“The Walking Dead is a stronger show when it tries to make us care instead of trying to prove a point.”
“Rick still isn’t winning any popularity contests, not among fans nor his fellow survivors. But what I like about the character under Gimple is that Rick now appears as haunted by his own errors as he is by the horrors of the world around him. Rick is a stronger leader now, in that he doesn’t shy away from direct, often violent action. But there’s no question that this tack has broken something essential within him. He no longer makes promises he can’t keep. It’s just that the ones he does make tend to involve machetes.”
“Never discount a good apocalypse beard.”
“The quiet that filled Gabriel’s church when Gareth and his fellow fine young cannibals entered was agonizing — but it was nothing compared with the deathly hush that fell once Rick and his team had finished their slaughter. Graves aren’t silent on The Walking Dead. Only the living could ever be so defeated or so still.”
“In this leaner, unquestionably meaner incarnation, The Walking Dead has become a show not about life or death, but about hunger. Of all the basic instincts that make us human — the need for shelter and companionship, for laughter and the occasional lollipop — hunger is the most primal and the least forgiving. Hunger is what we share with the fiercest animals and, when left to fester, it’s what can easily lower us to their level. As humans become even more of an existential threat to our lead characters than zombies, the question The Walking Dead poses is no longer “Can we survive?” It’s: “How much of ourselves will we have to sacrifice along the way?” Living is always preferable to dying. But it’s also a whole hell of a lot harder.”