The Walking Dead New Episode Review: 'Them' Is Slow, Plodding March Through Depression

This week's new episode of The Walking Dead puts the series on some weak footing to start the second half of Season 5. After the mixed bag last week, "Them" was a slow, plodding episode filled with crippling depression and little development.

Immediately after watching this episode, I remarked to a friend that this was the Seinfeld of Walking Dead episodes. Television occurred in front of me, but by the end of it, nothing had changed. Nothing happened. It was a show about nothing. That's not completely true considering the final scene, but we'll get to that.

"Them" tried and succeeded to show just how desparate the survivors have become at this point. They have no home, no food, and no water. They've lost three members of their family in the last few weeks. They're close to Washington, D.C., but even that destination could wind up as just another dead end.

To this end, the episode worked well. The sheer weight of hopelessness that permeated the episode was palpable. Even when it rained to finally give them water, it wouldn't stop raining and the survivors had to find shelter. Nothing was going right.

But The Walking Dead has always been a show about surviving in this world. The show has tried, with varying degrees of success, to show what it takes to survive and debated if there is even any point to surviving at all. The problem for "Them" is that the show has trodded through this material so often that this episode offered nothing new. Sure, the circumstance may have been at their most dire, but we've been here already. Compound this with the fact that the show glossed over much of the trip to D.C. in the midseason premiere, and it's a puzzling choice to produce an episode akin to walking through molasses.

One of the two highlights of the episode was the speech Rick gave around the fire. Here it is as a refresher:

"When I was a kid, I asked my grandpa once if he ever killed any Germans in the war. He wouldn't answer. He said that was grown up stuff, so.... So I asked if the Germans ever tried to kill him, but he got real quiet. He said he was dead the minute he steeped into enemy territory. Every day he woke up he told himself, 'Rest in peace. Now get up and go to war.' And then after a few years of pretending he was dead, he made it out alive. And that's the trick of it, I think. We do what we need to do, and then we get to live. But no matter what we find in D.C., I know we'll be okay, because this is how we survive. We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead."

This is a key theme in the comic book, and one that drives much of the series from this point. Eventually, the zombies aren't the problem anymore. It's the surviving humans and what they do to each other in this world that causes the conflicts.

The other major development was the appearance of Aaron at the end of the episode. Fans of the comic book know, generally speaking, where this is going. [WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD] Aaron is a member of the Alexandria Safe Zone, and he recruits wandering survivors to join the community. So he wasn't lying when he told Maggie and Sasha he has good news. Of course, Rick and the others are not going to trust him right off the bat, or at all, so we'll see how this goes next week.

Notes:

- Sasha is grief-stricken, but she's also acting foolish.

- Those who have read the comics know that Maggie goes through an extremely dark period around this time. This could be worth keeping an eye on as we go through the rest of the season.

- When Daryl cried alone in the woods, I think I heard thousands of fans crying along with him.

- The shot of the survivors holding the door closed while the zombies pounded on the other side was really cool.

What did you think of "Them"? Let us know in the comments section.