The heart-pounding excitement continues in the opening scene of “The Walking Dead” with a high-stress moment where a leg is amputated with dozens of hungry zombies ready to pounce on the fresh meat.

It’s nice to see the first two episodes open with exhilarating scenes after the mundane openings of last season. It holds the attention of the viewers rather than bore them to death.

Differences continue in the show from the comic book, involving the interactions the main characters have with the surviving prisoners. In the comic book, cooler heads prevailed and everyone learned to live together to survive.

In the show so far, no one seems to trust each other leaving everyone on edge. Rick has no problem killing the prisoners if he has to, which is stark contrast to his feelings in the comic. Killing a prisoner for no reason and leaving another to die with zombies all around him is not the Rick comic fans know.

However, this isn’t a bad thing. In the comic, writers only have 20 to 25 pages to get the story across each issue. In the show, writers have about 45 minutes each episode to develop the story.

This gives the show an edge in it can develop richer characters since there is more time. The writers did this with Andrea in previous seasons where they had more time to develop her fall into sorrow with the loss of her sister.

This season so far, writers have made Rick a darker character by making him a heartless leader who is willing to do whatever it takes to keep his family alive. Rick is a shell of what he is in the comic showing no emotion to his family to show his toughness and his willingness to be a ruthless killer.

This episode mainly focuses on the main characters coping with life in the prison; which continues to look amazing and shows the amount of detail to replicating the settings in the comic. It’s a little bit of a let down after getting a small dose of Michonne in the last episode, but the emergence of Rick into a ruthless killer is great.

It continues to show the writers are not afraid to stray from the comic and make the show their own.

Hopefully development like this continues and next episode we see what Michonne and Andrea have been up too.