I've only recently watched S5, but my impressions of it;

Kind of wishing they spent a little longer at Terminus. You get "enough" of the "Then" segments to figure out what happened there easily enough, but I think they either could have gone full out Governor-mode and given us an episode purely to see Gareth's//Terminus' origin story. It just didn't seem "long enough".

Hospital//Slabtown episodes were... interesting. I enjoyed the strangeness of a functioning building in the middle of a bombed-out Atlanta, and the little developments of Beth the infinitely naive kid trying to play investigator. Her death didn't bother me so much that she died, as much as I got sad over Maggie being really depressive up until Alexandria (honestly was waiting for a near suicide sequence with her).

Ty's death was... meh. I think Dale's death in S2 had a ton more impact, even if it did spring up on you at the end of the episode he died in, while Ty's was just telegraphed pretty much from the opening and dragged all through the episode. It didn't seem to honor the character.

Bottle episodes, even if they did feel to drag on, are kind of necessary with such a large cast. Even if there isn't a whole lot of dialogue in them, the small things have that much more weight to them. I got a kick out of Tara finding a yoyo and being all excited about it, and have a new respect for Rosita going all Survivor mode. The only real disappointing thing was the whole "Eugene lied" reveal - he just blurts it out all panicked; pretty much stopped caring about Eugene right there (I knew it was coming anyway, but I have even less of a reason to care about him now).

I got giddy when Aaron appeared. Truly giddy. I liked the Alexandria episodes too, though if I'm being truthful, I don't think the season finale was quite as strong as S4's -- it's like they were trying to "fill up the bottles" a bit too much from the bottle episodes, while the payoff of Rick killing Pete just wasn't as strong as Rick going headfirst into crazytown after biting into Joe.


All in all, I really hope they bring back some of the older writers. It's the zombiepocalypse, we aren't really looking for sage advice, profound statements, and bring-it-full-circle symbolism. ESPECIALLY when some of the dialogue is referencing stuff that was mentioned in an equally strange way a few episodes ago. I get that they might have been trying to tie a lot of the themes together across the whole season, but that doesn't work when you've got ambiguous and cryptic lines talking about awkwardly forced lines (and vice versa!). About the only real theme I thought that really stuck and held across the whole season well enough was what Bob said about coming back from the nightmare; even though that itself is rehashing Hershel's "you get to come back from it, you have to" theme.

 

Well, it gave me my fav character in Gareth, killed off my most hated character in Beth then replaced her with Jessie. It gave me the beat arc with Terminus and immediately followed with the worst arc with Grady. It gave me 2nd fav episode with No Sanctuary and my 2nd most hated episode with Slabtown.

 

I rewatched s5 this weekend it's my second five season after s1 my fave ep was 4 walls least fave was slabtown and conquer
we lost a very interesting character, Gareth and gained er, Jessie.
which leaves me fairly ambivalent about the coming season, I'm glad much of the original group remains and we still have Maggie, michonne Rick, daryl Carol etc
lim happy that Tara sasha and Eugene are still with us also Morgan, which goes without saying.

 

It has it's strengths and weaknesses but I thought it was just decent. The premiere was alright, I don't think it's great but it was good enough. 502-503 were solid except for Seth Gillam's subpar acting. But then we got to Slabtown and it became a more extreme version of S3 only with a much weaker actress trying to carry an unnecessary bottle episode.

From Slabtown right through to Them the season suffered a serious blow quality-wise. Thankfully, Tara and Eugene helped pick up the pace a little with their interactions in Self Help. WHAWGO and Them were just pointless filler episodes to try and supply us with the 'aftermath' of the apparent storm that was Coda despite the entire episode literally feeling like it was built around another unnecessary loose thread that Gimple felt the need to tie up.

511-516 were quite solid despite this.

 

I agree that Aaron's appearance was a major relief after a time of utter despair, it was a big turning point

 

I like it the same as I did the first and second time. I very rarely change my mind.