10 Things The Walking Dead Wishes It Could’ve Done Differently

6. The Search For Sophia

Though the first season was genuinely stellar, and launched The Walking Dead to the top of the TV landscape, the rot that would haunt later years set in almost immediately. Frank Darabont was sacked while working on the sophomore set of episodes, allegedly because he quickly wanted to move on from Hershel's farm as a setting, while AMC wanted more action set there so costs would be cut down.

That explains today why a tiny arc from the comic took up an entire season in the show, but at the time, nobody had any idea why The Walking Dead suddenly became so slow and cheap. That ire and confusion manifested primarily in the backlash to the main storyline of the first half of that second season: the search for Sophia.

The reason Rick and co. are forced to hang around Hershel's farm is because Carol's daughter went missing in the opening ep, and it wouldn't be until the mid-season finale where the plot point would be resolved.

It made for a killer ep, but like a lot of things on TWD, the story in general was unnecessarily stretched out between episodes that had nothing of substance to add to the world or story.