The campaign events commenced in Hong Kong and Taipei, and culminated in Los Angeles. Themes Romance is an underlying theme in "Days Gone Bye". After returning from the hospital, Rick Grimes unsuccessfully looks for signs of his family. Determined to find them, he travels to Atlanta, which is imagined to be a haven because of its proximity to the CDC. Kirkman said of the developing storyline: Well, I didn’t know how long the comic book series was going to last. I hoped that it would become a success and survive for years and years. But at that time in my career, it was very early, I had had a lot of books canceled, just because of poor sales. So early on in the book I would move past storylines very quickly. I set up this love triangle and I resolved that story and moved along within the first [few] issues. But there's a lot of story potential to mine there. One of the things that the TV show is able to do is to look at the comic book series with hindsight and go, 'This would probably be something that we could explore more.' And that's what we're going to be doing. So we'll be seeing a lot more of the Lori-Shane-Rick love triangle. The scene in which Grimes regains consciousness and investigates his situation is reminiscent of the British horror films The Day of the Triffids (1962) and 28 Days Later (2002). Kirkman insisted that the similarities especially with 28 Days Later was coincidental. "I saw 28 Days Later shortly before the first issue of Walking Dead was released," he stated. "That first issue came out in October of 2003 and 28 Days Later was released in the States in June of 2003. So we were working on our second issue by the time I saw it. It was going to be a matter of somehow trying to restage the entire first issue, because it was a very similar coma opening. I made a decision—which I pretty much regret at this point—I said, 'You know what? It's so different [from that point on], I will probably never hear anything about this.' And I was wrong." Reception Ratings The episode attained 5.35 million viewers, making it the most-viewed series premiere in AMC history. It garnered a 2.7 rating in the 18–49 demographic, translating to 3.6 million viewers according to Nielsen