7x09 Rock in the Road

[6.6/10] The Walking Dead is a frustrating show for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that even in an episode like this -- one filled to the brim with dull speechifying, blatant wheel-spinning, and lame parables -- there’s one or two moments of brilliance that make it hard to just give up on this mercurial series. Even when the show is stalling for time, serving up weak dialogue, and leaning into its weakest tendencies, it sprinkles in a couple of great bits that rise above the rest of the flotsam.

This week, it’s the zombie cheese slicer and Rick’s smile, two dissimilar but connected moments that demonstrate what the show is capable of when it’s not tripping over its own bad lines and plot contrivances. Those faults are out in full force in “Rock in the Road,” an episode that sees Rick and the gang at The Hilltop and The Kingdom in an effort to rally forces sufficient to take on The Saviors. That coalition is inevitable; the arguments over whether to unite and fight or cling to the status quo have already been turned over dozens of times, which leaves “Rock” with only a thrilling walker-killing sequence and a clever way to convey Rick’s state of mind to recommend it.

But hey, many shows don’t even have that much, so let’s focus on the good stuff to start out. If there is one thing The Walking Dead does well consistently, it’s those big zombie set pieces. While the show often struggles to come up with new directions to take the characters, or move the plot, it Greg Nicotero and his team never fail to come up with some new, outside the box walker scenario to breathe some life into action-y side of the series. If that’s all the show were, it would get tiresome (and I imagine some people watch solely for such thrills), but as a periodic, imaginative treat, these scenes never fail to prop up sagging episode like “Rock” and boost the better ones.

The setup is, admittedly, contrived. The line of cars blocking the road, and a set of tripwires and explosives does match up with The Saviors’ ability to set traps we witnessed in last season’s finale. It’s a questionable use of resources, and feels tailor-made to allow the slice-and-dice that follows, but the coolness of that scene makes up for some of the implausibility of what allows it.

It’s also preceded by a pretty uninspired ticking clock scenario. There’s a definite sense that after a dialogue- and exposition-heavy opening half, the folks behind The Walking Dead felt the need to include some death-defying scenario to keep the action quota up. For that reason, there’s little tension, despite the fact that our heroes are frantically defusing bombs and untying bundles of dynamite. Apart from the plausibility issues, the sequence feels like a throw-in, where there’s little actual risk but the gods of empty action must be feted nonetheless.

“Rock” at least has the good sense to come up with a plot-relevant reason, however thin, to put our heroes through these paces. The theme of the episode, to the extent there is one, is that Rick & Co. are outmanned and outgunned, so every bit of odds-evening artillery they can amass is important to the upcoming fight. Still, the sequence of explosives recovery can’t help but seem unnecessary, where the seams of The Walking Dead’s need to fulfill its weekly action requirement start to show.

And then, Rick and Michonne use a pair of cars strapped with trip wire to bisect an entire horde of walkers in about fifteen seconds. It’s just as dumb and gratuitous as the prior bomb-defusing sequence, but it has the advantage of being a cool visual and a novel concept, which allows it some grace the plot obstacle of the week does not possess. Sure, it leads to another scenario in which our heroes are surrounded by zombies and somehow miraculously don’t get bitten or scratched, but in set pieces like these, the show runs on excitement, not logic. I’ve made my peace with that, and learned to enjoy such shallow thrills.

The problem is that The Walking Dead can’t sustain that sort of energy or novelty for an entire episode. “Rock in the Road” is incredibly lumpy in terms of how it’s structured. There’s a rushed recruitment drive at The Hilltop, an extended visit to The Kingdom, the aforementioned walker madness on the highway, and a quick coda of an encounter with The Saviors back in Alexandria.

Despite a general sense, which has permeated the whole season, of the protagonists struggling to survive in Negan-dominated lands, there’s not much of a connection or flow between these settings or beats. “Rock in the Road” simply limps from one to the other, content to offer a collection of barely related chapters in this larger story rather anything with a more holistic feel. Polemics about the “death of the episode” as a standalone unit are premature, but “Rock” conforms to the “here’s a bunch of stuff that happened” approach that old school critics complain about with the rise of serialization.

It also conforms to The Walking Dead’s worst and seemingly most inescapable bugaboos, namely ponderous debates back and forth about whether to act or to kill or whether there’s a fight worth having. Don’t get me wrong, Morgan and Carol’s struggles with their morality in the new order have been one of the strongest elements of the series in the last couple of seasons, and the notion of whether a leader should sign up to fight in a war in the hopes of a better tomorrow or hold onto a fraught, if unpalatable peace is an interesting one. But TWD does nothing but offer trite aphorisms and repeat itself when delving into these topics here.

As with the explosives, there’s a sense of inevitability here that makes the hand-wringing over whether The Hilltop or The Kingdom will join the fight less compelling out of the gate. The other side of the coin though is that great shows often find their best material not from unveiling surprise after surprise, but in making the expected engaging.

Rick’s fable about the titular rock in the road is not the persuasive argument and moving lesson on the rewards for those who fight to save others from continuing ills even when it seems all hope is lost it’s meant to be. Instead, it’s a generic monologue, couched in rhetorical flourishes and a cheesy parable form that robs it of what little impact it might otherwise have. We can only surmise that narrative necessity will lead to the various enclaves we’ve met this season will be united to take on Negan eventually, but “Rock” can’t make the pitch for this inevitability interesting on its own terms.

The closest “Rock” comes is in Benjamin’s argument to Ezekiel for The Kingdom joining the fight. His point that Rick & Co. are going to take on Negan no matter what, and that if The Kingdom doesn’t aid them, they’ll either die anyway, something Ezekiel’s men might have been able to prevent, or they’ll succeed, and free The Kingdom from The Saviors, without Ezekiel’s group pulling its own weight. Ezekiel makes a suitably reciprocal point about the lives lost in fighting the walkers, and Morgan’s gradual acclimation to the idea of taking lives in the name of a greater good has some weight, but on the whole, the various arguments back and forth turn ponderous quickly. “Rock” lingers on these debates, ensuring every character gets their two cents in, to its detriment. The show’s writing just isn’t good enough to sustain that sort of ethical weighing for that long.

Thankfully, TWD is not without some remaining creative flourishes. After their daring, cheese slicer-esque escape from the walkers, Michonne implores her beau to smile, telling him that they’ll win, that they’re the ones who’ll live. Rick puts on a brave face, but can’t quite manage it. The implication is clear -- as much as Rick must pitch this hope for resistance to Gregory and Ezekiel and others, he cannot yet buy it himself.

But in the episode’s final scene, Rick and his band of not-so merry men go looking for Father Gabriel, who has seemingly, once again, gotten scared and run away. (As with Rick himself, the battle for Gabriel’s soul is too well-trodden territory for me to really care about the swerve there.) When following Gabriel’s clues, which call back to the supplies Rick and Aaron found in the previous episode, our heroes are surrounded by a crowd of people who seem organized and well-armed. Rick smiles, and the contrast is just as clear -- with these people, with these supplies, they may actually be able to stand a chance.

It’s the kind of canny narrative device, the kind of subtlety, that’s almost wholly lacking in the rest of “Rock in the Road.” But it’s the sort of thing that keeps me coming back week after week, hoping that such successes will become the norm rather than exception. It is, like Rick’s initial response to Michonne, perhaps more of an aspiration than a reasonable expectation, but hopefully The Walking Dead gives Rick, and the audience, more reasons to smile.