Without spoilers...

Mother of God, that was better than all of Season 2 combined!

Agreed!

Patently #ossum

I don't usually have a visceral response when watching TV or movies ... but this one had my blood pumping!

lol to be fair, season 2 was pretty bad xD

This episode was like a return to season 1, where there was an actual present danger to the group, and the drama filled in the holes nicely (rather being front and center stage, with the zombie apocalypse happening somewhere in the background).

My only complaint was the scenes with Michonne and Andrea. They felt sort of pointless and tacked on, like, "I suppose we should have a few scenes with these two, so the audience doesn't forget about them."

Personally I quite liked season 2, I liked that the whole zombie apocalypse took a backseat, but I do have to admit, the premiere episode of season 3 kicked ass, I do have to agree with Greyfeld though, Andrea and Michonne's scenes felt very pointless.

I've met a lot of people that adored season 2, just like you do, and I understand why. And when I say the season was "bad," I'm being a bit hyperbolic, because it wasn't bad so much as it was... blah. Thing is, when you dial the post-apocalyptic nature of the show down to 1, it just becomes a set piece for the drama. It becomes more of a soap opera than a series about survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

It's like that movie that came out last year, Another Earth; the movie is touted as this scifi spectical where another identical earth is found within the solar system. But then, the entire movie is about these two people and their emotional problems, and the whole "other earth" thing just becomes a set piece that doesn't even matter in the context of the story that's being told. The setting literally could have been anything else, and it wouldn't have affected the story.

The reason I like zombies is because they're human, but not quite. They allow for the inner, deepest fears and desires of the survivors to come boiling to the surface in a world that no longer makes sense. Zombies aren't predators in the traditional sense, they're the feral and animal part of the human condition that's buried beneath millennia of self-imposed civility, intelligence, and restraint.

Anyway, that's how I feel about the majority of season 2 (and more, I guess lol). Just my thoughts.

I have one thing to say.... It was supposed to be Dale (comics)

I do agree to some extend, I just found the moving away from focusing on the apocalypse, just made it that bit more tense, you know as a "Life has to go on in spite of the circumstances" kind of deal, plus I felt it built up a certain tension, cause knowing the walking dead setting, when things has been good for a while, they turn into deep shit at some point, watching them get distracted by "petty problems" in comparison to the apocalypse going on around them, to me only made things more dire in the long run, cause they weren't prepared for what was to come.

In season 3, the first episode, while it was great no doubt, the characters felt a bit disconnected though, but that may just be me, cause of how I liked the building up of the tension.
The premiere were a brilliant start though and I can't wait to see the rest of this season.

Still Season 1 were the best so far.

Taking Dead addressed this ... and honestly, I like it when the show diverts from the comic. It lets the TV show have a life of its own that's separate from the comic.

I liked the way Talking Dead started...lol that guy is awesome.