After The Walking Dead on AMC blew up the Nielsen ratings (relatively), there was a ton of predictable backlash. Critics pointed out that the dialogue was wooden, a lot of the acting was bad, and many of the plotlines were more or less cliched in the zombie genre. Guy wakes up from a coma in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse? That’s 28 Days Later. Saw it. Pretty good.

All that stuff is true, but the show is still ridiculously awesome, and well deserving of the esteemed ranking of 10th best thing of 2010.

First of all, zombie drama. Just when you thought great meta-zombie movies like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland might spell the logical conclusion to convincing and unironic zombie horror, here comes The Walking Dead to breathe new life into the genre. By stretching out many of the typical zombie plot elements into a serial drama, the show can add an emotional timbre rarely felt in the inevitable now-you-have-to-shoot-your-zombie-family scenes.

Second, zombie killing. Damn. I have no idea what the makeup and effects budget for the show must be like or how they’re pulling it off, but The Walking Dead presents some downright grisly and most awesome zombie destruction. I’ve never read the comic book upon which the show is based so I’m not if this is from the original story or just an adaptation for the TV show, but making it so the zombies are attracted to loud noises is an amazing twist. If human characters are reluctant to use guns, they have to find all sorts of more creative ways to kill zombies, like baseball bats and crossbows and shovels.

The Walking Dead also nails the appropriate level of zombie competence. The zombies are still idiots and incapable of organizing or anything like that, but their numbers are great enough and they are hungry enough to figure out a way to come get you if you give them enough time. That’s important, keeping you on the edge of your seat and everything.

And mostly, despite some issues in characterization and dialogue, the plots are good enough to force you to put yourself in the same situation, like the best episodes of Lost often did. I’ve always held that one of life’s most important moral and ethical questions is when to shoot your loved one once you know he or she has been infected by zombies. Do you do it right away, because you don’t want your girlfriend to suffer the pain of becoming a zombie and because you yourself couldn’t handle seeing her like that? Or do you wait until your father becomes a zombie, risking further zombie contact but avoiding the burden of having to shoot your dad while he’s still a breathing, functional human?

Oh, the other important element it shares with Lost is the forced group dynamic. The only thing the characters on The Walking Dead have in common is that they’re not yet zombies. But they’re forced to work together, with leaders emerging and roles in the group developing, because it’s their best way to survive.

Just about every time I get on the subway, I size up everyone else in the car and imagine my role in the group if we somehow got teleported somewhere and separated from society. Could I be the leader-guy? Who would stand in my way? Who would be my love interest? I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who does that, so I suspect the show taps into something about the way we self-identify.

Also important: Your life before the zombie apocalypse has little bearing on your position in the group, other than the ways in which it prepared you to defend yourself from zombies. You might be a crazy backwoods white-supremacist redneck, but if you know how to operate a crossbow and cook squirrel meat then you’re a pretty valuable dude to have around. The best character on the show is Glenn, a pizza-delivery boy turned dope zombie-killing strategist. Glenn’s apparently really awesome at figuring out the best routes to get places, which is probably related to skills you’d develop delivering pizzas.

And since the show has no set end date, you know eventually if it continues long enough, Glenn’s gonna turn into a zombie. That’s going to be so messed up! Will Rick shoot Glenn? Can he shoot Glenn, after all the respect he has earned saving lives and destroying zombies?

People sometimes say that the quality of television programming is declining. That’s a blog post for another day, but it’s the furthest thing from the truth. More channels means more options means more specialized programming and more competition, which means more righteous zombie kills on Sunday nights. The end.