A Review of The Walking Dead, Season 5, Episode 10: "Them" (Mild Spoilers)

written by Heather Bellson

directed by Julius Ramsay

After last week's infuriating mid-season debut, last night's episode of the top-rating zombie apocalypse series The Walking Dead slowed things down a bit with an episode that, for the first time in a long time, had the group dealing with issues like hunger, thirst and lack of shelter, as they are forced to walk after their vehicles break down. Still reeling from a succession of shocking deaths, namely those of Bob (Laurence Gilliard Jr.), Beth (Emily Kinney) and Tyreese (Chad Coleman), the group of survivors, in particular Tyreese's sister and Bob's girlfriend Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), Beth's sister Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) who spent much of season four wandering around with Beth, begin to feel the emotional burden of their collective physical and emotional ordeal, and the ties that bind them become increasingly strained. Suddenly, they are no longer just threatened by walkers or rival humans but by the lack of basic needs for survival, and later, by the elements. 

I made no secret of how I felt about last week's episode, which, for all its artsy-fartsy trappings, was basically a sloppily-written kill-off episode. While this new episode is far from my favorite work from the series' creators, for me it improves over the last one in terms of writing, by pitting the characters against the elements and lack of supplies for the first time since, well, possibly, ever. Rick and his group have always been able to find supplies, shelter and provisions with relative ease, even in the tumultuous post-prison episodes that saw the group scattered. Even the late Gareth (Andrew J. West), of the Terminus cannibals, pointedly said to Rick, just before the latter hacked him to death, that he looked like he had never been hungry. Well, this episode changes that, although the writers bail the characters out at the last minute. 

There are quite a few "talking dead" moments throughout the narrative, which threaten the overall pacing of the episode at some points, but the good news is that the episode is still chock-full of walkers, especially since the crew spends most of their time out in the open. It was fun to hear Andrew Lincoln's Rick finally say the title of the show after five long years.

All told, however, while the episode does have a few things to say about grief, optimism and the ties that bind (and what can weaken them), I couldn't shake the feeling that it was basically a placeholder of sorts, something to keep the characters busy while the writers set up the next big story arc which, as far as I can tell, officially begins at the very end of the episode. 

After the nail-biting cliffhanger of Season 4 led to a season that, to me, has been one disappointment after another, I truly hope this bodes well for my favorite crew of apocalypse survivors.

7/10