'Walking Dead' Midseason Premiere Review: There Really Is 'No Way Out'

You won’t catch me giving away spoilers for the Season 6 midseason premiere of The Walking Dead on Sunday night, which frees me up to make a more general observations about the series. Happy Valentine’s Day, especially those of you wearing your Magic Zombie-Fooling Blood And Guts Ponchos.

This is a show that is at its best when humans are killing zombies — its action scenes are everything that is entertaining about it. Whenever The Walking Dead pauses to let its characters talk, what emerges is tedious melodrama and endlessly obvious meditations on the importance of humanity, the strength of family bonds, the nature of violence and betrayal, and whether or not Father Gabriel is a gutless coward or just a goofball.

This is a show whose biggest moment in the first half of Season 6 was whether or not Glenn was dead. It’s a show that has so little of narrative substance, the current issue of Entertainment Weekly decided that one of the best features it could do would be to get the half-dozen main characters who’ve remained un-zombie-killed to sit around and talk about what it’s like to be around for another paycheck — and that discussion has more drama than most actual episodes of The Walking Dead.

For fans, there are some big moments in the Sunday-night return of the show, the episode titled “No Way Out.” Big, hurtful moments. An advancement of the budding Negan storyline. A massive zombie-killing scene topped by an artfully edited zombie-killer montage. A resolution to the Father Gabriel question posed above. An opportunity for Sheriff Rick to become emotional.

Is that enough? It will be for a lot of viewers — millions of them, I assume. But for some of us on Sunday nights at 9, there’s more suspense in trying to figure out how The Good Wife is going to wrap itself up in a mere nine episodes.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.