Is "Warm Bodies" related to zombies? Or are you only talking about zombies in the sense that any faceless mass of groaning creatures with hardly enough brain activity to power a light bulb might be classified as "zombies?"

Because I've never heard of "Warm Bodies," and as with most things that I haven't heard of I simply don't care about it, not even enough to type it into google and discover what it is you're talking about. But that isn't entirely laziness on my part, but simply that I'd much rather talk about Walking Dead, which I love.

You made some good points about it, and I agree with most of them. The appeal of the zombie genre is in a more interesting version of the apocalypse. With any other apocalypse scenario the problem occurs, passes, and humanity is left to pick up the pieces and rebuild. The zombie apocalypse is one of the few where the apocalypse spreads in a way that is noticeable and understandable to the average person, and slow enough for it to be truly devastating. It is also one of the few where rebuilding afterward is next to impossible, because the whole world is against you. But at the same time, the situation is not so hopeless or one sided that the remaining humans die, or the audience loses interest because things are too hopeless.

But I think there is more to this genre, and even The Walking Dead specifically, than simply violence - although it does help. Season 3 would not be anywhere near as good as it is if we hadn't all seen seasons 1 and 2. It is the contrast, and the fact that these characters have changed so greatly that makes it a pleasure to watch them act like efficient killing machines. If they were this way from the start, it would be old and stale. Furthermore, while I think season 2 was far too slow, and Lori was a despicable and annoying character and human being, I think questions of inter-group politics and relationships, morality, etc, all have an important role to play in the genre. The problem with season 2 was its pacing, and that the characters paid too much attention to the foolishness of people like Dale for it to be believable. Not the existence of such foolishness itself. Without those elements I may as well be watching any other show where one group brutally kills multitudes of other creatures/monsters/people. The appeal of the zombie genre is in the balance between pointlessness and mere hopelessness, and the way this new environment forces everyone to adapt to it.

And for the record, I actually liked season 1 of Walking Dead, although I found the nursing home group rather implausible.