Shout by Jonathan McReynolds
after seeing the entire first season, I can safely say this gotta be one of the most over hyped, overrated, generic, boring and if not for demon slayer I might have even called it the worst battle Shounen show of this decade, also it's fandom is dangerously steering at the same path MHA fandom took, and finally the female characters sucks contrary to what the fandom says, just because their not sexualized doesn't automatically make them great, you still need to give them an actual personality and goal.
Verdict: 4/10 great animation, boring characters and cliche as all heck story.
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@west-look I agree. JJK has the exact same problems every other battle shonen has. Mainly, too much goddamned exposition and over-explaining shit you already know, just heard, and just saw happen. I spent the whole season bored, had to force myself to get through it and it took me like five days to finish it.
@abtr Not just you. The episodes feel a little too long and the best part of the show besides the okay fight scenes is the vote, which is also just okay at best, since you already know what the outcome will be each time (of course everyone will vote to kill the criminal).
so everything was a continuation of the comic, game, film and at the same time a reboot
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@jarvis-9574097 Didn't Higurashi do something like this? I haven't seen the newer show yet so I'm not sure.
Review by filmboicole
Truly interesting premise and the execution is almost great. I really appreciate the deep dive into psychosis the series boasts, the subtle turnover from sane to "undone." It's a well written turn many other writers should see.
However, I take issue with the ending of this season. Cliffhangers are tricky. They have to be done just right. But what makes them particularly difficult with shows like this is they must balance not only the literal payoff, but also the emotional and metaphoric weight of the show. And here is where Undone lost me. Purdy and Bob-Waksberg spend the entire season carefully crafting the subtle and nuanced switch from believing in Alma's ability to seeing her on the verge of a break in desperate need of professional help. The emotional arc here is beautiful and satisfying. It shows how slowly, naturally, and easily illness approaches. How much easier it is to believe in the fantastic than the reality, because here it stems from an unwillingness to process trauma and pain. It's relatable. But it also boasts extremely good character arcs from the supporting characters, primarily Camilla and Becca--but not really because they change. The arc is in how Alma (and, in turn, the audience) perceive them. They shift from overbearing and borderline insufferable, to compassionate (even if they perhaps could learn to express it better). The writers have put an extremely careful eye to developing the arc and it works.
But then comes the cliffhanger ending: is Alma actually schizophrenic? Is her father going to walk out of the cave? The answer, of course, needs to be no. If he does, there are more issues that arise than are solved. I suppose none of these are so big that couldn't be wrapped up with another season's worth of content, but I'd argue that another season will actually diminish the impact of the one that already exists. It feels as though we could be heading to a retread of the same arcs we've already seen. It might not happen though. Purdy and Bob-Waksberg have proven their writing mettle over numerous years of excellence on Bojack. But it does make me nervous. Particularly considering that indulging Alma's illness could have problematic implications similar to those presented by Legion's depiction of mental illness.
But on a completely subjective level, I just felt like the writing had so brilliantly shifted to showcasing Alma's mental state as the series is titled. A cliffhanger undermines this for what, to me, feels like nothing more than a just kidding... unless?
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@filmboicole Perfect review, I completely agree! I loved how everything was coming Undone in the last episode, wish they committed to it. I really hope Season 2 is just as good...
I am super mixed on this series/season.
Episode 1? Fucking fantastic! It still is my favorite episode in the series. It's nothing but character build up, and I love it.
Episode 2 to 8? Good shit. The pacing is way too slow, and some cliffhangers are pretty shitty, but what this sets up and tries to execute is honestly good. I was ready for the finale.
Episode 9 to 12? Meh. Not a fan of a lot of stuff here.
The thing that pissed me off the most was the fact that they completely abandoned the conflict between Gwi-nam and Eun-ji. For me, they had the 2nd most interesting conflict in the story (after Na-yeon's internal conflict), and yet they decided to use Eun-ji to alert the military to the existence of hybrids in order to not end the show in episode 8, and just made Gwi-nam run after Cheong-san for god knows how many episodes. It gets tiresome after a while. Gwi-nam and Eun-ji both survived after being bitten by zombies, and yet they never clash again in order to resolve the conflict that was set-up in episode 1.Either way, weak 6/10. Na-yeon was my favorite character.
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@alexandredemi7 Great review! There's a lot of stuff they build up to yet never go through with. Na-yeon is definitely in my Top 3 favorite characters, along with Mi-jin and Nam-ra.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[8.8/10] When I think about why I watch Avatar-verse shows like AtLA and TLoK, it comes down to a few things in particular: compelling world-building, strong character stories, and mythos and humor to match the bigger arcs. But as much as I appreciate those elements of the show, it’s exciting every once in a while to have an episode that is basically one big third act action sequence.
The Legend of Korra does action well, and bringing in essentially the entire extended Team Avatar to fight this massive thing makes for thrilling set piece after thrilling set piece. What makes the episode work and not feel like an empty exercise in twenty-five story combat is the diversity of what we see.
There’s a progression in Team Avatar’s tactics. Meelo’s initial plan -- to effectively blind Kuvira in the Colossus using paint-filled water balloons and attempt to trip the mecha during her confusion -- is a good one. It creates neat images like the Colossus swatting at swarms of airbenders, and the tense, “so close” atmosphere when it stumbles but doesn’t fall.
Varrick’s follow-up plan, to knock the Colossus out using an EMP, is a solid one too, one that gives the show an excuse to devote a little more time to teasing the Varrick/Zhu Li pairing. Watching the regular-sized mechas falk like dominos is a cool image, and it gives our heroes a small victory to make the fight against Kuvira something more than just one defeat after another.
Even apart from the big plans, there’s loads of cool action beats, big and small, that give the battle character instead of being a spate of undifferentiated combat. Watching Bolin, Lin, and Suyin topple a building onto the Colossus feels so grand and impressive. Having Tenzin zoom in to same Jinora from a superweapon blast, only to have Ikki and Meelo save the two of them add a nice moment to clinch the family connection. And Korra summoning a torrent of water and freezing the Colossus in place grabs you as a show her might and power even against this seemingly impossible foe. “There’s just no way to beat this guy” is a cliché in superpowered show and films, but TLoK finds inventive ways to diversify the fight and keep in interesting and distinct from beginning to end.
Despite that onslaught of action, there’s lots of great character work going on in the episode too. The previously too annoying to live Wu gets a moment in the sun, using his dorky singing and the badger moles that he wanted at his coronation to create an escape route for the evacuees and take out some interfering Earth Empire soldiers. His arc has been one of the most pleasant surprises about this season, turning what seemed like a throwaway, weak comic relief character into one who grows but remains firmly himself.
We also see Varrick propose to Zhu Li. The subtext for all of this isn’t great, but as I’ve said before, I think of Varrick at TLoK’s answer to Tony Stark, which I suppose means eventually he has to make good with his version of Pepper Potts. It’s not the world’s most touching romance or anything (in truth I have a lot of problems with it) but Varrick’s proposal -- asking Zhu Li to “do the thing for the rest of our lives” still makes for a nice moment.
But that pales in comparison to the combination of character and action that comes from Hiroshi’s redemption story with Asami. His idea, to use the “hummingbird mechas” to cut a hole in the Colossus so that Team Avatar can get in and disable it from the inside, is a good one, and a nice evolution in strategy. It’s given added weight by making it part of Hiroshi trying to make good for his past transgressions. Sure, that too is a bit of a cliché, but him sticking it out in the hummingbird, ejecting his daughter and telling her he loves her before making the whole and (presumably) sacrificing himself in the effort is a strong moment that makes Asami’s chess game with her dad earlier in the season more than just a grace note to their story in Season 1.That’s what’s always set the Avatar-verse shows apart. They are great on action, and episodes like “Day of the Colossus” do a stellar job of creating a compelling obstacle for our heroes to overcome. But these series not only find interesting ways to differentiate that action -- showing progressions and different types of sequences -- but ground it in character hopes and histories that give the skirmish stakes beyond the threat to the series. “Day of the Colossus” is a mighty fine prelude to the series finale, and an epic confrontation that finds meaningful things for almost everyone on the team (save Mako) to do.
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@andrewbloom I'm curious about your problems with the Varrick and Zhu Li romance.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.6/10] Here’s the weird thing about this season for me. Despite the world-changing events going on, the mystical origin stories and threats of uber-spirits reigning for 10,000 years, the plotline in the season I’ve enjoyed the most has been about Tenzin and his family.
In fairness, that’s not crazy for me. I tend to like smaller, more personal stories as much as I like the one with major fireworks and battles to the death, but it seems odd when the universe is supposed to hang in the balance here, and I’m more invested in the Offspraang Gang trying to find Jinora than whether Korra will save the world.
Part of that is because the Tenzin/Kya/Bumi portion of the episode is just so good. It has a few things going for it out of the gate like return engagements from Iroh and Zhao(!) (the latter of whom is still ranting and raving after his adventures with Northern Water Tribe) which helps give the story a sense of place. It also allows us to explore more of the spirit world. The fog of lost souls is a neat concept, as is submitting to a spider creature to get there, and I prefer the spirit world to be this sort unpredictable unknowable place (with humorous talking mushrooms) than just an interdimensional battlefield.
It also gives us a great insight into Tenzin. Sure, Bumi fearing cannibals and Kya fearing being tied down are bit too on the nose, but I love the culmination of Tenzin’s arc here. So much of the sibling’s plot this season has been about reckoning with their father’s legacy and the different ways it marked them. Having Tenzin’s great fear be that he won’t live up to that legacy, that he’s failed to preserve what his father stood for and wanted for him is a deft choice in that regard, and I like the show’s answer too. Tenzin has to stop trying to be his father and start simply being himself. It’s trite, but relatable and understandable, and it works as a key to solving problems plotty and personal.
The other part of my preference for Tenzin & Co.’s story is that the rest of the episode feels so rote and easy. Don’t get me wrong, the show still knows how to do action and design like nobody’s business. Dark Avatar Unalaq has a crazy-looking design that gets by on coolness alone, Korra fighting a giant kite is actually much more exciting than I imagined, and she even gets her own badass Aang like moment, where it looks like she’s down for the count but then comes back with Avatar powers to kick ass, replete with the musical swell. Heck, she even does something really bright -- air-blasting Unalaq out of the spirit realm so that he can’t bond with Vaatu.
But I just can’t get over the easy escalation of this whole plot. The entire concept of the Dark Avatar feels like too much to me. The Avatarverse has always had stories about big bads, but having an almost purely villainous dude endeavor to replicate the mechanism that created the first Avatar to make an Anti-Avatar feels like a lazy way to make a universe-threatening antagonist with the standard “evil reflection of the protagonist” veneer. In a Star Wars prequel sort of way, it reduces the inscrutable magic behind the power of The Avatar to an admittedly difficult but all too understood process that can be replicated, and just gives us a snarling uber-bad guy for the trouble.
There’s some interesting things happening nonetheless. Eska and Desna freeing Mako and Bolin because of love is a bit too contrived for me (and it feels like they probably should have turned on their own by now), but each has something to do here and it largely works. And I’m admittedly curious about where the show is going to go after having Vaatu seemingly kill Rava and thus wipe out the previous line of Avatars. It would be a bold choice if they stick with it, though something about the previous “neither light nor dark can ever be permanently” defeated shtick suggests that they’ll find some means of wiping it all away.
I don’t know. There’s a lot of cool stuff in both parts of the story of this episode, but one of them is founded on something sound -- a man who is both son and father trying to reconcile himself as a child and as a parent, dramatized with neat expansions of the spirit world, and the other is founded on something disappointing -- the reduction of the Avatar to a magical recipe and the usual “I’m the dark version of you” bad guy that often happens when a franchise has run out of places to go. We’ll see whether TLoK can stick the landing and shut me up.
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@andrewbloom I completely agree with you. I see now what some TLoK detractors mean when they say this show (or at least, this season) ruined the Avatar(verse) mythos.
6.8/10. I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed. I realize there's a debate about whether or not this show counts as anime, but however you'd like to define it officially, it uses certain tropes and ideas prominent in that strain of art that I've always had trouble jibing with. So when the crux of this episode involves the bad guy capturing a fish whose death, it turns out, destroys the moon and takes away all the good guys' powers, it was just a bridge too far for me. Why is a magical fish too much for me when people being able to manipulate elements telekinetically or Aang jumping to the spirit world or flying bison are not? I wish I could say. It just comes off as a weird to me, and my suspension of disbelief is suddenly and reflexively finished.
It doesn't help that the result of Aang going to his Avatar State, the peak of all of his power, is just him turning into a big glowing blue water Pokemon. The show's fight scenes have been some of its stand out bits, but just seeing a transparent Aquagodzilla smashing ships didn't do much for me. We got scant few scenes of the promised siege, and the liquid dinosaur attack felt like a pale substitute.
That said, there was enough cool and interesting stuff to keep my attention, even if it didn't feel like as epic a finale to the first chapter of this story as I might have liked. The focus on balance, while heavy-handed throughout the episode, was enjoyable, as was the twist that Iroh in particular, who's been shown to have a connection to the spirit world, is the most steadfast defender of the moon fish and the spirit that inhabits it. Iroh's the MVP here, between standing up to Iroh, showing his fire abilities, and giving Zuko a warm sendoff while telling him that he thinks of Zuko as his own, he was the best thing in this one.
I say that, but the other really neat thing here was the art direction. The whole fish-snatching escapade may have landed with a thud for me, but the way the entire screen was tinted red when the moon fish was captured, and the way everything, sans the avatar and the pupils of the Princess's eyes, went grayscale when it was killed, showed a commitment to artistry and a visual shorthand for the consequences of Zhao's actions that elevated the episode even when the plot mechanics were a little ridiculous.
I did appreciate Aang's adventures in the spirit world. The face dealer was nicely creepy, and the effort for Aang to maintain his emotionaless detachment was an interesting conceit for the encounter. Despite my fish-skepticism, I do like the show's commitment to showing this spirit world that intersects with the real one, and which has an ecosystem and figures all its own lurking at the edges of the frame.
Still, so much of what happened here felt pretty convenient. We never get a hint of Zhao having this fish plan until this episode, and then it immediately comes into play. The Princess's sacrifice would have more weight if we didn't get an exposition dump about her connection to the moon spirit just five minutes earlier. Even the tag, with the Fire Lord sending Zuko's sister after him would seem cooler if this wasn't the only episode where we've had any idea he even has a sister. I liked Zuko's monologue, blunt though it was, about him comparing himself to her, noting that he had to fight for everything, but that it had made him strong. Zuko started out as a one-note villain and has slowly become one of the most multi-dimensional and tragic figures in the series.
But overall, this felt less like the culmination of a great journey and more like a weird anti-climax, with a deus ex machina device introduced at the last minute, and other hastily deposited plot points having less impact than they should, even apart from the fish thing or the disappointing nature of Aang's water-beast. It's nice to see Katara become a master (it feels quick, but whatever), and to see the emotional toll of all of this on Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, and even the head of the Northern Tribe, but on the whole, this finale wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped.
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@andrewbloom As always, you've managed to capture exactly how I feel in your review. I felt apathetic most of the episode. Everything was just very underwhelming and boring for me. I hope Book 2 is much better, I really want this show to live up to the hype.
As dark as what Walter did was, she deserved it. She was completely full of herself and blackmailed Walter for the money. Not to mention she was basically making Jesse's decisions for him. While she may have truly loved him, she would've definitely used that money to continue being an addict. That's most likely the very reason she even wanted the money. I'm not going to feel sympathy now that she's dead.
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@problematisierer I completely agree. The only thing Jane (and Jesse) deserves is a successful rehab.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.7/10] I like how simple this one is. It’s a very intimate, internal hour for The Walking Dead, the kind of episode we haven’t gotten in the longest time. There’s no major threat here. We get some minor zombie attacks just to ensure the show still hits its quota of the undead for the week. But for the most part, this episode is about smaller problems that Carol and Daryl face, that reveal deeper things about their psychology, a tack I almost always enjoy.
There’s an intimacy to it. The episode doesn’t quite reach these heights, but it reminds me of “Fly” from Breaking Bad with that balance. Carol’s challenges are simple: make soup and find a rat. So are Daryl’s: find a screwdriver and fix his bike. But the realities of the zombie apocalypse mean those tasks are not just more difficult than they ought to be; they’re harrowing and even maddening.
They also reveal something about the inner workings of these two stalwart characters’ minds, dramatizing the difficulties each is experiencing without the other to lean on, the way both have absorbed the pain of their fight earlier in the season, in ways they’re not likely to vocalize. THat’s another thing I like about “Diverged.” It’s a dialogue-light episode, one that lets the characters actions and the actors’ non-verbal performances carry the day. The writing on TWD is hit or miss, so taking a step back like that, giving us a more tactile, “show don’t tell” episode like this one is a breath of fresh air.
I like the themes and symbolism in this one. Things are hard in Walking Dead-land right now, and yet the refrain is “We’ll get through it, we always do” in a way that is well-intentioned but also glosses over how much hardship Carol and Daryl have absorbed over the years. It just assumes they can go through anything and be fine, because they always have, without thinking about the toll its taken on them.
That’s why I like Jerry here, someone who recognizes that for all her stiff upper lip, Carol is in a bad spot right now and wants to give her support. She wants to solve problems because it’s all she knows how to do, especially when she’s worried her best friend might have recognized that she’s broken. Jerry sees through the facade and gives her the solace and friendship she needs to help weather it. The fact that the rat she’s been chasing scurries off after Jerry’s expression of empathy lays it on a little too thick (hello, fans of The Departed!), but it’s a nice sentiment.
We see Carol and Daryl using similar expressions (“Take that, asshole”), applying similar approaches, and hitting similar walls and frustrations in their efforts to keep things humming after the absence of the other. There’s still a lot of raw feelings there, but I like the implication that they don’t work well without the other, that as much as they’re inclined to be lone wolves and take care of themselves, they still rely on one another to an extent, as we can see in the way each rests a little easier when the other’s around, and how even simple problems can drive them to exhaustion when the other’s gone.
Overall, it’s one of the more intimate and experimental episodes of TWD we’ve had in some time, and I admire the big swing “Diverged” takes. I can see how it’ll be controversial in the fandom -- there’s minimal zombie-killing and no major plot movement. But it’s the kind of small-scale, character development-focused episode that I can really appreciate.
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@andrewbloom Too bad this episode is hated, you nail exactly what I like about it.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[5.9/10] I like Princess as a character, and I have since she showed up. I’m intrigued by the advent of this stormtrooper group, especially the hints we get about who they are and what they’re protecting. And I think Paola Lazara gives a good performance here, especially considering she is the anchor of the episode and the character necessarily comes with a lot of tics.
But good god, I am so so so so so tired of the “It was all in the character’s head” twist. It became played out at least a decade ago, and unless someone has a genuinely new spin on it, I wish storytellers would just retire it, because it’s lost all cultural currency and impact. It drains “Splinter” of any emotional impact, since the hoops the show has to jump through to make the situation work just leave a ton of interactions feeling awkward or speech-y.
The best I can say is that maybe the show wants the audience to know early, considering we never see Yumiko, and I started having my suspicions there. It’s a little bit better if the show isn’t trying to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes. But it doesn’t play that way. It plays like it’s supposed to be a dramatic reveal, for both Princess and the viewer, and it made me roll my eyes hard rather than give the “whoa!” reaction the show seemed to be going for.
At the same time, the delivery and execution of Princess’s backstory felt pretty rote. There’s power in the idea of someone with a history of parental abuse, anxiety coping mechanisms, and trouble feeling secure in friendships and found families because of it. But “Splinter” only plays the loudest, most obvious tropes in that regard, and it does a disservice to both the character and the idea.
The theme is also pretty trite here -- the usual “You can trust people, don’t give into despair, there’s good folks out there worth fighting for” which we’ve done dozens of times and dozens of ways on The Walking Dead. Hell, we’ve even done it in the form of hallucinations before. There’s not much new to it, which isn’t this episode’s fault, but makes the central message feel just as tired as the Durden-esque twist is.
That said, I’m still intrigued as to what the deal with the stormtroopers is, and I still think there’s a lot of potential in Princess as a character, so hopefully this is just a temporary bump in the road and the show realizes the potential of both going forward.
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@andrewbloom It's funny cause the twist was used (better) in Episode 3 of this same season.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[8.5/10] My favorite stretch of The Walking Dead is the Terminus arc, if only because the show stopped trying to do these overarching plot that it’s so-so at, and basically fell back into doing individualized short stories, giving its characters and performers space to breathe. It’s too season to tell, but part 2 of season 10 seems to be following the same tack, and it’s paying dividends.
In “Find Me”, that takes the form of a frame story where Daryl and Carol go on a hunt together, and a flashback story set in the unseen interregnum between Rick’s disappearance and the present day, where Daryl found an amiable concordance with a fellow Loner named Leah.
I like both parts of the episode. There’s a nice contrast between Carol/Daryl at the beginning of the episode versus the two of them at the end. They’re the two longest-serving cast members at this point, and it shows. There’s such an easy rapport, a lived-in back and forth between them as they make their way through the wilderness on Daryl’s bike and rib one another through the process. You can feel the shorthand and rapport that the two have developed over the years, a mutual understanding and deep friendship that’s persisted through all of this hell they’ve been through.
But at the same time, understanding a person also means understanding how to hurt them. Being vulnerable with someone also means opening up yourself to pain. So when Daryl projects his hurt and challenges Carol on the losses that are her fault, on her need to follow what’s right, and Carol returns fire on the topic of Daryl’s hero/martyr complex, it hurts just as much for the audience. What the two say to one another isn’t wrong exactly, but it’s uncharitable, it’s harsh, in a way that shows you how much these two people are smarting and, sadly, taking it out on one another with no one else to blame for the scars that have accumulated over the years.
At the same time, there’s a meta quality to their conversations and much of the dialogue in the episode. Carol seems self-aware when she wonders aloud if their luck has run out. Carol and Daryl and their coterie have enjoyed a certain amount of plot armor, and story-necessity protection for their communities given the needs of the show. And yet, we seem to be entering a new stage, post-Whisperers, with a new showrunner fully asserting herself and more wounds being opened in even the most hard-won relationships on the show. News of a spin-off featuring some characters dampens the lengths to which this could go, but it’s an interesting idea to play around with.
I also like the flashbacks we get to Daryl’s relationship with Leah. It’s a nice way to fill the gap from the show’s time jump, and I like the notion of Daryl having a tense but also solace-filled relationship with someone. Their interactions are a little traditional and expected for this sort of thing, but the chemistry is there, and the friendship is endearing. Plus, it’s an origin story for Dog, which I didn’t know I needed! I like the two of them together, finding comfort in the fact that they’ve both suffered losses, and the question of “Where do you belong?” to Daryl, challenging his hero complex, add weight to the romantic elements of the plot. The midpoint monologue from Leah is a bit much, and I just know she’s going to show up with the Reapers or something, but as a standalone piece, I still love these little glimpses of what Daryl was up to in the intervening years.
It’s also worth noting that this was a particularly gorgeous episode of the show. The autumnal setting, the beating rain, the summery glow when Daryl and Leah are enjoying life together, the framing of Daryl and Carol on opposites sides of the river, all made for some stunning images in this one. The score was excellent as always, lifting these moments without being too obtrusive. This was a slower, more aesthetic episode in a lot of ways, and I appreciate the show taking some big artistic swings, here.
Overall, this was another big winner for the new season. I’m not naive enough to expect it to continue at this level of quality, but it’s welcome to get the show as the earthy, character drama in the ashes of the world, the one we were promised all those years ago, from time to time.
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@andrewbloom I've read all of your Walking Dead reviews up to now, so I knew you'd like this episode! I also knew that everyone else on here would be bitching about it lol.
Shout by Lineage
From everything I see people say about this show and how it's essentially one of the greatest shows, I expected that to be the case for every episode, every season, in the sense that it's one of the greatest shows in every single episode and season. While I found this season good and enjoyable, it didn't give me the impression of this show being as great as everyone says. I still believe that this show is much, much better, from the second season onward to the end. I'm just not feeling that "Breaking Bad is one of the greatest shows of all time, if not the greatest" vibe, yet. From this season alone, anyhow. I have no doubt it gets better.
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@legendaryfang56 I completely agree. It's good, but I'm still not getting that feeling I get when I watch something really good, like when I watched seasons 1-3 of Attack on Titan or the first 2 seasons of Walking Dead. I plan on watching Game of Thrones after this, and I'm afraid of it being similarly underwhelming. I hope Breaking Bad gets even better in Season 2.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP98.3/10. 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.
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@andrewbloom Your reviews are underrated and it's a blast reading them after finishing an episode.
damn rick that was kinda hot. I MEAN GROSS. obviously...
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@gemmat77 :face_with_raised_eyebrow::camera_with_flash::camera_with_flash::camera_with_flash::camera_with_flash::camera_with_flash:
This was the best episode yet. I love Jane.
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@ljanew Funny how Jane loves Jane.
Shout by Sunny Senpai
Andrea died for nothing, her role is a waste. She saw everything what the governor did and still couldn't do anything about it
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@sunny_senpai Yes. At least she tried.
"He needs blood. We gotta operate now." SAY WHAT???????? Getting scratched by a zombie infects you, but being freaking gutted by one doesn't???? Are you people stupid or what? This is just as stupid as that time when they found that gross zombie rotting in the well and they didn't shoot it right away because, according to them, the water might not actually be contaminated yet and shooting it would contaminate it????
I like this show but these people can be so stupid sometimes..
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@nimnz Come on, it was obvious Rick was panicking and not thinking straight when he said that. I agree with you about the well scene, though. Don't know why they wasted their time and risked Glenn's life. T-Dog even pointed out the stupidity of it all at the end haha.
