For many people, a major family crisis can feel like the end of the world. Everything you know is falling apart, and you don't know if you'll ever make it to the other side. To juxtapose these conflicts against the literal apocalypse may seem a little on-the-nose, but crafting a strong relationship between the micro and the macro is what good storytelling is about.
That summarizes The Walking Dead: A New Frontier's two-part opener, Ties That Bind, fairly well, I think. It never loses sight of its characters, using drama to propel development and development to propel drama, as it should be. After The Walking Dead's disappointing second season, one that regularly mistook surface-level drama for long-term character development, it's refreshing to see the series back on track.
A New Frontier plays with the established Walking Dead tropes to great effect, especially if you're either a long-term or lapsed fan of the franchise. By the end of episode two, I was hooked, although there's still plenty of time for the season to falter -- I remember being similarly charmed by season two's premiere, and look how that turned out. But Ties That Bind is a stronger mission statement than anything we've seen in the last full season; for me, that's enough.
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