*WARNING! WARNING! Spoilers of plot points along with stuff, and other general thangs imminent! Ye all have been warned, now excuse me while I stop talking like a pirate. Arr!*

Hello again folks of WordPress, I’m back in time to post my review of this season’s epic season premier. But first I just want to say I had intended to post reviews of Fear The Walking Dead, but I’ve been too caught up with life to keep on top of the episodes coming out. As soon as I see the last two episodes of FTWD On Demand I’ll post  a season recap review. Now onto the review!

This episode was paced a little oddly cycling between the current struggle with diverting the walker heard away from Alexandria, and the flashbacks with how things progressed up to that very moment. It was an interesting cinematic idea, but the pacing in the 90 minutes threw me off a little bit due to constant switching at random and climactic moments. It’s very interesting to see how Rick is slowly descending back into Rick-tatorship mode again like at the end of season two (except worse) with how he’s treating the folks of Alexandria and how he killed Carter. Lastly, I enjoyed that it was left a (simple) mystery who amassed the walker herd into that ravine. Now let’s get into the strengths and weaknesses of this episode.

What I enjoyed:

It’s interesting to see how power is slowly corrupting Rick into becoming a tyrant hell bent on doing the right thing, it’s been a long time since I’ve read the comics, but I can see that they’re going to go deeper into the Rick-tatorship in the show than they did in the comics with how he’s acting he owns Alexandria and how killed Carter to keep the plan intact. It was amazing seeing how many extras they had in the crowd of walkers, and funny to note they had some people wearing masks instead of makeup due to the sheer amount of extras in the crowd. It was epic seeing Abraham be the complete badass that he is single-handed take out that splinter group of walkers from the heard. I enjoyed seeing the tensions boil between Rick’s group and the members of Alexandria, and how Rick’s plan was built to divert the walker heard north. Lastly, it was both funny and annoyingly tragic when Glenn’s group opened the door only to find another metal door behind it.

What I didn’t enjoy:

Two words: cliff hangers! It’s such an annoying way to end an episode! Still, I’ll bet the ones ringing that truck horn are the Wolves that Morgan met last season, the same ones who set up the traps to capture that walker heard in the ravine. I’m also not happy about how they kept switching between flashbacks and present time scenes in such an odd way. It could be worse though, at least they didn’t use the flashbacks in the same way as they do in Naruto Shippuden: drawing out the episode longer to avoid adding canon source material. I don’t have many other complaints aside from the pacing since the acting, camera work, and writing were amazing. It’s not as action packed as the season five opener, but it still packs a great punch for people who’ve been waiting to see The Walking Dead since this past March.

Today’s music video is another Breaking Benjamin song, “Angels Fall” off of their album “Darkness Before Dawn”. It reminds me of the struggle many of the characters have too deal with in the zombie apocalypse. Their angels have fallen, but they refuse to give up or give in.

-KCard