The Walking Dead Season 5 Review

The Walking Dead Season 5 Review

After many record breaking season premiere views, it is safe to say that AMC’s drama and action show, The Walking Dead, is one of its best on the network. When season five of the show aired on October 12, 2014, it gained a total of 17.3 million views worldwide. The Walking Dead is about a group of survivors in the zombie apocalypse, trying to survive the hordes of undead, and the corrupt humans willing to kill to survive.

The season premiere was all about continuing the cliffhanger of the season four finale, where the main characters were captured by a group of cannibals. My first thought of the season premiere was nothing but excitement. The focus of the episode was action, and not much of the drama. The episode is the group escaping the group while taking down their base, and then regrouping with the lost members of their group. In my opinion, this was a good way to do a season premiere; start with the action, and save the drama parts for later in the season.

And of course, the writers did make more dramatic episodes later in the season, which is good. But after the first few episodes, the season took a bad turn. The main conflict is ended around the fifth episode when the main character kills the antagonist from the group of cannibals, and that main plot was expected to go through the entire season, but just ended right there. There was another sub plot that was unexpectedly ended, where part of the main group splits off heading to Washington D.C., in hopes to stop the zombie infestation. This sub plot was ended when the scientist of that group admits to not knowing a solution to the zombie outbreaks. This was a bad way to end this sub plot because that plot ends right there, there is no falling action from the climax. This plot could have gone better if they continued that plot and if the group continued to Washington anyway, which could have opened up more plot possibilities.

The end of the conflict of the main plot was decent, but not the best, because after the antagonist was defeated, there was still drama and emotion with a dying character that suffered from the group of cannibals.

The story then begins a new plot, which reveals another cliffhanger from season four. I was glad to see a change of story with a character that went missing in the last season. This plot is about a girl from the main group that went missing, that wakes up in a hospital. She was knocked out, but a new group of survivors saved by bringing her to a hospital where they safe bunker in.

This new plot was pretty entertaining, it had a good amount of suspense in it, because after this character realizes this new group of people demand her to help them with survival in repayment for saving her, she must find a way to escape the hospital, and find her group. This plot had great action, and introduced some new complex characters.

But this brings up another fault with the season, the amount of different plots. With a total of three different plots, it was not handled how it should have been. The writers made each story get their own episode, until each of them tied together later in the season. It was nice to give each plot at least one episode each so the plot can unfold, but then episodes should have included the different plots in the same episode as they tied together. The writers did do this though, but towards the end of the mid finale.

Season five of The Walking Dead has been doing well so far, and has an upcoming second half premiering in February. It had good action, some complex and vivid characters, and a good deal of suspense. My only problems with the season where the juggling of plots, and how some of the plots were ended quite rapidly. One last problem with the season is how the half ended. Unlike other times a season half would end with a plot halfway unfolding, but this season half ended with the hospital plot ending, and we won’t see a new conflict until the next half of the season.