Clementine and company in the Second Season -
This may sound a little bizarre, for that I apologize, but basically the idea is this... you know how Lee was older and wiser and took care of Clementine while they were together?
Well... what if the shadow figures on the hill are 'zombies'? And so Clementine runs away, getting into the trees and loses them, she comes across a house, where things are quiet, so she checks it out cautiously, she has already loaded the gun, when she slowed down and came up to the house which is almost a cabin, not very large, isolated and out in the woods, when she goes into the kitchen she hears whimpering, a very soft almost crying.
She goes to the cabinet and slowly opens the door and sees a young child, perhaps 5 years old or so, boy? girl? Not sure at this point, but what the main idea of this idea is, is that Clementine becomes the main character and not the ward of another adult character that takes Lee's place, but 'she' actually takes Lee's place and helps someone younger and more inexperienced than her.
Also, in the first season we moved from group to group, meaning we had new people join us and we joined them, until at the end, there was no one left except Clementine. (Omid and Christa's fate is unknown, and I know that many things were 'not' expressly shown, so they become indefinite too, but until things are shown to have survived, I am going with the theory, that Clementine is the only one left alive.)
But rather than have a re-tread of the first season 'feel and formula', it would be nice to take a completely different track in the second season, and what I think would be very cool, with a different feel and flavor completely, would be to have Clementine and Sally be the main protagonists, they sneak around the woods and out onto the highway, moving away from the city, with Clementine telling Sally as they go, "We have to stay out of the cities, it'll be safer that way... fewer walkers to worry about..."
Perhaps other characters come into the story, people Clementine and Sally see at a distance, or who they see camped and talking, but don't interact with directly, because if they do, the arc devolves into the adults either taking care of, of taking advantage of the children's situation. Which may present a problem to be gotten around in the story for Clementine and Sally, with them getting untied and escaping back into the woods alone. Or rescuing a twenty something woman and her baby that the group was using as walker bait.
With the twenty something young woman almost out of her head, but minimally so, it might be Clementine and Sally that take care of the woman and her baby, more than the woman taking care of them.
I think with a small group that has only a few 'other people' encounters changes the flavor of the story a lot, and if the problems change to environmental challenges instead of other people doing things... Like, ok, we got chased up onto the roof of this house by walkers, how do we get to anther house, and out of the neighborhood?
Or we got into this store to find some canned baby formula, but now there are raiders coming into the front of the building, how do we get away unseen?
By having a small group and a change of emphasis from group decisions involving people that come into and out of the group, then we change how it feels when we play it, and it gives us a different side, of how things could go for people if they were out there in the world in a zombie apocalypse. Not everyone is going to be in a group. It may make the story slower, if Clementine and company have to spend a lot of time 'thinking' about how to do things, instead of reacting, but maybe with a smaller group they have to be 'smarter' about things, ya know?

Just my two cents, but I think it could be both fun and different.
-Teal