A Review of The Walking Dead, "Coda"

Firstly, my apologies for being a little neglectful around these parts in the way of TV reviews. Evidently, the Blue Jays keep me fairly busy during the regular season (and this offseason as well), so I haven't had much of a chance to write about my favourite shows.

Anyway, please keep in mind that this brief review will of course contain spoilers, so if you haven't already watched the season five midseason finale "Coda", then please don't be mad if I spoil anything.

So I don't know if it was just me, but I feel like this was an episode that was supposed to be grand in nature, but it really didn't. A series regular may have been killed off, but the episode itself didn't come across as monumental at all.

It seemed like the past four episodes (after the conclusion of The Hunters storyline) were kind of stagnant. Not unlike the endless search for Sophia in the first half of season two.

At this point, the formula for The Walking Dead is fairly familiar; most mid-season and season finales lead up to a showdown of some point, and invariably include the death of one or several key characters.

"Coda" was not all that different, and sweet, innocent Beth was the victim this time around. Admittedly, this season was the first which allowed her character to develop and flesh out a little bit. But sometimes when that happens, it essentially means those characters are ticketed to be killed off.

The final scene in the hospital hallway with Beth felt anti-climactic and I want to say ... rushed? I mean, in reality, that would've been an extremely quick sequence of events, but if you blinked, you really might have missed what actually happened.

Beth herself symbolized a sense of hope and innocence that's very rare in a post-apocalyptic universe, and one could argue those qualities might actually be detrimental to one's survival in that world. But Beth managed to evolve, and perhaps her father Hershel's passing was the catalyst for that.

Again, going back to The Hunters arc; I think a lot of people were disappointed this storyline really only had a three-four episode run, while Dawn and the rest of the hospital had a total of five. In comparison, Gareth felt like a much more compelling antagonist, while Dawn was just a plain old tyrant.

In retrospect, it might have been better to flesh out The Hunters arc much longer, and only cram the hospital stuff in the latter part of the first half of season five.

Logically, I can understand why the producers did it that way; building the hospital set pieces had to warrant using that particular setting in more than one or two episodes.

As usual, leave it up to Daryl (Norman Reedus) to steal the show; the imagine of him carrying Beth out of the hospital was definitely one that elicited a lot of raw emotion, and it's probably one of the single strongest images from the series thus far.

Overall, the season five midseason finale "Coda" wasn't bad, but it certainly could've been better. The energy and emotion in the last 10 minutes (and the bonus scene) was palpable, while the first 50 minutes of episode kind of dragged on until the showdown in the hospital.

My issue I guess is with the progression of the first eight episodes of the season. It was a whirlwind first three episodes out of the gate, but then things slowly fizzled out after that.

And now we have to wait until February to discover where the survivors are headed to next. Is here anywhere that's a safe haven for them anymore? We shall eventually find out.

VIDEO: How HIMYM Should Have Ended

Leave it up to Mr. Ricardo Dylan for fixing the "How I Met Your Mother" series finale and giving us this rather perfect ending. It ends on the perfect note and in the perfect spot - how Ted meets the mother.

It doesn't allude to Tracey passing away, it doesn't hint at Ted ending up with Robin later, it ends exactly where it should have; under the yellow umbrella.

While many folks are still outraged at the real HIMYM finale, I think the sticking point is not that the mother dies (which has been hinted at for years), it's that Ted ends up with Robin at the very end.

Again, I think the producers wanted to try to tie everything up into a little bow by making it come full circle, but that wasn't the point of the show. It was learning how Ted met the love of his life, not how he moved on to the woman of his dreams ten years ago.

How I Met Your Mother Series Finale Thoughts

Well, that was ... something. If I had to describe the series finale of How I Met Your Mother in a word, it would probably be "ungratifying".

I'm really not quite sure what to think about the HIMYM finale. In a way, I don't think there was really any sort of ending that would have satisfied everyone, but they opted to go the fairly conservative route.

The one-hour finale itself was plagued with the same problem that affected the series as a whole; they dragged it out too long. The finale episode could just as easily have been 22 minutes long, but for whatever reason they decided to stretch it out.

In retrospect, the "weekend in a season" was not a very good idea at all, as it got old very quickly. Many of the episodes found themselves long, drawn out and pointless to the overall story.

At the very end, the writers opted to go the "full circle" route, which has been used umpteen times on television shows (the most recent example I can think of was "Lost"), but in this case it didn't really fit.

If you think about it, the series has been nine seasons of building up towards the penultimate moment of meeting the mother. And then suddenly you realize the mother has died and Ted just ends up with Robin. Not exactly the way you had hoped it would end, right? I kind of feel like the rug was just pulled out from under me.

On that same token, the entire ninth season was built leading up to Barney and Robin's wedding, only to find out they end up divorced shortly thereafter. So what was the point of that?

I thought the scene at the train station was probably one of the best of the season, and am surprised they just didn't end it right there. That would've been a great way to finish off the series; Ted and Tracey huddled under their yellow umbrella. End scene.

Ending on that theme of serendipity seemed very fitting. But again, instead they decided to let it drag on a liiiittle too long.

As an aside, I had three predictions for the finale and two of them came true. There have been hints for years that the mother might not make it, and it seems like the seed was planted long ago that Ted and Robin would eventually end up together.

I thought that the mother (Tracey) might actually end up being Lily's half-sister or something, simply because the two look and act so similarly. Alas, that didn't happen ... but the other two did.

And what was up with Barney suddenly having a kid? For a moment there, I thought the mother might be Robin, and somehow she miraculously was able to conceive ... but we learn that the mother was, nobody?

As great as the scene was in the hospital where Barney was talking to his newborn, that storyline itself just seemed unnecessary. So once again, the identity of a mother is kept a mystery. Was that done on purpose or what? Perhaps that will somehow tie into the HIMYM  spin-off.

Overall, I think the series finale of HIMYM was alright. It's not really the one I was hoping for, but I understand why the writers chose to go that route. They obviously had it in their minds from the very beginning that Ted would eventually end up back with Robin ... it was just a matter of when.

Apparently they filmed the scenes with Ted and Tracey's kids on the couch at the very beginning of the series nine years ago, so they knew that was happening from the beginning.

How I Met Your Mother was a great series, but that ending just did not reflect the overall quality of the show. It wasn't the best ending ... but it was an ending.

The Walking Dead Season 4 Midseason Premiere Review

Is it possible to both love and hate a television episode all at the same time?

That's what I found myself doing with The Walking Dead's midseason premiere entitled "Don't Look Back". Ironically, that's the exact opposite advice young Carl Grimes should have heeded, but I'll get into that in a moment.

For me, this return had a lot of great things going for it, but a few old bad habits reared their ugly heads once again.

First off, the opening of the episode was fantastic. Very rarely are there quiet moments during a zombie apocalypse, but the first few minutes of this episode just focused on the eerily silent nature of what happened after the prison. In fact, I don't even know if a character spoke at all within the first five minutes of the episode.

On another good front, we finally got to see part of Michonne's back story. Her character has remained shrouded in a lot of mystery since her introduction at the beginning of Season 3, and you can tell the writers don't want quite to divulge her complete history just yet.

However, I think the producers missed a huge opportunity here to make this a Michonne-centric episode ... but I digress.

So in between, we were subjected to another "Carl goes off and gets himself into trouble to further the plot" episode arc. By this point in The Walking Dead, I really thought we've gotten past the point of characters doing truly stupid things like walking backwards into walkers, but I suppose there are only a certain number of plot vehicles the writers can use to progress the storyline.

Although I wasn't really a fan of the "Carl in the wild" moments during this episode, I thought the father/son dynamic between Rick and Carl was the best it's ever been. You get the sense that Carl is really struggling with his identity, and trying to be like the man his father was while Rick is struggling to find out the man he is.

"Shane taught me ... remember him?" was probably my favourite line of this season thus far. All too often in shows like these, the producers kill off characters and then fail to acknowledge them ever again. But in reality, these characters would have their fallen comrades on their mind nearly every single day.

Carl acknowledging Shane was a nice homage to arguably one of the most dynamic characters to appear in four plus seasons of The Walking Dead.

Although "Don't Look Back" was an okay return to Season 4, it definitely could have been better. Since the group is almost completely fragmented at this point, it will be interesting to see how the group gets back together over the course of the next seven episodes.

Just remember Carl, like in horror movies, never walk backwards ... ever. It never leads to good things.