A Late Review of "The Distance" or Episode 11 of "The Walking Dead" Season 5

directed by Larysa Kondracki
written by Seth Hoffman

As I write this, I have already seen Episode 13 of "The Walking Dead," but I was so pleased with what I saw that I feel I have to weigh in before moving on to the next episode, or to just do a "two for one" review.

Following the survivors' harrowing experience of wandering for days without transportation, food or water, they again find themselves facing hope once more as the mysterious Aaron (Ross Marquand) comes to them, offering them sanctuary in a community that he swears is safe and sustainable. Having been burned by one unfortunate experience after another with fellow human beings, however, Rick and his group exercise utmost caution, with Rick himself knocking Aaron out while he's making his initial pitch for the group to join his community, and then having Aaron tied up while his group checks out Aaron's claims of having a vehicle big enough for all of them. Later the group tries driving to the camp, using a road other than the one Aaron claims is cleared of walkers, and things go disastrously wrong.

After being bitterly disappointed with the mid-season premiere, I was glad to see an episode as well-written as this one, which is focused primarily on Rick and which draws on all of the years of his character's experience to inform his decisions and his extremely cautious approach to a new situation . My irritation with the episode that turned out to be Tyreese's swansong was how his death was basically brought about by uncharacteristic, badly-written carelessness. Here, Rick is in full-on paranoid mode, which is somewhat understandable considering that it was not too long ago that a place he and his group believed to be friendly and welcoming turned out to be a den of cannibals.

The effectiveness of the writing, though, is down to how well Aaron is presented, helped along by a very sympathetic performance by Marquand. As a viewer, I wanted to believe he was telling the truth, and wanted to hate Rick for his antagonistic attitude...but I couldn't. That was the triumph of this episode; everything Rick's people did was informed by their harsh experience, and it was therefore impossible to blame them for thinking the way they did. At the same time, while a less effective script or performance would have made it easy to dismiss Aaron's promises as yet another too-good-to-be-true utopia, this script, ably realized by Marquand's well-nuanced performance, really sold his pitch effectively.

Time will tell if Aaron's community is the haven he says it is, and if the comics are any basis things will get a whole lot worse before they get better, but whatever happens I am grateful for this episode, which set up the introduction of Alexandria quite effectively.

8/10