REVIEW #378 The Ones Who Live (Season 1)

Years after Rick Grimes was taken from Alexandria, Michonne is on one final push to find him and bring him home to his family.

Unfortunately The Ones Who Live felt like a mess of ideas forced together to justify a fast tracked explanation of where Rick has been for the last eight years. Was it great seeing Rick Grimes back on our screen? Of course it was, but this felt far from the man fans loved in The Walking Dead. I understand that they needed to show a changed man who had pretty much given up hope of getting home and that their hands were kinda tied in the sense they had to show an entire character arc in a single limited series… But that being said, there were so many awful decisions that ruined the experience for me. What can we do to show he was getting desperate? Oh let’s have him chop off his own hand with no thought on how he would escape after doing so. That’s not Rick Grimes! This man survived through the Negan dilemmas and never did such a thing. There were so many other options to represent that internal desperation other than crippling him, not to mention that him being one handed was pretty much brushed aside for the rest of the show, replaced with some assassins creed type flip blade! To emphasise my point, they wanted to show the CRM as this big, unbeatable, clever organisation, yet they were tricked into thinking a 3ft dwarf could take down six armed soldiers with a samurai sword… terrible writing.

Despite my criticisms, there were positives too, Matthew Jeffers character Nat was one I really enjoyed and I would have liked to have seen more of him (if it wasn’t for that bad writing, maybe we would have!). The production value was also high, it certainly had that film quality to it, which perhaps The Walking Dead has lacked at times over the years. Then of course the reunion with Rick and his kids, that was emotional for sure! But the timelines really are all over the place and all of these shows are making it real confusing now. Like where were they when they reunited? Alexandria? The commonwealth? There’s just so many questions around these intertwined shows. Even Gabriel, he was with Rosita, yet he was kissing Ann in the woods? When was that happening? An expansive universe is great if it’s easy to follow, but this certainly wasn’t. Overall I was disappointed and it’s a real shame because TWD is one of my favourite shows of all time and Rick Grimes was a big part of that. But ultimately awful writing ruined it.

Overall (6/10)

Thanks for reading.

Callan