people often say the walking dead has gotten worse. sorry, but it was terrible, trite, formulaic, and a ripoff of all zombie things that came before from the very first episode.

however, a lot of that could have been fixed, IMO, with a bigger budget, a more 'prestige TV' style, and maybe even more character flashbacks, similar to Lost, which started out with a lot of the same problems but to some extent overcame many of them. one of the best ideas Lost had was to make the characters and their stories the real focus of the show, with the island and all the other stuff being a way to learn more about the characters. it's why i kept watching until the end, even when the actual story got pretty nuts.