Everything gets a return: The Walking Dead Season 5

Warning: this review contains spoilers.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the most recent episode of The Walking Dead, Nicholas (Michael Traynor) tried to kill Glenn (Steven Yeun) but failed; Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) tried to kill Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) but (un)fortunately Maggie (Lauren Cohan) stopped her; Rick (Andrew Lincoln)  covered himself in walker blood and delivered the best survival speech at the counsel; Rick also shot Pete (Corey Brill); Aaron (Ross Marquand), Morgan (Lennie Jones) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) arrived at the scene; and CUT: Season 5 was done. In the post credit scene, Michonne (Danai Gurira) wears her sword, and the Wolves are not far.

Most TV shows start to weaken after the second and third season – character development stops moving forward, the narrative pattern gets repetitive, or simply the overall structure of the show does not allow for never-ending running seasons. But Season 5 of The Walking Dead was not bad at all.

Photo: AMC

I have been following The Walking Dead since the beginning, and I have to admit that when I started watching it I was not expecting to attach myself so much to this series or to the characters. But now it is physically impossible to stop watching it!

Characters such as Rick, Carol (Melissa McBride), Daryl, Maggie, and Beth (Emily Kinney) grow on you to the point that during episodes such as ‘Them’ you start wondering whether you should actually stop watching the show to spare the characters from all that suffering. Every line of dialogue, every shot, every small act of kindness remind us at the same time of everyday triviality and the violence and drama of our own lives.

Do not get me wrong, I am the first one to note down everything I do not like about any show that I am following, but for The Walking Dead it is becoming an ordeal. The show has never been immune to weak episodes but it seems like the creators are really doing their best to fix it.

Season 5, in my opinion, is the most complex and interesting one yet, since it features only two episodes that could be described as ‘flawed’: the first one is ‘Self-Help’, which wants to convince us that we can learn everything about what Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) has been through with a two-minute flashback that is stretched to forty minutes, and the other one is ‘Consumed’, which uses several flashbacks of Carol that fragmentise the overall tension of the episode and do not always bring the plot or her character forward.

Photo: AMC

Both episodes were well thought out but wrongly executed: the show should never fall into the format of ‘one episode per new character’ because it annoyingly digresses from the group storyline, and also because there are far more subtle ways to do some character development. Think about ‘Spend’ and what the writers did for Aiden (Daniel Bonjour). They were able to transform him from an arrogant college boy to a more sympathetic coward in a couple of minutes just before he died.

Like AMC’s Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead decides to link all the seasons together through symbolic objects and references. Every new season is not only the result of an old one but an opportunity to visually comment on the mistakes of the characters and the themes of the season. This goes as far as using, for instance, a speech made by Dale (Jeffrey DeMun) back in Season 1, which matches perfectly the titles of the five last episodes of Season 5:

“I like what the father said to the son when he gave him a watch that had been handed down through generations. He said: ‘I give you a mausoleum of all hope and desire which will fit your individual needs, no better than it did mine and my father before me. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you may forget it for a moment, now and then, and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it.’’

The show promises even more complex intertwined narratives for this summer, when Fear the Walking Dead (a companion series, taking place at the very beginning of the zombie outbreak in LA) will start airing. The creators are probably timing it perfectly so that when it ends, the sixth season of The Walking Dead will start.

Many shows keep going even if they should not (Under The Dome, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time are some honourable mentions), but people still want to believe that any show can rise from its ashes because everything gets a return, but The Walking Dead does not need one.

We will keep watching, no matter what happens or how slow the pace gets

There is still so much meat to chew on: we know the Wolves are coming, but there are also so many incredible villains from the comic books that could be introduced (the Whisperers, Negan and the Saviors, and the Scavengers).

We will keep watching, complaining not only when it disappoints us but also when it fulfils our expectations, because it is painful, because it is beautifully scripted and acted, because it is the most horrible reality show we would never want to star in.