The Walking Dead: 7 Things "The Distance" Got Right (And 3 It Didn't)

3. Zombies Do Something For Once

A recurring complaint (on this site at least) throughout the fifth season of The Walking Dead is that the zombies have become increasingly surplus to requirements. It's a natural progression that, this far into the zombie apocalypse, the characters have become so capable with dispatching the shambling masses of reanimated corpses that any encounter with them is like watching a skilled gamer doing a speedrun through Resident Evil 4. The context is definitely supposed to be terrifying, but they slice through the horrors with such ease it's difficult to get a scare in edgeways. It reached fever pitch in last week's episode, which opened with Maggie having a good sob whilst fully aware a walker was stumbling up behind her. So confident are the group in their zombie-killing abilities that they can literally wait to the last minute to knock 'em off, and then spend most of the rest of the episode strolling ahead of them. Well, this week, they finally decided they were ready to be a threat again. The tension of all the umming and ahhing about Aaron's proposition was palpable, but it was nice to have a bit of release in the ensuing sequence of the group coming across that huge group of walkers, running for their lives through the darkened woods.