Season four of AMC’s hit zombie drama The Walking Dead is in the books and, especially the final eight episodes, the series is as good as it has ever been. It is still far from perfect, but in the hands of the latest showrunner, Scott M. Gimple, fans have more reason to be optimistic about the future—of the show, not the characters, those guys are totally screwed. With shows like Talking Dead, the series has always been all about interacting with its viewers, and Gimple stopped by Larry King Live to answer a slew of questions from Twitter followers.

Though he does address a variety of topics and queries, he, understandably, has to skip over some specific spoilers for the upcoming season five, which goes into production next month. But there are times when his omissions are just as telling as his answers.

When you think of zombies, what probably springs immediately to your mind is a swarm of rotting, undead corpses shuffling about, arms outstretched, trying their level best to take a bite out of your fleshy bits. That’s how it is in AMC’s The Walking Dead and George Romero’s genre-defining Dead trilogy, though the BBC’s take on the subject matter, In the Flesh, takes a different approach. Season two of the show is set to debut soon, and this new trailer illustrates just how the show stands apart from its contemporaries.

In the Flesh picks up after humanity has survived a zombie war. Though many were hunted down and killed by militias, they’ve found a way to rehabilitate the zombies and reintegrated them into society. That’s where the drama picks up, with the sufferers of Partially Deceased Syndrome (PDS), including Kieren Walker (Luke Newberry), attempting to reclaim their lives.

We all know how to turn people into zombies: just give them boring, 9-5 jobs (or worse, 8-6, 7-7, etc) that don’t require them to use their brains at all and thus turn them into the shuffling, vacant-eyed folks that appear in Shaun of the Dead even before the undead start snacking on them. Animals can become zombies too, when under the control of bodysnatching parasites. Now, scientists have learned that bacteria can work their zombie mojo on plants, too.

A team of scientists from Norwich, UK’s John Innes Centre published research in PLOS Biology that describes how phytoplasmas, parasitic bacteria that wreak havoc on the likes of sugarcane and coconut, take over plants and make them do all sorts of things they otherwise wouldn’t. Flowers become shoots, petals change color, and the plant sends up the telltale “witches’ broom” shoots. As the parasite takes hold, the host becomes incapable of reproducing. Insects descend on these new shoots, transmitting the bacteria to make new zombies. They don’t even have to bite anything. The report points out that for all intents and purposes, the plant is dead, living on bacterial life support.

AMC has their zombie show, an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead; BBC has one of their own, In the Flesh; and damn it, Syfy wants one of their own. And what Syfy wants, Syfy gets, in this case in the form of their new zombie show Z Nation. You can see the obvious allusion to Max Brooks’ World War Z in the title.

The undead are everywhere, from movie screens and TVs to video games and marketing for cars and candy, and it takes a lot to set a new project apart from the pack. Syfy seems to be hanging their prospects in this area on one fact, that while the zombie apocalypse genre is usually rather depressing, Z Nation plans to offer viewers a more hopeful outlook. That certainly is a different approach than the overwhelming bleakness of The Walking Dead.

Season four of AMC’s hit zombie-apocalypse drama The Walking Dead wraps up tomorrow after 16 surprisingly good installments. This year, especially the second half of the season, the episodes have been consistent and strong, especially considering that has been a huge issue, and right now The Walking Dead is as good as it has ever been. Building up to the finale, the network has released a series of ominous character posters, and they’re back with three more that still seem to indicate gloom and doom on the horizon, if and when the survivors reach the mysterious Terminus.

After the events at the prison that finished up the first half of the season, the group of survivors was forced to split up and find their own way through the walker infested Georgia wilderness. Like the episodes, these posters check in with one splinter at a time, and first up we have Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman). Wounded, worried about his sister, and playing guardian to two young girls and a newborn, he’s had some stuff to deal with. And then factor in the brutal, heart-breaking situation that he and Carol (Melissa McBride) had to deal with in “The Grove” a few weeks ago, and he’s carrying an almost unbearable emotional weight with him as he approaches Terminus, which may or may not provide a safe haven.

Well, that was one hell of a bummer of an episode, even for a show a notoriously bleak as The Walking Dead. If you thought Andrea’s death at the end of season three stung, Rick shooting zombie Sophia in the head in season two, or the debacle at the prison a few weeks ago were bad, you’re in for a hard slap of reality with tonight’s episode, “The Grove.” It’s like the writers went out of their way to say fuck you, here’s how bad shit can really get. So sit back, strap in, and get ready to get ready to have your day ruined a little bit.

Since The Walking Dead returned from its mid-season break, with the group of survivors in ruins, the show has taken to telling smaller, more contained stories. “The Grove” sticks with this program, and follows the splinter that includes Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman), Carol (Melissa McBride), and the kids Lizzie (Brighton Sharbino), Miki (Kyla Kenedy), and baby Judith, who as we learned a couple weeks ago, is still alive.