Walking Dead second half

I'm trying to stay on top of the Walking Dead on a weekly basis, which is new for me. Normally I'm weeks, if not years behind, so it's new for me to have to wait for a new episode.
I haven't formulated my feelings yet about this second half of season four. I'm loving that they ditched the prison, which was just driving me crazy. It was dreary and such a magnet for nuttyness. That being said, this is a zombie apocalypse, which on its face is nutty.

While the first half of season four had some great dramatic moments - I'm thinking about Rick and Carl being overrun with zombies after the fence falls - but also had some super slow pacing and was somewhat of a repeat of season three with the governor converting seeming normal people to murderers.
I almost wish they'd held the governor back for a reunification a year down the road or something. That would have been a super big surprise. Now that the big bad, other than zombies, has been dispensed with, we are left with the survivors being scattered in the woods.

I personally would not camp out in the woods as Daryl and Beth did. I would be climbing up a tree or finding a house like Rick.
I'm glad to see Glenn is alive and I like his cleverness in finding riot gear and plowing through the mass of dead heads.
My big question is how did all of the prison folk on the bus turn into zombies so quickly? Either one person died and then bit them all or somehow a zombie got on board. It was kind of a sad outcome but I guess it makes room to bring in new characters, like the commandos Glenn and Tara encounter at the end.
It is a little odd to keep bringing in new people as the writers sweep out the old. I guess that's the reality of the kind of show this is. Few can survive and characters must keep dying.  The cycle is also predictable too.

While I feared too that Judith was dead, and I was surprised when Tyrese turned with the baby in his arms. I was happy to see her alive and since the show went so far to lead us to believe she was dead, I knew that when  Lizzie was smothering Judith, she wasn't going to die. She didn't need to cover her nose and mouth to get her to stop crying but whatever, it made for more significant drama if you believed she was in jeopardy.
I didn't get a chance to read the sign that seemed to point to more survivors, but I wonder if it is the governor's old hideout. If it's a new survivor community, I wonder how it will differ from the other communities they seem to encounter that are all run by dictators.

Walking Dead still alive

What a season opener! It started off subtle and slow, the sheriff becomes a farmer. And then all hell breaks loose at the grocery store.
That was a clever way to get the Walkers into the store but heck, how realistic is it that the ceiling is rotting and the weight of a rack of bones causes holes in the roof versus a helicopter that seems to be siting on the roof comfortably.
I know, I know. Don't apply logic to this show, but I can't help it.
I can't say I'm upset that two new cast members are already dead or on their way to dying and wrecking havoc on the prison group. While the cast is big, I don't want my favorites to die otherwise it might be hard to maintain interest.
Speaking of interest, I do wonder how long they can keep up this fairly generic storyline. Hunt for food, get attacked by Walkers, someone dies, hunt for food, get attacked by Walkers, etc. Wash, rinse, repeat.
In the other storyline, I get why the woman tried to bring Rick to her husband, who I guess was a Walker, for dinner. She thought he needed feeding, although how she managed to stay alive while he was a starving Walker sharing her space is silly. Then she kills herself, heck why didn't she do that eons ago?
This was a strange story that I wonder if it's a setup for something later on. We'll have to see.
What was up with her face? It looked liked she'd been beaten up or had tattoos on her face.
The lighting for this show is sometimes so dim I have a hard time making things out.

"I don't want to be afraid of being alive," best line of the episode.

Not a bad start to season 4. We'll have to see where it goes to judge how it measures up with the other seasons.