The not-so-quick and "The Walking Dead"

The zombies of "The Walking Dead" have the reflexes of Play-Doh, zero tactical awareness, and a top speed of 1.2 miles per hour. Yet somehow they are able to take down major characters week after week.

That’s just one of the problems I have with this show. I’m coming up on the end of Season Three via Netflix and there are so many new faces it’s beginning to feel like Saturday Night Live. Longtime cast members keep exiting the show in entirely foreseeable ways — nearly always involving the snapping dentures of the undead.

In a zombie-rich environment, is it really so difficult to remain alert for zombies shuffling up behind? These are not ninjas, creeping stealthily from tree to tree. Walkers grunt and moan and tend to trip over discarded items. But even after dozens of episodes, the living still tend to become so dreamily preoccupied that the undead can easily get within eviscerating distance. Or, if our seasoned veterans do take flight in a timely manner, they run straight into another pack of walkers, also previously undetected. Sorry, but this kind of thing is getting old.

One other problem: When walkers feast on a person, don’t they always make a full meal of it? It’s not just a nibble here and there. Generally, there’s nothing left but some chicken bones and a big red mudhole. And yet very few of the walkers patrolling the terrain of The Walking Dead show much damage beyond missing lips and terrible complexions. The most common way to become a zombie is being bitten by a zombie. So, either a whole lot of these ravenous walkers are just wasteful of their food, or we have a bit of a paradox in the show’s premise.

Which is probably why the show seems to be evolving beyond the day-to-day trials of killing and being killed by zombies. It remains pretty gruesome, but scenes that were horrifying at the start are kind of old hat now. Fine with me. I keep watching because it’s become less about mindless slaughter and more about group dynamics and the evil that men do when the rickety pillars of civilization give way. Also, I have a weakness for post-apocalypse yarns.

Walking Dead is no Lord of the Flies in that regard, but it’s still roughly 100 times better than NBC’s stupid Revolution, which has so many inconsistencies in any given scene that it’s completely unwatchable.