Thoughts About The Walking Dead Midnale

I started watching The Walking Dead in January of 2013 when I was on hiatus and looking for a show to get into. This was during the Season 3 midseason break, so the first two seasons were available on Netflix. I was blown away by the stark efficiency of the six-episode first season, but then felt like it struggled to maintain its consistency over twice as many episodes in Season 2. After feeling like I had to binge-watch three episodes in order to experience one episode's worth of content, I wasn't too eager to get caught up to watch in real time, so I waited until the next year when the next season was available for instant streaming.

I enjoyed the escapades in the prison well enough and The Governor is obviously a franchise-defining character, but afterwards I kind of lost interest. Until I discovered Ozzy Man Reviews on YouTube. I've been obsessed with this channel recently, so I figure I'll just keep plugging it as much as possible until my obsession passes. After memorizing the brilliant comedic overdub "Eddie Stark: Australian Dad" and burning through his Game of Thrones reviews, I noticed that there were also links to Walking Dead, Season 5 episodes. Season 5? What happened to Season 4? Oh, that's right, it was sitting there in my Netflix queueub, or list, and I hadn't been watching it.

Needless to say, if I wanted Ozzy's latest works to make sense, I would have to power through some episodes and fast. So at a whirlwind pace I sped through the group's final days at the prison, the Governor's brief solo campaign and subsequent failure to grow or change as a character, and some ripping crosscutting between storylines as our various heroes make their ways towards Terminus. I laughed along with Team Flat Top/Mullet, cried along with Carol and Tyreese and those two girls who just didn't get it, and held my breath in anticipation when Daryl lost track of Beth and fell in with the wrong crowd. Top it all off with a season finale for the ages - complete with a cliffhanger rife with overconfidence - and Season 4 was in the books. Then once I used AMC's streaming service to get caught up on Season 5, it was time to start watching with my friends on Sunday nights, when the episodes actually air (shocking, I know).

In the last two half-seasons before the Season 5 midnale (the word I've coined (I think) to describe the last episode before AMC's patented midseason break), Rick and the gang have neutralized, with extreme prejudice, two hostile groups of humans: Daryl's lie-hating merry band of outlaws and the nasty cannibals at Terminus. In the cold open, it immediately looks like Rick will continue his murderous streak with Dawn's group of corrupt cops when he rear-ends Bob 2 as he goes on his morning jog. After misquoting a lyric from a song off Taylor Swift's new album ("All you had to do was STOP!"), Rick puts Bob 2 out of his misery, proving beyond any doubt that he has no qualms about executing people he sees to be a threat.

I learned that when you watch TV live in real time, you gain insights about the program that you don't get through streaming alone. For example, when the promo for a given night's Talking Dead advertises the presence of a "mystery guest," you can be pretty sure that a character is going to die in that night's episode, and that the mystery guest will be whichever actor played said unfortunate character. Those of us who had unwittingly seen spoilers thankfully kept their mouths shut, but we were all pretty sure that the big death would be someone more important than Bob 2 or the random cop who enjoys shoving old people - even though it was pretty appropriate that he was killed when Beth shoved him into an open elevator shaft. You live by the shove, you die by the shove.

We didn't keep a tally or put any money on our guesses of who would bite the farm, but the popular consensus seemed to be Carol. She never really became part of the group again after Rick exiled her and she's had plenty of character development in the recent episodes so we'd be sure to feel the emotional sting of her departure. Plus apparently she dies really early in the comics so she's been living on borrowed time for multiple seasons. My vote was for Daryl - just something about how he said "Everyone goes home" when agreeing with Tyreese's plan in the last episode made it seem like he would be the one to not go home. Some folks objected that people would stop watching if they got rid of such a popular character, but my line of thinking was that Game of Thrones wouldn't hesitate. But then again Game of Thrones doesn't formulaic-ly kill off characters every half season.

A few people suggested Beth, but that's just because they were getting kind of sick of her constant sing alongs and weird misplaced eyebrow scars. It became fairly predictable that #RIPBeth was going to be a thing as the episode progressed since she was the main character with whom we spent the most time. And then there was that pair of scissors she slipped into her cast. It's like Anton Chekov's old rule: if you introduce a pair of scissors in the first act, someone's gonna get shot in the face in the third act. It was emotional, if not terribly shocking, that Beth took a bullet in that exchange with Dawn. My biggest disappointment was that she biffed her chance to stab the latest antagonist at point blank range. Part of me thinks she would have been more successful if she forgot the scissors and used her teeth like Rick did last season.

The middle of Season 5 seems like it got wrapped up in a nice little package. The team is back together, with a couple of new members, and they're all set to commence wandering aimlessly without Eugene's mission to keep them going. The only unresolved issue is the return of Morgan from the pilot (if you watched till the end of the credits), but what do we have to look forward to there other than another reunion? I'll still tune in next season because I've committed four and a half seasons and now it's an excuse for me to be social. I just don't know what I'll be expecting.