The Walking Dead: 6 Things "Coda" Got Right (And 4 It Didn't)
1. You've Been Out Here Too Long
The Walking Dead has never been known for its subtlety. After all, when you're making a TV show about flesh eating zombies that tear people apart, it's difficult to trade in subtlety. And yet the writers have clearly been honing their craft over these five seasons, with this most recent one including some of their most nuanced and clever scripts yet, and Coda is no exception. Every character got a chance to shine, whether with dialogue or performance, and seeds were sprinkled covertly for the second half of the season (like the who can you trust? thing). The smartest bit came towards the start, however. Rick chasing down that cop was badass, but it also showed you how much he'd changed - how they'd all changed. When the crippled police officer was sat cowering beneath Rick's handgun, he pointed out something that hasn't really been brought up before: you've been out here too long, he suggests, providing the first glimmer of doubt that the group might have gone off the deep end. At this point are they just trying to survive, or have they gone too far? Is the reason none of the villains have really been up to scratch this season because Rick and co are so much worse? Now that's interesting. The Walking Dead has dragged these people down, forced them into difficult situations, to the degree that they no longer bat an eyelid about killing a man in cold blood. Without wishing to fall foul of that old cliché, who are the real monsters here?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
