[6.5/10] You are never going to fully get away from “Is it right to kill?” when you’re telling a zombie apocalypse story. Part of the inherent trappings of the genre is forcing people to make life and death decisions outside the normal day-to-day. That’s part of what makes undead movies and T.V. shows both thrilling and thought-provoking, putting the viewer in the shoes of the characters and letting them wonder whether they would be saints or slayers in such a state of nature.
But my god, The Walking Dead has been exploring these issues for seven-going-on-eight seasons at this point, and while it hasn’t dug into every possible permutation of them, it’s come close. There’s some benefit to putting new characters into those situations, to have them vacillate between Heaven and Hell and try to figure out what the right way to life in these harsh environs is. But you can only lean into this sort of “that’s not who we are” back-and-forth for so long on a television show before it starts to become rote, no matter how relevant it may be.
“The Damned” tries to make up for how many times it pushes that well-worn button by turning most of the episode into an endless cavalcade of military assaults, firefights, and action. Director Rosemary Rodriguez and editor Evan Schrodek do a nice job of making the images on the screen visually compelling even if the episode’s dialogue and thematic material is lacking.
The episode balances five major escapades all centered around the same multi-pronged attack by the coalition of the Alexandrians, the Hilltoppers, and the Kingdom. It features Aaron leading a frontal assault against one Savior compound. It has Rick and Daryl sneaking in the back of the same compound in search of guns. It has Carol and Ezekiel hunting down one of Negan’s lieutenants who use a grenade to escape their initial attack and threatens to warn the others of what’s coming. It has Jesus and Tara executing a raid on the same communications building where our heroes first encountered a collection of Saviors, and it has Morgan stalking his way through the same building, running support.
That’s a lot for one episode to juggle, and while it feels overstuffed in terms of storylines at times, it never feels out of sync visually. Schrodek does well at jumping from one setting to another to create a sense of continuity with these sequences. And Rodriguez captures the organized chaos of these attacks happening all at once, whether in the form of the bullet-trading from Aaron (whose boyfriend is potentially a casualty), to the cold and methodical killings from Morgan, to the quieter but ultimately more raw encounter between Rick and an enemy. Given the repetitive notes the episode continues to hit, some of these events feel empty in purpose, but they’re always compelling when conveying the heart-pumping, fraught qualities of these skirmishes.
The problem is that the skirmishes lead to more of the usual dilemmas that our heroes have confronted time and time again to diminishing results. The most obvious of these happens when Tara and Jesus, mid-invasion, come across a Savior with his hands up and his pants wet, having locked himself in a closet. Tara and Jesus argue about what to do with him, with the former arguing that he could be a threat and wanting to take him out and the latter buying his sob story and wanting to spare him given his unarmed, hands-up state. I’m sure there’s some intended social commentary there, particularly that last part, but it’s trite for the show at this point, and it doesn’t help when the Savior uses the duo’s indecision to take Jesus’s gun and hold him hostage.
Naturally, the situation works out for Jesus and Tara, and Jesus ties the guy up rather than kill him after their escape, but not before plenty more back and forths about what separates their group from Negan’s and whether they should violate their principles to end this now. It’s the same debate we’ve seen a million times, with nothing new to add, beyond the idea that there’s some sort of little-mentioned disagreement between Rick and Maggie on this issue that will decide what happens when Jesus and Tara try this on a larger scale with a collection of Savior hostages from the compound.
The episode also dips into the same sort of material with Rick’s hunt for guns in a different Savior compound. He gets into a knock-down-drag-out brawl with a Savior on the top floor, chokes him out, and them improbably impales him on a nearby wall protrusion. This is pretty standard combat and mayhem for The Walking Dead at this point, but the twist comes when Rick takes a key off the guy and uses it to walk into a locked room where he expects to find a cache of guns. Instead, he finds a sleeping baby.
In fairness, Andrew Lincoln does a great job of selling the moment, with the sort of disbelief and denial that Rick, a father to his own little girl, would have to this sight, that could pierce through his determined demeanor and make him realize the horror of taking another parent away from their child. But something about the moment feels unearned for the show, like a cheap trick to remind us that the Saviors, craven as they are, are still human beings, rather than something that’s developed from story or character as with Dwight or other characters we’ve gotten glimpses of in The Sanctuary.
Rick being held at gunpoint by someone he met back in Atlanta, now aligned with The Saviors, has some promise for a “how far we’ve come” reflection, but even that ends on another cheesy cliffhanger and bit of schmuck bait for the show. As I’ve said before, I’m not very interested in the battle for Rick’s soul anymore, and this tack to bring more humanity into his pragmatism does little to change that.
“The Damned” also plays the same game with Morgan to a certain extent. He is still in something of a fog and a rage after what happened with his surrogate son last season, and has turned into a cold killing machine. As much as his story hits the same beats that we’ve been over with umpteen characters at this point, it’s still compelling because Lennie James is a good enough actor to carry it. Like Rick, he’s been with the show from the beginning, but unlike Rick, we haven’t seen enough of him to have watched him go through this transformation and untransformation and retransformation several times over, so there’s still some juice left in the idea.
That said, the show can’t help depositing in on-the-nose flashbacks to signify what Morgan is feeling when the situation as depicted and James’s performance tells the audience all it needs to know. He, like Rick, nearly kills someone he knows from before because of the fog of war and his discombobulated mindset, until he’s stopped via the same moral thought experiment Jesus and Tara are engaging in. Exploring Morgan experiencing his trauma anew after things went wrong last season is a worth goal, but delivering it in these terms is a misstep.
Even the one storyline in the episode that doesn’t play to the same “we are not them” business is a repeat. Ezekiel boasts to his charges about their undoubted success in their mission, while Carol offers skeptical glances and reserved but perturbed questions. The thrust of this plot is Ezekiel dropping his act to Carol for a minute and admitting that he’s trying to pump his people up, encourage them loudly and publicly even if he has his own doubts so that they don’t visualize failure. We played this game already when they first met, and putting it in a combat setting doesn’t change much, despite some nice work from Melissa McBride and Khary Payton.
I can tell you as a committed Simpsons fan that if any show goes on long enough, it’s inevitably going to start repeating itself. You can only come up with so many novel situations, so many new reactions, before you start remixing old ideas. But this isn’t just a familiar beat reemerging in an unfamiliar form. It’s the same, essential zombie apocalypse question being asked and answered over and over and over again. It’s natural, maybe even necessary, to wonder what the ethical line is in the face of a ruthless, mortal threat, but this is the hundredth mortal threat the survivors of The Walking Dead have faced, and until the show finds new ways to explore that idea, it’s just going to feel like old hat, no matter who’s questioning whom and whether to kill this week.
[6.5/10] Some day, The Walking Dead will end. Sure, theoretically, given the premise, the powers that be could cycle through cast members like Saturday Night Live and go on into eternity, but the practical reality is that the series is likely closer to its end than its beginning at this point.
But it’s hard to imagine what that looks like exactly. One of the creators’ of the comic the show is based on has famously declared that the story could go on forever, with no clear ending in mind. The Robot Chicken special poking fun at the show envisions a “Walker Museum” devoted to the struggle of Rick & Co. (with a nice historical “game of telephone” sense to it). Still, there’s no clear place for the story to close off, no clear way to bring things to series-long catharsis.
“Mercy” dares to dream of what the future, the belabored “tomorrow”, looks like. It gives us a gray-bearded Rick, cane in hand, walking through a loving home with Michonne, Carl, and Judith. There’s a gauzy hue over these images, one that, contrasted with a red-eyed Rick standing much more starkly in interspersed scenes, suggests this may be as much a fantasy as a vision of things to come.
It’s a nice vision though, one where there’s a big festival to plan and everyone seems safe and content enough to have a humdrum, everyday life filled with silenced alarm clocks and Weird Al songs. There’s still gold to be mined from The Walking Dead franchise, which suggests that, despite slipping ratings, the show isn’t likely to depart the airwaves anytime soon. And yet, the season premiere for Season 8 sets up this clash with Negan as “the last fight” before things settle down and Rick has the chance to live out the old man life we see glimpses of.
The meat of “Mercy,” however, is our heroes preparing for that strike, and then bringing the fight to The Saviors’ doorstep. As is most often the case with The Walking Dead, those preparation scenes work best when they’re not laden with the show’s clunky, grandiose dialogue. The forces of Alexandria under Rick, The Hilltop under Maggie, and The Kingdom under Ezekiel, have finally united and are ready to strike back and Negan and his brutes. But before that can happen, Rick has to give his best approximation of a halftime speech, lolling out the usual platitudes about what they’re fighting for and why in the familiar, halting tones of his average motivational speaking appearances.
But the episode fares better when it devotes itself to showing the preparation rather than holding the audience’s hand through the theme of this mission and episode. Watching the current coalition of the willing exert their will on unsuspecting Savior lookouts as locales get crossed off Rick’s handwritten list is a thrilling little sequence. As a viewer, it’s hard not to value competence in our heroes, and seeing how they’re good at what they do, even if what they’re doing isn’t exactly good, can’t help but rouse some cheer.
It all builds to a standoff between Rick’s coalition and The Saviors at the sanctuary, made all the more tense by teasingly-placed act breaks. The season-by-season pacing of The Walking Dead has always been a little odd, with season premieres needing something big but rarely feeling like the beginning of the story, and season finales feeling similarly interstitial. “Mercy” is no exception. This face-to-face confrontation between Rick and Negan both feels like the culmination of the theatrics that took place over last season, but also just a middle portion of a larger story, partly meant to kick off the events of this season, and partly meant to just give us something with scenery-chewing and explosions to grab the jaded audience’s attentions after another year.
But it’s a good stand-off. Rick is all business and grunts and ultimatums. He rolls up in cars decked out in aluminum siding, brandishing and weapon and setting out a mobile layer of defense for him and his cohort. He calls out the Savior lieutenants we’re familiar with (plus Eugene!) and gives them one chance to surrender, before it’s showtime.
Naturally, Negan responds with his usual joie de vivre, taunting Rick about the size of his reproductive organs, issuing his own leering threats, and generally continuing to be the embodiment of toxic masculinity wrapped in a jaunty scarf. It’s a clash of personalities with enough tension to hold the moment, even if you just know things are going to erupt in gunfire sooner or later.
And they do. But it’s not another pointless firefight even if Rick and company do more immediate damage to Negan’s window repair fund than they do any of their actual adversaries. It’s part of a deliberate plan from the good guys, which involves the team assembled in front of the Saviors’ hideout sending through an exploding RV to breach The Sanctuary’s forward defenses, and then having the all-star crew of Carol, Daryl, Morgan, and Tara lure a massive horde of walkers right onto their doorstep. It’s a clever plan for once (even if it feels like Rick could have clipped Negan plenty of times while they were jawing at one another) which sews chaos directly in The Saviors’ home base. And it brings in the necessary quotient of action and excitement.
Eventually, those explosions give way to more heavy-handed underlining of the theme of the episode -- “it’s not about you.” The Walking Dead has never been anything but full-throated about what it’s trying to say, but it’s at least a laudable tack to take as the show seems to be contemplating its endgame here. As much as the fight in “Mercy” is framed as a one-on-one confrontation with Rick and Negan as figureheads, there’s at least lip service to the idea that this is a broader struggle, one between those who believe the world needs to get bigger and more inclusive, and those who believe they have the right to carve it up for themselves.
It leads to our heroes considering the next generation, and how the better world they’re hoping to make, will become theirs. It comes in the form of Michonne trying to nudge Carl to take responsibility. It comes with Rick at least nominally passing the torch to Maggie. It comes in broader notions that Rick and Morgan and Carol are stewards in the midst of an interregnum, ready to settle the last scores so that the world can return to something approaching normalcy and the next batch of leaders and doers can emerge, hopefully less stained and scarred from the harsh transition.
There’s hope for that here, not just in Rick’s bleary-eyed fantasy. It comes from Carl scoping out a decaying gas station in search of fuel, and finding another young man, asking for some of the titular mercy, or at least a bit of food. Before Carl can react, can fully decide what he wants to do about the situation, Rick shoots his gun in the air and scares the kid off, full of the (legitimate) paranoia about who could be working for Negan. Carl, however, still has enough altruism to return to that same spot with a couple of cans of nourishment and a note of apology.
Maybe that’s where The Walking Dead ends when it’s time to close up shop. Too many folks have been too battered by the state of the world as it stands. Rick, Carol, and Morgan have each tried to give up this life, to end their part in its cycle. There is work to be done, and each of them is stone-faced and resolute through most of it. But there might be a light at the tunnel, one where the zombie disease isn’t cured, and there’s still threats that lurk on the horizon, but where the vision Rick so clunkily outlines to his troops takes hold, where people come together and work together to forge something deeper than working for points and deciding who owns and who owes.
It’s a vision that’s going to have to be lived out by Maggie and Carl and the rest of the young folks who have a chance to see it through. Maybe the best end for The Walking Dead, is just one where the world doesn’t need Rick Grimes anymore.
That ending scene with Dwight was amazing too. Dwight has become one of my favourite characters and I don't want him to be a goner. "Get on your knees". It literally gave me the chills. I really found this delivery really hot. For a sec there I thought he was about to ask him the three questions. But no one wants to be Negan more than Rick. Moreover, the symbolism was perfect. Rick subduing Dwight the same way Negan suppressed him in the premiere and similar to the way Gareth was put down.
This episode really emphasized Negan's persuasion. I love to see him interact with strong survivors like Daryl and Sasha, whom he can't break easily. Trying to turn an enemy into playing his own game and towards his own goals shows how methodic he is and how scary intelligent it is.
One thing that bugged me during the episode were Maggie's bits. I know she's British but her accent was off this episode. It kinda didn't feel right at all. I'm not from Georgia so I can't judge properly,but it sounded a little bit off. Btw, loved her line "He hasn't killed one before. He's learning". I'm sure the people at the Hilltop will remember that. So Gregory certainly considered killing Maggie despite not having ever killed any walker? That guy's brain is pudding.
All Out War. And next episode looks absolutely insane. Can't believe it's almost over. One episode to go and the war is coming. I'm sad Sasha's gonna get Holly'ed. I honestly need to see Negan and Jadis together and he flips out the moment she speaks.
[8.9/10] One of the questions The Walking Dead has been interrogating from the beginning of its run is whether the end of the world changes people, or just reveals what we truly are. Most notably with Shane, the show has played around with the idea that the end of civilization, the lack of rules and orders to keep people in line, forces some to be different, turning them into changed people. But for others, it just gives license for them to be who they were the whole time.
The centrality of that question to “Hostiles and Calamities” is part of the subtle way in which The Walking Dead pays tribute to its network-mate Breaking Bad in the episode. Fans of Vince Gilligan’s seminal drama know the significance of a character hanging onto a cigarette with a loved one’s lipstick on it. We’re quite familiar with the notion of a former science teacher finding himself enjoying the spoils and status of his talents when recognized, producing poisons, puffing himself up, and taking to his new role a little too easily. Most of all, Breaking Bad watchers know the exploration of whether changed circumstances change a person or simply let the beast out of the cage.
But despite those similarities, Eugene is not Walter White, and Dwight is not Jesse Pinkman. The key epiphany for Eugene in “Hostiles and Calamities” is that he is a follower, a coward, someone who knows what will keep him safe, and accepts the path of least resistance in that regard despite the people who will be misled, hurt, or even killed in the process. If there were only a handful of qualities that defined Walter White, it was his need for control, his need for recognition, and his blithe self-denial about his own motivations. By contrast, Eugene knows exactly who he is and the reasons, however shameful, that he does what he does -- kowtow to whoever has the courage and boldness to be in control.
So when he finds himself enmeshed in Negan’s machine, he is both afraid and in awe. The episode plays on the expectation that Eugene will be broken the same way that Daryl was, starved and isolated into compliance. But The Saviors are smarter than that, and quickly see that someone as weak-willed as Eugene is more likely to be moved by carrot than by stick. He exults when he sees a refrigerator of food just for him. He is taken aback by the living space he realizes is to be his own. When he hears “Easy Street,” it’s not the sign of his torturers arriving, but the symbol of the creature comforts he will get to enjoy for the first time since the world fell.
And, like Walt, he changes. Initially Eugene is tentative and tries to be moral. He is reluctant to take anything made by Negan’s workers rather than scavenged. When Negan rewards him for a walker-smelting idea with a visit from a few of his “wives,” Eugene treats them with respect, resisting their attempts at physical interaction because he knows they’re not there of their own volition. While his motives may be a bit mixed, he’s only willing to make a poison pill for humanitarian reasons.
But slowly but surely he settles into his new surroundings. Rather than waiting in line for the tools he need, he turns on that Savior entitlement, dressing down the point-keeper and taking what he wants (including a stuffed animal that, true to form, he gives a silly name). He begins to enjoy those creature comforts, indulge the attentions of those “wives” and give in to the privileged position in which he’s been placed. He is familiar, but seems different than the Eugene we’ve gotten to know over the past few years.
Dwight is the inverse of Eugene here. While we’ve known Eugene as a kind-hearted, if misguided individual, slowly being tempted by what The Saviors have to offer, we’ve known Dwight as a bad guy, one who seems to buy into the cruelty of his position, only now getting wisps of the idea that he wasn’t always this way, and that he’s having his doubts and reservations.
In that way, maybe that lipstick-ringed cigarette is a hint that there is some of Jesse Pinkman in him. Perhaps Dwight had, and has, a moral compass, one that gives him pause about the deaths that have come at his hands. He too may be under the thumb of a tyrant, one who manipulates him, uses the woman he loves against him, and makes him a party to things he wants no part of, but eventually make stains on his soul that aren’t so easy to wash off.
The thrust of his storyline suggests that he was not always this way, and he is starting to remember that. The chief reminder is his wife, Sherry, who it turns out was the one who freed Daryl. It’s an obvious device, and a bit overly sentimental, but her letter to him, read in voiceover, underscores that this life is something Dwight didn’t want, that it was a last resort he and Sherry paid dearly for. The glimpse we had of him in his first interactions with Daryl don’t paint a pretty picture, but there’s the notion that under different circumstances, Dwight might have been a decent person, and with Sherry’s memory burning within him, he might be one again.
But Daryl also awakened something in him. When Dwight goes out in search of Sherry, he’s wearing Daryl’s vest, carrying Daryl’s crossbow, riding a motorcycle. As the shot where he’s reflected in a pool of Fat Joey’s blood suggests, he is a dark mirror of Daryl here. Dwight may have been a burnout going nowhere like Daryl was, one with the misfortune of ending up attached to someone more like Merle than like Rick in the end.
Daryl represents something for him -- the idea that it doesn’t have to be this way. So much of Negan’s philosophy, his method of molding people to his will, is by convincing them that there are only two choices: you either submit or you die. That’s the lesson of the (frankly kind of ridiculous) moment where he throws the doctor into the furnace. But Dwight threw that doctor to the wolves, ostensibly not just to cast suspicion away from himself, but because of the doctor’s embrace of that philosophy, of his statement that Sherry was too “tender-hearted” to last. Dwight is beginning to have doubts about who he is, about who he’s become, in the embrace of The Saviors, and once more, he seems on the precipice of resisting and standing up as Daryl did.
Eugene, however, has the opposite reaction to these events. Witnessing the doctor being so brutally (if ridiculously) disposed of is not a moment of pause for him to contemplate what he’s become and what he’s a part of; it’s a confirmation that he fears that result, that he, unlike Daryl, can be cowed. He sniffs out the assassination plot of the wives who told him those poison pills were for assisted suicide and shuts them down, acknowledging that he is too afraid, too comfortable, too meant for this to do anything but accept his face and the rule of the man who dictates it. Despite Eugene’s typical florid and boastful proclamations that he was self-sufficient to Abraham, he has always been someone incapable of looking after himself, lying and doing what was necessary to attach himself to those who could protect him, whether it’s Abraham, Rick, or Negan.
Dwight seems to be in a state of uncertainty, but Eugene is clear-eyed. He tells his captor without hectoring or pressure that he is Negan, that he was Negan before he even met the acid-tongued head of this operation, and deep down he knew it. He has no illusions when he puts on that black jacket, surveys the enactment of his plans, and bites down on the gherkin that represents his acceptance of the take what you want ethos of The Saviors. Dwight, like Jesse, is in limbo, unsure whether he can go on with all he’s done or whether it requires something more of him to restore the balance. But Eugene, like Walt, is discovering that his new circumstances have not forced him to become someone else, but instead exposed him for what he truly is, however unpleasant, self-serving, and lacking in moral will that person that may be.
[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.
"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.
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.
That was interesting but not the ending I was looking for. I would have liked more hero vs hero action. It was a strange game played between Madelyn and Homelander. We needed more Black Noir. and less Fishman.
I think Alan Tudyk joker voice is a great successor to Mark Hamill. His voice totally fit the villains persona. I dig all the villain in this series loved the English accent of Scarecrow, and the attitude of bane. And Poison Ivy being hot as always while at the same time chill AF like Kite Man.
Loved this episode.
"In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good."
"I never would have given you to them. Not for anything. Don't cry. You're perfect."
This episode has some incredible quotes.
The finale wasn't great and had a lot of developments that feel more needed by plot instead of actually earned, including a full on Deus Ex Machina not dying anymore fake out. I guess they wrote themselves into a corner or two.
Still way better than Sabrina ever was.
I don't get why people didn't like Fred Armisen as Fester. What were they expecting? His portrayal reminded me of the 60s show Fester by the way he talked and he added his own comedic criminal macabre twist; giving us something new and still holds to how Fester is. Fred was awesome as Fester.
It finally clicked why it feels very familiar - it's feels like Veronica Mars in a supernatural setting, the parallels are actually quite striking once you notice them.
Teenage girl with rather dark view on humanity is very resourcefully trying to solve a mystery, and is somehow better at it than everyone else. In the process she regularly uses the few friends she has to achieve her goals, sometimes getting them hurt in one way or another, and has no problem suspecting at least one of them of horrible things. Somehow she always ends up close by or in the middle of things going down.
"Come on, don't you like a day that's all about you?"
"Every day is all about me, this one just comes with cake and a bad song."
Catherine Zeta-Jones is amazing and still looks good. I don’t know why anyone complained about the casting of her and Gomez. They’re both great actors and they play the characters well.
why isnt this listed as S2 here on trakt
It's the manga ending fleshed out a bit, plus two-ish additional scene right at the end and some adjustments. I doesn't change the ending (aside from Armin's admission), it just highlights it more. People will be discussing this again, just like after the manga ended. Let's see where this is going.
I, for once, found the last two episodes powerful. It's as far as I'm concerned a logical conclusion. Or at least I have no idea where the story could have realistically gone otherwise. Would I have liked it to end another way? Yes, definitely! But in the end I respect a conclusive ending more than a magically appearing good feeling ending.
I'm autistic. Attack on Titan has been my hyperfixation more often than any other piece of media in my life. I started watching a little late, entering in when the first part of the final season was out. But Attack on Titan is one of the most masterful, well-plotted, intricate pieces of fiction that I've ever seen. Analyzing it's mysteries and story, it's characters and world, it's message and symbolism. Nothing even comes close to Attack on Titan for me in that regard.
I unfortunately have been spoiled on many parts of the ending, because manga readers are the most insufferable people ever. But even still, it is an excellent conclusion, and I think it's so interesting how it decides to leave it's ending open to interpretation. It reflects how the entire series has been a series of questions and mysteries, so leaving with some questions left unanswered allows for discussion to be continued long after Eren's story is over.
I will forever love Attack on Titan, and the absolute joy it gave me for years, and it will be sad to see this legendary series go. But all good things must come to an end, and I think this ending is satisfying enough for something so special.
If it weren't for MAPPA at helm I would have dropped this like three times already... At least the show doesn't take it's fake drama serious either. An upcoming tournament arc and one-note upperclassmen getting introduced doesn't really get me any more excited really.
so everything was a continuation of the comic, game, film and at the same time a reboot
Kimiko and the dildo fight.......................
Me: Kumiko murdering a bunch of thugs with dildos is gonna be the wildest thing in this episode
Levitating Guinea Pig right before burrowing in some dude's face: Hold my beer
please let Kimiko the beloved be okay
Season 1 was 10/10 gross and sick and fun. Season 2 cranked it up to 11/10. This episode just turned up knob beyond that...at least twice.
are you even an ally if you don't drop an episode at the beginning of pride month where an uncensored naked dude enters the dickhole of his lover? are you?¿?
‘But it is not about me. I can’t lash out like some raging, entitled maniac. That’s a white man’s luxury’ - Stan Edgar -
"Don't be a pussy, lazer my fucking tits"
- Stormfront, 2020
Melisandre: What do we say to the God of good episodes? Writers: Not today!
I feel like the writers are trying to insult people's intelligence this season.
Writer of the episode said that, and I quote ''Dany kind of forgot about Euron's fleet, but they haven't forgotten about her..'' She forgot. Everyone mentions the fleet 3 scenes before they show up and she was in that scene.
Not only did Dany suddenly suffer from concussion and forgot about them, she also couldn't see the entire fleet while flying high in the air. But tbf, they were hiding behind little rocks so she could not see them. Then Rhaegal gets hit 3 times in 3 tries, but when Dany goes straight at Euron (and does nothing) every arrow misses Drogon, of course. But then they destroy Dany's ships in a single minute, no misses there again, I'm afraid.
There were more bad things in this episode, like how no one else noticed Bronn (with big crossbow) in Winterfell, how no one asked for Arya's and Bran's help against Cersei, how Sam didn't ask Jon why he didn't help him in the last episode when he was lying on the ground, why Cersei didn't just kill everyone in that last scene, etc.. but the thing I hated the most was when characters were about to finally learn about Aegon Targaryen and then the show would just cut away from those scenes. We have time for those drinking games and romantic soap opera parts of the episode, but we cut away from Sansa's, Tyrion's and Arya's reaction about AT. Nice writing and directing.
The only scene that I liked and that reminded me of old GOT (S1-S4) was Tyrion and Varys conversation.. until Varys said that he'll betray Dany. Writers are probably going to kill him in the next episode because of that. In earlier seasons that character would never say his real thoughts, he would lie to Tyrion and then quietly spread info about Jon's true identity everywhere.
This is just.. sad.
