TWD will get better. It has to. There's nowhere to go but up after that deer scene

Also, I think the deer scene can subtly demonstrate what's actually going on behind the scenes. That scene makes absolutely no sense unless IMO they were trying to paint the portrait of the kid not understanding the world, where he came from, normal things, nature, etc, and they were trying to show him capturing a piece of a pre-zombie world by being awestruck by a deer which he may have never seen or heard of before.

If that's what they're going for, which it's the only thing I can think of, the problem has got to be the outlines are somewhat coherent, but the writing is being rushed like crazy due to infighting or whatever. So they could have legit ideas and way of making the boy discover a world he never knew, but if they don't have enough time to write an episode, it looks like that episode/scene did