects and make-up work, and the fact that the quality of the acting was (for most of the cast) so much better than the weak writing deserved. The cast (with a few exceptions) managed to "sell" even the really poorly-written bits. And it did seem to have at least a semblence of a serious 'theme' (seemed like it kept coming back to the one topic of "how to balance the need to do whatever you have to to survive with the need to hang on to enough of your humanity to give surviving any point")
In a weird way it dimly reminded me of watching Space 1999 in my childhood. That also had really awful writing, but by-the-standards-of-TV-of-the-time excellent minatures/effects and sets, and good actors who took it way more seriously than it deserved.
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