Reviews – Page 28 – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 13 – Forget

“Can you tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy? Rick doesn’t seem to be much of an expert.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It was another week of intriguing character development in the newly optimistic Walking Dead, as the regular gang cautiously began to bond with the inhabitants of Alexandria. After the implication in last week’s ep that our heroes could well be going down a dark path that would lead them to be the ‘bad guys’, Deanna Monroe’s shrewd social engineering had them questioning whether that would even be necessary – and subtly implied that there may well be a greater threat waiting outside those impressive walls.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 12–Remember

“What do I want? I want you to help us survive. I know you can help us to do that.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After a predictable Twitter backlash about last week’s fairly chaste kiss between two men, The Walking Dead’s new tone of hope continued to develop this week, in a thought-provoking, character-driven episode as the gang (and the audience) got to know more about their new refuge. After several years of having all their suspicions about such communities justified, their (and our) scepticism was understandable. But this ep seemed to show that Alexandria really was everything Aaron had claimed it would be; leaving us to wonder where the danger would come from this time. And in a final bombshell, we found out.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 11–The Distance

“Just because we’re good people doesn’t mean we won’t kill you.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Watching the previous episode, I had cause to remark that, after all the shit our heroes have been through, it was about time they caught a break. In this week’s ep, it seemed that that break had turned up in spades. The only trouble was, with Rick and the gang so hardened from their experiences in the post-apocalypse wilderness, could they find it in themselves to trust their luck?

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 10 – Them

“We do what we need to do. And then we get to live… We are the walking dead.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After the previous rather experimental season opener, the follow up was a much more conventional affair. That didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty to enjoy – depending on what it is you enjoy about The Walking Dead. If what you’re after is zombie action, violence and gore, but you don’t care much for character development, you were probably shit out of luck with this one.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 9–What Happened and What’s Going On

“To face it. Keeping your eyes open. My dad always called it ‘paying the high cost of living’.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

As ever this time of year, I’ve been absent from blogging while having a whale of a time at the Los Angeles Gallifrey One Convention. It was as much fun as ever, but once again, I’m behind in looking at The Walking Dead, which returned from its mid-season break the night I arrived in California with a typically bleak but unusually experimental episode. On first viewing, I found it confusing and hard to follow (though that might have been the jetlag), but interestingly a second viewing gave me quite a different perspective.

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Doctor Who–Last Christmas

“Do you know why people get together at Christmas? Because every time it might be the last time.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Do you know what, for me, is the biggest disappointment when I’m reading or watching a story? When it ends with some variant of “he woke up and it was all a dream”. For me it cheapens and discredits everything that went before, however good it might have been. It also provides licence for some very dodgy writing, with the inevitable defence that, if it’s a dream, it doesn’t have to make sense.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 8–Coda

“You keep telling yourself you have to do what it takes just until this is all over. But it isn’t over. This is it.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

So this week we bid farewell to The Walking Dead for a little while – till February, anyway. As has been traditional since season 2, the show has taken a mid-season break, giving rise to that new style of cliffhanger, the “mid-season finale”. Compared to previous years – and indeed to this season’s slam-bang opener – this was a surprisingly low key affair, both in action and in stakes. In season 2, the mid-season finale brought an unusual bit of excitement to Hershel’s farm when the barn zombies broke free and we discovered the tragic fate of Sophia; season 3 brought the reunion of the Dixon brothers after Rick’s ‘terrorist attack’ on Woodbury; and season 4 had the spectacular destruction of the prison along with the deaths of several established characters.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 7–Crossed

“We all owe Carol.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

This week’s Walking Dead had a welcome return for Rick and the rest of the gang at the church, as the three narratives we’ve been following for the last four episodes finally came together, much as I’d expected, in readiness for the big mid-season finale. After three eps which focused very heavily on particular characters while gradually driving the plot forward, this week had a lot more action as Daryl and Noah led the increasingly hardass Rick on a rescue mission for the captive Beth and Carol.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 6–Consumed

“You’re not who you were, and neither am I. I don’t know if I believe in God any more, or Heaven, but if I’m going to Hell, I’m making damn sure I hold it off as long as I can.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

This week’s The Walking Dead found us rejoining the plot thread involving the show’s two fan favourite characters with the rhyming names, Carol and Daryl; though the ep as a whole was properly devoted to her rather than him. And that’s a good thing. No disrespect to Beth or Abraham, who’ve been the focus of the last two eps, but Carol’s a fan favourite for a reason – her character arc has been probably the most powerful of the show, played with quiet dignity and intensity by Melissa McBride. Some extremely good writing this week from Matthew Negrete and Corey Reed gave her plenty of meat to chew on this week, and the result was another quietly devastating episode to rank with last season’s The Grove.

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The Walking Dead: Season 5, Episode 5–Self Help

“We don’t stop, we don’t go back. We’re at war, and if we stop, we lose.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Another week, another group of survivors in The Walking Dead. Having sensibly split up the ever-growing gang of main characters, it looks like showrunner Scott Gimple’s approach for this year is to jump between numerous storylines involving each group. If nothing else, it presumably means that some of the gang will get a bit more time off; after all, we haven’t seen Andrew Lincoln for two episodes now.

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