‘The Walking Dead’ 5.11 “The Distance”

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.11 “The Distance” (7 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

The main conflict tonight comes from Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) extreme trust issues as Aaron (Ross Marquand) tries to persuade our heroes to come home with him, along with a few night zombies along the way. My reservations about the midseason episodes are still lingering in my mind like the stench of a walker left to rot in the basement. As always, ahead there be spoilers.

The New Guy

When Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) bring Aaron before Rick and the others, they give him some time to say his piece. It all sounds great—steel walls, food, applesauce—but through the course of the series, Rick has come to understand that the term “too good to be true” has come to mean “lure you in slowly and kill you when you least expect it.” It’s a fair judgment to make, seeing as how 90% of the strangers that come across Rick and his pals are up to no good. The difference between this situation with Aaron and their encounters with the other lost denizens of post-apocalyptic Georgia is that his story seems to create a schism between Rick and the rest of his group. Interestingly enough, it’s Michonne (Danai Gurira) who seems most willing to trust Aaron and go with him to his community, Alexandria. This is an interesting moment, considering season three Michonne would probably have chopped Aaron’s head off without thinking twice about it. She’s gone through some interesting changes, and I like that the show has kept that up.

That being said, I didn’t love how the episode played out. Assuming Aaron was always playing some sort of mind game with him, Rick kept negotiating and re-negotiating the terms of their eventual trip to Alexandria. Since the episode ends with them showing up at the community’s gates, all of the zombie peril that our heroes endured tonight was totally Rick’s fault. While his bad decisions could be leading up to some kind of coup within the Rick-tatorship, it was a lot of clumsy thinking, which is not something we’ve come to expect from Sherriff Grimes. On the other hand, these bad decisions did give Rick the opportunity to shoot a zombie in the head with a flare gun, which was one of the most inventive zombie kills that we’ve seen on the show so far.

Verdict

You’ve gotten yourself into a pickle, “Walking Dead.” As our new additions Aaron and Eric (Jordan Woods-Robinson) are impeccably-dressed, totally in love with one another, and appear to have nothing but good intentions for our heroes, the show now finds itself between a pack of feral dogs and a horde of ravenous zombies. See, if Rick and his crew head to the romanticized bastion of Alexandria with Aaron and Eric (Seriously? There are plenty of other dude names that start with a consonant) and it’s not a façade for a group of cannibalistic maniacs, then what? Volleyball and wine coolers? At the same time, however, if they do find that Alexandria is populated with social deviants who are planning on crafting necklaces out of the groups’ vertebrae, we’re then faced with another Woodbury, or Terminus, or Grady Memorial, which is a trope that has officially worn out its welcome.

I’m only a little bit concerned with all of this—TWD has previously done a good job of setting things up only to knock them all down in an unpredictable and violent manner, and if the show is going where I think it’s going (Negan…yeesh), I suspect we’ll have plenty to talk about further out. And, I have to go here, props to TWD for assembling one of the most diverse casts on TV. The inclusion of complex characters from multiple different races and sexual orientations makes the survivors feel like a microcosm of the real world. Regardless of background, we all have our own zombies to kill, and TWD has captured that without making it feel obligatory.