You had me at . . . "Zombie Apocalypse"

The season finale for AMC's The Walking Dead airs on Sunday. If you've missed an episode--and if you have, what the heck is wrong with you?--they'll be running a marathon prior to the finale so you can catch up (one of the benefits of a short season, I guess: you can run the entire season in less than a day).

If you're a fan of zombies, you've probably seen all the episodes already. If you're not familiar with zombies, or if you're a little bit squeamish, this is NOT the show to cut your horror teeth on. It's not a splatterpunk festival, but it's also not shy about sloshing a little gore around. My daughter (a big fan of zombies, and not generally squeamish at all) got a little upset when a very, VERY bad thing happened to a innocent horse. The show is also doing a fairly strong job of building characters and character relationships, and bad things sometimes happen to the people you like (or bad things happen to the people who are loved by the people you like, and then the people you like have to make some cold, hardcore decisions that might leave you a little breathless). It's a little gory, a little gritty, a little gut-wrenching. Four stars, baby!

If you're already a fan, then you're probably wondering when the series will be coming back. Right now, rumor has it that it will be next October. Way too long, if you ask me. And I don't say that just as a fan, impatiently waiting to see what happens next; when you air a series for two months, then leave it for ten months, it's going to lose some of it's buzz. The excitement around it is going to wane a little. You are almost going to have to reintroduce the whole thing to everyone but your core fan base, and it's going to be a little bit like starting from scratch. So I think it's a bad marketing decision . . . but what do I know?

I obsessively put my name into their contest every week (Win a "stagger on roll!" Are you serious? Fingers, toes, and eyes crossed for luck). So I guess I qualify as a member of the hardcore fan base, and I'll be anxiously waiting for the series to return.