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While it was definitely an interesting and effective decision for The Walking Dead to quickly wrap up the cannibal storyline, trying to squeeze all of Grady into what was essentially a three-episode arc was a major misstep. And the permanently lingering question of, "Are these dopes even good enough or scary enough to face off against Rick?" hung around until the very end, when the answer was revealed to be a resounding, "NO."
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Dawn's reluctant minions certainly didn't know who she was, as Rick's interrogations of the cops he took hostage yielded a chorus of, "Dawn might do this," "Dawn might do that," and "Who the hell knows what Dawn will do?" instead of anything interesting. She was a supposed tyrant who gave Beth a set of keys to the drug locker and named Beth her personal ward after Beth broke the number-one rule of Grady by trying to escape.
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It's difficult to introduce new characters in an eight-episode half-season that's otherwise focused on people we already know, and Dawn and the rest of her cuckoo Red Bland Society suffered greatly for it.ĭid anyone ever really care about the folks in the hospital besides Noah and maybe that strawberry-loving Santa Claus who didn't know how to sew? I don't even think Dawn knew who Dawn was. My dislike of "Slabtown" (Beth's hospital-centric episode) makes even more sense now, as an hour of prep work wasn't long enough to build a solid foundation for these final two episodes. However, it's now clear that the entire Grady Memorial Hospital storyline wasn't really successful, and I believe it was thrown together to give the second half of Season 5 some sort of goal. The good news is that I don't think "Coda" returned The Walking Dead to its old, "Eh, it's kinda good sometimes" M.O.
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After starting out strong with several entertaining installments that focused on developing characters and telling tighter stories, Season 5 stumbled with last week's "Crossed" and crashed into your mom's antique China cabinet in "Coda." It'd be easy to label the decline as predictable, given The Walking Dead's history of consistent inconsistency, but so many signs pointed to the show maturing and coming into its own that an episode about storming a hospital to carry out a rescue mission should have been the easiest chapter to put together.