Veteran TV Check in — The Walking Dead

"If we start tomorrow right now, everything we've beaten, everything we've endured, everything we've risen above, everything we've become ...if we start tomorrow right now, no matter what comes next, we've won ...we've already won!" — Rick, "The Walking Dead."

"The Walking Dead" returned for its eighth season on October 22. Eighth! It seems almost hard to believe that this show has run for so long, but it's also not that hard to see that the show was starting to show its age last season.

Ratings for this eighth season premier were the lowest they've been since season two. And I don't see them bouncing back a lot higher. But they might level off if the show does a better job with the narrative in this eighth season. That, to me, could be a big IF.

The seventh season was a lot of treading water. It started with a brutal reveal of a cliff hanger that kept people talking about the show all summer. But it was what followed that sort of lost people. The show felt like it was biding time — for 16 episodes — as it set up the inevitable war between factions. That war kicked off in the seventh season finale and picked up in the premier.

And it's hard to say it was worth the wait. We got a lot of great speeches — like the one above — that were meant to set the stage for the season. (And, actually, I can't help but wonder if that speech was the writers trying to psych up the audience for this season, too.) There could be some good stuff here, but the premier felt a bit like more of the same.

Sure, there was some action. And also some weird future projections — that may or may not have been real. Hard to tell really, and probably just meant to give folks something to talk about since it was the 100th episode. And I applaud the show on making it this far, but if it wants to make it much further, it needs to start going somewhere, and in a hurry.

The episode set more of the war in motion, they shot some windows and took out some centuries, but that was about it. More importantly, what always drew me to the show was the look at how you maintain hope and morality in a world where conventional society has crumbled. But now, it seems like the show has devolved into a series of skirmishes for control of the broken world. That's less interesting, and the ratings reflect that.

This is a pivotal season for "The Walking Dead." It's time to show what kind of show it is going to be and whether that's going to be worth it for audiences.