With The Walking Dead’s fifth season’s return around the corner there are a few key plot points and fan expectations that need to be addressed. A one-minute trailer was just released in which the current group walks through the woods brandishing and utilizing a variety of weapons while an omniscient voice states that “Surviving as a group is all that matters.” The central irony to this trailer is that the writers spent the entirety of last season finding dumb reasons for why the group should not be together. What is even more ironic is that at the start of season five, after dealing with the threat of terminus, the group was together talking about survival walking around. Which basically means that the entire first half of season five was spent teaching characters a lesson they already knew: that staying together was more beneficial to everyone’s survival. Aside from the first two episodes, the fifth season has been no more than a rehash of things these characters already learned in the previous four seasons.
With the mid-season premiere approaching, it’s better to be optimistic than to expect the worst. In the latter half of the season I would like to see the plot pushed into some new territory. Yes, the hospital in the first half of season 5 might have been new ground, but it was handled so poorly and was so rushed that details about it and how the whole system worked never became clear. Seemingly, the entire hospital plotline was no more than an excuse to shift focus to Beth. I like Beth, but end result was so lazy that it would have been simpler and better if she had just gone to terminus with Daryl. In the end it felt like a cheep way to kill off a character for pure shock value. There was no reason to kill Beth off and even if the writers wanted to end her story, she deserved a better death.
Although I haven’t read the comics, I know that they contain plenty of unused material that show could mine from to avoid this constant retreading of previously resolved issues. The show would also benefit from introducing new characters who stick around for more than 3-5 episodes before being killed off for no reason other than to fill the show’s weekly bloodbath quota. Gareth, for example, was one of the best new characters in quite some time and he didn’t even make it through three full episodes. The show wastes countless opportunities to add depth to its storylines by doing away with characters before they have a chance to develop.
All this being said, I don’t know where the second half of the season will go, it very well could do nothing that I have said and still be great, or go in to new setting and be crap. It is all dependent on the writing. That is the final component to The Walking Dead formula. It has great acting, spectacular practical and special effects but if the script is lazy than it is the same as building a skyscraper with no foundation; no matter how pretty it may look for a bit, it will never stay up.
The second half of season five returns February 8th at 9PM on AMC.
