The Walking Dead 5×11 Review: The Distance

I have to admit, it’s hard to describe how I feel about this episode of The Walking Dead. I wasn’t exactly entranced with the midseason premiere or last week’s overly-symbolic “Them“, but “The Distance” reminded me over and over again why I enjoy watching this show.

Perhaps it was the fact that quite a few comic scenes and references came into play in this episode. I’m admittedly much more a fan of the comics than I am of the show, so I always tend to be biased when they bring in a comic story line and do it right. Those moments are few and far between, unfortunately…but they do exist.

The thing about “The Distance” is that it was a nearly perfect meld of the TV show story line with a comic book story line. Will they continue this trend? Who knows. They usually haven’t in the past…but sometimes their deviations work, especially in the television medium.

For now, though, they’ve hit that stride – Aaron from Alexandria arrived, they questioned him, they tested him, they made it to his community. And it was pretty darn clear that had the group – and Rick in particular – not witnessed Aaron’s concern for his significant other, they wouldn’t have done so.

I had my concerns about how AMC would introduce Aaron. They’ve made major changes to a lot of comic book characters – some for the better (Carol) and some not (Andrea). But for now it seems that they’re keeping Aaron’s character pretty similar to that in the comic books, and also using his clearly loving relationship with his boyfriend Eric to convince the group of the reality of their community.

And on the way, there was one moment that literally had me on the edge of my seat – and that was when Glenn was separated from everyone and it seemed that he was going to be overrun by zombies. Honestly, I’ve always loved Glenn, but I was still surprised at how emotional I got when he came so close to death in “The Distance”!

One thing the show hasn’t explored enough is the relationship between Abraham and Rosita, but in this episode they finally got a few moments to themselves, which was refreshing. The problem is that they’ve been the background love story for so long, and I’m not sure how I feel about the show only exploring their relationship again “after the fact” (because it seems pretty clear that Rosita is done with Abraham).

In the end, though, I couldn’t help but love the poignant moments between Rick and Michonne. She’s always been a strong character, but in this episode she showed that she can stand up to people politically as well as slice off zombies’ heads with her katana. Additionally, I can’t help but hope that there is in fact a relationship developing between the two of them. Let’s just say that this comic book reader would have no problem with Michonne taking Andrea’s place, in that respect.