11x02 Acheron (2)

[7.0/10] I unexpectedly find myself liking the Commonwealth business. The hints we get of this society, where there’s a rigid, legalistic bureaucracy, but there’s some sense of stability and protection, is an intriguing one. We’re not that far removed from Rick’s crew arriving in Alexandria and facing a similar (if not quite the same) battery of interrogations and tests to ensure that newcomers would be helpful and not destructive in a fragile but enduring society.

The end of “Acheron pt. 2” is a bit of a hope spot, at least as far as Eugene, Ezekiel, Yumiko, and Princess are concerned. They’ve ascended past the level one “processing” and are welcomed into a place with toilet paper, medicine, and not for nothing, Eugene’s radio pen pal. It’s a nice win in an otherwise dark episode, with the tension that comes from folks like Yumiko and Ezekiel making demands of their erstwhile captors and Eugene masking a lie with the truth to an intimidating interrogator.

In short, I like it. As I said in my write-up for the last episode, some of this is familiar. It seems like every season since the second has involved our heroes encountering some new civilization and having to feel it out as friend or foe. But the Commonwealth, with its Orwellian entrance exams and prospect of a civilization close to the one we know has my interest and attention, whis is no small feat in season 11.

And yet, there’s hints of something sinister beyond the impliedly brutal “reprocessing” we’ve seen so far. The scenes Daryl sees painted on the walls of the subway, the mass grave of folks possessing U.S. currency that the Commonwealth seems to use, both suggest something more difficult or brutal about the society that Eugene and company are poised to enter. I know this arc is based on material that originated in the comics, and I’m shaky on the timeframe there, but it’s hard not to read at least some of this as a commentary on America’s immigration policies, which is a compelling throughline to address through The Walking Dead’s central premise.

That said, I’m a little skeptical of the steps along the way. I understand that the show needs to convey details about the Commonwealth to the audience and it’s a tricky thing to accomplish. But Ezekiel being able to intuit that the mostly silent leader of the Commonwealth’s law enforcement is a “beat cop” (who apparently also went to West Point), and Yumiko being able to divine not only the structure of the Commonwealth’s society but the specific pasts of her two interrogators strains credulity. It smacks of convenience for the show in setting the stage for what this new civilization is, without the characters who communicate that necessarily earning their insights.

Still, I do like that the key for all of this is Eugene masking a lie with the truth. He’s not apt to give up the location or details of the group from whence he and his “traveling companions” came, but he’s able to hide that via his embarrassing admission that he’s a CB radio enthusiast with a crush who’s still a virgin in his forties. (Not for nothing, Principal Skinner used a similar admission to get out of trouble on The Simpsons.) It’s a good scene, and some downright cleverness and humility from Eugene in his masking subterfuge with a personally humiliating admission.

But then there’s the Daryl/Maggie/Negan half of the episode, which I’m much more sanguine about. (No pun intended.) Some of it’s cool enough, albeit still a bit played out. Daryl goes off on his own to play action hero for a while, and it results in some cool sequences, albeit ones filled with empty calories. Him taking out walkers while trapped in a sewer, or saving the day via an unbroken shot of him shooting his way through a subway car all bring the cool factor that’s kept Daryl in the fans’ good graces despite the show’s failings.

But good lord, this is an episode that gives up on realism and even coherence. Some of the action here is solid enough, but the show all but gives up on the geography of the train cars and zombie threat, making success and failure seem random and arbitrary. How is it that the team were able to get into the train car where they’re holed up, and can’t quite get to the next one, but also can’t’ open and close the prior door to save the kid who’s trapped there? How is it that some young adult has the mettle to basically stab himself to death before the walkers arrive to consume him? How is it that a random subway car appears to have grenade-proof doors?

This late in the game, it’s better to just accept that the rules of The Walking Dead are fluid and explosions/geography/human anatomy work however the episode needs them to in a given moment. But it still leaves viewers (or at least this viewer) scratching their heads.

At the same time, “Acheron pt. 2”, or at least the subway tunnel half of it, is a return to the grimdark brutalism that turned so many former fans off of the show. God help me, I don’t know why we need Maggie’s overwritten monologue about having lived through a vignette straight out of The Road. We get it. This modern world is cruel and unforgiving, and everyone’s been turned awful by it. But the way this episode wants to rub the audiences nose in that is, at best, unpleasant.

That said, I do appreciate the irony/hypocrisy of Maggie at the ready to sic her goons on Negan for failing to save her, right before she instructs them not to save the kid. The situations aren’t 100% comparable, but it’s a sign that self-preservation has turned Magge into more of a Shane-like figure over the years, ready to do what it takes to protect herself and her loved ones, which makes her closer to someone like Negan even as she loathes the man. The sort of understanding they forge from her handing him a gun in trying times and him handing it back works for me, even if the line the episode tries to draw between notions of “It’s a harsh world out there” and “What we have is rare” seems a bit muddled to my view.

Overall, this episode is emblematic of both the good and the bad of The Walking Dead. There’s some solid action, interesting moral thought experiments, and hints of how society might be reorganized after the fall of the world. But there’s also some baffling choices in how that action is presented, fatalistic takes on humanity that have repelled audiences, and beaucoup contrivances necessary for our heroes to gain admission to the latest new civilizations. So it goes.