Do they really walk? More like, Shuffling Dead...I've been enjoying this half-season. After some of the misfires of the first half of season four - in particular the pointless Governor two-parter - I've liked spending some time with the protagonists. Not every episode has been great (the Tyreese and the kids episode was weak) but they've all been entertaining and pretty logical as far as telling stories. That's why last week's episode had an event in it that bothered me a bit. While most of it was okay, the scene where Beth (no longer "what's her name...Hershel's blonde daughter" which was how I referred to her since she was introduced...now, she has a name) is kidnapped struck me as needlessly random. We are to believe that a car just happened to be driving by at the moment a zombie horde attacks the house? Even if the person or people in the car turn out to be the one's who had been staying in the funeral home, his is still a coincidence too far.
This is a common trope in fiction; the improbable or coincidental happening in just such a way as to advance the plot. While it can be accepted in some -even many - cases, here it seems like poor writing. Can this been redeemed? Sure. If the explanation of why they just happened to be driving by and why they stooped even though there were zombies wandering around AND if the story-line is engaging enough, then plot-device will be forgivable; however, it will still be a painfully obvious plot device and a prefect example of reliance on tropes over original writing.
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