by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels.

5×16: “Conquer”

Conventional wisdom would suggest that, as a genre show, there’s a ceiling in terms of how good a show like The Walking Dead could ever be. Even though The Walking Dead explores elements of the human condition like most all art and fiction, a show with zombies in its central premise is, rightly or not, almost always going to be pigeon holed. It could be considered a great horror show or a great action show, it can be recognized for its makeup or effects, but the fact is that, regardless of its quality, most would never include it in the same conversation as its upper-class AMC brethren like Breaking Bad or Mad Men. I’m not going to put The Walking Dead in that same class either, but I will say, unlike those shows, that I didn’t give up on it in the middle, and after this season’s conclusion, I’m glad I didn’t. Continue reading →

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels.

5×15: “Try”

So things look bad right now for Rick and co.  Sasha’s got some kind of survivor’s guilt going on.  No matter who Deanna believes, Glenn or Nicholas, her son’s still dead and she’s not okay with to that.  And Rick, well Rick really could’ve handled his whole side of things a lot more diplomatically.

The big news this week is that everything’s falling apart. After four episodes of building Alexandria up as the safe zone our heroes need, yet another of our group has died, and Rick’s carnal desires may cost them everything. We finally get the confrontation we’ve been waiting all of two to three episodes for (even though it feels like forever) and Rick takes it to Pete in a way that’s actually pretty disappointing. Continue reading →

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels.

5×14: “Spend”

Just when you think everyone’s safe… they go and kill the guy nobody really cares too much about! A lot of things happened in “Spend” and there’s a lot to unpack, so I’ll try not to go off on too many irrelevant tangents. Like I normally do.

“Spend” opens with a measure of hope and a look towards the future with Noah speaking to Reg, Deanna’s husband, about learning architecture (okay, so it literally opens with a small character moment for Father Gabriel, but I hate that guy and will address him later). So far most of the learned skills in our group have centred much more around hunter-gatherer tasks, so it’s refreshing to see one of our heroes learning something that’s still important, but not quite as directly practical as insert knife here. Continue reading →