The Walking Dead Review: Things Begin to Fall Apart in “Warning Signs”

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

My first question is where was this exciting and well written Walking Dead last year?

We are three episodes into season nine and it’s been a slow build of quality, maybe too slow in parts but still miles about the disaster of season eight. In fact, I would go so far as to say “Warning Signs” was the best episode in the last couple of seasons. This season continues to impress me with its strong writing, character development and scenes that are interesting, exciting and suspenseful. Raise your hand if you thought this was possible…yeah, that’s what I thought. Yet here we are, three episodes in and I’m actually looking forward to next week’s show.

Saviors are still disappearing and things are getting rather tense. A couple of confrontations, one near the bridge camp and the other a more intimate affair involving Rick and Carol, show just how easy it might be for things to go bad really fast. This all comes to a head when Daryl and Maggie stumble upon the Oceanside women, who as it turns out are the ones killing the Saviors. It seems there are targeting certain Saviors that helped Simon kill their family and friends. This rings true with both Maggie and Daryl, and when they turn and walk away, leaving the women to execute the captured Savior, you know things have started down a path that will only lead to chaos and death. This is confirmed when Maggie says it’s time to go see Negan, and with her wanting him dead I’m sure that will be tense,  to say the least.

The Jadis/helicopter mystery gets even more bizarre when she sneaks off to her old garbage home to find a hidden walkie-talkie and contact those in the helicopter. The people on the other end require what they call an ‘A or B’, which means nothing to me right now. Poor Gabriel though, he follows Jadis, in part to keep an eye out for her safety and to see what she’s up to, and gets knocked out by Jadis for his trouble. I am very curious to see where they take this part of the story.

Amidst all the tension and mystery, there were some wonderful moments between Rick, Michonne, and Judith. The talked about having a baby, shared some time with Judith and actually took some time to be together, to smell the roses and to remember just what it was they’ve been fighting for all this time. This is important, it gives the show a sense of humanity and purpose, and humanizes the characters in a way that conflict never will.

It was really a wonderfully put together episode that had a bit of everything and didn’t need to resort to some cheap gimmicks or suffer the pitfalls of idiotic writing. Here we are moving onto episode four and things are going just fine without any outside threat yet. I certainly hope when that does arrive it works itself into the story they’ve built so far in a way that makes things even more tense and dramatic and not cheap and boring.

Four stars out of five