Rejoice Rick Grimes’ haters, he is not in the latest season of ‘The Walking Dead’ at all! He only appears in some flashback scenes, or during those annoying hallucinations of the past the characters have in the series. If you are an Andrew Lincoln fan (the actor who plays Rick Grimes), sorry, some of just don’t like the overbearing bossy cop hero.
Season 10 has 15 episodes and starts with all like-minded community training for an eventual skirmish with the ‘skinnies’, the group that wears zombie masks and walks with the dead. Episode one was pretty good and reminded me of the game ‘Age of Empires’, with people farming and training for war with medieval weapons. I just don’t understand why man-genius Eugene can’t make more bullets for everybody though?
Episode 2 was completely skippable, because it delves into Alpha’s past, who is the primary antagonist of the series now and leads the pack of skinnies. The original comic did not give us any background and for good reason, because her past and how she met Beta was completely inconsequential, pointless and boring. Episode three in contrast was pacy, with a countdown set between scenes, as the communities battle waves of zombies circling them. Alpha gives the ‘good guys’ a warning against stepping into their territory and cuts off their hunting grounds, pissing off a lot of people.
The rest of the episodes is back to plotting and strategising on how to defeat Alpha and her horde of the undead. A lot of the secondary characters get more screen space, Michonne who leads the Alexandria community gets a whole boring episode to herself, where she is off to an island to find weapons. Oh and she hallucinates a lot about her past. Back at Alexandria, Siddique the doctor also slowly loses his shit and keeps zoning out, imagining things. Daryl and Carol’s friendship is back in focus – a LOT of time is wasted on philosophical conversations between them. It’s not just them, you have the usual rambling between different set of characters, which makes you want to hit the fast-forward button.
The biggest problem with this season is that Samantha Morton as Alpha is just not badass enough. For a pack leader who believes in living like animals in the wilderness with the zombies, she is just not fit enough. Alpha from the comics was tall, fierce and fit like an athlete. Alpha in the series is a short weird wack-ass mom with an annoying countryside accent. There are no major battle level confrontations in this season and it’s like a loooong foreplay before the final act.
Towards the last few episodes, things get only slightly better. For what it’s worth, one finally sees one of the most interesting character in the comics debut in the last episode – Princess. The cheery young woman with pink hair and loud clothes, who brings some comic-relief (the only comic-relief really) to this dead as fuck season.
