8x13 Do Not Send Us Astray

[7.6/10] I don’t always love the structure of the average Walking Dead episode. More often than not, a given episode of the show has the sense of a bunch of scenes somewhat stitched together. Every once in a while, there’s some nifty editing that gives you a sense of flow between one locale or one story or and another, but more often than not, the show will jump tones or settings in a way that may work for an individual storyline, but rarely makes the whole feel as fluid or unified as it needs to.

But in episode like “Do Not Send Us Astray”, where The Walking Dead is essentially telling one big story in one spot, albeit one with most of the casts implicated in one way or another, the show can do some pretty interesting things in terms of using the pace and progression of the episode to earn an emotional response.

To wit, the episode has a little bit of lead-in, just enough prep to ease the audience in and build some anticipation, but pretty early on breaks into an all-out battle between our heroes and the Saviors. The horns sending the warning signal, day turning to dusk, and the eerie calm as everyone at the Hilltop waits for the dam to break give the audience a chance to feel the electricity in the air before everything goes down.

And then the potential energy is unleashed, in a hail of bullets and brutality. It’s been a while since we’ve had a real fight on this scale in the show. The incursion on Alexandria last season was a bit one-sided, and most of the major skirmishes in this show emphasize a sense of chaos over order. This was one of the first that seemed to evoke that sense of cinematic warfare, where there two competing armies on opposite sides, advancing and retreating.

There’s plenty of spills, thrills, and surprises in it. From Daryl roaring up on his motorcycle with a machine gun, to the headfake with everyone at the Hilltop going dark to lure the Saviors in before blasting them back, to Rick showing up as the cavalry, there was a heightened pace and rhythm to this fight that made it one of the show’s most thrilling set pieces. There seemed to be a cleverness, a real strategy to Maggie and Rick and Ezekiel’s followers, that made this more than just the standard exchange of bullets in the show.

It was an exciting, well-done piece of cinematic combat, but I have to admit, it left me wondering what the hell else The Walking Dead was going to do for the rest of its runtime. Those sorts of major battles usually wrap up pretty close to the end of an episode, the blood-pumping highs giving way to just a little bit of denouement afterward.

And at first, it looked like “Do Not Send Us Astray” didn’t know what to do with all that girth in the middle. The episode embraced the quiet bit of recovery after running the Saviors off. There’s a sense of triumph there, that while some lives were lost, while Negan is still at large, the group was able to win the day and start patching their wounds.

It seemed like the episode gave over to the show’s worst impulses: long, clunky conversations about What It All Means, and expository reflections on how they got to this point. It’s a slack tide for the show, one where characters tell Maggie how great a leader she is (putting too fine a point on the idea), Rick is clearly still messed up from what happened with Carl while Michonne tries to comfort him, and Tara and Daryl debate Dwight’s loyalties.

The best of them comes from a sweet, sad reunion between Carol and her sort-of beau Tobin (whose name, I had completely forgotten). It’s not a scene that should work. Their “relationship,” such as it was, had barely been developed in the first place, certainly not enough to carry the emotion The Walking Dead tries to lay on their being reunited. But Tobin looks up at Carol with those kind eyes and understanding chuckles, and Carol looks back at him with that half-smile and those hard words of caring and of a broader acceptance, and the result is the most meaningful conversation in the episode.

I’ll admit, my first reaction when Carol says that there is no “after this”, that winning gives you a day or two, maybe a little more, but the fighting and dying just goes on, as the camera shows various people at the Hilltop settling in after the battle, of young Henry stealing a rifle, of the sound of a clock ticking, was that it was too much. You can’t just throw some poetic words over a montage with some fairly obvious imagery and then call it a day.

But “Do Not Send Us Astray” doesn't. It makes good on those ideas that Carol had -- somewhat stoically, somewhat woundedly -- resigned herself to. In another outstanding sequence, The Walking Dead shows the denizens of the Hilltop packed in like sardines in the main house. It shows the fruits of the Saviors’ walker blood-tipped weapons, as Tobin, the doctor who chastised Siddiq, and the man who complimented Maggie on her leadership all eventually turn and become the threat from within after the threat from without has been repelled.

It’s a great sequence because it punctuates that calm. The attack from the Saviors is something that Rick, Maggie, & Co. anticipated. They were prepared for it. They had a plan for it. This problem erupts when they’re at peace, when they feel safe and secure. There’s something more claustrophobic, more panic-inducing about this, about the friends and allies whom you’d just patched up turning around and becoming a mortal threat in the still of the night.

Again, the show builds the tension, showing how this minor outbreak starts small, with just a few people making the change, until the hunger rises, and people are packed in too tightly, and no one’s expecting to have to defend against a walker attack when they feeling du jour is that the threat has been neutralized. It’s paranoia-inducing, the kind of psy-ops Eugene spoke of a couple of episodes ago, where the Alexandrians and Hilltoppers can no longer trust that they’ll have a moment of serenity, that even the biggest of victories won’t be punctuated by more deaths, more pain, and more fear.

That’s the impact of Carol’s words. She’s reconciled herself to that idea, that this never really ends, that there’s always another fight. And then we see it, and what it does. We see Morgan haunted by the image of Gavin, of the ghosts of what he’s done and what he’s lost. We hear Maggie answer that phantom’s question -- that “what it is” is “the cost,” the toll this endless fight takes on the lives of the people trying to survive. And we see that closing image of the makeshift graveyard, of that seeming moment of victory spoiled by how many souls were plucked from their midst and deposited into the ground.

It is, god help me, poignant. The show’s darkness can often be static, to where deaths don’t necessarily have meaning because they fade into the din and day-to-day mortality that the show made its bones on. But here, The Walking Dead tears into the harrowing notion that going on is not bloodless or something that gets better. Much of this season has been about what the future looks like when Negan is vanquished, and far from promising a brighter tomorrow, “Do Not Send Us Astray” promises that things may become different, but they don’t become easier. The darkness here is a broader one, the lesson sinking in that all victories in this place are pyrrhic and temporary.

That’s the beauty of the structure in this episode. It gives us the tension-filled build to the battle, offers the triumph and release of our heroes showing their prowess on the battlefield and repelling the invaders. And then it spends the big middle of the episode conveying a sense of stability at the Hilltop, the notion that the latest threat has been neutralized and they have the time and space to recoup.

But then it turns that place of sanctuary into a nightmare. It reveals that sense of safety and security as a myth. And once the walker attack is over, and even more names have been added to the rolls of the dead, it closes the episode with an image that digs into the heart, of the heavily-signposted costs to all of this.

It is one story, a story of our heroes fighting, winning, and rejoicing, only to find their victory tainted and illusory and costly when the dust has settled and the sun sets again. Ratings decline or no, The Walking Dead may go on forever, and that means these types of fights, these types of problems, won’t be stopping anytime soon, and those seeming moments of peace will always end up interrupted by the enemy at the gates, or the infection within them.