The second half of season five on the Walking Dead may hold clues to the zombie spinoff planned for the fall

"The Walking Dead" by Ron Kurniawan, originally published in the December 23, 2013
issue of The New Yorker. You can read "Utter Rot" HERE.

It's that time of year again. No, I'm not talking about Valentine's Day, but about the spring sweeps that the Nielsen's perform to try and gauge what people are watching. I got my phone call yesterday, and I'm doing another Nielsen's diary. Yes, this technically does make me a professional couch potato, and I wear that badge with honor!

Honestly, they couldn't send it to a better household. I'm looking forward to making my choices known on all things nerdy and geeky. Like, for example, The Walking Dead. The penultimate zombie drama returns with its mid-season premiere this Sunday. Actually, it's a double header because AMC is also giving us Better Call Saul and from what I've read about it from those who've seen it, the spinoff to Breaking Bad is just as good. Let's hope I'm not disappointed. However, I gotta say that the hype on this thing is pretty high, and my friend Patrick warns that things rarely (if ever) live up to their hype.

The two minute opening scene for this week's Walking Dead premiere is online now. I watched it twice yesterday, and it picks up pretty much where I thought it would. In other words (spoiler alert) they are taking care of Beth's body and everyone is pretty much asking where they're gonna go from here. From the trailer, I think they'll go south and then meet a community that's been able to thrive in the apocalypse before the next major story arc starts up that leads to all out war with the leader of a huge gang of thugs (named Negan). I'm really excited for this story arc because we get to meet some awesome characters: Ezekiel who is ruler over a place called "The Kingdom" and who has a huge tiger as a pet, Jesus who is a charismatic and athletically gifted warrior from a friendly town of 200, and Aaron (the first really openly gay character who's also smart and not a psychopath). But before you get excited too, realize that the series is basically hovering around issue 67 and we don't get to Negan until about issue 100, so it could be as much as a year away before we meet the next big bad who's so awful, he makes the Governor look like a boy scout.

The second half of season five on The Walking Dead may also hold clues to the zombie spinoff planned for the fall.

So hear me out. One of the rumors I heard on this as yet unnamed show (The Rising Dead sounds nice!) was that there might be one or two characters that move between the original series to this new one. So what two characters do we know that are already in the cast who have no reason to really stick with the group? Duh...Daryl and Carol. Both basically got nothin' holding them emotionally to the others. Everyone they loved is now dead and both are looking for some way to start over fresh and with a clean slate.

I think that this might be an opportunity for Daryl and Carol to go off and join one of the three communities that we are about to get introduced to. You see, in the comics there are towns that are about a day's journey apart from each other by car. Without a car, they're about a week apart. The comics always stay with Rick's group, but this doesn't mean that they couldn't jump to another group of survivors and tell the story from one of these other towns. That'd be perfect for the show because it would allow them to expand the story and spinoff characters that viewers love to "head" another community. Honestly, it seems like an easily mined pit of gold for AMC, and if I were an executive calling the shots, I'd greenlight this idea tomorrow.

Anyway, if you're a fan and haven't seen the trailer for the first two minutes of the mid-season premiere, then you should click play. It sucks you in the same way that Attack on Titan sucks you in. And you know another great thing about the return of The Walking Dead? When it ends, Game of Thrones starts up. Ah spring, how I love thee.