The Walking Dead - "The Suicide King" (Feb. 10, 2013)

Behold the long-anticipated, mid-season return of The Walking Dead.

When we left our survivors back in December, Merle and Daryl had just been captured by The Governor and thrust into the arena for a brother-on-brother fight to the death. Things pick up almost 2 months later exactly where they left off. Rick and company conclude their daring infiltration of Woodbury by getting Daryl and Merle out of town. The fate of Tyrese's group is also deliberated but never reaches a definite conclusion thanks to a last-minute twist.

SPOILERS: Now I love The Walking Dead as much as the next guy, and I've been waiting for this night since before Christmas. My Sundays have been empty without a little gore in them. But I gotta say, I wasn't entirely impressed with this new episode. It wasn't quite the epic, slam-bang return that I had hoped for. In the first 10-20 minutes, a member of the group decides to head out on his own, but aside from that, not much happens. There's some drama at Woodbury in the wake of Merle and Daryl's escape that results in a breach of the town's safety measures, but I didn't find it especially memorable. I'm also not entirely sure why the title of the episode is "The Suicide King". I didn't catch a connection there. The only thing that blew me away was the end where Rick returns to the prison to meet Tyrese and his group. There's a head-scratching twist that makes me question Rick's sanity and his future ability to lead the group. We'll see what happens next week in "Home".