6.5/10. One of the interesting things about The Walking Dead under showrunner Scott Gimple's influence is that it has, more or less, eschewed the traditional narrative structure for a season of television. The prison/Governor storyline seemed to be building to a climax at the end of Season 3, but then didn't really end until several episodes into Season 4. Then, the show embarked on a wandering in the wilderness/Terminus storyline that stretched from roughly the midpoint of Season 4 until the beginning of the Alexandria storyline in Season 5. That storyline, about our heroes discovering an integrating into Alexandria, reached its natural conclusion with this year's mid-season premiere where the town came together to defeat the zombies at the gates.
Which is to say that we're not at the end or the beginning of the Negan storyline; we're in the middle. That's admittedly a little strange. It's different from the annual Big Bad structure that Buffy the Vampire Slayer established, or even the trend toward the real fireworks happening in the penultimate episode with the season finale reserved for aftermath or reflection employed by The Wire and The Sopranos.
It means that season finales have to feature big moments, but cannot be the climax of the story. It means that season premieres have to be remind the audience where the story left off rather than starting at the beginning. But truth be told, I kind of like it, or at least admire it. It's unorthodox and just a hint avant garde, and in a show that can struggle to distinguish itself despite its big ratings, that structure gives it unique storytelling rhythms that help the show to stand out.
Which is why, perhaps, I'm not particularly bothered by the "Who Shot J.R.?" (or, for my generation, "Who Shot Mr. Burns?") quality of the cliffhanger. Sure, it's a cheap way to add intrigue to a season premiere that won't happen until six or seven months from now, but it is, narratively speaking--just a bump in the road. I won't deny that there's something kind of silly about it, especially the POV-shot that makes me feel like I just lost a multiplayer game of Goldeneye, but it's just another death on a show that's rife with them. Maybe it'll be a major character. Maybe it'll be equivalent of the random racist lady in "S.O.B.s" from Arrested Development. Either way, I can stand to wait.
I understand the frustration though. From the fakeout with Glenn earlier in the season to last week's awkwardly pasted-in non-fakeout with Daryl, this show hasn't been very good about teasing the audience with this kind of stuff. You can only place your significant characters in peril and show them escaping largely unscathed before each new danger starts to lack any real stakes. But to that end, the success of the cliffhanger hinges much more on whether the show kills off a major character or whether we lose someone like Aaron instead, than on the somewhat corny mechanism The Walking Dead uses to get there.
I've said before that I often like what TWD is trying to do more than what it actually does, and "The Last Day on Earth" is no exception. It is, in some ways, intended as an antidote to the complaints that our heroes are bulletproof. Rick seems to vocalize this perspective when tells Maggie that they've all made it this far, and that they can find their way out of any bad situation. There's a quiet arrogance to the idea, present in the group's negotiations with the Hilltop, that there's nothing they can't handle. There's a sense that Rick feels as though they've tamed this wild land, that however hairy things may get, and however rocky the road to get there was, his people know what they're doing and can handle it. They've won. All there is to do now is protect what they have and plan for the future.
And then they hit roadblock after roadblock. Each time the roadblock has more soldiers, more guns, more horrors waiting for them. And each time, Rick has a plan, and surely his scrappy band of survivors can find a way out outwit or outmuscle or outmaneuver these ruffians! After all, they always find a way out. It's just what they do. Those Saviors don't know who they're screwing with, right Rick?
Slowly but surely, the episode reveals that they do, in fact, know exactly who they're screwing with it. And they're better prepared, and better organized, and better armed. For once, Rick's band of merry men, the same ones who sold the Hilltop on their combat abilities, who decimated the Savior compound by superior planning and skill, have run into some folks who do exactly what they do, and do it better. I like the hopelessness, the sense of being overmatched, that the narrative imparts on that front. It creates a sense that we may actually lose someone important in that final destination, that there may be a real cost to whatever the next step is. There's a "can't go over it; can't go under it; gotta go through it" atmosphere in place for our heroes for what feels like the first time, and that's interesting and different.
The episode even doubles down on this idea with the tearful farewell for Eugene. It has all the trademarks of a classic Walking Dead plot, where one character makes the sacrifice so that the others can go on unscathed and live to fight another day. "The Last Day on Earth" sells the hell out of it, with everyone saying their goodbyes, the bullet recipe, and Eugene's smile as drives alone up the road signifying the end point of his character's arc toward competence and redemption. It's an easy way to suggest Rick and The Alexandrians outsmarting their pursuers, and it would fit as the culmination of Eugene's journey.
Instead, that little narrative trick, employed in one form for another many many times on the show, fails miserably. Eugene is captured; the rest of the group is captured afterward; and it turns out they already had Daryl, Rosita, Michonne, and Glenn locked up in a van the whole time. The Saviors were always two steps ahead, and for once, with all of heroes assembled, they're at a clear and distinct disadvantage with an enemy who's demonstrated they're capable rather than just crazy.
That's a great idea. It just doesn't work very well in practice. Much of the traps set for Rick & Co. are fairly implausible, even if they make for cool visuals, a recurring theme for the show. Rick's attempt to trade threats with Negan's Lieutenant at the first "checkpoint" had an awkward quality to it that made it feel reminiscent of Homer Simpson's argument with George Bush Sr. about who wanted "trouble." The episode didn't quite impart that sense of foreboding it was clearly shooting for, with the awkward pacing and lack of real attention permeating the episode right up until the Eugene feint. And, as is very frequently the case on The Walking Dead, especially in a season finale, several characters offer action movie one-liners, or grand on-the-nose statements that loudly call out themes the series has been playing around with this season.
That extends to the Carol/Morgan storyline, the part of the episode that features the only two major characters not caught in Negan's whistle-worthy trap. The slow burn of Carol struggling with the weight of her killing has been one of my favorite parts of Season 6, even if there have been several hiccups along the way. But we didn't need to have her repeat that you don't get to choose, the world gets to choose. We didn't need her begging for death to understand that she was hurting and wanted a way out. We didn't need any number of other bluntly-employed scenes or devices to shake the audience and yell at them "Carol is not okay right now and here's why!" As always, Melissa McBride puts in a good performance, but the material doesn't live up to it.
And despite that, I have hope for the story going forward. Morgan shooting someone to prove that even he will take a life if it's the only way to save another one is more than a bit contrived as a turning point for Carol's road to recovery. But I appreciate the way the show put the two of them together here. Morgan's sequestering himself with a recalcitrant Carol who thinks the world has nothing for her was a nice parallel to his own circumstances with Eastman in the episode that introduced Morgan's new circumstances and philosophy. That philosophy has filtered through to Carol and led her to a state of misery. But Morgan is here to get to the other half of it, a half that The Walking Dead is all too miserly with -- healing.
Morgan's episode was one of the few times the show has depicted someone healing from the pain and misery of this new world. It wasn't just death as redemption; it wasn't just a miraculous realization leading to someone becoming a better person; it was the story of how one man found his way back from the edge of despair, little by little. It's one of the reasons I've never had a problem with Morgan's pacifism on the show, despite the obvious problems with that philosophy in the state of nature he lives in. It was never meant to be a practical philosophy here; it was meant to be a way for Morgan to cope with the loss of his wife and son. In that, it succeeds, and with any luck, he can continue Eastman's work and help Carol find some peace as well.
But peace doesn't seem to be on deck for the rest of the group. If there's one thing to say in favor of "Last Day on Earth", it's that Jeffrey Dean Morgan lives up to the big introduction Negan has received over the course of the season. He chews the scenery, and adds a malevolent charm that makes him feel like everything The Governor was intended to be but never quite achieved. His monologue devolved into a few cliches--this is still The Walking Dead after all--but he was an absolutely commanding and mesmerizing presence in the scene, and lived up to his billing, which is no small feat given how much this character has been built up to over the course of the season.
And yet his presence crescendos in an act meant to exemplify the very obvious theme of the episode -- that in this world, your life can end in a second, and just when you think you have it figured out, when you think you're safe and can start planning and building, death can still strike, random chance can still deal you a losing hand, and your entire world can be turned upside down. It's an idea that The Sopranos played around with in a much more subtle, artful fashion. But that's The Walking Dead in a nutshell -- taking its cues from the best of prestige television, trying to infuse the show with big themes and mediations on serious issues, and losing the plot in cornball dialogue, puzzling story directions, and the occasional stunt that leaves the fanbase gnashing its teeth.
So we enter another interregnum between seasons, wondering who lives and who dies, who rises to the occasion and who falters, and how our heroes will save the day this time. Because, once again, we're in the middle of the story. It's a story about Rick & Co. kicking the hornet's nest that is The Saviors, but also of the show itself. The Walking Dead is a series where we're perpetually in the middle, always wondering when it will trust its audience to understand the points it's trying to make without having its characters scream them at us, when it will string together a nice streak of quality episodes rather than a persistent sense of "two steps forward and one step back," when it will be more than just impressive production and zombie kills with a patina of profundity behind them, and when it will stop being a pretty good show and start becoming a great one. As the show concludes its sixth season, a point where some of the best series in television ended their runs, it becomes apparent that we'll be waiting forever, that this is simply what the show is, and all it is -- an endless parade of middles.
I suppose I'll be back in the fall then, complaining about such small portions.
"East" is about cycle, about chain reactions, about the way decisions big and small come back to you in one way or another. Morgan says it himself -- it's all a circle. But whether that circle is good or bad, whether you get out of it what you put in, remains to be seen.
To Morgan's mind, it can be a force for good. He decides to spare The Wolf, and to Morgan, that decision not only leads to The Wolf himself helping to save Denise, but it leads his way of thinking to trickle down to Carol, and make Alexandria's most pragmatic warrior so uncomfortable with the act of killing that she absconds to where she need not risk hurting anyone. And yet Daryl faces the mirror image of that cycle. He chooses to spare Dwight, and to Daryl's mind, that makes him responsible both for Denise's death at Dwight's hands, and for the way that having to bury yet another innocent, drove his dear friend Carol away. Both men made the same kind of choice, but interpret the ensuing events very differently.
But there's another cycle in play in "East". Rick's crew attacked The Saviors, and brutalized everyone they came across. The episode repeatedly features folks in Alexandria worrying about the blowback. It seems inevitable that the remaining portion of Negan's followers will mount a counterassault, and try to return the favor. Maggie and Michonne predicted as such when they agreed to the plan. Rick started something, and the violence he dished out will no doubt come back to him as well.
In the early part of the episode, Michonne grabs an apple of the nightstand, takes a bite, and then offers one to Rick as well. It's a heavy-handed visual metaphor, and the implication is clear. Right now, Alexandria is paradise, a walled Eden where they can be well-fed, healthy, and safe from the tumult of the world. But paradise must fall, according to the demands of both biblical precedent and serialized television. So in each moment of bliss, of peace and pleasure, we wait for the other shoe to drop.
In that way, "East" feels a lot like filler. There's a storm coming; that much is clear. But in the meantime we have to shuffle the characters around the board so that they're in the right place when it hits. So Daryl bolts off, in attempt to clean up his unfinished business; Glenn, Michonne, and Rosita go after him in an attempt to keep him from doing something rash or reckless, and Rick and Morgan head out in search of Carol.
This being The Walking Dead, each of these events is cause for long-winded, not particularly subtle conversations about What The Right Thing Is in the midst of the fall of civilization. Season 6 has done well to examine the morality of the actions of the group to some degree, and putting conflicting philosophies at loggerheads, but "East" feels like a rehash that communicates these ideas by having people blather on about them in an inorganic fashion.
There's some juice to the exchanges between Morgan and Rick, who stand as the devil and angel on either shoulder of Carol for all intents and purposes. They have a history together, albeit one with large gaps. But those gaps allow each to see the way the other has changed in a way that isn't as clear when you're close up the whole time. Rick is pure, Shane-like pragmatism, willing to kill at a moment's notice whenever he feels threatened, and Morgan is pure, nigh-impossible pacifism, constantly trying to find another way. Sure, their views are caricatured to a strong degree, and the dialogue is painful at times, but there's at least a solid foundation for how those ideas clash, and the way Carol is being torn apart from the inside with both sides of the spectrum pulling at her.
The Daryl/Glenn/Michonne/Rosita contingent is less compelling in their part of the episode. Again, it feels largely like a repetition of themes and ideas that have been brought up and dramatized better in the past, without much beyond a slightly different setting to draw them out. And it again involves our supposedly capable heroes getting ambushed yet again (twice actually!) and setting up a pretty standard hostage situation and shooting fake out that will no doubt be a catalyst for the events of the finale.
Despite all of this, Carol is, once again, the highlight of the episode. Credit once again belongs to Melissa McBride who puts on another clinic in how to convey being tortured by both what you've done and what you have to do. Again, both McBride and Carol do a superb job of taking the character's genuine discomfort and distress at potentially having to take another life and mixing it with her attempts to play the timid mouse who's overwhelmed by the opposing threat of violence and thus underestimated by the people who are threatening her. It's one of the few elements in this episode that works at multiple levels, and it's far and away the most striking scene in "East".
The way that Carol trembles when confronted by the prey who think themselves predators, the way the episode opens with close up shots of the aftermath of this grisly scene that lets the audience know before a single shot's been fired that this doesn't end well, the way that she pleads with them that it doesn't have to be this way, add to the inherent tragedy of where Carol is right now.
The guns hidden in her sleeves is a neat trick--Carol is full of neat tricks that show the craftiness she's developed out in the wild--but they come with a cost, with the way she is devastated at having another set of names to add to her journal. Here is a woman who suffered mightily long before the world as we know it ended, and she faced even more hardships after that. But she responded with strength, with a commitment to doing what she had to do in order to survive and protect the people who couldn't protect themselves. And yet those actions have come back to her, the thoughts of the lives snuffed out by her hand haunt her still, and seem inescapable, even as she gives up what little stability she's managed to cobble together in an attempt to elude them.
So much of this episode is focused on when and how good can beget good, evil can beget evil, and violence can beget more violence. These are thoughts TWD has explored time and time again, with enough water-treading in terms of the plot that make the entire episode somewhat tedious. But Carol's part of it, the way that Rick's philosophy and Morgan's philosophy have crashed together within her and left her as the devastated, lethal woman on that road, show that pain can also beget pain. I can only hope that she finds a way forward.
One of the best parts of Carol's storylines on The Walking Dead is that they've largely been underplayed. Melissa McBride is such a talented actress that the show can dispense with its often lumpy dialogue and simply let her convey the meaning in the moment, whether it's a sullen look after the events of "JSS" or the harsh tone in her voice when she tells Rick that Maggie shouldn't be out on the raid. This season in particular, The Walking Dead had done a good job at letting the idea of Carol feeling the weight of her actions and gradually pivoting away from the ruthless persona of strength she'd taken on bubble under the surface, thereby making the scenes where those themes are a little more prominent stand out as earned and effective.
But "The Same Boat" basically turns that subtlety on its ear. It's a bleak bottle episode, that spends most of its time keeping Carol in a single room and trotting out an odd version of "This Is Your Life!" There's Maggie as a symbol of uncorrupted innocence and incipient motherhood there to let Carol fight to protect something in another person that she herself has lost. There's the colorful Molly, who offers Carol a view of her possible future, a dead woman walking who's not afraid to do what need doing. There's Donnie, a nearly textbook abusive boyfriend who's mostly a prop to draw out another parallel for Carol. That parallel is Paula, who is both a dark reflection of what Carol has become--a woman who lost her children, dealt with abuse, and resolved to kill when necessary without compunction or hesitation--and a living caution of what Carol is afraid that Maggie could become.
These are all interesting character comparisons in particular, but given that all of these people have to be introduced and die in the same episode, the audience necessarily gets thumbnail sketches of everyone rather than meaningful shades of character development to make them feel like real people rather than narrative devices to elucidate Carol's internal conflict. The episode does a good job in giving Carol's captors texture--Molly in particular is someone I'm sad to see go given how distinct and magnetic she was with little weight to carry here--but their characterization is thin, and that inevitably leads to the feeling that "The Same Boat" is more of a contrived allegory than a story with emotional truth.
That's especially true for Paula, a well-acted, poorly-written character who seems to have little use besides acting as the obvious living wakeup call for Carol she's meant to reflect and turning subtext into brutally on-the-nose text. When she blasts Carol for being weak, when she spits Carol's philosophy back at her in a clumsy fashion, when vocalizes that Carol sees Maggie as the way she used to be, it's all unnecessary emotional exposition about themes the show had already communicated in much subtler ways. I actually liked the idea of Paula as an antagonist because the performance is good, and there's a harsh pragmatism to her that makes her an interesting comparison point to Rick as much as she is to Carol. But when she launches into that monologue it becomes clear that she's only here to be a ponderous, poorly-sketched out doppleganger for Carol, with nothing under her skin but cheesy dialogue and didactic speeches.
Melissa McBride does what she can to save all of this. Her performance does a very nice job of showing Carol's simultaneous cunning and her pain. She's obfuscating timidness to disarm her captors, the same way she used that persona to keep the Alexandrians off guard. But McBride does a great job of selling the moments where Carol's real concerns, her genuine conflicted feelings about the choices she's made, bleed through. More than that, the episode shows her using those real feelings to further the lie, a tactic composed of equal parts canniness and pathos.
There's a bit of Morgan's philosophy that's wormed its way into Carol's thinking, whether she likes or it hates the way it makes her shoot an intruder in the arm rather than in the chest, or hesitate when a single bullet could practically end the whole struggle. Carol become this hardened warrior so that she could protect the innocent, so that what happened with Sofia wouldn't happen again. It's why what rouses her from her mild pacifist streak is Paula's swipe at Maggie's stomach. But as bluntly as the concept is hammered home in "The Same Boat", Carol has been wounded in that process, and when she looks at the deaths she's been responsible for, at the harshness she's perpetrated in the same of doing what's necessary, she doesn't necessarily like the person she sees, and begins to not only question that path, but to slowly feel more and more of the hurt of it all.
I'm hardly a Carol-Daryl shipper, but there's has always been a special friendship on the show, and one of the most pleasant moments in a dark episode was his immediately comforting her after she and Maggie kill the last couple of Saviors. Maybe he can help her find a bit of peace.
But that brutality doesn't stop at Carol. "The Same Boat" also suggests that it's infected the whole group, or at least the ones who embark on the raid of the saviors. Again, it's not subtle. Michelle, who seems intended as an alternate version of Maggie much as Paula is a dark mirror of Carol, outright says, "you're not the good guys." But at the same time, I like the idea of the show broadening its perspective a bit. We literally see the events at the Saviors' compound from Paula's eyes, and it's not necessarily a pretty picture.
The Walking Dead has been toying with this idea since beginning the Hilltop/Negan storyline, and it's fruitful territory. It's cold and nearly heartless when Rick takes out Primo without his enemy barely getting a sentence out before there's a bullet in his brain. To this end, the best scene in the episode is the first, that shows a group no less capable than Rick's looking on with horror but determination at what our heroes have accomplished. But it peters out quickly when the episode tries to draw a moral equivalency while making the Saviors we see too thinly-drawn to feel truly sympathetic.
But as I often say about The Walking Dead, there's the germ of a good idea there. I appreciate the concept of Carol as an agent of change, of someone who's lived by the philosophy of doing whatever must be done, no matter the cost, it protect yourself and your own, who's disillusioned by where that's led her and having serious qualms about the group as whole adopting that view. This episode was a weak attempt to draw out that internal conflict in Carol, but hopefully the way it tied that idea to the larger theme of whether our heroes are really worth rooting for or if, instead, they've become something different, something cruel out there in jungle, will lead to better and brighter things.
8.3/10. There's been a lot of death, unsurprisingly, on a show called The Walking Dead. We've seen folks in the series take out hordes of zombies, roving marauders, and even their own as a bloody kindness when necessary. But very very rarely are our heroes the aggressors.
That's what made "Not Tomorrow Yet" so interesting and so novel for a series already in its sixth season. Many episodes of the show examine the morality of killing--when it's justified, what makes it a sin, and how those things change after civilization falls--but it's never shown the show's main characters engaging in what amounts to a preemptive strike before.
It is, in a word, kind of uncomfortable, kind of troubling, even when on paper it makes sense, even when you're on the side of the people doing the killing. I think it's meant to be. The Walking Dead has paid lipservice to the moral gray areas that emerge when balancing life and death in something approaching a state of nature, but rarely has it confronted these ideas so directly.
It's telling that the closest thing to a preemptive strike of the kind that Rick & Co. unleash on The Saviors was The Governor's assault on The Prison in Season's 3 "Home". Even then, Rick's group had snuck into Woodbury and gotten into a firefight with his men. (Though it could be argued that Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham's run-in with Negan's group in "No Way Out" is a similar justification.) There, it's portrayed as cowardly, as cruel, as something that makes Andrea begin to doubt the goodness of her companion.
And yet here, it's Rick's group attacking without real provocation. It's Rick giving the speech to his band of survivors that they need to strike before a potential rival decides to strike at them first. It's Rick who startles Heath with how brutal he can be. It's our heroes who put together a surprise attack on a group of people they've never even met, let alone talked to.
It's harrowing, both from an ethical standpoint and a purely visceral one. I've often said that The Walking Dead tells stories better with images than with words, and the show lived up to that branding tonight in the tightly shot-and-edited sequences at The Saviors' compound. There was tension in the moment where Andy stood anxiously in front of the two Savior guards as they examined the faux-head of Gregory, before it deflated with the dark comedy of a one guard using a severed head as a puppet. (Despite the ethical conundrums and heavy thematic material, there was a surprising amount of solid comedy to the episode, in moments like this and in the awkward humor of Eugene asking Rosita about Carol's cookies at a very bad time.)
But from that moment on, Rick's crew moved with precision through the compound in crackerjack sequences that showed how scarily effective they had become in their seek and destroy mission. Director Greg Nicotero does a masterful job; there's a tremendous pacing to this part of the episode, that never loses the tension in the mostly one-sided fight, while still finding time to let the audience breathe between big moments and show the surprises and escalation of the conflict.
That part of the episode also includes the most striking scene of "Not Tomorrow Yet". In a wordless sequence, Glenn and Heath enter a room where two of the Saviors lie sleeping. Glenn kneels over one of them, holds his knife aloft, tears up, struggles, but eventually plunges his weapon into his erstwhile enemy. Then, although Glenn's clearly devastated by what he's done; he stops Heath from doing the same to the other man sleeping in that room, with the implication that after the pair's conversation about killing another human being while on the hunt for a Gregory lookalike, he wants to spare Heath the the pain, the stain on the soul, that Glenn himself just endured, even if it means doubling down on committing the grisly dead himself.
It's a powerful scene, one of the most captivating and poignant of the entire series. In truth, there are plausibility problems with it, It strains credulity that Glenn and Heath wouldn't wake up their prey when entering the room no matter how quiet they were tried to be; Glenn would presumably have to use much greater force to stab his targets, and the fact that the men died instantly without a sound has no basis in reality. But as I've said before, The Walking Dead is a show that runs theme rather than verisimilitude, and the performances of Steven Yeun and Corey Hawkins are so impressive, and the direction of the scene so well done, that it hardly matters, especially in the moment.
That one scene sums up the entire thorny ethical territory the show explores in "Not Tomorrow Yet." I recently wrote about how The Hateful Eight examines the idea of when lethal force is justified, and how that idea changes based on what team or tribe you're on, and this episode dives into similar thematic material. Our heroes seem more like butchers that warriors. We've seen Rick and his crew kill before, but almost always in self defense, always in the heat of battle. Killing a man in his sleep, a man who's done nothing to you, who simply poses a future threat, feels different, feels wrong. It clearly disturbs Glenn in that moment and gives him pause about the path that Rick so confidently sets his band of merry men on.
Suddenly it hits you -- beyond what they've heard from a group of people our heroes barely know (who are, it should be noted) led by an unsavory prick and guided by a man who stole from Rick and Daryl), Glenn and the rest of his compatriots have little basis to know that these people are really bad. Lying there, motionless on their beds, they just seem like survivors, same as anyone. At best, there are two sides to every story, and Rick and Maggie only got half of it, but their needs and the needs of the people they protect make it enough for them to kill unprovoked, to kill by a much less direct form of necessity than the kind that normally motivates the lead characters in this show.
But the episode still muddies the water further from there. After Glenn pains himself to kill the two Saviors they find in that room, he looks up and the camera pans across the sleeping man's collection of photos of people and/or walkers he's apparently shot or bashed through the head. It's morbid, and it speaks poorly of the character of the man that Glenn just killed, but I don't think it's meant to make the audience see the death as deserved. Instead, it's meant to underscore the complexity of the ethical choice here. The way that the folks from the Hilltop paint a picture of The Saviors makes the killing seem righteous, but the manner of it, the defenselessness of their enemies, makes it feel wrong. And yet, those gruesome photos, which imply the harshness of these men who died at Glenn's hand, suggests that as disquieting, maybe even unjust, as these kills feel, they may yet be for the greater good. You just don't know. Things are not as simple as pure right and wrong, and that just makes what it takes to survive in the next world all the harder.
And Carol, who is conflicted in her role in this assault, is on the other side of this moral quandary. She too has become scarily effective at killing at is feeling the weight of that, of the lives lost on her ledger. The show has been setting up this inner conflict for Carol since the beginning of the season, and it serves that conflict well.
From the cold open (which have been some of the best parts of The Walking Dead lately) that depicts Carol attempting to reestablish her shrinking violet bona fides with the community with some Macgyver'd cookies, only to offer a bit of penance for the dead young boy whom she frightened, "Not Tomorrow Yet" plays up the fact that Carol is having trouble dealing with the number of names she writes in the journal of people she's killed.
I wish I could unpack her sweet, earnest, human scene with Tobin as well as it warrants, but for now all I can do is say that Carol has been a paragon of unexpected strength for a long time now. Tobin recognizes that, he sees through the facade of the diffident homemaker, and respects what Carol is capable of. He calls her a mom not as something meant to minimize her, but as an honorific, as a term that means she's the kind of person who protects people, who does the scary stuff so that the people who can't handle it don't have to.
The implication is that she stands parallel to the soon-to-be father Glenn, who stabs one of the Saviors so that Heath won't have to. What Carol has done is a burden; this episode makes that clear. But at the same time, it is a mitzvah, to protect people, to take on the challenging, unpleasant, perhaps even unholy deeds that need doing so that others need not face them.
There's subtext to the scene that's hung in the background of the series for several years now. Carol couldn't do those things; she wasn't strong enough; she didn't know how to survive in this new world, and feels like she couldn't protect Sofia from it. She felt it was a mistake she had to correct for, to become capable, to teach the children of the prison how to defend themselves, to kill without hesitation to defend the people incapable of making that choice.
But it wears her down, weighs on her, the sense of the blood on her hands. She's still trying to protect people, allowing herself a moment of quiet comfort with Tobin, or staying back to look after Maggie, a mother-to-be thrust into a dangerous situation. Carol has become a killer, the kind that aligns with Rick's speech about doing what's necessary to survive. But she's been deeper into that mindset than the rest of them, and it's dragging her down, making it harder for her to go on and make peace with the acts a harsh world requires. In an episode that explores the murky waters of when a kill is right, when it's wrong, and when regardless of that inquiry, when it hurts the soul of human being to commit even necessary, lethal acts, Carol is ahead of the curve, and finds that those choices, and the certainty and necessity that seemed to motivate them, leave her wondering how she can live in the face of all the people who have died.
6.5/10. In the distant, far of year of 2008, an ambitious (and ultimately disappointing) game entitled Spore was released. Nicknamed "SimEverything," the game was meant to capture the progress of civilization from single-celled organisms to space-faring intergalactic communities. Part of the idea was to stage the game using that progression, with parts that let your character evolve individually, and eventually form collectives that trade and war with similar neighboring groups on the way to a more united front.
I like the idea of The Walking Dead taking the same path. For several seasons, we've seen the core group of TWD expand and seek stability. In the beginning, it was all about Rick surviving on his own and finding his family. Eventually, on Hershel's farm and afterward, it became about the group, and finding safety and survival in bigger numbers. This continued with more permanence at the prison, which continued the theme of the group finding temporary safety and trying to protect it from enemies both dead and alive.
Then, with the advent of Alexandria, the show began to pivot a bit. It started to tell a story about building civilization back up again, about creating something sustainable for the foreseeable future, not just until the prison fence collapses. Deanna had her ups and downs as a character, but she was the anchor that held this idea in place, and despite the story of whether or not Rick's battle-scarred compatriots could settle in with the very green and sheltered Alexandrians, the conclusion was the two groups becoming one, and building for the future.
Now, with the idea that Alexandria is a more permanent home, a foothold back to civilization, the reveal that there are other, neighboring groups who are also self-sufficient, who trade and war and have, for lack of a better term, international relations with one another, is an interesting development in the expanding scope of the show and the way it's exploring the way the society is rebuilt after the zombie apocalypse. I don't expect the show to continue this trajectory forever necessarily, and its facility with political ideas has been broad and shallow at best, but it's a worthwhile direction to move after the end of the first major Alexandria chapter of the show in "No Way Out."
The future has been very much on the show's mind since the end of that episode, and the theme continues here, especially with Abraham's story, which was the highlight of "Knots Untie." I've gone back and forth on Abraham as a character. There's a distinctiveness about him, obviously in his look, but also in his demeanor that makes him stand out in a series where it feels like a good percentage of the cast is, by fiat, intended to be little more than bland zombie food. And I'll admit that as tired as I grew of his doublespeak in "Always Accountable," there was something irresistibly enjoyable about his turns of phrase here, whether it be his Bisquick/pancakes metaphor, or his galoshes comment, or simply his standard poetic drawl. Having been raised on a steady diet of Whedon and Tarantino, it suckered me in.
But more than that, what I liked about Abraham's story is that it conveyed his conflict and his decision without either making them too explicit or taking refuge in inscrutability. It's clear that for him, Rosita represents the vagabond, just keep moving and fighting ethos that gave him direction in a directionless world after the reaction and deaths of his family in Season 5's "Self Help." And Sasha represents the idea of putting down roots and trusting that things will be steady for a little while. It's clear that Abraham is nervous about the latter idea, that he's hesitant to make himself vulnerable like that once more, in his colorful conversation with Glen about he and Maggie's child. To have a child is to predict some measure of safety and stability in the near future, and that's clearly an idea that he has trouble with.
But then, still recovering from his PTSD, Abraham nearly strangles one of the men from the neighboring camp, and in a moment of recovery later, the man talks about seeing his wife and children, the people in his life that really matter to him. Somewhat conveniently, Abraham himself is nearly strangled later in the episode, and in artful moment, he hears Sasha's voice in that moment of heightened focus, eventually laughs, and leaves Rosita's necklace behind. His decision is made, and as seen in his little crooked smile at Maggie's sonogram, he's willing to look to the future with a measure of hope again.
What kind of future will that be? That seems to be the question at the heart of "Knots Untie". Negan and the Saviors' outpost seems to run on violence, threats, and intimidation. Gregory and Jesus's camp appears far more docile, but it's run by an obvious creep and seems ill-equipped to defend itself. Alexandria appears to be the pragmatic middle ground, with values of community and kindness du jour, and yet as much as the audience is supposed to recoil at the revelation that Negan is essentially running a protection racket against Gregory's group, our heroes are just as willing to step in and receive the same benefits in exchange for taking out that threat.
It's a move that posits Alexandria's value to the wider world being as fighters and strategizers. Rick points out that their value is themselves, their ability to surivive and the fact that they've made it this long while wandering through the desert, so to speak. In her scenes with the uncomfortably slimy, entitled, self-important Gregory, Maggie uses that as her leverage, and puts up their crew as not only the lesser of two evils, but the best chance Gregory has to keep his people together over the longterm.
The execution of all of this is far from perfect. The dialogue is clunky throughout, the ending conflict feels like a contrived and convenient to throw in some more action and move the plot forward in a less-than-organic fashion, and having a guy named Jesus who's constantly trying to keep the peace and find a better way (replete with Rick's crew telling survivors "we're with Jesus") is on the nose in a way that feels like a bit much even for the fairly blunt stylings of this show. To the same end, Maggie's pronouncements that there will be a cost to going to war makes me think that she and her child are likely casualties meant to show some error or guilt for the rest of the group, and her scenes with Gregory didn't necessarily communicate the power or savvy from her that seemed to be intended.
But again, I like the idea that the show is exploring a wider world beyond the walls of wherever Rick & Co. have holed up for a while this time. I like the idea of different groups out there, with different ideas of how to run their collectives and different strengths and weaknesses being measured against one another and forced to do business. The show's attempted this sort of thing before with The Governor, but that was little more than a rote, separate build to an obvious conflict rather than equal civilizations figuring out how to interact with one another. The Walking Dead could go down that same path again in the lead up to the fight with Negan, but as the series seems to be looking to the future, I hope it spends as much time examining where Rick, and his group, and Alexandria fit into the broader landscape of The New World.
I don't care about the battle for Rick's soul. I just don't anymore. Rick's been good. He's been bad. He's been crazy. He's been sane. He's been all too trusting and all too vicious. Sure, in better hands, there would still be places to take the character, but right now it seems like The Walking Dead has exhausted the possibilities with Rick.
So what we have is a slight rehash of the Ricktatorship that began at the end of Season 2 of the show. Rick trusts his people, and dismisses the Alexandrians. In case you miss the subtlety of that, the episode hammers it home with Mischonne questioning Rick making plans without the help of the folks outside their group and Rick brushes her off, while making it explicit later in the episode when he tells Tara not to risk her life for one of "them."
And of course he gets pushback from Mischonne, from Morgan, from Tara, in addition to little reminders from Deanna and the guy who helps him put up the brace that even if the Alexandrians are still a bit green and naive, they're hopeful, helpful, and willing to learn. The obvious trajectory is that at some point, like the literal walls around their compound, the walls Rick has erected around himself and his ground will come tumbling down, and he will accept that the locals are worthy of his trust and acceptance. But I just can't be bothered to care about it. We've seen him do this dance a dozen times over the course of six seasons, and there's just not enough shades to Rick or Andrew Lincoln's performance to make this go-around stand out.
And hey, Glenn is alive! And just in time to have a tedious discussion about what they're living for with Enid! His survival is a complete and total cheat, that doesn't match up with anything we know about the zombie hordes in this behave. But you know what? It doesn't really bother me. This show has always been remarkably inconsistent with how the walkers function, and has used more than a few narrative loopholes to handwave the survival of important characters. At this point in the series, you're either on board with it or you're not. I'd be lying if I said I liked that tack, but that's what the show is, and I've come to accept it.
What I struggle with more are the endless, repetitive, never-ending conversations between characters about what use there is living in this shattered civilization. Sure, Enid's feelings are completely justified and motivated by what she's been through, but just like Rick, we've seen distraught and fatalistic characters so many times that just having those same sentiments come from a young girl without anything to distinguish them doesn't render them new or different. It just makes them a dull rehash with a new, preteen coat of paint.
Thankfully there's Lennie James as Morgan to raise the quality of the episode with the quality of his acting alone. Morgan joins other characters like Mischonne and Carol as being able to convey a conflicted and compelling inner life even when the characters aren't vocalizing their thoughts, or worse yet, are having to spit out the show's frequently clunky dialogue. Lennie James portrays Morgan's inner turmoil so convincingly--a man caught between the philosophy that saved him from madness and the necessities of the moment--that it elevates any episode he's in.
By the same token, Carol has less to do, but her brief conversation with Jesse's son Sam was also quietly revealing of Carol's own concerns about whether she's turned into a monster, whether she's hewed too far toward hardness she embraced after the deaths of her husband and daughter, of what she believes is required to survive in the new world. It's a character beat the show touched on in "JSS", and Melissa McBride does a great job at selling both Carol's steely determination and her silent self-questioning.
Then there's Ron, who has been very blatantly set up by the show to be seeking revenge against Rick and Carl, and the show all but attaches a flashing neon sign to that effect in this episode. I don't particularly care for Ron. The kid has Dawson's Creek-level acting skills and his storyline is a little too written-on-the-screen for my tastes.
But it does have one interesting angle to it. The Grimes boys almost have it coming. I'm not saying they deserve to be shot or killed or anything, but Carl acts like a superior prick during the shooting lesson, whether he means to or not, and Jesse was right when she told Rick that it's overstepping his bounds to take a paternal role with Ron after he killed Ron's father, whether or not Rick means well or Ron's dad deserved it. If there's one interesting new place the show could take with Rick, it would be to make him an out-and-out villain, but this is, sadly, the closest we're likely to get.
The episode touches on other stories here and there. Rosita goes drill sergeant on Eugene at the Alexandria machete class in a scene that was fairly cliche but at least dovetailed with the episode's theme of why we live and why we fight. Father Gabriel's cold war with Rick continues, and is sure to come to some kind of head--perhaps as the focal point of RIck's inevitable turn to learning to trust others (including the Alexandrians) again--but for now just sits in the background. Denise is growing in confidence in her medical practice, and the feint toward her helping Morgan with her skills as a therapist has promise. And Maggie stands vigil for Glenn, just in time for the lead into the next episode.
But this is a scattershot episode of The Walking Dead. It's squarely average for what this show is in its sixth season. There's still a bit of the bad, a bit of the good, and a lot of the middling and repetitive. It's a slower, workmanlike episode, with the only major fireworks being Spencer's little jaunt. It didn't give us much insight into the character, but instead circled around the theme of finding a reason to live and finding the people to do it with. Unfortunately, those are themes the show has hit more than a few times over the years, and it doesn't have much more to say at this point.
This episode was a nice change from the usual type of story telling. I still watch The Walking Dead, but it's not because it's a very good show. More episodes telling the background stories of the characters would definitely revive my enthousiasm toward the show.
So many people hate this episode, but it was brilliant, Watching people kill walkers & fight over land is nothing new, but actually realizing what this whole zombie apocalypse is about, that's something to think about. But most of the people here hate thinking, I guess, that's why they want ACTION, ACTION, ACTION! I say screw you, spoilt kids...
Eastman, "Everything in this world is about people. It couldn't be just me, it shoudn't be just you." Nothing worst then feeling lonely =/
Morgan become one of my favorite characters after this episode!
This is what I want in writing, acting, and pacing in a Walking Dead episode. I inflated the rating to even out others' lower ratings.
Before I watched this episode, people told me it was "boring" -- obviously I didn't believe them! And I was right not to because this episode was one of my favourites. TWD doesn't have to be fast-paced or excessively gory to be good. This episode proved that. The acting from the two men in this episode was incredible, bravo TWD!
This episode would've worked so much better as 6.03 instead of 6.04!!
An amazing episode, with great character development, not only for Morgan, but also for Eastman (in only on episode). Kudos to the writers in getting Eastman as a Forensic Psychologist who had gone through trauma himself... and the perfect thing was that he did indeed get his revenge, and showed that it didn't fulfill him and gave him peace... showing that vengeance wasn't worth it, and getting him to actually relate to Morgan.
It was perfect to show how Morgan went from the nutty guy we saw in Clear and the zen guy we get now. But after such a fast paced episode and with such cliffhangers, this episode broke the rhythm and was sort of disappointing for us who were still high waiting for continuity of 6.03
9.5/10. This was a superb effort from The Walking Dead. I really appreciate them devoting whole episodes to developing characters rather than trying to do it through the various machinations of an often baffling series of storylines alone. This was practically a short story, and it helped us to develop a better understanding of who Morgan is, and he got from the screw-loose madmen we saw in "Clear" to the pacifist monk who appeared last season.
Some parts of the story were a little too convenient. I was reminded of "Broken" from House M.D. where you knew that the writers were going to have to hit certain beats in telling a story of recovery. But that aside, I really liked the character of Eastman, who was given quite a bit to do and was the glue that held this episode together. The actor who played him (an odd mix of J.K. Simmons and Paul Heyman) lent the appropriate zen but playful air to him that made the character work.
And I liked how the show offered a little bit of optimism here. There's a great deal on TWD about people being damaged, scarred, shaken, or changed by the fall of civilization. It is, in many ways, a pessimistic show, about what people become when the metes and bounds of society are removed and our impulses go unchecked. Sometimes the show has depicted people finding solace in this new world, but never has it devoted so much time to showing a person healing. Despite the episode's end, it was a very hopeful episode, something that's in short supply in this series, and I for one, was happy to have it.
It was also a wonderful episode in terms of atmosphere and mood. It was very patient, going over the show's usual runtime to develop the story as long as it needed to. There were slow, lingering shots of edenic meadows, quiet streams where Eastman and Morgan practiced forms, or the characters simply stayed in place and reacted to each other. Very artful and a nice break from some of the more action-y drama from the first few episodes of the season.
It's Glen. He's one of the characters who's been around since the beginning. He's had some legitimate character development over the years. So why don't I care about his death?
Maybe it's because this was an exhausting episode. Some of television is exhausting in a good way--conveying the sense that the viewer, like the character, has been through something--but this was a slog, full of heavy-handed dialogue and images about (yet again) what it takes to survive. And Glen is the latest casualty of this debate, leading the unexpectedly intriguing Nicholas into unexpected peril, and having it all become too much for this Alexandrian who is not as accustomed to having to earn survival the same way that Glen is. Glen's death is filmed and scored well enough, with images that are meant to convey the severity of what's happening, but which fell flat with me on an emotional level for some reason.
Again, maybe it's just because this episode was so blunt. Rick has gone off the deep end in terms of his self-assured cravenness again, and I'm sure we'll have some further tired exploration of that. Bitten husband guy is a walking symbol for Michonne learning to open herself up to human relationships again (probably with the survivor who cheesily eavesdrops on Rick's instructions). As always, the actress who plays Michonne gives a strong performance, but the material didn't give her much to work with. To boot, the scenes where they all escape from the hoard were not particularly well set up or explained, as I had a hard time figuring out what the various, jumbled plans are.
So by the time I got through the slog of all that and we reached Glen's death, it couldn't have the impact it should have because I was already numbed by all the on-the-nose dialogue and endless clunky meditations on what kind of person survives in this world. The Walking Dead is a show that has wild swings in quality, and after the high point of last week, this was an unfortunate nadir.
Two exciting episodes in a row! I almost didn't blink during it because I was so focused
I expected the Wolves to make an appearance in Alexandria, but I didn't think it would be so soon and quite that vicious. I was sure that a bunch of walkers had separated from the horde Rick and the others were leading away and found their way there. So imagine my surprise when that lady who was smoking just got hacked out of nowhere
AThe writers once again did a great job in one single episode making me change my mind again about a character... I mean, I was faithless regarding Rick in 5.15 and then in the season finale he actually made sense and I was back in the "Go Rick" band wagon. The same happened to Carol! I really liked that they showed her more human and actually feeling sorrow and a little bit of guilty about killing people... because I was already wishing her demise about her attitude of "let's just kill everybody" from season 5. Carol stole the whole episode, she was impressive, smart, strong and human.
I also think it was important to see Morgan going from "not killing anyone" to finally realize that it was necessary.... TBH he was annoying me when all hell was breaking loose and he was making angry faces about killing those guys, not to mention he did allow some of them to run away carrying a gun, so it's a no brainer that they'll come back and next time will be worst
I also like that they are slowly redeeming Gabriel? His apologies to Carl was good and I since they both interacted more at the church it felt right. I am hoping that he will learn some things with him. One that really needs to step up his game is Deanna's son... the guy was useless.
And I felt really sorry for Aaron when he found his backpack
I'm liking Jessie so far... I was afraid she would be a helpless damsel in distress and run to Rick's arms, so now that she is starting to fight I'm happy about her development.
Ohh another thing I want Eugene and Aaron's boyfriend (I forgot his name) to help out in the clinic with that new doctor
Carol's favorite game is Assassin's Creed
damn rick that was kinda hot. I MEAN GROSS. obviously...
Wth is wrong with everyone else! Why is everyone bitching about this season. Such a good episode. These characters are humans. They deserve rest and peace. Screw you guys!
Pretty decent episode. Emphasizes a lot on the drama so it may disappoint those who expect action, but still good nonetheless. We get the bonding between Daryl and Aaron, Sasha's stress, Rick and the barber Jesse, and that "W" letter hint again. And Carol! From an "invisible" lady to a threatening killer in an instant. That scene is priceless.
A number of things are still going on here. Still a decent episode.
I do not understand the poor ratings for this season are for.
I mean yeah, TWD is changing its approach to their audience a bit by adding more drama and less action then usual, but if you cannot adapt to the very slight change to the show, then I feel bad for you.
The premise of this was a bit too stupid for me - I could go into a lot of detail about it but I'll just say, these "scientists" failed to define what morality even means, which is kind of the basic beginning of any real scientific research. Sometimes they defined it as selfishness vs. altruism, but then they also had a question about eating human flesh which is more a basic instinct regarding diseases and cultural conditioning, and then the Stutzer guy also claimed they were aiming for world peace, completely disregarding the fact that the vast majority of wars are waged by people who think they are the good guys, fighting for the good of their own in-group - all of which might also demonstrate that it's ludicrous to imagine a completely culturally constructed and context-dependent concept like morality could be regulated by a single part of the brain, and that even if one might be able to make a violent ape docile, so to speak, that would also entail turning them into a completely different ape - which I guess was the point, but still. That a supposed real researcher would actually believe any of that is mind-boggling.
Of course it was way slower than the last two episodes, but personally I liked this episode much more than the last one because it was more realistic.
And come on, guys! By now everyone should know that slow episodes with a lot of talking follow after dramatic episodes where people died. It's been like that for a while.
Unlike the rest of the season, I found this the best episode in a loooong time. The major change in cinematography was very refreshing and to experience the death throught the eyes of Tyreese was interesting. It felt like an episode that was thought through well, instead of others which form by boring, chronological storytelling. Sad to see that a lot of people don't see the beauty in this sort of filmmaking and are easily bored when the series cut down on action scenes.
I was sadly spoiled mere minutes before Beth’s death while watching this episode. Dad came in and asked “isn’t this the episode where Beth dies?” …thanks dad! :skull:
Mannn you could see that ending coming a mile away...
On the talking dead Andrew Lincoln (rick) said Norman (Daryl) was supposed to hand him a wet cloth but that it was the driest thing he’s ever used and felt like sandpaper on his face
Now that's how you end a Season!!! "They're fucking with the wrong people!"
I guess this season was most character development and a buildup into the next season.
Bottom line, it was great
