Is this episode written by 16 years old?
This episode wanted to be Seven Samurai but ended up as that terrible The Walking Dead episode where everyone gets slaughtered (they're not though in Mandalorian, since this is a Disney series).
There is no development and no build up at all in this episode. Like the previous episode, everything is self-contained. All are introduced and resolved in this same episode. A lot of things happened in this episode but nothing actually contributes to the plot - except for exposition dump.
The bandit raid is a terribly weak, villain of the week setup. They just show up as some evil nuisances - no motives, no goals at all. The Mando teams up with an ex-rebel, which debunks a tired cliche, but at this point this feels like a try-hard attempt to make The Mando as a morally righteous hero. There is a half-assed attempts at romance here, but it feels forced as it happens so sudden. Despite being self-contained (or maybe because it is) the episode lacks closure by the end, and the nifty little scene regarding one stray bounty hunter seems like something that appears just because they still have several episodes to go.
The dialogues are terrible: it's a tonne of exposition dumps. I don't have any idea why the writers think it makes sense for the characters to suddenly ask a stranger, "when was your last time you open your helmet?" and, in return, open up a heart-to-heart "hey I got a tragic story" past to a stranger. The banters with Gina Carano's character is okay, but it feels like they have to slip backstory every now and then. As if they're not having a real, human conversation. Every dialogue feels so forced and hurried as if they have to make it fit into this episode.
Also, it seems like they have no idea what an AT-ST is. It's a vehicle, not a droid.
This actually is an overall decent finale. The tense in Camina's fleet is good. The Rocinante battle is good. Naomi's rescue is good. The reveal on the end was also good. However there's one reason that makes the episode feels like a jumble of choppily edited scenes: everything involving Alex's death.
I don't take issue with it being sudden and abrupt, as many deaths are. But everyone feels really disconnected from that one incident that should have affected at least all the main casts. Alex just died, but Holden and Naomi spent their time to listen to Naomi's supposed farewell (and spent minutes on it). Amos was more eager to bring Peaches instead of mourning his close friend; even worse he was only informed about Alex's death off screen. For a fellow Martian and somebody who has spent quite a time with Alex, Bobbie seems largely unaffected at all. And Alex, well... The only tribute they gave to this incident is a plaque, which makes for some emotional moment, but that's it. Heck, that part where Holden talked to Naomi to rekindle the events almost feels like Holden breaking the fourth wall to explain to viewers due to how abrupt it is handled.
It almost feels like the event is not supposed to happen, and the showrunners edited in last minutes.
This season has been nothing but a Naomi season that leads to a reunion of Rocinante crew. That incident stuck like a sore thumb, making the supposedly joyful event with all crews gathering feels really emotionally detached. Not to mention that, barring the reveal at the end, most events still happen off screen. Just like most things that happened this season. We don't get to see the impact of something big happening.
So despite being an overall decent episode, this finale closes the relatively most mediocre season The Expanse has produced. I'd even say that the quality is even lower than Season 4. The first four episodes were nice, but it went downhill and stagnated really fast.
The beginning of the episode left me wishing we could've seen more of this side of Star Wars: regular stormtroopers doing their job, getting into action, and all the unseen dynamics rarely mentioned in the mainstream film trilogies. We did have something in that vein: Republic Commando explored the lives of elite Republic clone troopers; Jedi Academy had us follow the lives of youngling under tutelage of Luke's academy; the original Battlefront showed us the transitioning of a republic to an empire through the eyes of the soldiers.
It's the lives of the mundane, the less than extraordinary, yet still gripping and intriguing. They let us dive deeper to the world of Star Wars beyond the flashy buzzing of lightsabers and spectacles of the magical force.
The Mandalorian wished it could be one of those. Unfortunately, it failed terribly.
In episode 5, @ShrimpBoatSteve has said that the series has became too predictable, and I agree - the finale shows how predictable the whole season is. https://trakt.tv/comments/264475
After the long flashback which most parts we've already seen in previous episodes - seemingly making the scenes feels almost like a filler - The Mandalorian episode 8 seems reluctant to set their foot to the ground with its notable world-building as previously seen in Eps 7 and Eps 1 to 3. As I have previously said, after everyone gangs on The Mando (Eps 7), Baby Yoda/Little One's background (who Baby Yoda is, why is he wanted, what the Imperial remnants wanted to do with him, etc) remains unresolved. As the episode shows us Moff Gideon rising with a darksaber in hand, yet another reference moment: every substance the show can possibly offer will be dealt only in Season 2 (or, worse, more).
Stormtroopers in Star Wars have been infamous for their terribly inaccurate shots, but in this episode it feels like their incompetency is amplified to the point of parody and, of course, plot armors. Scout troopers - which is supposed to be snipers - can't shoot droid right in front of their eyes. Instead of coming in squads, troopers only come individually (incinerators burning the building, a few troopers slaughtered by the blacksmith, a few others guarding the tunnel, and the most stupid of all, Moff Gideon waiting for nightfall just for no reason) which makes for a convenient plot armors for our heroes to trek on their way.
Of course, there are casualties - what is a story without something seemingly at a stake? - but it is nothing more than devices to delay the heroes from their trek. Taking cues from Eowyn's "I am no man" of Lord of the Rings fame, in less than moment-defining fashion IG-11, which himself came as a sort of droid ex machina, said that it is no "living being" while resurrecting The Mando from fatal injuries, remedied every possible threat with its healing devices.
Antagonists can be dumb, but there is a limit to dumbness that can suspend audience's disbelief. This episode has antagonist almost feels like they are intentionally dumb and there is nothing really at a stake when everything can be easily remedied.
This episode is not the worst, certainly, as the action sequence is flashy and satisfying. The one near ending where The Mando utilizes a neat jet jump is clever and actually can show the extent Star Wars can be when the director wanted to think creatively beyond the force. Knights of the Old Republic and the aptly named Star Wars Bounty Hunter played with clever tricks similar to this once a while, and the trick doesn't feel cheap as they stand on a very good storytelling.
The Mandalorian's flashy action, regardless, seems to serve only as explicit fanservice - a style over substance.
There are plenty of action, which, by itself, is quite well-done. The consistently hardly imposing threats, unfortunately, dull down the possible thrill those scenes can offer - in a typical corny action heroes such as Gerard Butler's character in Has Fallen trilogy. The scene, for example, with The Blacksmith let us peek into the martial arts capability a Mandalorian can exhibit. But the rather plot armor of incompetent stormtroopers leave no stake at hand; the martial arts dexterity looks more like a cheap imitation of main trilogies of Jedi's acrobatic feats.
Redemption ultimately ends with nothing to be redeemed about, as the people in this show seems to be forever clumsy. From start to finish, everyone made questionable decisions. Nobody blasted the Mando's group with that large amount of stormtroopers. Nobody checked whether Moff Gideon is dead when the fighter was down (Gideon also miraculously survive the crash), with Carga, a supposedly veteran bounty hunter, lightheartedly saying they are already free of the Empire's grasp.
Everything people said in this episode, just like many episodes prior, are not crafted as if the actors were having human conversation. They were rushed by time - they seemingly appear to be set in motion by the plot's demands, to say X so Y happens; to say A when B moment happened.
This episode almost feels like a filler to conclude the dragging episodes this season has been. Screenwriting-wise, this whole season is nothing but bait-and-switch to justify next season(s).
There is much to be said about this kind of terrible business model, where series is written with nothing exactly in mind but to find reasons to continue producing the franchise - the same business model Disney has been using on their MCU franchise and Star Wars films/spinoffs - but the crowds of gladly willing moms awing for Baby Yoda and nerd dads geeking over Star Wars reference doesn't leave enough rooms for those commentaries.
Another good episode, but I must admit that I was kinda disappointed by it as a season finale. It ended well, but the episode felt a bit off. It felt as though every single character just had a sudden change of heart, as though we had missed an entire episode of development. Obviously we knew certain characters were headed a certain way, but they just seemed to suddenly jump from say 60% of the way that they progressed through the last 7 episodes, to 100% just in this one. It felt kinda weird how Homelander just suddenly showed up and got Ryan too - it came out of nowhere. It was still a good episode, but I thought it felt a bit rushed.
Also kinda disappointed that we're kinda just back where we started at the beginning of the season, with no real way to take down Homelander. I was expecting Soldier Boy to take Homelander's powers and then we'd get to see a new side to Homelander next season since he'd be weak and dealing with having no powers. Instead, it seems we're going to get a lot of focus on Ryan and Homelander together - which I do like. I had also thought that maybe all of The Boys would end up with powers by the end of the season, but that didn't happen either (not that that's a bad thing).
Anyway, I thought this was a good episode, but an ever so slightly disappointing end to a fantastic season of TV. Can't wait for season 4.
Weird season finale. After all the build up, everything feels anticlimactic. Right down from A-Train--the reason all this mess started--to Homelander.
Before we get to that, let's talk a bit about how weird the whole prison sequences play out. The joke, the attempted rescue, the shootout, all feel really weak especially compared to well-directed sequences in prior episodes. First of all there is really no need for some jocular banter that went for about two minutes or more. Not to mention the pauses. It feels dragging. This includes the attempted rescue which continues the joke.
Second, the shootout looks really weird. We've seen Frenchie did his weird stuff when it comes to the Female/Kimiko, but this doesn't seem logical. He is a professional killer, why the hell he keeps on showing up his head to look at Kimiko when getting shot at? Is he looking to die? Not to mention he got shot prior, on the stomach, how the hell he can walk and help Kimiko walk that easily? Hughie getting to shoot randomly while saying "I'm sorry! I'm sorry" and miraculously hit trained soldiers is even worse. Even the Starlight rescue looks like a cheap deus ex machina for the plot to goes forward.
The Boys had been attempting to mock the quip-ridden superhero genre--that is, the Marvel Cinematic Universe--but the whole prison sequences makes The Boys looks exactly like an MCU episode.
Now we get to the supes.
The Deep. His subplot has been standing on its for quite a while now. There seems to be no direct connection with the bigger plot that has been going on. And this episode his subplot stays that way, while still giving him enough screen time to focus on his emotion. I'm not sure if that is something we wanted to see for a finale. It feels like something to be saved for future seasons. Even if that doesn't mean it's bad, they could have cut it way shorter than what they did.
Then the thing with A-Train feels very anticlimactic. He just popped up there out of nowhere. We were previously shown his desire, his post-power syndrome, his attempt to be relevant. Then in the supposedly final showdown, we finally see Hughie vs A-Train head on. But we don't see A-Train. We see an injured A-Train, a traumatic supe in his mental and physical breakdown. Now this still could be an interesting, emotional confrontation between our protagonist with the one who murdered his sweetheart. Not to mention, the presence of Starlight could make this dynamic interesting--is Hughie done for, how would he cope between his past and present emotion? What we get instead, however, is a slow motion capture with very minuscule combat and almost none of emotional engagement. Then A-Train just went, just like that.
I feel like they are saving him for future episodes, but this being the finale--the culmination of all emotion that has been built up so far--makes this confrontation very lacking. It feels like we are still on Eps 5 or 6, but with worse pacing.
Now Homelander. He is our another main driver of the plot. Everything that has happened so far always leads us back to him. His dynamics with Madelyn the CEO has been a bizarre Oedipus complex-like situation, What happened between them in this episode is actually very unexpected, though one may sense that it would eventually came to this point through the clues scattered so far. This result should have provided a surprising reveal. However, as it turns out, there seems to be something hollow in the encounter. Given the interesting portrayal of their faux-mother-son-sexual-relationship in the first half of the episode, the second half seems to speed up the climax. As if they were being chased by some deadline, that they have to cut it short, while at the same time giving enough spaces for Homelander to give his, in Maeve's words in previous episodes, "boring speeches."
It feels climactic and inconclusive at the same time. And I guess the same can be said with many encounters in this episode. Starlight with Meave. Billy with the CIA. Hughie with Starlight at the church. It feels like they have to speed it up--to shove in the dialogues--for the sake of putting the plot forward. It's shaky and unreliable.
Now, the end of the episode leads us to a quite intriguing reveal. It's not the direction we--or at least, I--expected to take in the season. However, with such really weak build up throughout the episode, the ending feels like forced. As if they have prepared them to be this way, but still unsure how they would bring it up to this moment. As such, while the scene itself is (should be?) surprising, there is not much surprise when I watch the event unfolds. It's less of a "wow, so this is it?" than a "oh okay, so this happens, and then?"
Credits where it's due: Anthony Starr as Homelander and Karl Urban as Billy Butcher display terrific performances in this episode. Especially Homelander with his extremely erratic, unpredictable behavior. But that alone is not enough to pardon the sloppiness of this episode.
Perhaps because they, like MCU and other superhero movies, seem to busy themselves to prepare for the upcoming season instead of trying to give audience a closure of the plot. And that exact reason is what makes superhero movies went boring for these past years. They are focusing to build an universe, instead of writing a good narrative. Unfortunately, this episode robs the fresh air that The Boys has breathe for quite some time. While I hope for the continuation of the series, I am less excited.
[6.0/10] I’ll often forgive the text of a television show if it gets the texture right. I tend to be more interested in what an episode means than potential plot inconsistencies. Storytelling on the screen is a magic trick, and that means I’m willing to tolerate a fair amount of sleight of hand. That’s exacerbated by fan approaches to stories that seem too left-brained or inclined toward puzzle-solving for my tastes, where rather than taking a work as they find it, viewers go on the hunt for plot holes and inconsistencies as opposed to considering what the film or show made them think or feel.
But that only goes so far. And even, if you’re like me, and can forgive details like most folks in the show not looking unimaginably filthy or constantly complaining about the smell in the ashes of civilization, it matters much more why characters are the way they are and act the way they act. What purpose does a scene serve in the story? What is the motivation behind a particular character’s action? And if the only answer a show can give is “because the plot, or the pre-finale table-setting exercise requires it,” then you’re in trouble.
That’s the sense I’m left with at the end of “Worth,” an episode that basically only exists to fill time and set a few things up the end of the season. Why do Daryl and Rosita capture Eugene, lose him when he runs like five feet ahead of them, and then miss him in a dirt pile? Because the show reminds you that he exists, but can’t pull the trigger on major events ahead of the grand finale, and so the plot requires it.
Why does Aaron starve himself in the woods to persuade the Oceansiders rather than realizing at some point that he should head back and regroup? If you’re being generous, you could say that he either has little to live for after the death of his partner and so is more willing to lay down his life for the greater good. But the truth seems closer to some combination of his survival man routine needing to underline the “anything to survive” theme the episode dabbles in, and because, you know, the plot requires it.
And how and why is Negan able to play thirteen-dimensional chess with everyone in his orbit, being able to play Simon, Dwight, and Gregory off one-another, knowing precisely when certain meetings will happen (while hiding behind a dumpster or something), being certain when and how his sabotaged “fake ass” plans will get to Rick & Co., and deciding who’ll lead the Saviors based on a fistfight with his second-in-command after being in a car crash and kidnapping? Say it with me now -- because the plot requires it.
If you strain, you can come up with mildly passable reasons for all of these things. Maybe the combination of projectile zombies and vomiting gave “save my neck at all costs” Eugene just enough grease to slip away. Maybe Aaron talked to Tara and realizes that a feat of endurance is the only way to get the Oceansiders’ sympathy. Maybe Negan really is both smart and cocky enough to play his lieutenants off one another perfectly and trust his rule to the fortunes of his own two fists.
But none of it feels natural. None of it feels believably motivated. And none of it feels like it could plausibly exist in a world where a T.V. show wasn’t moving the deck chairs around before a long-teased battle between the show’s good guys and bad guys.
Worse yet, when the show does try to convey those sorts of motivations, it’s in the most clunky, ham-handed fashion possible. Father Gabriel literally announces his emotions and impulses, basically guiding the audience through his internal conflict. Seth Gilliam is a talented enough actor that you can still feel the emotion of the scene, but the lines he’s given are downright atrocious.
The same goes for Ross Marquand as Aaron. Marquand gives a hell of a physical performance in the best scene of the episode, where Aaron, barely subsisting in the woods near Oceanside, is beset by walkers in the rain. Marquand communicates the sense of raw exhaustion in Aaron; his joy at the prospect of fresh rainwater; his desperation when fumbling for his knife, his peril when being attack by the soggy zombies who threaten him when he’s sapped of all but last reserves of his strength.
But then, when the Oceansiders come across him, he gives the lamest, least-inspiring halftime speech to try to convince them to join the fight. It’s another in the long line of Walking Dead quotes that feel like they’re stolen from eighth grade fan fiction, which Marquand delivers with all the conviction one can muster for such banalities, which turn out over the top. But what do you know, the show implies that it works to persuade the Oceansiders to take up the cause. Because it has to. Because the show is now less concerned with making sense than shepherding everyone to where they need to be on the board before the endgame comes.
The one element of the episode that does manage to feel well-motivated, that manages to feel like both payoff and prelude, are its bookends, which feature Rick and Negan hearing Carl’s last words to each of them.
Rick seems, if not changed, then at least encouraged by reading his son’s pleas. Maybe it’s just the use of those cinematic tricks -- the swell of the gentle music, the images of Michonne and Judith in the background, the idyllic light that pours over everything as Carl’s words spill out in voice over. (And kudos to Chandler Riggs, who may have become a solid actor right when the show decided to kill him off.) But whatever it is, The Walking Dead succeeds here where it fails everywhere else in the episode in generating an emotional moment with real meaning for where the story goes next.
And it’s contrasted with Negan’s reaction to Carl’s similar plea for peace, for a bigger world and a better tomorrow, to him. It’s admittedly a little convenient that Michonne’s able to get the message to him, but it’s forgivable. When Negan hear’s Carl’s words, he’s just had to kill one of his top lieutenants for a coup attempt with his (almost) bare hands, and realized another’s turned on him. He’s too far gone, too unyielding, to take Carl’s words to heart.
And that sets up the inevitably clash between Rick and his allies vs. Negan and the Saviors better than all the backbiting power plays and vomitous escapes and symbolic stands in the forest ever could. There is a fundamental difference between the two men at the center of this conflict. The show has tried to blur those lines, the show how Rick can be just as stubborn, brutal, or cruel, and how there is, at the very least, an imagined greater good that Negan believes himself to be serving.
But here it draws the fundamental differences between them, how Rick can still be moved, still be pulled back from the brink by someone he loved, and Negan is in too deep to ever remove his iron from the fire. The two embody the episode’s opposing themes of people who will do whatever it takes to survive, and people who believe there’s bigger, more important things, that transcend an individual life and may even be worth dying for.
That’s motivation. That’s storytelling. That’s the stuff that gives weight and meaning to the swords slicing through zombies and bullets going through bad guys. The Walking Dead can pull it off when it wants to, but too often, in episodes likes “Worth”, defaults to spinning its wheels in contrived situations that only exist because the story demands they do, and yet manage to weaken that story given how inessential and forced those developments seem.
6.4/10. I enjoyed the season premiere of The Walking Dead better than most. I understand the complaints that it was too bleak, too cruel, and too hopeless, but to my mind, it made sense to establish Negan as a threat and as a character. There have been so many ineffectual bad guys on this show, so many antagonists who seemed like mere speed bumps along the way toward Rick & Co. getting the big win. It makes sense to me that TWD needed to make a big introduction to convince the audience that Negan and The Saviors were something different and something serious.
I also didn’t mind the hopelessness of it. Sure, it’s difficult to see the good guys broken, to see characters we know and love brutalized, to see the bad guys seem to take great joy in the process. But shows like The Walking Dead need stakes. In order for the heroes’ inevitable triumph to feel earned and meaningful, you need to make the villain not only someone whose loss doesn’t seem preordained, but who’s worth beating. The suffering at this point of the arc will, with any luck, pay off down the line when the good guys strike their blow against Negan and his goons.
The problem is that the premiere, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be,” already felt like a lot. It was a lot of blood and guts, a lot of horrible acts, and a lot of Negan preening and chewing scenery. It works as an opening salvo for the character and as the culmination of the build to Negan that had been bubbling up since the midpoint of Season 6, but it’s a lot to take in. The audience can only stand so much of that level of cruelty and velvet-lined venom before it starts to overwhelm.
Which means that an episode that basically acted as a sequel to the premiere, that gave us buckets and buckets of Negan’s routine, that skimped on the violence but doubled down on the lack of hope idea, comes off as rubbing the viewer’s noses in all of this. Making “Service” a super-sized episode to boot, one that packs in an extra twenty minutes or so worth of the same sneering bad guy stuff, the same hammered home message about Alexandria’s weak position, worsens the problem.
It’s especially rough for the character of Negan himself. I’ve enjoyed Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s performance as the season’s new big bad. It’s a difficult character to find the balance of. By definition, he has to be outsized, someone so grandiose and convinced of his own smoothness, but also someone who feels like a predator and not just a clown. Morgan pulls that off. He has Negan’s shit-eating grin down pat. He lays into his lines with a joy and a casual cruelty that lets you know he thinks of himself as the cock of the walk and the coolest guy in the room.
But again, too much of that begins to wear. The Walking Dead has had outsized characters before -- The Governor probably comes closest to Negan’s theatrical bent -- but so far Negan has really only played that one note. He gives you the sort of gleeful menace, the man who toys with his prey and thinks himself a just and noble ruler. That works well enough in small doses, but pile it on like TWD does in “Service” and you start to see the seams. It begins to feel as though the show is spinning its wheels, repeating itself as Negan simply reestablishes the things previously established memorably in previous episodes.
It also doesn’t help that “Service” has absolutely plodding pacing. Not every Walking Dead episode needs to be eventful of full of fast-paced action, but despite some effort at conflict on the margins, most of this episode is just a big walk around Alexandria for The Saviors. Seeing the effect that Negan has on the rest of the camp, the way the last bits of resistance are meant to be stamped out, is a valid and arguably necessary tack to take in the aftermath of the events of the season premiere, but there’s not enough there, or at least not enough of what we’ve seen, to fill an episode all on its own, let alone one with an extended runtime.
Those conflicts feel fairly tepid. The missing guns provides fodder for Rick to give one of his trademark speeches, albeit one about knuckling under rather than fighting back. This episode is full of reminders, constant conversations, and loud declarations, that “this is our lives now,” that things are different and can’t go back to the way they were. So when Rick finds Spencer’s guns and turns them over to Negan in exchange for Olivia’s life, it’s anticlimactic, feeling like there was never really much of a risk, but that the whole issue was drummed up, forced conflict to give a reason for that speech and to accentuate the mostly forgotten wedge between Rick and Spencer.
“Service” plants the seeds for that growing rift, with Spencer still resentful of Rick after the death of his parents, and laying the Saviors’ new order at his feet. It’s an issue that’s bound to come up at an inconvenient time, quite possibly with Spencer trying to make his own deal with Negan and ending up meeting a grisly end for the trouble after Negan decides to stick with Rick for his greater earning potential. But in the brief time we’ve known him, Spencer’s never been a particularly interesting character, which makes it hard to be too invested in that storyline or its implications.
The same can largely be said for Rosita, though she’s gotten a bit more characterization and adventure over the past couple of seasons. She is part of a different strain running through this episode, of people who are poised and ready to resist The Saviors, even if they don’t quite have the tools or the plan to do so just yet. Her task to retrieve Daryl’s bike (and attempt to find a gun from one of Dwight’s deceased running buddies) mostly serves as yet another opportunity for people to debate whether The Saviors can be stopped or whether the denizens of Alexandria should simply accept that this is how things are now. We’re given plenty of plausible justifications -- that The Saviors have greater numbers, more weapons, and a ruthlessness that makes them a threat to everyone and everything -- but the endless back and forth over it (probably meant to answer the “why don’t they just mount a resistance now?” question from the audience) isn’t particularly compelling.
It also bleeds into an uncomfortable air of rape among The Saviors. We see it in the disgusting way that Negan talks about Maggie (who, in one of the cannier narrative choices, has been whisked away elsewhere before Rick tells Negan she passed away). We see it in Dwight’s uncomfortable treatment of Rosita, and we see it in the particularly unsettling way that one of Negan’s henchmen tries to get Enid to repeat the word please.
I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, as uncomfortable as these moments are, we’re talking about the bad guys here. We’re not supposed to like them, and so deplorable behavior is more excusable. What’s more, rape is about power, and the overtones to Negan’s behavior underscores the way in which he is, despite his violent and sexual appetites, clearly interested in the power of his acts, the way it allows him to act unfettered and unchallenged, than any inherent pleasure he gets from them. On the other hand, in the henchmen especially, it feels like a cheap way to make them seem more villainous, a shorthand in lieu of something better earned or more thematic. It all depends on where the show takes this particular thread in the rest of the season.
The same goes for the episode’s closing scenes. Michonne is exactly the type who, as her experience with The Governor portends, will not sit idly by while someone like this prances around and tries to keep her people under his thumb. But Rick’s speech, while not enough to convince her, at least ties the “we have to do what Negan says” sledgehammer of a point into something emotional and steeped in the history of the series.
The parallels are loose, but when Rick confesses that he knows Judith belongs to Shane, there’s power in it because it’s one of those few plot threads from the beginning of the show that haven’t been tied off yet. And the thematic resonance of it, that sometimes we have to accept hard truths, things that tear us up, in order to do what we need to do to protect the people we care about, is solid. Negan’s actions make Rick’s knuckles tighten up on Lucille when Negan’s back is turned, but his desire to keep the Alexandrians safe loosens his grip, allows him to make all these compromises and admission in the hopes that they’ll stay alive and healthy even under such harsh conditions.
That’s a fine way to dramatize the yoke under which Rick and Michonne and their band of survivors are living, the choices they must make every day. It’s just too much of Negan’s scenery-chewing, self-aggrandizing flotsam to where that resolution feels like too little too late.
It’s important to establish your villains. It’s important to make them notable characters in their own right, and to show them besting the heroes, posing a genuine threat, so that the eventual victory doesn’t feel hollow. But when you spend so much time with this bastard, so much time reinforcing how terrible he is and how little hope there is, those remaining moments when you try to show that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel, a reason behind the capitulation, it feels like a mere tiny bit of salve after forty minutes with your hand in the fire. Strong villains are good, but make them monolithic and give entire, overly long episodes over to their villainy, and the audience will be as apt to give up as Rick is.
One of the best parts of Carol's storylines on The Walking Dead is that they've largely been underplayed. Melissa McBride is such a talented actress that the show can dispense with its often lumpy dialogue and simply let her convey the meaning in the moment, whether it's a sullen look after the events of "JSS" or the harsh tone in her voice when she tells Rick that Maggie shouldn't be out on the raid. This season in particular, The Walking Dead had done a good job at letting the idea of Carol feeling the weight of her actions and gradually pivoting away from the ruthless persona of strength she'd taken on bubble under the surface, thereby making the scenes where those themes are a little more prominent stand out as earned and effective.
But "The Same Boat" basically turns that subtlety on its ear. It's a bleak bottle episode, that spends most of its time keeping Carol in a single room and trotting out an odd version of "This Is Your Life!" There's Maggie as a symbol of uncorrupted innocence and incipient motherhood there to let Carol fight to protect something in another person that she herself has lost. There's the colorful Molly, who offers Carol a view of her possible future, a dead woman walking who's not afraid to do what need doing. There's Donnie, a nearly textbook abusive boyfriend who's mostly a prop to draw out another parallel for Carol. That parallel is Paula, who is both a dark reflection of what Carol has become--a woman who lost her children, dealt with abuse, and resolved to kill when necessary without compunction or hesitation--and a living caution of what Carol is afraid that Maggie could become.
These are all interesting character comparisons in particular, but given that all of these people have to be introduced and die in the same episode, the audience necessarily gets thumbnail sketches of everyone rather than meaningful shades of character development to make them feel like real people rather than narrative devices to elucidate Carol's internal conflict. The episode does a good job in giving Carol's captors texture--Molly in particular is someone I'm sad to see go given how distinct and magnetic she was with little weight to carry here--but their characterization is thin, and that inevitably leads to the feeling that "The Same Boat" is more of a contrived allegory than a story with emotional truth.
That's especially true for Paula, a well-acted, poorly-written character who seems to have little use besides acting as the obvious living wakeup call for Carol she's meant to reflect and turning subtext into brutally on-the-nose text. When she blasts Carol for being weak, when she spits Carol's philosophy back at her in a clumsy fashion, when vocalizes that Carol sees Maggie as the way she used to be, it's all unnecessary emotional exposition about themes the show had already communicated in much subtler ways. I actually liked the idea of Paula as an antagonist because the performance is good, and there's a harsh pragmatism to her that makes her an interesting comparison point to Rick as much as she is to Carol. But when she launches into that monologue it becomes clear that she's only here to be a ponderous, poorly-sketched out doppleganger for Carol, with nothing under her skin but cheesy dialogue and didactic speeches.
Melissa McBride does what she can to save all of this. Her performance does a very nice job of showing Carol's simultaneous cunning and her pain. She's obfuscating timidness to disarm her captors, the same way she used that persona to keep the Alexandrians off guard. But McBride does a great job of selling the moments where Carol's real concerns, her genuine conflicted feelings about the choices she's made, bleed through. More than that, the episode shows her using those real feelings to further the lie, a tactic composed of equal parts canniness and pathos.
There's a bit of Morgan's philosophy that's wormed its way into Carol's thinking, whether she likes or it hates the way it makes her shoot an intruder in the arm rather than in the chest, or hesitate when a single bullet could practically end the whole struggle. Carol become this hardened warrior so that she could protect the innocent, so that what happened with Sofia wouldn't happen again. It's why what rouses her from her mild pacifist streak is Paula's swipe at Maggie's stomach. But as bluntly as the concept is hammered home in "The Same Boat", Carol has been wounded in that process, and when she looks at the deaths she's been responsible for, at the harshness she's perpetrated in the same of doing what's necessary, she doesn't necessarily like the person she sees, and begins to not only question that path, but to slowly feel more and more of the hurt of it all.
I'm hardly a Carol-Daryl shipper, but there's has always been a special friendship on the show, and one of the most pleasant moments in a dark episode was his immediately comforting her after she and Maggie kill the last couple of Saviors. Maybe he can help her find a bit of peace.
But that brutality doesn't stop at Carol. "The Same Boat" also suggests that it's infected the whole group, or at least the ones who embark on the raid of the saviors. Again, it's not subtle. Michelle, who seems intended as an alternate version of Maggie much as Paula is a dark mirror of Carol, outright says, "you're not the good guys." But at the same time, I like the idea of the show broadening its perspective a bit. We literally see the events at the Saviors' compound from Paula's eyes, and it's not necessarily a pretty picture.
The Walking Dead has been toying with this idea since beginning the Hilltop/Negan storyline, and it's fruitful territory. It's cold and nearly heartless when Rick takes out Primo without his enemy barely getting a sentence out before there's a bullet in his brain. To this end, the best scene in the episode is the first, that shows a group no less capable than Rick's looking on with horror but determination at what our heroes have accomplished. But it peters out quickly when the episode tries to draw a moral equivalency while making the Saviors we see too thinly-drawn to feel truly sympathetic.
But as I often say about The Walking Dead, there's the germ of a good idea there. I appreciate the concept of Carol as an agent of change, of someone who's lived by the philosophy of doing whatever must be done, no matter the cost, it protect yourself and your own, who's disillusioned by where that's led her and having serious qualms about the group as whole adopting that view. This episode was a weak attempt to draw out that internal conflict in Carol, but hopefully the way it tied that idea to the larger theme of whether our heroes are really worth rooting for or if, instead, they've become something different, something cruel out there in jungle, will lead to better and brighter things.
This is certainly not The Boys' strongest season finale. The plots feel awkwardly resolved and the key plot points they've been developing just ended up as nothing. It feels really underwhelming. Of course there are some positive notes about this finale as well but bear with me, let's go through three most crucial problems for me.
First, Black Noir. What a disappointment. They've been building up Black Noir for at least four out of eight episodes in this season. They even showed him as a person, a real individual with emotion and vivid imagination this season after the previous two he had only been a mute killing machine. And he went down just like that. Sure the conversation between him and Homelander was tense - but that was it. Unfortunately, Black Noir's imaginative flashback, as I've suspected in the previous episodes, serve as nothing more than plot device to move the story forward.
Second, Soldier Boy. The hunt for the ultimate weapon to destroy Homelander ultimately just ended up in vain. Where did it go, the riled up spirit of The Boys in bringing Homelander down? They have the weakest excuses to portray this change of heart. With M.M.'s plot, well, I guess, okay, as he has his own personal vendetta against Soldier Boy, it's still understandable. This is to put aside that they went with the "Soldier Boy kills my family" plot too easily (we didn't get to ever see what actually happened and it's brushed off as nothing more than "racism", which is quite disappointing since there were plenty of rooms for flashback this season).
But then there's Butcher. He ended up beating down Soldier Boy because Soldier Boy hit his kid? I mean, sure it's his kid, but where's the man-with-a-mission-to-kill-Homelander-no-matter-what-it-takes that we've seen for all these three seasons? If Butcher was a little smarter - and he actually is with his cunning tactics and all! - he could've stopped Soldier Boy for a while, let Homelander pats Ryan's back, then when Ryan is out of sight just finish off Homelander by then. Soldier Boy doesn't even seem to hold anything against Ryan (especially after he knows Ryan is Butcher's son). The whole charade about beating up Soldier Boy is a really weak plot point just to let Homelander alive to be the ultimate big bad in next seasons.
Still here? We'll get to Homelander but let's talk about Maeve briefly. What's her end goal? At first she seems to be an ally ready to take down Homelander, but when it comes to actually facing Homelander she can't see the forest for the trees. Rather than staying true to her goal to kill Homelander, she was just absorbed with herself, punching Homelander around only to get herself beaten. Sure, Maeve isn't the most tactical ones, but she's been supplying Butcher with everything so far.
Last, Homelander. As soon as the fight ends, my biggest question is: what would be Homelander's yet another reason to NOT kill Butcher, Hughie, and co? Our Boys have been picking a fight with him since Season 1. It's clear our protagonists are pests to him, but he keeps giving them leeway. At this point isn't it easier to just get rid of them all when Ryan's not looking to prevent our Boys messing up with him again? There's a fan speculation that predicted Homelander is going to be depowered, then he's going to live the whole Season 4 under Vought's protection while our Boys track down the biggest big bad: Compound V. I think I like that better since it's going to show how Homelander will struggle with his weakness and humanity. But I guess the showrunners wanted to keep on getting Homelander more unhinged and even more unhinged and violent, as shown when he lasered a guy in a parade. With this direction, I'm expecting the show to end in a high note with chaos everywhere like perhaps in the comics. I just hope they don't prolong this much further - maybe Season 5 at most.
Then there's some plot devices like Tempo V, powering the army with V, etc that are left unexplored, which feels a bit like nothing more than filler to get the plot moves forward. And the fact that they kind of go with cliffhanger in this finale reminds me of Season 1's rather weak, cliffhanger-ish finale as well (perhaps that's their pattern: the real season finale is in the even-numbered seasons).
That said, this episode is still quite entertaining as it kept me guessing where the plot would go. It's not as frantic and riled up as Herogasm (Eps 6) and the direction is not quite satisfying, but it's fine. The theme of this season is "family", they stay true to that up to the finale. Soldier Boy's dialogue with Homelander is good. Talk about how toxic upbringing would make you become toxic as well, while thinking you can do better than your parents.
I like that they are planning to use the political plot with Neuman in Season 4 (I thought it was going to be wasted after the nice development in Season 2) as The Boys' forte is taking a jab at politics and corporatism. I do hope we will see what Stan Edgar envisioned as Vought "getting out of the supe business in the next five years."
I also like what they did with Ryan, coming together with Homelander, and the way Homelander is normalizing Ryan to violence. This is the consequence of Butcher's acting asshole-ish to everyone and sure hope our Boys will see the consequences of his action, especially with the sweet reunion with everyone at the table in the end (feels like the calm before the storm).
All in all, not a bad finale, but a bit too disappointing in the way they resolve the plots that have been built up all this season.
This finale feels like not just a finale for Season 2, but Season 1 as well. It wraps up the plot that has been worked on since Season 1, and in some ways turning it to full circle, e.g. Butcher's quest for Becca, A-Train subplot, Hughie's self-discovery, and the rest of The Boys's relationship with each other.
As usual, The Boys does the best job when they take a jab on current corporatist-political climate.
“People love what I have to say. They believe in it," Stormfront confidently said. "They just don’t like the word Nazi." A racist superhero is Vought's darling - one that casually screams lingos like "white genocide" to young boys. Seemingly contradictory considering Stan Edgar, who would be target of racism, is Vought's CEO. But Edgar insisted that it is not about him. "I can’t lash out like some raging, entitled maniac," Stan Edgar responded as he smiled when confronted on what he did, "That’s a white man’s luxury." Anger drives demands for securitization. Demands for securitization drives demands for Compound V. Vought just "play with the cards we're dealt." Like Maeve's bisexuality that Vought plays, racism is just another card to eventually drive profit. Be it racism or empowerment, they are all smoke and mirrors.
But of course the thickest smoke and mirror is not a mere woke capitalism - something we can already obviously see. The thickest smoke is one that makes us think that within this war of attrition, another hero existed, and they would fight for our cause. We follow them as they march - our symbol of hope. This episode reveals something that has been foreshadowed very early in this season: "it's a fucking coup from the inside," said Raynor, before her head got blown into bits. Neuman, an obvious parody of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, raised into the spotlight as an opposition toward Vought and Homelander. But as it is revealed that it was her who was blowing people's head, and she has blown the church leader's head too as soon as she knew he has files on supes, it is revealed that she is actually a controlled opposition by Vought. Like the politicians who hail from Democratic Party, a part of ruling oligarchy, The Boys takes another jab that we should really never trust heroes, be it in the form of supe or another.
This reveal is also a very nice setup as it closes the arcs on Season 1 and 2, and prepares for another arc coming in Season 3. It gets interesting as I had myself asking, "can Homelander end up being our hope now?" This sort of dilemma is what piqued my interest in The Boys; we can't really easily label one as evil and another as good, as - like in real life - today's enemy can be tomorrow's ally, and vice versa.
That being said, I do not think this episode is a perfect ten. Butcher's quest for his wife, for example, was quite unsatisfying. Becca, despite having a lot of screen time, does not possess actual agency, and more like a side character who happens to be involved in Butcher's bigger story. Despite revolving around his infatuation with his supposedly long-dead wife, the way the subplot climaxes leaves much to be desired as Butcher seemingly sidesteps Becca's death. How would Butcher reconcile with such heavily emotional feeling, after years of losing her, finding her, and now he is losing her again? How would Ryan, her son, react to the loss of the only guardian he ever knew in all his life? Those questions remain unresolved. We get to see more time of Hughie and Starlight bonding - while it resolves the tension in their relationship, there is not much resolution or development going on in that aspect.
In addition to that, while watching girls trio beating up Nazi is fun to watch (though it seems to lean more on the cathartic side too much) - and especially funny since it is another parody at Marvel, the forced "girl power" scene in Endgame - Maeve's appearance seems a bit too convenient, deus ex machina that resolves not just the issue with Stormfront, but also Homelander. The Boys has been sort of weak in the last three episodes in employing deus ex machina, something I wish could be worked on more on the next season.
All in all though, this is a much better finale than Season 1's.
[8.6/10] Impostor syndrome. Fake it till you make it. False confidence. There are a thousand phrases and a thousand permutations that if we just project enough strength, if we just put a mask on over our doubts and insecurities, we can become, or at least embody, the things that we want to be. Inspiration can come from within, and flow out to those we’re trying to lead or impress or simply comfort.
But what if you have imposter syndrome because you are, in fact, an imposter? What if you fake it with all your might, but the odds are too stacked against you for you to “make it? What if your false confidence just gets your friends and allies killed.
That’s the reality Ezekiel grapples with in “Some Guy.” His brand, his ethos, since we met him last season, is founded on the idea that with the right inspiration, the right idea, the right star to steer it all by, you can go anywhere. As he confides to Carol in a flashback, he made a choice at a particularly fraught moment in his life, about what kind of person he wanted to be. And since then, he’s used that choice to spur on others, to build something greater than himself, and hopefully lead his people into a better life.
But what do you do when that dream falls apart? The opening seven minutes or so of “Some Guy” is some of the best, most brutal work that The Walking Dead has ever done. We see Ezekiel making that choice once more, in miniature. We see the tired, plain-clothed man getting into character, going from a regular man into a King, using that weekend matinee experience to craft this inspirational figure.
And he rallies his troops. He promises them victory. He fills their hearts and minds with hope and confidence, with the idea that this act will help bring them about. It leads to a performance, a Shakespearean halftime speech that puts Rick’s earlier attempt at the same thing to shame. And it leads to the denizens of The Kingdom rallying around their king.
Then, just as quickly, the episode match cuts to a pile of corpses on the ground.
It’s a brutal, brutal cut. The image of Ezekiel emerging from that pile of dead bodies, gazing at the fallen comrades he walked into this fate, and then looking on as they slowly but surely rise from their decimated states and begin to walk and stalk as is the grim fashion of the age, bores into you. This is what has become of Ezekiel’s well-meaning bravado, of his pie-in-the-sky promises meant to ensure the opposite result. And the grisly scene understandably shakes him, and devastates him.
That’s the thematic pull of the episode. Where do you go, who do you become, when the fantasy you’ve created is punctured and spills blood on your hands. And it’s a compelling one. But “Some Guy” also works on a nuts and bolts storytelling level. In contrast to the first three episodes of the season, it zeroes in on two plots: Ezekiel escaping that lurching horde full of his own men outside the compound, and Carol escaping the lingering Saviors within it, until those stories collide. It creates a throughline for the episode that helps support the headier themes at play.
In the process, The Walking Dead gives us some damn good set pieces, with some well-crafted action movie moments. Ezekiel’s broken leg creates a notable obstacle to the challenges from Savior and Walker alike. The moments where he seems likely to be done in by a captor, only to be saved at the last minute by Jerry, where Carol gets into firefights with the latest crop of Negan goons, where Shiva springs into action to save them, have the right blend of thrilling action and thematic resonance.
Amid these slowly dovetailing stories, “Some Guy” even drops in a pretty badass car chase with Rick and Daryl vs. the Saviors from that same compound. The attempt to prevent those Saviors from getting their weaponry to The Sanctuary creates a clear goal, and between near misses with Daryl, shootouts with Rick, and car-hopping, truck-crashing mayhem, the episode crafts a setpiece that keeps your heart pumping even if it feels a bit tangential to the broader material of the episode.
But what’s so great about the other set pieces is how well the fit into the essential question that the episode is asking. Ezekiel believes himself a failure because his attempts at inspiration led to the deaths of scores of his followers. But while it’s yet to sink in, he’s given example after example of the ways in which what he exemplified, more than what he represented, still made him worthy of being followed.
That first comes in Jerry’s last minute save. Ezekiel, as he does throughout the episode, tells his friends to simply run, to leave him behind, because his injured leg will only slow them down. Instead, they stay and help and fight over his protestations. And despite Ezekiel’s attempts to push back, to say that he doesn’t deserve to be called their king, Jerry remains steadfast, not because of some elegant image Ezekiel has crafted for himself, but because he’s simply a “good dude,” a terminology that cuts through the King’s grandiose presentation and reaches the heart of what he was trying to do.
It also comes in Carol making a choice that parallels the one Ezekiel made with Shiva. After finding a sharp way to outsmart the Saviors she’s embroiled in a standoff, Carol faces a dilemma of her own. Either she can take out the remaining pair of antagonists and ensure that their powerful guns don’t make it back to Negan, or she can let them go in order to save Ezekiel. The Carol we know might tend toward the former choice, reasoning that two lives, even the lives of friends, are not worth the lives that those guns in the hand of The Saviors could cost. But instead she chooses to save the man who helped give her a lifeline in a time of crisis, who’s helped her to internalize that sense of altruism over her effective but brutal (and often fistpump-worthy) pragmatism.
And it comes with Shiva, who offers the last save of the episode. As Ezekiel, Carol, and Jerry attempt to cross a muddy brook, riddled with walkers, Shiva comes out of nowhere at the last second to fight and ultimately sacrifice herself that they may live. It is a hard moment for Ezekiel, almost as hard as returning to The Kingdom and having to look into the eyes of a child whose father he just saw reduced to a pile of fetid flesh.
But therein lies the cinch of “Some Guy.” Ezekiel will, as is the spirit du jour of The Walking Dead, no doubt be haunted by what happened here, no doubt blame himself for using his stories and speeches to send these men and women into battle and ultimately to their deaths. He will likely hold himself responsible, and argue that his embellishments only convinced good people to follow a lie.
And yet, what “Some Guy” reveals is that this theatricality, this impostorhood, this lie, was founded on a truth, a truth about who Ezekiel is and what he stood for, that overcomes any sense that Ezekiel filled his followers’ heads with nothing. He gave them hope; he gave them a reason to go on, and with their help, built a community to sustain them. The choices he made come back to him -- not as much the choice to put tokens in your hair or armor beneath your jacket, but the ones to rescue wounded animals, to be a just and kind leader, to show the same kindness and understanding to strangers. Those are what truly made Ezekiel a king, regardless of what he wears, or how he speaks, or who’s left to follow.
[6.7/10] Fault is a slippery concept. It’s bundled up with intention, result, and a host of other complicating factors that affect whom we blame and whom we absolve. Some people wrong us, and don’t intend to. Some people mean to hurt us and give us what we need. And some people simply twist in the wind, unsure where they are or where they’ll end up. How we credit and blame others for such things says as much about us as it does about the person whose actions we’re trying to figure out.
But so does how we move past that, whether we’re blaming others or blaming ourselves. How we try to avoid or overcome the bad blood, the hurt feelings, the guilt, can decide how long it weighs on us. In “The Other Side,” Daryl blames himself, Gregory bends over backwards to avoid blame, and Sasha and Rosita hash their shared, awkward part in Abraham’s life and death, and what comes next.
It’s a solid idea, but a weaker hour in Season 7. The meat of the episode centers on the fraught relationship between Sasha and Rosita, and while each of the characters is decent enough, they don’t have much chemistry together, leaving the many scenes they share feeling uneven and miscalibrated. So many moments in this episode simply feature two people going back and forth, and when there’s not a connection between the real people having the conversation, those moments quickly suffer.
That may be part of why the episode’s most effective scene was the final one between Daryl and Maggie. The dialogue between them is as trite as anything in the rest of the episode, but in keep their scenes together short, “The Other Side” keeps them punchy and affecting enough before the emotion in the moment from being stretched too thin.
It makes sense that Daryl would refuse to look at Maggie because he blames himself for Glenn’s death. There was a clear warning; Daryl acted, and someone who’d been with him from nearly the beginning died because of it. Despite his warrior’s bent, Daryl is a surprisingly sensitive individual, and it’s not hard to imagine him looking at Maggie and only seeing what he took away from her.
But Maggie gives him absolution. She tells him it wasn’t his fault. However much he sees himself as an avenging angel now, all the more ready to kill to prevent a death like Glenn’s from ever happening again, she tells him to hang onto himself. She calls him one of the good things left in this world, like Glenn was, and her embrace is one of comfort and of strength, that forgives Daryl his trespasses in a way that only a grieving loved one can.
Gregory, however, has no interest in absolution, no interest in carrying the burden of lives lost or saved under his watch. He simply wants to protect his own interests, to keep himself in whatever small amount of power he has. He’s willing to kowtow to anyone, to sell anyone out, to write off any blame or shame as owing to forces beyond his control, in order to ensure things stay that way.
I’ve come to appreciate Gregory as a character. It’s not my favorite performance on the show, but there’s something true to life about him. He is not pure evil like The Saviors. He is not nearly as avaricious as some of the antagonists who’ve peppered The Walking Dead. He is the sort of person who would emerge in a setting like this – a petty tyrant with delusions of grandeur.
While Negan, however horribly flawed he is, shares Gregory’s narcissism, he’s backed it up with his horrid empire. Gregory is the man who shakes hands with power and thinks himself power. He is the quisling, the one who’s cowed but prides himself on being the plumpest bovine at the slaughterhouse. His doomed haughtiness, his faith placed in the wrong places, makes him as intriguing a foil as he is an ineffective schemer.
It helps that he’s often paired with Simon, who seems to find a new level of cheery unctuousness each time he appears. This visit to The Hilltop sees him absconding with their local doctor to replace the one at The Saviors’ compound. (Apparently they’re brothers, in a detail that adds next to nothing to the proceedings here.) Gregory complains to him that he’ll be blamed, that he’ll lose his people’s trust, if this goes down, and that he could be replaced with someone less accommodating.
Simon writes him a “pass” to the Saviors’ compound, and with this imaginary get out of jail free card, one sure to backfire should Gregory ever try to use it, Gregory tries to intimidate Jesus. (Jesus, meanwhile, finally feels like he belongs, which is in no way convenient or setup for him to step up when things inevitably go south with Gregory.) There’s a foolhardiness to the attempt. Gregory’s no chess master, and his threats and misplaced faith in The Saviors to save him from facing the consequences of any blame will no doubt leave him sipping far less tequila.
And then there’s Sasha and Rosita. It’s nice, in principle, that The Walking Dead is having the two of them address the bad blood between them. And there are some good moments between them where the tension between them is present but set aside for their shared goal. But the whole frenemy setup is a weaker one, and neither Sonequa Martin-Green or Christian Serratos can elevate it through performance alone.
That becomes most clear in the scene where they’re enjoying relative safety and have their heart-to-heart. (Really, this could be called “Heart-to-Heart: The Episode!”) We get some perfunctory backstory on Rosita. It turns out she’s so capable because she would drift from guy to guy after the outbreak hit, sticking around long enough to learn whatever skill they had while they were trying to “protect” her, and leaving when she’d mastered it.
But Abraham, apparently, was different. There’s truth and complexity in the moment where she attributes her anger to the fact that Abraham seemed to adjust to life in Alexandria, to not being on the run, while she needed more time to “figure shit out.” It gives shape and depth to her relationship with him, and makes her pain and disillusionment this season more real. And it adds tragedy to the sense that, as she tells Sasha, she was happy that he was happy.
The problem is that, as often hobbles The Walking Dead, the scene is also filled with trite truisms and forehead-slapping dialogue. It’s a long scene, much like the one between Morgan and Richard last week, and it serves the same purpose – to setup and explain the dramatic choice made at the end of the episode. It’s a moment of bonding for Rosita and Sasha, one that makes them part of the same thing rather than opposing forces. That’s a nice idea, even if the episode’s realization of it leaves something to be desired.
The finish to the episode is more setup than resolution. Eugene reaffirms his loyalty to Negan. Sasha rushes into the compound and keeps her comrade out of it so that she may live to fight another day. And Rosita crosses Dwight’s path. These are all steps as much steps toward the next chapter of the story as they are cappers to this one.
Still, the episode is at its best when it depicts its central figures understanding the titular “Other Side” beyond the attribution of fault that haunts them. It stands for Gregory, whose alliances begin to shift to a group who will no doubt set him adrift when he’s no longer useful. It stands for Daryl, who can, perhaps, start to forgive himself after seeing how Maggie’s forgiven him. And it stands for Rosita, who bares her soul, tells her side of the story, and is given, whether she wants it or not, the chance live for something else, no matter whose fault it is.
Others might say that this is not as intense as previous episode, which might be true in terms of action and moving the plot forward. But I find this episode is still intense in a different way: more emotional investment.
"Family" and its unfortunately related cousin "abuse" seem to be the the theme that knits together different story arcs of the episode: the obvious Butcher flashback, Kimiko and Frenchie, MM with his family, Soldier Boy, and Homelander.
The episode kind of speeds up the pace in showing Soldier Boy's villainy through a recreation/imagination of Black Noir's flashback; although I'm not too comfortable that they present Noir's flashback at face value (instead of being an unreliable narrator), I think it still kinda works.
It is shown that Soldier Boy is an abusive, selfish bully with anger issues you would typically see among band leads or celebrity groups. While some have defended Soldier Boy's action by comparing him to Homelander ("at least Soldier Boy is not psychotic, emotionally unstable narcissist! He is a normal person not grown in lab!"), I think they missed the point of the show: the biggest issue here is exactly what would happen if people with power (influence) have additional power (literal superpower) while being protected by multi-billion dollar company. They possess all the impunity to wreak havoc. Like MM said, "no one should have the right to wield such power."
This theme of abuse is explicated with Butcher's flashback. No one is inherently "good" or "evil" - you are shaped by your upbringing. As the scenes between his memories, his reflection, and his projection in current time are cut seamlessly back and forth, Butcher slowly realizes that he mirrors the man he hated the most. Yet he fully accepts his succumbing to that darkness while bringing Hughie with him through his personal vendetta against the supes - not caring about the risk towards others who he claimed he loved. Even with parents, one may grow to be a contemptuous person if they live in an abusive family, and it's a cycle that is very difficult to break. Butcher's flashback is certainly the spotlight of the episode for me.
Even with Kimiko's story in the background (her saying that V only explicates what kind of person you are), considering that we've been shown how the character's social lives shaped them into what they are now - Kimiko with her abducted kid background, Hughie's insecurity with his zero to hero job, etc - the message stays strong, countering the superhero cliche of inherently morally good and evil person.
I'm hoping this dynamic could be further explored in the next episode (or season) with the Soldier Boy and Homelander encounter when it's revealed that Soldier Boy is Homelander's father, at least he feels so. An abusive father meets a narcissist kid-who'd-wanna-be-a-father. The ending of this episode becomes revealing when tied up to the earlier convesation between Homelander and Maeve: with Homelander echoing Soldier Boy's words that he "used to dream of having kids" with Maeve, it becomes apparent in this episode that the relationship between Homelander and Maeve (and Soldier Boy and Crimson Countess) it is not something exactly out of pure love.
"Having kids" is not a romantic statement: it's a purely masculine, self-centered ego of having someone of your blood - of your similarity - that you can be proud of. Who the partner is doesn't matter; they are only means to that end. And in that Soldier Boy shares something in common with Homelander as shown through his delight of accepting Homelander readily as his son, albeit lab-grown. He only wants to see a better version of him.
Last but not least, I love the jab at corporate this episode still throws. Ashley spinning breaking news about Starlight in a similar way Disney would spin stories about their abuse and mismanagement; and that A-Train being zombified, again, with the heart of Blue Hawk embedded in his body, serving only as Vought's puppet. I'm not sure if that's the most satisfying end to A-Train's arc, but seeing his disappointed, grim look, his lack of agency, I guess the character suffers a lot. I just hope this will be the last of his arc and the show doesn't squeeze him further.
That said, with the reveal at the ending, I am not sure I am 100% satisfied as I was expecting Soldier Boy bringing down Homelander, or rendering him powerless by the end of the season. Looks like Homelander will continue to be the main villain. I just hope they don't prolong the "mentally unstable" trope too much and find ways to keep the show interesting. Looking forward to the finale.
It's decent. I mean, I understand that they want to focus on character development and team building in this episode. But it seems pretty rushed at certain points. Like: 1) when Economos shows up with a chainsaw in an instant. It almost feels like deus ex machina; 2) when Adebayo discovers that Murn is a butterfly. How does Murn even know that Adebayo is wearing X-ray vision? The whole sequences just felt pretty rushed to me, even down to the Adebayo being thrown; 3) The resolution with Chief Locke and Detective Song. There was this tension building then the sequences switch back to Peacemaker and the gang.
It's obvious what they're trying to do, and I know they don't take themselves too seriously, but it feels like they kinda take a shortcut to do that. Even the action sequences are lacking and look a bit low budget (camera shakes and the poor explosion effect). They wasted more time on toilet jokes and quippy banters. The crude jokes worked in the first few episodes but it has ran out of its novelty by the 5th episode. It's watchable, still, but I guess only if you have that much time to kill.
The most obvious best part in the episode is of course Stormfront. The show doesn't pull punches. Stormfront makes a really good portrayal of today libertarianism: social media savvy, all about women empowerment a la Sophia Amoruso's "Girlboss", but does not care with the have nots, and is extremely prejudiced towards marginalized groups (e.g. ethnic minorities). Casting a female Stormfront (instead of a male one like in the comics) is a good touch as it highlights the point that without class or racial sensitivities, you'd get people that talk of empowerment as long as it only benefits them.
However there is another part, a slightly minor scene in the big move that drives the plot forward. When it is revealed that Starlight successfully leaks Compound V to the media, A-Train confronts her. She justifies her action: "there is much more than having good cars, houses, etc" (the things possible when the supes rose into stardom). Disappointed, A-Train cut her short, "the only people who say that are the people who grew up with money."
This short conversation shows what The Boys can do best: nuance. A-Train might be a jerk, but he too is a victim of the system. Like the blacks Stormfront murdered later in the episode, A-Train came from lower class background. His supe power helped him to climb the socioeconomic ladder, being an athlete in place of his brother and of course being a part of The Seven. This is in contrast to Starlight, who was raised by relatively affluent mother - who was obsessed with getting her child into stardom herself - always in spotlight and sufficient wealth since a young age. Starlight yearns for a meaningful life; A-Train desires a luxurious life he never got before his rise to supehero status.
A-Train was introduced as a jerk, no-good drug abuser; but after the anticlimactic conclusion in S1, with limited screen time he's been having in S2, we are shown more layers to A-Train's perspective. The show does this sort of nuance well with Maeve too.
The only obviously antagonist in the last episode is Homelander - as he went into more a narcissitic, mentally unstable character that may explode at any given time. But I hope even with his unpredictable deranged action we can still see the way he handles conflicting expectations he will face in the following episodes, esp. with the appearance of Stormfront, like when we saw him juggling between his individuality and personal branding in S1.
And here I thought the last episode was terrific. This was a near-flawless ribbon on the top of so many different arcs. And it's only the season's midway point.
Cotyar goes down a hero by destroying an infected Agatha King (taking "that asshole" Nguyen with him), Errinwright gets double-teamed by Sorrento and Anna and finally locked away, Mao is captured by Jim and forcibly knelt before Avasarala, Prax finally finds his daughter Mei, safe and sound, and Bobbie confronts a hybrid and finally gets over her PTSD of being defeated by one on Ganymede. Even Jim and Naomi made up and got back together after a risky tip of their hand to Fred Johnson paid off. And then a fucking jellyfish swam out of Venus' atmosphere... It's almost too much to process right away.
So much got packed into this hour yet it all flowed perfectly from one plot line to the other, interweaving where it made sense, and pushing the whole narrative forward in a believable way. This is how you make hard scifi.
The SyFy Channel is positively stupid for giving up on this exceptional piece of television. They really should be forced to change their network's name on account of it deliberately creating confusion for viewers.
[9.1/10] “A war of all against all.” That is how political philosopher Thomas Hobbes described the “state of nature” of man without government, without rule. He imagined a life that was “nasty, brutish, and short” and posited that people needed a Leviathan, the force of the government, to enforce laws, and have people give up certain freedoms as the price for avoiding such an unenviable way to live.
In Negan’s mind, he is that Leviathan. The last time The Walking Dead interrogated Negan’s moral philosophy, it left it somewhat ambiguous how Negan saw himself, whether he really believed that his brutal ways were for the greater good, or whether he was just spinning propaganda to justify the comparatively lavish and carefree lifestyle he gets to enjoy while others toil.
“The Big Scary U” is much less ambiguous. There is a certain sense that Negan may be deluding himself, offering rationalizations and eliding the darker or more self-serving side of the choices he’s made, but it becomes clear that he is a true believer, someone who thinks that he’s doing what needs to be done.
The episode explores that with one of the oldest tropes in the book -- two characters, trapped in a room together, deciding to find common ground and reflect on their lives, shared enmity, and personal truths. (Think “Fly” from fellow AMC stablemate Breaking Bad.) “The Big Scary U” catches up with Negan and Father Gabriel, trapped in a temporary building and surrounded by walkers after the events of the premiere.
In those close, perilous quarters, Gabriel asks for Negan’s confession. A brief flashback signifies (in TWD’s typically lofty tones) that Gabriel no longer fears death; he just fears a meaningless death. And in the present, he reasons that maybe the reason he’s survived this long, the purpose he’s been in search of, is hear Negan confess and give him absolution.
But Negan declares he has nothing to attone for. He uses the confinement to lay out his philosophy -- that however bad things may seem under his watch, that it’s better than the alternative, and that what came before, and what would come after him, would be much much worse.
“The Big Scary U” seems to suggest that Negan’s right, at least within his own fiefdom. When the episode isn’t centered on Negan and Gabriel’s heart-to-heart, it’s in the heart of The Sanctuary, where all of Negan’s lieutenants are scrambling to figure out what to do in the absence and possible demise of their leader, and backbiting, disagreement, and recriminations come to a head.
Regina wants to sacrifice the workers to make an escape. Eugene declares that it will never work. Gavin declares that somebody must be collaborating with Rick & Co. given how things went down. Dwight deflects and is ready to read the riot act to whomever needs to hear it. And Simon, who seems to be the closest thing to a second-in-command ready to take over, tries to hold court.
It’s fascinating watching the various forces that Negan has amassed slowly turn on one another, ally with one another, and generally seem lost without him there to guide them. Negan has inculcated a need for a dictator, for an unquestioned leader who can whip people into shape. As soon as the man and his baseball bat are gone, things start deteriorating, with workers staging the beginnings of a revolt, the remaining leaders not knowing what to do, and the situation getting volatile quickly.
But The Walking Dead plays at least a little coy about whether this really is the better alternative, or whether this is simply the world Negan created. It’s easy for Negan to pontificate and preen with Gabriel about how things would fall apart without him, that his presence is necessary to bring order and security, but what if that’s just true for the little ecosystem that Negan has overseen? What if he’s built things to be that way, rather than that things have to be that way.
Rick certainly seems to think there’s another way, even if Daryl remains skeptical and more Negan-like himself by the minute. “The Big Scary U” comes down to, as so many TWD episodes do, to the question of whether it’s okay to kill someone, “the right person,” in order to achieve some sort of greater good. And it positions all its major characters on different sides of the question.
Daryl has turned single-minded and unbothered by the potential loss of life in taking out The Saviors, even if it means that the innocent workers at The Sanctuary perish in the process. Rick pushes back against him, wanting to stick to the plan, even if the fighters from The Kingdom are killed, because he doesn’t want to take innocent lives. Negan believes in killing people, even innocent people, if it serves a greater cause, while Gabriel believes in saving people, even bad people like Gregory, if it serves a higher power. And Gregory himself has no scruples, no principles, one way or another, only caring to keep himself alive whatever that may require.
Negan and Gabriel also have to keep themselves alive, as the walkers slowly but surely start to break through the meager walls and barriers separating them and the two morsels inside. That’s mainly a plot device to ensure that Negan and Gabriel can’t just keep talking forever (thank heaven) but it at least creates some urgency and sense of place in the midst of what is basically a miniature stage show starring these two men.
It’s a real showcase for Jeffrey Dean Morgan in particular. Let’s face it; Negan is a pretty ridiculous character. Some of that is intentional, with the persona being meant to project a certain amount of intimidating bombast. But some of it is just an inherent part of putting such an outsized figure into a nominally down-to-earth take on the zombie genre. Nevertheless, Morgan has the chops to go big and go small as the situation requires, and make it convincing in either guise.
That’s why his pronouncements about “saving” people, his pretzel logic about the difference between “killing the right people” and “letting your people get killed” (blame-shifting logic which Daryl starts to share), don’t sound as insane as they might here. There is a conviction in Morgan’s voice when he delivers those lines, a certainty in the truth of them that informs the character’s perspective and makes it feel true to who Negan is, even if the audience isn’t supposed to take it as true generally.
But we also winces just enough when confronted about his “wives” and grimaces through his excuse that they “made a choice.” His deflection about the state of his “workers” functions as an internalized dismissal of any economy having “winners and loser.” And he even breaks down, such as a proud guy like Negan can, and admits the only time he was “weak” was when he could not put his “real wife” down after she turned. Like much of the show, it’s a little too neat as informative backstory, but the actor makes it work.
It works because Negan believes it. He believes that killing people to create order, that harshness can make people and civilizations stronger, that engendering submission, even in lethal terms, can save lives. There’s a twisted worldview at the heart of Negan’s philosophies on governance and leadership, ones with antecedents across history, but for all the metaphysical and ethical conversations at play here, it’s the truth of this view in his eyes, the palpable sense of belief from Negan as he champions the need for that Leviathan, that makes the villain more than a bunch of cruel deaths and priapic boasts. He represents the worse angels of our nature, the ones that say we need to be cowed less we tear one another apart, and the hints that he may be right, at least for the part of this world he’s overseen, makes him all the more terrifying.
[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.
What a weird episode.
What a weird plan that apparently noone saw coming? How weird noone decided to just shoot Negan in the nogging? What a weird bunch of speeches and how weird people appeared to be riled up by something so lackluster? How weird that Negan thought bringing out that one guy from that one place would work? How weird some people all of a sudden don't seem to be so appetizing to a horde of zombies. How weird there was apparently only one side to this war? How weird to shoot at windows, to blow up just a courtyard? How weird all those cars could drive out of that area? Weird flashforwards or dreamsequences. Weird aging that only seems to affect Rick.
Weird that the writers of this dreck seem to keep getting away with all this contrived bullshit. There was almost no suspense, no ROAR moment... what a mess. I don't get how Fear the Walking Dead can be so drastically different and more realistic than this. I'm sure there will be good episodes this season but I'm getting a bit tired of the stupidity of the characters and events and the way these episodes play out. I'm so annoyed with this episode and I haven't even listed all it's flaws (including the unlogical nonsense I usually tend to ignore... You are holding an automatic rifle and all you can say is "what?" when your archnemesis tells you you're gonna shit your pants?" COME ON!!! At least let the magical priest lose his weapon on the way?)
Also weird "everyone" seems to love it btw.
It's relieving to see the Alexandrians putting up a fight, hand-to-hand, against the zombie menace. But if all this is triggered by Rick's sudden madness, it begs the ultimate question: why the hell didn't he do it since the infestation begin?!
Rick just needs a few experienced fighters (Glenn, Michonne, Abraham, etc maybe Aaron too). Back in Season 6 episode 5, they should have stood in front of the gate and cut the walkers to bits one by one like they just did in this episode. It should have not cost anybody's life--not to mention the life of a woman dearest to Rick! No need to gather the zombies far away and causing unintended consequences. Maybe all this is a ruse by Rick, to teach the Alexandrians a will to fight. A will to power. But it doesn't make much sense considering the cost and risk he ultimately pays. Especially since Rick is ultra-protective and should be calculative enough to realize that.
Putting that aside, with the Wolves leader dead, and Jesse's two annoying kids also dead too, I think the show kinda putting off the tense too early and too easily. The annoying little kid poses a classic, albeit cliched, zombie movie annoyance (scared little kids who ruin everything) and his older brother (Ron) could've been some sort of a rival to Carl (or a potential enemy, I mean he already bears deep hatred to Carl and Rick). Ron could've helped Carl's interesting character development. Perhaps Ron can be a Shane to Carl, leaving the audience the feeling of, "this guy is gonna give trouble but we're not sure how and when." The same goes with the Wolves leader. The show spent quite a time to built their characters for the audience to expect more. They could've made an useful, interesting tension like we had with Shane.
But they're all dead now, so it's kinda a waste, I guess.
Ah, gotta love those Donkey Balls.
While I am not precisely liking the dubious new addition to the ship's complement, because he feels treacherous, he sure does come up with some good ideas.
This episode had some beautiful moments.
While I am still not enjoying Chrisjen's wooden delivery of dialogue, I very much liked that we got to meet at least one of Holden's parents. It would have been a bit more interesting if we had seen the whole unit of them, but who knows why production felt just his body-mother was required. Frances Fisher does a great job, making a meal of a small role, and we get a great look at Holden's backstory. This late in the season though, I suspect we won't get anyone else's backstory until Season 2. I don't know about you, but I am chomping at the bit to find out Naomi's story.
Miller's sad and wistful goodbye to Octavia, as he heads off into the black chasing Julie Mao; the tense but funny process of getting into the lockbox to find the black ops codes to evade the blockade, these both give us more character depth. Miller is turning into a different kind of man, and the Rocinante crew's democratic, yet effective teamwork makes them a lot of fun to watch as they're grinding through trying to get to the bottom of Lionel Polanski, the Scopuli and the Anubis.
I'm also enjoying the little things in the show: The Belter's patois, although largely incomprehensible, is a nice touch that adds a lot of dimension to the Belter's as an insular, underdog group. That they evolved their own language, says much for the alienation they must have to the rest of the solar system. Jared Harris as Dawes, has the most beautiful sing song thing going on, and it makes his character a much more seductive and enchanting force in the story's play...
Regardless of the next few episodes, which i suspect will be relentless, Sy Fy has done a marvellous job of fueling this production. Despite a few obvious TV gaffs here and there, for the most part the show is really well put together, and the concepts, sets, action sequences and character development almost make you pause, because Sy Fy has gutted us more than once since Battlestar Galactica went off air. I say again, this is the best show I've seen on TV since BSG ended... and that Sy Fy is coming through for us, is something to celebrate.
This show is pure science fiction and it's commitment to creating a believable story, is tremendous.
I am just more and more underwhelmed by what we're seeing with this series. It's not bad, but it's certainly not very meaty either. What, exactly, are the themes? The overarching struggle that I'm supposed to attach my empathy to? Baby Yoda is incredibly cute, but one off episodes of The Mandalorian thwarting unconnected threats feels like it's just going to get more and more stale. These episodes have been entertaining (this one least of all), but I want something to chew on.
I have to laugh though. The Star Wars fanbase is incredibly fickle and hypocritical. The idea that we hear so much hate for the sequel trilogy and then this series is being lauded by those same fans is hilarious. What are some of the major complaints they have for the sequels? Rey is a Mary-Sue and Star Wars is being Disney-fied?
Have they actually watched this show then? Or are they just enamored by the cuteness of Baby Yoda? The Mandalorian is arguably a bigger Mary-Sue than Rey (who honestly isn't a Mary-Sue, but if she is then so was Luke Skywalker in the originals lol). And this series is far more Disney-fied than either The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi.
:person_shrugging::male_sign:
[5.2/10] Notions of reconciliation and mercy are powerful because they invoke the idea that The Walking Dead has been so invested in this season -- that there could be something different, something better, than this endless array of bad blood and killing.
That’s an antidote to the idea that might makes right, that vengeance must be had, and suggests that might can come with grace, that wrongs can be forgiven. For a season founded on the concept of war, to conflicts and alliances and the clash of civilizations, there are worse things to anchor your finale around than the idea that we can break bread with our enemies, and show them kindness when we have every reason to turn them away.
But by god, you have to earn that.
And “Wrath” just doesn't. It tries. It commits. It goes whole hog on these concepts and has character after character reckoning with making a different sort of choice, leaning into a sense of healing, and having the universe reward them for it. Rick spares Negan. Daryl spares Dwight. Gabriel regains his sight, one way or another. Alden gives up the Savior life and wants to help the Hilltop rebuild. Morgan sends Jadis to the Hilltop and seeks the dump as a place to better himself. The Saviors are to be remade as a peaceful community, part of the vaunted larger world.
But it takes every shortcut in the book to get there. Don’t get me wrong, after suffering through what feels like scores of tedious, underfed “extended” episodes, I’m not exactly clamoring for The Walking Dead to bust out ninety minutes of battling and denouement, but at best, at least half of those stories gloss over how the character gets from Point A to Point B to their pleasantries at the finish line.
To some degree, finales should get a little leeway in that regard. These are endings after all. Ideally, the show should have laid the groundwork for everyone’s journeys up until this point, so using the runtime to close out the biggest season-length arcs, while merely putting capstones on other plotlines is forgivable, if not always eminently satisfying. But for a show like The Walking Dead, which has introduced so many characters going through so many different, individual challenges, the whole back half of “Wrath” can’t help but feel like one big drive-by of each story (and that’s not counting the assorted teases for next season).
And my god, that’s before all the speeches. Maybe I would give “Wrath” a little more credit for tying of loose ends in a rushed fashion if it could do so with anything other than a series of undifferentiated, faux-profound oratories stacked on top of one another. Rick gives a speech. Negan gives a speech. Jesus gives a speech. Morgan gives a speech. Daryl gives a speech. Maggie gives a speech. Rick gives another speech (this time with Michonne).
I could even tolerate that tack if there were only some variety! Different characters should have different speech patterns, different rhythms, different verbiage. But everyone in “Wrath” speaks with the same voice, the same stilted, wannabe poetic dialogue, the same saccharine music cues trying to scaffold the emotion those painfully on-the-nose words can muster on their own. You could mix and match half of these speeches and it wouldn’t make much of a difference. It’s The Walking Dead leaning into its worst, most pontificating impulses, and indulging in grand declaration after grand declaration that sputter out of the gate and become exhausting by the end of the episode.
I have to give “Wrath” credit for one thing though. I walked into the episode expecting another epic battle, like the kind we had when Simon stormed the Hilltop. Instead, the show doesn't belabor the lead-up to the inevitable confrontation too much, and the fight itself is almost over before it begins.
There’s a few twists remaining, as Negan baits the hook to lure our heroes (which includes all of the main characters in the same strike force) into his trap, and for a split-second, you believe that the show might go through with at least letting the good guys take some heavy casualties in this conflict.
But then, it turns out that Eugene has had a last minute change of heart, and has sabotaged the bullets he made for the Saviors, Schindler-style. The climax of this 2-season-plus long conflict is not the raucous exchange of bullets, but a couple of ploys and then a fair amount of clean-up. In a show that can and does lean heavy on its action quotient, I appreciate The Walking Dead spending its final hour of this arc focused more on the ploys and choices the characters have made then on the firefights that emerge out of that.
That said, everything feels rushed, a little too perfunctory, and a little too neat. Naturally, Rick & Co. fall right into the trap just as Negan planned (though I do appreciate that the show had Negan double-bluff our heroes, so they don’t seem like complete idiots). Naturally, Eugene’s sabotage goes off without a hitch (or with exactly as many hitches as necessary), and creates the perfect opportunity for him, Gabriel, and Dwight to have their little moments of glory and redemption. Naturally, Alden gets one final shot to prove his loyalty and worth to the Savior-hating Tara, and what do you know, the Oceansiders show up to help defend the Hilltop.
It underlines the ways in which this isn’t just a season finale -- it’s the end of the larger story The Walking Dead has been telling for two and a half years now. That means it feels appropriately final (despite the obvious tease of a giant zombie horde in the distance), but also a little too neat. For an oft-messy show, I suppose I shouldn’t complain if the setups and payoffs are a tad too direct, but it leaves the end results feeling preordained rather than earned victories.
That’s especially true when, of course, this big clash of civilization comes down to Rick and Negan have a one-on-one scuffle. It’s a little tense, but also hard to get past the silliness of this broader conflict being reduced to two stubbly middle-aged guys throwing haymakers at one another. The fight ends when Rick begs for ten seconds of mercy, to give Negan Carl’s vision for the future, and then uses them to slice Negan’s throat with some broken stained glass (in a twist that is a little dumb, but at least nicely set up).
But Rick vows, in another painful, not-so-rousing halftime speech, that he’s going to keep Negan alive (over Maggie’s strenuous, well-acted objections), that this is going to be different, that they are turning over a new leaf as a people and that includes Negan.
It’s an odd choice for this show, but not for the usual reasons. It’s an instance where the episode is running on emotional logic rather than real logic, which is much more the province of, say, Friday Night Lights than The Walking Dead. The latter series tends to stumble more in terms of plot-convenient logic, where characters make confusing, ill-advised, or downright stupid choices so that the story can move along, not because the show’s aiming for particular high-minded bit of sentiment.
But here, we see Rick instructing Siddiq to tend to Negan. We see the other communities allowing the Saviors to start over as a peaceful community. We see almost everyone hit a happy ending (with Maggie and a few disgruntled collaborators the notable exception) and the show hopes we’ll stop scratching our heads as to how this is all supposed to work because we’re enjoying the joy of the destination.
Morgan is suddenly fine, or at least fine enough, that he’s ready to be apart and heal. Henry is a joyful kid again, trading smiles with Carol. The Saviors are planting things and starting over. And Rick fondly remembers his walks with young Carl, writing a letter to his dead son (in voiceover) thanking him for reminding him, and bringing him to this new world.
I can’t fault the show for landing on optimism. It makes Carl’s death into the catalyst for all these people moving past their endless war. It’s striving for something good, at the very least, the value of peace in the midst of a series that is more blood-filled and bullet-ridden but most.
It just makes no sense how we got there. I’m as much a proponent of mercy as anyone, but letting Negan live, not just in the shadow of the lives he’s snuffed out, but in light of the trouble he could cause with his big mouth alone, makes very little sense in the world of The Walking Dead. (And the show bends over backwards to try to account for it as being motivated by anything other than “we like having Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the cast.”)
Wanting to give the Saviors a second chance is a noble ideal, but just leaving a group of people to their own business, after they’ve been actively trying to kill you and, as Eugene can attest, went to absolute hell not long after the last time their fearless leader was out of the picture, seems like a really bad idea.
But I guess The Walking Dead is content to serve up a happy ending, whether or not it’s done the legwork to get its characters or communities there. This is the end of something big for The Walking Dead -- the show’s longest sustained arc; it’s biggest and most prominent guest star, and also a period where the show’s ratings and fanbase have eroded. This ending fits that, both offering a sense of finality, but also the unavoidable flaws that continue to plague the series, even as it tries to adjust.
That means skipping over any realistic path between all-out war and idyllic peace. That means florid oratory after florid oratary that land with all the grace and deftness of a severed zombie head. That means brief check-ins with every character to try to put a final stamp on a series of bumpy, less-than-satisfying arcs. It won’t be, but “Wrath” could be the series finale for The Walking Dead, with Rick having lost the people that kept him going, but started something bigger, and the show offering up some semblance of closure and grander peace to please its audience on the way out, whether it’s earned that or not.
At first I liked the Rick & Negan scenes but then it just felt like one thing after another to prolong their fight and keep Negan around. We get it, The powers that be like him and don’t want to kill him off. It continues to make the story worse. The powers that be are just trying their add drama.
I also feel like they’re pushing Simon’s blood thirst too much. There was a little be about how they’re all going to continue if Negan is gone...and combined with what the powers that be said on the Talking Dead, it seems like they’re trying to say Negan isn’t so bad. No. One is a sociopath and one is a psychopath. Both are bad.
I really wish the writers would do their research if they’re attempting to talk about the psyche in the show & in the press (& The Talking Dead). It’s just making it harder and harder to watch.
I hated Maggie in this. She was way out of character. And enough about Carl! We loved him but every time they say Carl wanted this or that it’s clearly the writers & show runner telling us “See? We had to kill him off!” Trying to justify it.
Killing Carl was stupid and bringing him up repeatedly is just painful and annoying already. Though I will say the lack of people grieving Carl is also annoying. Enid was emotional but everyone else is emotionless and acting like he died months ago. I really don’t get it.
I did find Georgie interesting and am curious what will happen with her and her people.
However, the revelation of the “key to the future”...seriously? Back in season one I already was wondering why people weren’t trying to find a library. You know the place where all the books live with this old knowledge like: how to build aqueducts, grow crops, architecture, agriculture etc.
So this revelation felt juvenile to me and a little insulting. Is it just me? Surely other people thought groups should have hit a library once or twice while looking for ways to survive... I really hope there’s more to Georgie though.
Overall I felt this episode was bipolar. Action then long boring scenes..,more action then even longer boring scenes.
After this episode I wonder, is there a real plan? Rick is all about "Stick to the plan. We all stick to the plan" but no one does. Can someone just do what they're told? Daryl and Tara are on a mission to kill Dwight which will end up jeopardizing the whole mission; Rosita and Michonne leave after being shot and beaten up because of some reason; Carl simply decides to wander off to find a guy and bring him to Alexandria; Benjamin's brother (don't remember his name) wants to kill people and joins Carol who gives him a gun? Wth? And truly, if there's a plan, someone please explain to me what kind of plan involves having Rick naked in a freaking container. Btw, why the hell did Rick even think it was a good idea to go to thegarbage people?
The garbage people, lol. Jadis was sitting literary naked making a freaking garbage cat, wtf?
That freaking trash people talking like that, lol. It reminds me of Kevin's small talk to save time in The Office. It cracks me up every time. Economy of language to the higher level.
It's so good to have Rosita and Michonne back. Rosita with the rocket launcher was so badass. It was one of those hilariously funny scenes. But why did they exactly want to see the Sanctuary for? Feelings and emotions? I don't quite get it.
The whole episode an be summarised as "I want to come with you". There were quote a lot of them.
I understand Jesus' motivations but have any of the Saviors showed any humanity? Some days I don't think Negan's idea of killing one of a group is a bad idea at all. They should've killed Jared long ago. Can't stand that guy. He'll end up dead, but still.
I'm really digging the Ezekiel plot. That scene with Carol was fantastic. I loved how Carol tried to help him through his grief and identity crisis. The parallelism between the two of them is great. Carol is not different from Ezekiel. She put on the same act he did.
Btw, the letter narration montage was so weird. It reminded me to those camp letters you write.
Awesome episode. I missed Eugene's funny way of talking. Dr Smarty-pants needs his own science spin-off show. It was a fun episode: "I was Negan before I met you". That and he humming that music while he was doing science stuff to Negan's wives, rotflao. If he goes straight to Negan asking him to be one of his wives I won't be surprised. It's a tough spot to be on but I want to think he's got a plan. He's a liar and a scam artist. He'll do what it takes to survive but I hope he's just playing smart and not a complete sellout.
I love Eugene's new look: trench coat with GremlyGunk in his pocket, eating pickles and giving orders.
And what's up with Negan? Since when is he so emotional and dumb? He's supposed to be a smart evil guy not a dumbass. I certainly didn't expect him to kill the doctor. I've always though that being a doctor in TWD gives you immunity for everything and people won't try to kill you. Then, Negan tossed him in fire. It was a brutal death, even more when you know he's totally innocent. You can't have a heart in this world. The most valuable person at Negan's place and gets killed off by Negan himself. Fuck logic. About that oven scene. I fully expected Negan to iron Dwight. When the Dr confessed I was sure he'd go for Dwight, but he burns the doctor instead. I think Negan knows the truth. He has to know that Honey is Dwight. Maybe he killed the doctor to scare mame him to feel guilty. But there's another Dr Carson. Interesting to see if it leads to Negan finding out about Maggie.
And the wives, I bet Negan sent them to test Eugene's loyalty.
I burst out laughing the minute I heard Easy Street and I had to pause it when I saw Eugene nodding along with it.
The symbolism of the pickles authentic end was great. At the beginning he asked for pasta and tomato sauce if I recall correctly. Then he refused the chips and the pickles because they were homemade. And the fist thing we see him eat is that pickle, just before saying "I'm Negan".
I still like the world building. I like the part where Kovacs take Ortega to the hospital. Patients have to wait in long lines unless you're filthy rich. Doctor keeps talking like a telemarketer while doing surgery, constantly asking you for new products. It's a classic play on neoliberal patients-as-consumers/doctors-as-producers where everything is measured by money. I like the tension between the police officers and the meth; also the meth lawyer and the actual meth elites. Private power vs public power. It's the good cyberpunk classic trope.
The episode spends less time on world building however, and starts to move the plot a bit faster. This can be either good or bad. The good side is a lot of things happen in a couple of minutes. The complex web of interplay of power (Dimitri's, Carnage's, Leung's, Hemingway) is seen. Kovacs and Ortega move fast from hospital to Bancroft estate to arena.
The bad side... the storywriting starts to show its weaker points. This is especially true with the cliffhanger of sister ex machina in the end of the episode. She appears from nowhere - no build-up, no character introduction save for a few flashbacks. Cliffhanger could be interesting and pose a lot of questions, but this one doesn't. Not to mention the cheesy entrance. The ninja swordplay action is a bit off with high tech as its background, and I'd guess this serve not much other than playing the classic cyberpunk ninja trope. Which, since the character hasn't been handled well enough, doesn't look really good. Same thing with Dimitri's entrance in Kovacs' original body which seems to serve the Rule of Cool.
The scenes in hospital is a bit forced. Kovacs pulled a Sherlock to the police sergeant Tanaka. I understand Envoys are meant to be highly perceptive, but the scenes don't show it well. It relies too much on the exposition - of "telling", instead of "showing". They could've handled it better. Vernon Elliot's character is also handled a bit too poorly; only sitting there watching operation and interupting it with no clear reason, waiting for Kovacs to activate his sidekick plotline.
The episode is built upon faulty premises.
Lightsaber prowess and force power are two different things. You can be proficient in lightsaber combat without having ANY force-sensitivity (e.g. Grievous) and the other way around, you can be masterful in force but lacking in lightsaber feat (e.g. Jocasta Nu).
Lightsaber crystal also doesn't reflect the wielder's sensitivity to sides of the force. You can be a morally uptight Jedi wielding red lightsaber (e.g. Adi Gallia) and a sith wielding blue (e.g. Exar Kun, or Anakin after he fell to the dark side. Notice when he was knighted as sith by Palpatine his saber's color DID NOT turn red). Red crystal is actually a synthetic color that can't be generated by lightsaber crystal. Sith forged it intentionally to channel their dark side.
HOWEVER the execution of this episode is good especially compared to other episodes so far.
The faulty premises end up being an important plot point, and a good one at that. Characters are quite well-developed given the very brief duration (perhaps except the villains). World-building, although sparse, gives quite a good idea of how lives looked like on that planet. Animation is really well-done especially the lightsaber combat and the chase scene. And the music is reminiscent of Star Wars without having to be exact copies of the films, which I really appreciate.
So if Production IG is given a much better brief to the mechanics of Star Wars universe, I believe they are much better suited to produce more Star Wars films than Disney currently does.
Most solid episode of the season so far. Nothing extraordinarily amazing, but it's just The Boys at its best like in the first half of Season 1.
What I like the most is that everything that happens leading to the climax in the Herogasm is just frantic, chaotic, a lot of stuff happening at once, unplanned, unpredictable, and consequently, tragic. Just a lot of things coming out together at the same time, including the tying up of loose ends of plot points (e.g. with A-Train's demise and his conflict with Hughie).
The episode keeps the comedy and jab at corporate speak intact, but does not overdo it so we get straight to the crux of the matter. From Homelander, Starlight, Kimiko/Frenchie, Hughie, A-Train, even Ashley - the plot revolving around those characters are about what makes them really them. They all have struggled with the question whether power (be it through V or executive position) made them into a terrible person they do not like, but it is all actually on them. Power only explicate their attitude. Like Butcher in the previous episode said, "With great power comes the absolute certainty, that you will turn into a right cunt."
It was interesting to see how each characters react: Hughie portrayed as an insecure man, A-Train tasting his own bitter medicine, Starlight getting tired of the play-pretend and politicking she has played all over the years, and of course, Homelander being Homelander. I find it especially best with Hughie and A-Train. Hughie, when in S1 he acted as our moral compass, here we see him as someone fragile, a man unable to keep up with the pace of the world he's living in and feeling defeated by his girlfriend for not being a breadwinner. A-Train, a great end to his arc, as he realizes that he has caused so many harms to others due to his toxicity, he realizes that he can only bring a little bit of justice for his own brother. He can't run away from his past like Frenchie said, I think it's very poetic.
Also it's refreshing to get a brief character development with Soldier Boy. Hoping that there is more to this character in the next seasons to come.
Last but not least, the fight with Homelander was intense. The unexpected Butcher x Hughie x Soldier Boy tag-team is great, especially with the confused, defeated look Homelander gave to them. I'm expecting this will drive Homelander even uncontrollable, especially now with his inner monologue and everyone either against him (Starlight, Maeve, if she is still there) or leaving him (Noir and possibly A-Train). The show seems to be planting the seed of conflict between our Boys in the future to come. Hopefully this will pay off.
Up until this episode The Boys Season 3 has been solid with only a few dents, but this episode the dents are getting bigger and they're kinda showing.
First of all, everything doesn't seem to be too well-paced here.
Butcher and Hughie just had a convo in previous episode about not showing him taking Tempo V, but then in the lab he just outright stormed the bullets and showing off to the others about his newfound power. And same with Hughie, who somehow got a dose too. Worse thing the lab situation doesn't seem to be even that bad. They don't seem to be outnumbered nor outgunned, and they've seen worse before. Facing Gunpowder, it's understandable why they'd need a V; but this? Seems kinda forced to me as if the writers need to just waste those Vs already.
Still on the lab: The Soldier Boy reveal seems to be a bit hurried. Butcher suddenly randomly opening up stuff while in fact they realize they're onto something dangerous which may or may not have Soldier Boy in the lab is not just reckless (we know Butcher is) but dumb. Aren't they there to find a superweapon? When Soldier Boy escaped, they just ended up stopping the search and went back home. Granted there's the situation with the team, but the whole thing about this supposedly mysterious Soldier Boy and the search for superweapon just feels really anticlimactic.
Then, the thing with Vicky and Stan Edgar. The way she outted Edgar is a surprising twist, and I kinda like that Homelander Magneto-esque speech about choosing their own kind. But it seemed to be paced oddly interspersed between fillers and actions going on with The Boys.
There are a few death flags as well (though hopefully it's just false ones): either KImiko or Frenchie or both with their "one last run" convo; MM with the "you're natural-born leader" convo; and of course Alex/Supersonic with the "I'm gonna help you cause it's the right thing to do." That's just a straight death flag and it's proven true by the end of the episode - which again, is kinda odd paced, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
To note that this isn't a bad episode at all, but it feels like things are kinda jumbled here and there, making watching especially the second half a bit tedious. Not to mention that the first half isn't as packed and well-structured as prev episodes (it's the moment they started playing the "3 seconds still shot" too much that I felt that it's a bit too filler-y). The A-Train Pepsi parody is well done though - The Boys is always the best at parody but I hope they can do more than that.
Hopefully it will get better.
