Thoughts I Should Probably Keep to Myself Regarding the Season 5 Mid-Season Finale of THE WALKING DEAD

First of a series in which I review episodes of The Walking Dead in no particular order. WARNING: SPOILERS OUT THE YING-YANG, because, seriously, I’m among the last people in the solar system who has just started watching this latest season on a bootleg channel online. If you’re weird like me, give this post a pass.

Not this one, alas.

In the course of binge-watching this season’s The Walking Dead up to the mid-season finale, I’ve come to wonder: Is it so wrong that I’m on the side of “Screw these people, kill them all” when it comes to things like saving members of my zompocalypse survival group from other groups? If everyone had gone with Rick’s original plan to infiltrate, slit throats, then grab ‘n’ go, Beth would still be alive. As it is, I would have had my people empty their magazines into those dirtbags in the hospital before Beth’s body hit the floor. 

Tyreese and his weak-sister act are one thing — I’d have him hang back at base camp if all he’s going to do is come up with stupid ideas that don’t involve decisive eliminations of known threats — but when did Daryl Dixon become such a wuss? “[The slimy, passive-aggressive psycho running Rape and Slavery Memorial Hospital] is just tryin’ to hold it together,” is NOT an excuse to go easy on anyone. The Governor was “just tryin’ to hold it together.” So was Gareth and his crew at Terminus Flytrap Cannibal Camp, where Rick uttered my favorite line of the whole series: “These people don’t get to live.” This would be my standing policy with anyone who so much as steals a can of beans from my people — and stealing my people puts everything into the “with extreme prejudice” zone, i.e., you’re going to die, and I’m going to make sure it hurts.

Swear to God, this Dawn character reminded me of a supervisor
at a hospital I worked at. Screw “passive aggressive,” the foul hag
was slimy. Nothing was her fault. Especially when it was. That
some regard Dawn sympathetically as some poor dear in over her
head when she put those marks across Beth’s face—honestly,
what’s wrong with you people?

I wouldn’t have wasted a bullet on that cop Rick hit with the car, either. Let the walkers coming up behind do the clean up on Aisle 7.  

Oh, but what’s that? Lamson was one of the good cops? Right. One of the good ones who stood by while his fellow cops raped and abused the “wards,” because Thin Blue Line and all that. Everyone of those filth should have been shot in the legs and dropped down the elevator shaft for the misery they enabled, when they weren’t outright perpetrating it. 

Make no mistake, the zombie apocalypse is all about the misanthropy for me. Enough of this hand-wringing over “What kind of person am I becoming in this time of deadly extremity?” Damned if they didn’t make the Daryl ‘n’ Carol ATL Adventure episode boring for all of that. 

On the bright side, all of this murder in my heart will put a proper edge to my own zombie apocalypse books, now in rewrite. This tired “let’s not become the bad guys while fighting the bad guys” trope always drives me crazy. Mel Brooks said it all for that in Spaceballs: “Once again, Evil triumphs, because Good is dumb.” Holding one of my people against their will? You don’t get to live. Full stop. It’s not a Mensa puzzle.

Hey Daryl, if you’d supported Rick’s original plan instead of Tyreese’s, she’d still be alive.
Just sayin’.