The smartest decisions in The Walking Dead: Part I

There have been some very smart decisions on The Walking Dead.

Over the last couple of weeks, I looked back over all ten seasons of The Walking Dead, trying to sort out what were the worst decisions over each season of the show.

I have to say: Even with how unbelievably dumb some of those decisions were (I’m looking at you, season five), I had fun. I enjoyed laying down what the worst decisions were and why they were so dumb in the first place. I found they also served as a good survival rule of the week, basically explaining things you shouldn’t do in a zombie apocalypse.

Unfortunately, as last week came to a close, I found myself racking my brain trying to think of what to do for this week. I spent hours thinking about what to do, repeatedly rejecting the foolish notion of a “Best Decisions” list. It would have been too schmaltzy and, frankly, too subjective. But then, it hit me: Not a list of the best decisions…but of the smartest decisions.

Finally! Something I can sink my teeth into!

And that brings us here. This week, I’m going to look back at seasons one through five and determine what were the smartest decisions in each season.

Now, I’m going to have some criteria here. What I’m deeming the “smartest” decision may not be the most grandiose or be tied to some of the more action-packed scenes of the show, but rather, what I think were the decisions that either most positively impacted the person making the decision (Or the group at-large), or were most sound in terms of survival, be they well thought out or on-the-spot.

Also, I’m going to try to refrain from situations where someone used an elaborate plan. This isn’t to say I won’t pick such a situation, but, it will likely be more about them choosing to do that as opposed to something else. Additionally, if decision was an easy one, particularly a decision made a bunch of times before, it’ll get less consideration than an easy choice that, for whatever reason, people didn’t make previously.

You may not always agree with my choices, but, I’ll try my best to explain why I chose them.