After a disappointing week that delivered Slabtown, one of the most lacklustre episodes of the entire series run, it's somewhat back on track with this weeks instalment. Self Help focused solely on Abraham and the group headed for Washington D.C., which coupled with last week it appears that it has returned to last seasons format of alternating bands of survivors for each episode. Thats not necessarily a good thing, as thats what contributed to the tediousness of season four, but they'll get the benefit of the doubt for a while based on the previous quality of season five thus far. For readers of the comic series, one of this episode's revelations was expected (albeit not this early in the journey), and were surprised by the other which involved the backstory of one of the central characters. There wasn't a lot going on in "Self Help" in terms of physical progression, but the actual story advanced quite a bit in a small amount of time, continuing this season's modus operandi of tearing through plot points at a breakneck pace. It feels like the showrunners took all the criticism of The Walking Dead moving a crawl to heart and have really done their best to remedy that. "Self Help" wasn't nearly as good as the first three episodes of this season, but after the abomination that was "Slabtown", you can rejoice because it feels like the show is definitely back on track. Now let's get to those talking points.
Brad Hamilton is a writer, musician and marketer/social media manager from Atlanta, Georgia. He's an undefeated freestyle rap battle champion, spends too little time being productive and defines himself as the literary version of Brock Lesnar.
