6x08 Start to Finish

7.5/10. Perfectly acceptable mid-season finale. The cold open with the ants sneaking into Sam's little hideaway was nicely artistic, if a little too "the rat stands for obviousness" in the metaphor it conveyed with the imagery. Sam was actually a surprisingly strong part of this episode. How a young child copes with this world is an interesting angle on the zombie apocalypse story. The show's had mixed results trying this sort of thing with Carl, or the young zombie-loving girl from the last season, but Sam's demeanor really communicates how scarred and frightened someone too young to really deal with the carnage and state of affairs around him could be.

Rick gets a final speech from Deanna that "they're all his people." Like I mentioned last week, this story of RIck learning to appreciate all of his compatriots and not just his crew hasn't really worked for me. It feels like a rehash, and while the actress who plays Deanna does a good job, it's a pretty facile lesson to build Rick's arc around.

Speaking of surprisingly strong performances, Ron actually impressed me this week with his shell-shocked routine. Sure, his attempt to kill Carl was a kind of weak development that we all saw coming from a mile away, and I shudder to think of the two of them becoming best buddies now that Carl covered for him (especially after Carl's haughty, "but your dad was an asshole" line that was an unbelievable thing to say in that situation), but in similar terms to Sam, I appreciated how Ron just couldn't process everything that was happening and seemed believably in shock and out of sorts.

And speaking of speeches from Deanna, while I liked her performance generally, and Mischonne's one of my favorite characters on the show, the dialogue between the two of them didn't do either any favors. "What do you want from this?" is such a cliche, "mentor-y character dying words" thing to say. The actress who plays Mischonne sold it as best she could, and did a good job under the circumstances selling her character's struggle, but those scenes feel ripped from a standard action movie where a hopeful character kicks the bucket and tells her friend to go on. The actors elevated the material, but there's only so much they can do.

The stand out segment, to my mind, is Morgan's stand off with Carol. Carol is such an interesting Carol, and the subtext of her stance that she can't let anyone die, with the background that she was abused by her husband and allowed abuse without doing anything about it and won't go back to that, gives her scenes such power. Lennie James has quickly become one of the best actors on the show, and what we know about the background that led him to his no killing stance adds weight to his position as well. Setting the two against each other like that was tense and laden with interesting philosophical and thematic baggage. Carol is a utilitarian; Morgan is a Kantian; and the Wolf guy (who stood out as superbly unnerving in this episode) is something of a nihilist. Putting those philosophies in opposition to each other is an interesting direction to go, and I'm curious as to the fallout now that Wolf guy has escaped and has Denise.

Otherwise, it's mostly drips and drabs of other stories. Maggie has a fairly standard escape from the horde sequence. Rosita, Tara, and Eugene have the usual "I guess it's not over yet! We persevere!" scene. Glenn has the same kind of rote exchange with Enid. We get a bit of a scare with Deanna and Judith. And hey! They remember the zombie guts camouflage from Season 1! Mild continuity! Who'd have thunk it!

But overall, this was an episode had some artistic framing, direction, and cinematography (time slowing down from Sam's perspective was particularly effective), and while the dialogue, as usual, was pretty on-the-nose, there were some good performances, some interesting thematic material even if it didn't land perfectly, and some good zombie sequences to boot. As with most of Walking Dead, it's still a mixed bag, but there was more good than bad this go-around.