One of The Walking Dead’s best episodes changed the course of the franchise forever (and may have just doomed it). The first few seasons of The Walking Dead had the characters constantly on the move. They left their camp outside Atlanta in season 1, they holed up on Hershel’s farm in season 2, they fixed up a prison in season 3, and got ousted from it in season 4.
By the time The Walking Dead season 5 rolled around, Rick Grimes and his fellow survivors were lucky not to get eaten when the supposed “safe haven” of Terminus turned out to be a festering hive of cannibals. The group hit rock bottom as they trudged across the post-apocalyptic wasteland, barely picking up enough food to give them the energy to stab walkers in the skull.
But, as they say, it’s always darkest before the dawn. Just when Rick is out of options, Aaron shows up and says he’s from a civilized town that’s considering giving them a permanent home. It seems like another obvious Terminus-style lie; it seems too good to be true. But unlike Terminus, Alexandria is every bit the godsend it’s made out to be.
The first episode that brought Rick and co. behind the walls of Alexandria is one of The Walking Dead’s all-time greatest episodes. It’s a real game-changer that completely reinvents the format of the show, and it creates a hilarious juxtaposition between the battle-hardened survivors and the cushy civilians. But it may have inadvertently ruined the franchise by introducing what would become its most irritating trope.
“Remember” Is One Of The Walking Dead’s Best Episodes
In season 5, episode 12, “Remember,” two episodes after Aaron showed up and asked for Rick by name, Rick’s group finally made it to the Alexandria Safe-Zone, and it almost felt like a dream. It’s a gated community with running water and rules to abide by. It almost seems like the apocalypse never happened; these people are leading normal lives.
It was a massive departure from everything the series had done up to that point. We’d only ever seen survivors living day to day in temporary camps and dilapidated buildings at risk of being overrun at any moment. Woodbury was the closest thing we saw to an Alexandria-like township, but that was run by a sociopathic dictator.
Alexandria, on the other hand, was run by a nice older lady named Deanna. Tovah Feldshuh instantly proved to be a great foil for Andrew Lincoln when Deanna interviewed Rick at the beginning of the episode. Deanna is a fair, benevolent leader, but she won’t stand for anyone challenging her authority — and that’s all Rick does from the moment he arrives in Alexandria.
Feral Rick Trying To Assimilate With The Civilized Alexandrians Was A Great Dramatic Conflict
By the time Aaron found them and brought them to Alexandria, Rick and his group were essentially feral. Most of them readapted to the normality of Alexandria pretty quickly (especially the well-adjusted ones, like Maggie and Glenn). But, for some of them, like Daryl, it was a real struggle. Rick, in particular, was like a stray animal who’d been left out in the wild for too long.
Seeing Rick at his most unhinged and animalistic, trying to assimilate with civilized society, is both darkly hilarious and dramatically compelling. It was a juicy post-apocalyptic what-if scenario — what if, long into the zombie apocalypse, a group of people set up a fortified town and established a new normal? — and Rick’s fractured psyche made him the best character through which to explore that storyline.
After Arriving In Alexandria, The Walking Dead Stopped Being A Show About Survival
As great as “Remember” was, and as game-changing as the arrival in Alexandria proved to be, I think it might’ve unintentionally ruined the franchise. After Rick and the gang got accustomed to civilized life in Alexandria, The Walking Dead stopped being a show about survival, and instead became a big post-apocalyptic game of Monopoly between a handful of similar communities.
We were introduced to a bunch of these communities with their own new normal — the Hilltop, the Kingdom, eventually the Saviors — and all the plotting revolved around the conflicts between those communities. The Walking Dead wasn’t about the fight for survival anymore; it was just about these feuding factions arguing over territory and resource distribution.
The Walking Dead Kept Doubling Down On The Feuding Factions Trope
Once Alexandria started getting into conflicts with fellow communities, The Walking Dead kept doubling down on this tired feuding factions trope. It started off as a soap opera about a bunch of human beings weathering the zombie apocalypse, but it became a Game of Thrones power struggle between House Alexandria and House Negan.
In “Remember,” when Rick and his group first moved into Alexandria after fending for themselves in the wilderness for months, there was a lot of great dark humor in an essentially feral Rick Grimes having to reintegrate into civilized society. Now that these civilized communities are all over The Walking Dead universe, we’ll probably never see that kind of juxtaposition again.
