Good acting, very good, tight camera work (particularly the opening shot from above), and, by extension, seemingly competent directing -- but TERRIBLE script writing.
Like a 12 year old could write better scenes. Dumb dialogue; dumb set-ups for the dumb scenes (Oh no, could walking backwards while being followed by two zombies for 300 yards without so much as a rear glance lead Carl right into the waiting arms of yet another zombie? Will he write about his lost shoe on a door in an abandoned house for future generations to ponder on? Will he bother to see if his dad has a fever or is even still breathing after yelling at him for 10 minutes to wake up? Enjoy that rooftop pudding, kiddo, you earned it! Yeesh.)
And as much as I like the comic, it ain't exactly Hemingway. The bar is low, and the AMC writers keep tripping over it. Meaninwhile, Kirkman cashes checks. Well, good for him.
Very hacky; lots of drama for the sake of being dramatic. AMC can't help themselves it seems. After all, they have "something more" to share...
The writing for the Telltale games series is much, much better, and they aren't exactly creating works of literary brilliance either. Moreover, it's a "choose your own adventure" game, so maintaining logical consistency and variety in character dialogue will be harder. And yet, it has better scripting.
At least the AMC hacks had the sense not to leave us with an ailing Rick all season long... they're clearly not above stupid stuff like that (see further, a whole season devoted to the flu).
Best part was Michonne hacking off the head of the zombie who reminded her of herself. But then they overplayed it by having her go apeshit on the rest of them (complete with "Hyyyahhhhh" screams)... I'll give em bonus points for the very Romero-esque mini-scene with Herschel's undead severed head. A nice guilty pleasure.
If they're going to continue their typical random deviations from and clunky meandering back towards the comic storyline, here's to hoping they try and write good full stories rather than overly melodramatic scenes that go nowhere; or failing that, better thought out scenes.