'The Walking Dead' Season 5 Premiere Review: No Sanctuary

Spoiler warning through Season 5 of ‘The Walking Dead’ on AMC. The Walking Dead gets off to an action-packed start Sunday night, as Sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and crew make their bloody escape from Terminus, the creepy cannibal community that had imprisoned most of the survivors by the end of last season’s finale. When I wrote my review of that episode, I titled it “How Rick Got His Groove Back.” I’d been complaining about the group’s leader for a long time—he’d been wallowing in grief and confusion, following a long flirtation with his own micro-dictatorship. He was half the man he used to be. But at the end of last season he seemed to rise once again to the challenge facing him as a leader the group depended on, that he cared deeply about. “Finally Rick is accepting that this isn’t a world for farmers or democracies,” I wrote at the time, “it’s a live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword world, and only the fittest survive.”

Whatever redemption Rick found in Season Four’s finale, he maintained in the Season Five premiere, “No Sanctuary” Sunday evening. But he shared that redemption with his long-time compatriot Carol (Melissa McBride) who came through as one of the most heroic figures so far in The Walking Dead. I say “heroic” with some caveats. This is a show that examines how far people will go to survive while still maintaining some shred of human decency and compassion. In the last two seasons we saw how far The Governor would go not just to survive, but to thrive in a position of power. We also glimpsed how far the members of Terminus would go to survive, turning into cannibals in order to preserve their tribe. “You either become the butcher or the cattle,” is the refrain we hear in tonight’s episode. It’s a bloody echo of social Darwinism. Only the fittest survive.

Carol is an interesting case. She admitted to killing two other survivors in the prison last season in order to stem the spread of the sickness, a pretty cold, utilitarian move to save the rest of the group. She trained girls to kill Walkers, arming them in spite of one of those girls’ obvious mental illness. This led to the death of both girls, and very nearly the death of baby Judith. And yet goodness remained in Carol. She felt remorse. She knew that what she’d done was wrong, even though she believed at the time her actions were justified. Unlike The Governor or the cannibals, she walked away from the ledge, turned her back on the abyss, and took a better path. The ends, we’re reminded, don’t always justify the means. That doesn’ t mean you don’t fight, you don’t kill—that was Rick’s mistake—but it does mean you only use violence and bloodshed as a last resort.

Tonight Carol walked into Terminus guns blazing and helped rescue her companions from a certain and terrible death. Smeared in zombie grime, she blew her way into the compound, taking out cannibals with a cold, practical calculation. Rick and company were more suspicious than the first group of survivors to get snagged by the Terminus crew; Carol didn’t even bother with diplomacy. She saw what needed to be done and she did it, not out of cruelty—though no doubt we take some pleasure in the fate of the cannibals—but out of necessity. I’ve been a little annoyed with Carol for a while now, but was basically the female, zombie-grime-covered version of Clint Eastwood in tonight’s season premiere. A no-nonsense killer who not only saved the day, but stole the show. It’s just enormously refreshing to see characters in this show act so sensibly. Her bravery is admirable; her sensibility is sublime.  Other than Rick, the rest of the cast played a fairly small role in tonight’s episode, save for Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman.) I hate to say this, but Tyreese remains a problem for me here. He’s a big guy with a big heart but he’s constantly screwing up.

Recall when Tyreese left the two afore-mentioned girls alone while escaping the overrun prison last season when he heard someone in danger? That defied believability for me. It’s just crazy to leave the young, helpless children you have in your care to go maybe rescue some stranger off in the distance. Now we have Tyreese leaving a possible villain tied only at the wrists, free to run about the cabin they’re bunkered down in and very nearly kill baby Judith. The man is perhaps the worst baby-sitter in the history of zombie apocalypses. I’m not sure if I can blame Tyreese here. This sort of baffling action (or inaction) is rampant in The Walking Dead. It was the bane of Andrea, perhaps the worst protagonist a zombie show has ever seen. Her actions were constantly irrational, her motivations at the mercy of a show that cared less about character development than it did about moving the plot forward. Tyreese isn’t half as bad, but the same little problems that plague his character (as well as others in the show) still persist.

I have hope for Tyreese still. Michonne (Danai Gurira) had similarly weird motivations at first, and just never quite acted the way you’d expect real people to act even in crazy circumstances. But her character was fleshed out over time, given some humanity, and has since become one of my favorite on the show. All told, “No Sanctuary” was a decent return to The Walking Dead. An exciting, if predictable, season premiere. It was nice to see Carol take on the role of badass-in-chief. And we’re left with at least some potential Terminus survivors to come and cause trouble down the road. We’re also left with a probable conflict in where to go next, as Sgt. Abraham Ford and mullet-sporting scientist Eugene Potter will certainly wish to continue to D.C. whereas Rick—once again embracing his role of group leader—may have other plans.

I did get the sense, as the group reunited completely and made their merry way down the tracks, that something awful was about to happen. That somehow all of this was tied up too neatly, too carefully, too perfectly in the end. But nothing horrible happened. No rabid cannibal thirsting for revenge sprung from the bushes. I suspect we’ll have to wait an episode or two for that. The Walking Dead airs each Sunday on AMC. Stay tuned for more reviews, analysis, and opinion on the show here at Forbes.