Whoa! You sure you want to proceed? There’s spoilers in this review.
The manipulation games seen early in this episode started long before we all sat on our couches to watch. Back at San Diego Comic-Con, they swore up, down, sideways, bothways, whateverways, that the Wolves would not be a large part in the early episodes. Second episode—BOOM. Wolves at the gates. Yay. You finally got one over on us, guys.
Within the episode, the games serve a far different purpose. Carol continues to wheedle her way into Alexandria’s bosom with her perfect housewife routine. A routine which slips a little when Shelly talks smack about a dish Carol hasn’t even cooked yet, then proceeds to whine about dried pasta and how she could feed them all like kings if she had a pasta maker. In typical Carol fashion, she digs the emotional knife in under Shelly’s ribs, offering to teach her how to make pasta without a machine, but the cigarettes? They have to stay outside. Such a disgusting habit. Plus, they have enough things trying to kill them. Carol’s mood follows her home, where Jessie’s youngest, Sam, waits for her. She tells him point-blank, your dad beat your mom, he died, get over it. Seeing as it’s a great parenting technique, Jessie employs a similar technique with her eldest, Ron. She calls him down on the premise of cutting his hair. He sees through her ploy. But then the conversation stops making sense; until Ron says Rick is just as dangerous as Pete. There are ways to write scenes where characters are hiding secrets. This is not one of those ways. It’s clunky and far more awkward than it should be, almost like the actors had no clue what they were saying when it came to the context of the fight and Ron’s secrets.
Maggie does a little emotional manipulation of her own while Glenn is off dealing with the horde. Much like her father, Maggie believes every successful safe haven must be self-sustaining; that includes producing their own food. Raising cattle is a long way off, but Maggie scored crates of seeds recently and knows what to do. She takes Deanna outside the fence to a spot she’s picked for the garden. The catch? Deanna has to approve and put into motion the town’s expansion project, plus it will take a lot of backbreaking work to prepare the ground for planting. It seems like hard physical work may be what shakes Deanna from her mental fog.
The Wolves attack without any warning whatsoever. One moment Carol smugly watches Shelly puff away on a cigarette, the next Shelly has a machete in her head. Within moments, Alexandria is in chaos. How? Why? Rick left people on watch. Why was the gate unguarded? There are at least ten able-bodied fighters in town when the attack happens. Not one of them is armed nor at a guard position. The one guy with a rifle, Spencer, nearly wets himself when he misses his first shot. He’s taken out of the game completely when the Wolves drive a truck into the church, knocking him from the belfry. This is the truck Rick and company hear out on the road.
Carl holds his own pretty well, protecting his sister and their house by himself until Enid stops by on her way out of Alexandria. He convinces her to stay, but it won’t last; she’s a nomad. We see Enid’s introduction to Alexandria before the opening sequence. Why? Probably just to show a teenage girl eating a raw tortoise and create some oddness with the initials “JSS.” The scene has no real purpose other than to establish a mental mindset for a character handled as a throw-away since her introduction. This happens too often. Writers realize they have no substance for a character they need to do something vital, so they cram in a half-assed backstory to fill the gaps. Do your character building before they’re on the final script copy, guys.
It’s almost hilarious how inept these characters are. Carol is literally the only one to realize the Wolves don’t have guns, but if they get to the town’s armory, it’s game over for every single person in the fence. She alone prevents the first pack from breaking into the armory, then leaves poor, frightened Olivia to guard their only saving grace. There’s no help coming. Everyone else is armpit deep in walkers out on the road. But so long as they have the guns, they have the upper hand. Morgan’s world view is too narrow. Yes, he knows Carol doesn’t really enjoy the killing, but he has to see the necessity in the moment, appreciate the sacrifice she’s making for everyone. He’s so busy nagging her about the deaths, he still doesn’t understand what she’s telling him about the armory or the mentality of these people.
I think I know why . . . . Morgan has dealt with these people before. Nearly every one of the Wolves he encounters who manages to speak recognizes him, either directly or through stories they’ve heard. When they fight, he’s quick to knock them out cold. No brawling. Very few swings. One, two—pup on the ground. He even talks a small pack into retreating with little physical convincing. I’m not going to jump on the “Morgan is awful” bandwagon. He’s always been neutral. It’s possible he has a deeper connection to the Wolves, but I’d say it’s an old acquaintance telling undead war stories to his cronies with the occasional physical encounter to reestablish territories since they’ve all been in the same general area for a while, apparently.
In the end, the attack lasted about thirty minutes, maybe less. There’s no clear picture of how many or who died. Bodies remain on the street. Fires smolder along the fences. Carol and Morgan are on the prowl, clearing straggling Wolves or stray walkers.
Is Alexandria safe? Aaron finds scouting photos on one man’s corpse. The attack was planned. By who? Did they die in the fight or flee with the others? Or were they present at all for the Wolves’ shindig? I can’t imagine planning something with that much care and not watching. Unfortunately, the mastermind may remain a mystery for a while, giving them enough time to attack again.
For the first time in nearly five years, I’m throwing the B.S. flag on TWD. This episode is beyond ridiculous. It jumps from Rick shooting Pete to the Alexandria survivors staring at a walker horde numbering in the thousands. Yeah, that’s cool and all, but what are they doing there? Why are they futzing with this many walkers? Who is this guy arguing with Rick so much about a “dry run?” Dry run of what? Turning Daryl into walker bait, apparently. Just about everything before the opening credits makes little to no sense. It doesn’t get any better.
The episode bounces constantly from the present to the past. It’s confusing. Frustrating. Made me homicidal about twenty minutes into the episode when I finally just wanted to watch the plot in chronological order instead of the convoluted and drawn out method utilized in the episode. There are several moments when it cuts from a flashback—presented in black and white to lessen viewer confusion—to Rick and crew walking through the forest for ten seconds, then back to the Same Exact Scene in the flashback it cut from. Are you confused yet? Just typing it hurts my head. What were the writers, director, and editor smoking when they cobbled this idea together? Did they shoot up Krokodil in order to feel like a walker before locking themselves in the editing room? It’s the only way to make sense from the mess they made of the plot.
Sad thing is, the plot itself is pretty straight-forward. Let me try to sort it out and spare you the brain cramp I’m dealing with.
Deanna, kneeling in Reg’s blood, bonds with Father Gabriel for a brief moment after she realizes he was right to warn her about Rick. Abe takes Reg’s body to the cemetery to await burial. Pete’s family mourns their loss. Tara is awake and well in the clinic. Glenn and Nick stumble in fresh from their near-fatal fight. Maggie and Eugene fuss over their respective people. Tara is just happy the mullet survived. Carl is seen once in the episode, sitting on a roof with his kinda-girlfriend. Rick tells Morgan that he doesn’t taken chances. Morgan is locked in the prison room until morning after Rick collects his thoughts. They discuss the Wolves and what happened at the trucks. Daryl and Rick don’t see eye-to-eye on Daryl’s recruitment missions. Heath and his supply-fetching crew return to Alexandria. Eugene, in typical Eugene fashion, awkwardly allows them to drive through the gate. Morgan gets the penny tour of Alexandria. Father Gabriel sets to digging graves for Reg and Pete. Rick and Deanna agree—Pete will not be buried in town. Rick and Morgan take the killer’s body away to bury in a location none of the townsfolk will ever see. Ron, Pete’s eldest son, follows the men to the burial site. He ends up drawing a few walkers to their location. Rick saves the boy from falling off a cliff. He gives him a stern talk about how Ron can’t defend himself; Rick will teach him, but not right that second.
All of that was simply lead-up to discovering the thousands of walkers trapped in a quarry not too far from the town. This is how the people survived without learning how to defend themselves; most of the walkers are crammed in the quarry. A few escape, but not enough to pose a real threat. However, the semi-trucks the quarry’s former tenants put in place to defend themselves—that plan obviously didn’t work—aren’t so stable anymore. Rick sees the problem and brings it back to Deanna and the town. Heath fills in the information gaps since he already knew about the horde but didn’t consider it an issue. They must act now before one of the trucks barring the walkers falls. Carter, the new guy seen arguing with Rick in the opening scene, continues to argue with Rick. Big surprise.
They concoct a plan to move the walkers west, away from Alexandria. More arguing from Carter. Then Deanna and Rick corner him—he’s built a wall once, why can’t he build another barricade to keep the walkers off the road leading to their front gate? Obviously Carter agrees. The nexk set of flashbacks take place as they’re building the barricade. Daryl puts his foot down; he will be going to find new townspeople after they move the walkers. Carol continues to play “scared little lady” to fit in, however Morgan sees through it. He notices the way Carol is always watching, assessing the situation and confuses her with a cop. Maggie tells Tara about Nick’s part in Noah’s death and the murder attempt on Glenn. She gives Tara the power to spread the stories, let the town decide if Nick should be banished. For now Tara will follow Maggie’s lead when it comes to Nick. Rick corners Deanna on the premise of giving condolences about Reg. She sees through it and tells him to speak his mind. He tells her he will be training everyone how to defend themselves and use guns. Right on cue, walkers discover the build site. Rick holds back his crew, telling Carter and his friends to take care of the walkers with their shovels. That lasts about five seconds until they realize there’s too many walkers. The A Team steps in and clears the undead in a blink.
Later that night Eugene overhears Carter telling other Alexandria survivors he will kill Rick and take back the town. Eugene freaks, drops a jam jar, and is nearly shot in the head by Carter. His bacon is saved when Rick walks in and disarms Carter. The man is given another chance to work with Rick and his crew. The act of mercy doesn’t fool Morgan. He saw the real Rick in the armory with a gun pressed against Carter’s head. Grudgingly Rick admits he wanted to kill Carter just so he doesn’t screw up and get anyone killed. But he doesn’t have to pull the trigger himself; he realizes men like Carter will always end up dead. It’s just the way things happen.
In the armory again. Rick finally talks to Jessie, Pete’s widow. She tells him off for the way he man-handled and berated Ron. Understanding the need to learn self-defense, Jessie has been taking shooting lessons from Rosita and will teach her boys herself. Without Rick. Guess there’s no booty calls in his future.
The next day, the day before they play out Rick’s scheme, the townsfolk who volunteered to help with the plan meet to map out the route Daryl, Abe, and Sasha will drive in order to lure the walkers westward. Abe stops Sasha and asks her if she’s on the mission to die. She says, “No.” The crew stop by a tractor supply store with a dozen or so walkers trapped inside banging on the glass. The noise will draw the horde away from the planned route. Rick says they’ll come back before dark to clear the walkers. Glenn stops Nick to tell him he will sit out the following day; Nick isn’t ready to take on walkers again.
They arrive at the quarry. Rick gives a rousing speech about getting the walkers before they attack the town. Then things go wrong. One truck blocking the eastern path falls from the narrow road, giving walkers a direct route to their backyard. Instead of simply planning their attack, they must now act on it. Carter, of course, argues that they aren’t prepared.
This is actually where the episode begins, if you’ve lost track.
From here on out, it’s all walker action. Daryl plays pied piper, leading the initial rush from the quarry. Abe and Sasha meet him at the hill’s base. Together they lead the horde from the quarry east. While they’re driving, Glenn, Nick, and Heath double back to the tractor store to deal with the noisy walkers. After a false start on the killing, they eventually just blow out a window and open fire. Nick saves Heath’s bacon. It redeems him in Glenn’s eyes a little. Michonne, Rick, and Morgan wait on the far side of the barricade with flare guns. When the horde reaches them, they shoot westward, drawing the walkers’ attention toward where they need to shamble. At one point, a few walkers wander off. Abe jumps from the lead car and lures them back onto the road. When Sasha asks him why he’s acting like a nutjob—talking about pieces of Pete’s brain still in his ear—Abe says he’s just living large, much like Sasha when she snapped and slaughtered numerous walkers for fun.
Everything is going smoothly. Until Carter is grabbed and bitten by a walker. He squeals like a stuck pig, drawing walkers off the road. Luckily, or unluckily, Rick is nearby. He kills Carter. Michonne and Morgan lament the death, but both understand that’s just how it is nowadays. The others alongside the road fire their guns to draw the walkers back. It works. Well, for a moment. Not long after a horn sounds, distracting the walkers again. The horn is coming from Alexandria and now a few thousand walkers are out to find it.
Instead of presenting this version of the story, the showrunners decided to start with the zombie horde and edit the episode to flow inside out, starting in the middle for the present action and the beginning for the flashbacks. If they’d edited it better, I wouldn’t be so livid. Instead of large story chunks to lay groundwork, they cut it into tidbits, dropping ten seconds of storyline here and there amongst personal dramas and too-long clips featuring walkers, well, walking down a road. The undead action stopped being cool the second they hit the road. Then it became a rainy-day parade with no bathroom in sight, but you’ve down an entire pot of coffee just to be awake enough to watch the soggy festivities. It’s not fun. It makes no sense why you would put yourself through such torture for maybe a few enjoyable seconds as your favorite float passes. But it’s not the same. It’s not as entertaining. You begin to wonder if the parade will even be worth attending the following year if there’s a chance of rain.
I’ll tell you right now, if the show pulls this flashback stunt again, I’m not only done with the parade, I’ll forget there’s even a holiday to hold a parade for, rain or not. This episode was a waste of time. Whoever edited it and the people who then looked at this cut and said it was good to go need to relearn a few story-telling basics. The episode is a joke. My ability to take anyone in TWD’s post-production staff seriously is fractured. Just like my sanity after piecing the plot together for you guys. Here’s hoping the next episode makes more sense.
Slow your roll. This review contains spoilers. Are you ready?
The family is finally back on track with their original plan—pack everything they need and drive out to the desert to wait out the worst. That last part is hysterical. They’re not paying attention to what’s going on around them. Travis is convinced the government will find a way to fix the infected. Daniel is far more practical. He knows it’s “us versus them.” Which them, though? The infected and their mindless search for sustenance? The soldiers imprisoning them in the Safe Zone? The government doctors kidnapping anyone and everyone with symptoms of illness, both physical and mental? For Daniel, it doesn’t matter so long as he and Ofelia survive. The only reason he stays with Travis and Madison is because they’re heading to the medical facility to retrieve Liza and Nick. He won’t leave the city without Griselda. Daniel’s practicality demands they kill Adams so he doesn’t alert the remaining soldiers in the city. There’s an argument, of course. Travis wins the round, with an assist from cold-hearted Madison, and they take Adams along to provide a map for the military compound housing Exner’s clinic.
Except then the bleeding-heart lets Adams go. Why? Because Adams whines endlessly about being tortured. Cry me a river. Going from what we saw on-screen, Daniel gave him a couple paper cuts. This is why it was vital they establish the torture on-screen in episode five. Without it, the story line with Adams falls flat and makes no sense later on when Adams catches up with the group to confront Daniel. Why go back for revenge? Adams wasn’t permanently harmed. His wounds were entirely superficial. He showed no genuine mental anguish during or after the lackluster torture scenes. It’s another case of the writers drumming up tension without actually establishing any.
Not even the massive wave of infected in the second half of the episode manages to make an impression. As part of the plan to sneak into the military compound, Daniel utilizes the stadium overflowing with infected to distract the soldiers. There’s the usual footage starring clueless men shooting through a chain link fence. All the actual hand-to-teeth action is seen through Liza’s eyes as she’s preparing to evacuate with the clinic staff. In slow motion. While she stands still for two and a half minutes—I timed it—doing not a bloody thing. There are times for realism; any person faced with a zombie horde would freeze. However, with an already snail-paced first season and copious slow-mo shots, this was a bad call by the production crew. There’s no sense of urgency from the characters. They’re watching dozens die at the hands of people they assumed were just sick. Yet they stand around, twiddling their thumbs. Even when Liza discovers that Exner murdered the clinic patients who couldn’t be transported—the helicopter evacuation team tucks tail after discovering the infected horde—her reaction is, “Oh. Well, they’re dead. You, the woman who killed them, should come with my family.”
A lot of questionable behavior by the survivors gets swept under the rug. One exchange cannot be overlooked. While Travis, Madison, Daniel, and Ofelia are in the compound searching for their kidnapped family members, Chris and Alicia wait with the cars in an underground garage. Once the feces hits the fan, some of the soldiers tuck tail and run. A few find the kids and demand they hand over the keys to the SUV. Alicia and Chris fight back as best as they can. Then one of the soldiers stops and threatens to rape Alicia. This is not okay anymore. I’m tired of every man on TV with questionable morals resorting to rape in order to prove they’re not the good guys. Quite frankly, it’s lazy and predictable. Plus, it makes no sense. “Oh, we’re being chased by zombies? Let me stop and try to rape this chick.” Yeah, no. That’s simply not how the flight-or-fight trigger works. These men feared for their lives, not their libidos. Stopping to grab a little action before securing their safety goes against human nature. Writers, leave the rape threats on the cutting room floor. Surely as a group we’ve all moved past this bad-guy trope.
What about Nick? Well, he’s still got a friend in Strand—the well-dressed man he shares a cell with in the clinic. They break out after it’s obvious the soldiers are fleeing. Do they help anyone else? No. It’s another nail in Nick’s likeability coffin and doesn’t do a thing to make us find common footing with Strand. They’re sitting ducks in the compound, soldiers or not. The guy they needed to get a ride to freedom is somebody’s dinner. Then they walk the wrong way down a hallway with an automatically locking door. Luckily Liza happens to find them, and the others trying to save them, and unlocks the door. As reward for the assist, Strand takes them to his oceanfront property. They’re not staying in the gorgeous house. Strand is a nomad at heart. He knows setting up camp is a death sentence.
There’s business to take care of before they can leave the house for the yacht floating just off the coast. First, Ofelia has a bullet wound from Adams’ attempt at revenge. It’s not clear where, exactly, she is injured, just that it isn’t likely to kill her. Second, their only trained medical person was bitten in the rush to escape via a detour through the military compound’s kitchen. Liza takes a walk down to the beach. Nosey Madison follows. Turnabout is fair play in the apocalypse, spurring Liza to ask Madison to kill her before she turns—a talk which went the other way around about the time the Safe Zone was established. It takes so long for this talk, Travis finds the women. He ends up putting Liza down, despite both women agreeing it’d do irreparable damage to his fragile psyche. The episode ends with another drawn out set of slow-motion shots ranging from Travis’ anguished lament in the surf to Chris discovering his mother’s body.
That’s it. There’s no momentum catapulting these characters into season two. It’s inexcusable. They knew well in advance that FtWD would have a second season. It wasn’t like they wrote season one completely blind to the show’s future, as so many infant series do nowadays with fickle audiences and wary network executives. The Walking Dead franchise is more or less all AMC focuses on as their cash cow. So why end this show in particular in such a boring way? Yes, they kill a main character. Yes, it should be tragic. But it isn’t. Liza isn’t given enough screen time to make fans like her enough to mourn. The slow-motion ending drags down the tempo and Travis’ breakdown in the surf is almost parody. I do not have high hopes for season two. If this show sees a third season, it’s simply because AMC is milking this cow until the teats run dry, then putting it out of its misery.
His position doesn’t thrill Madison at all. She’s playing single mom with five extra people to feed and clean up after. Liza can’t help; she’s the only one tending to the injured and sick inside the gates. But what does Travis do all day? Hang around the main gate, waiting for Moyers to need him? Which is exactly what happens after Moyers announces that there is a six-mile buffer between the fence and the nearest infected person. The officer needs Travis’ smooth-talking skills to convince Doug to submit to medical testing. He does the job, only to later find out Doug broke curfew and was taken away to a medical facility.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. There’s spoilers in this review. You sure you’re ready to read it?
Travis exposed Doug’s mental instability. Anyone not normal and one-hundred percent functional isn’t welcome in Moyers’ safe zone. Is Travis putting the same hyper-focus on his kid? Nope. Chris tells Travis there may be survivors on the hillside outside the fence after spotting someone using a mirror to send a distress signal. It isn’t until Madison hears about the discovery and talks to Travis about it that he brings it up to Moyers. But like Doug, his attempts to make things better backfire. The episode ends with Travis sitting on the house’s roof, watching muzzle flare light up the window where Chris spotted the S.O.S. signal. Anytime he interferes, people are hurt.
His fiancé isn’t doing much better at keeping her head down to wait out the worst. When Madison is certain Travis won’t do anything about the possible hillside survivors, she breaks out of the fence. Up on the hill, it’s obvious the military have been through there. However, the corpses don’t look right. Madison is nearly spotted by a patrol unit and crawls under a car to hide. It puts her face-to-face with a dead woman. That’s when it dawns on her, most of the bodies stinking up the street weren’t infected. The military mowed through them and moved on, leaving them to rot. At least Madison took some form of action, though she never found the house with the survivors. When the episode opens, she’s more concerned with painting the family room again because she can still see the blood stains from when Daniel saved Travis. She has this delusion that they can host an open house to sell the place. Yeah, like the fickle market will survive a zombie apocalypse. It can’t even handle a drought. Meanwhile, she’s so tense, she’s dropping the ball on her Nick Watch. Like most unrepentant junkies, he found a way to score morphine—stealing it from the men next door with congestive heart failure. Hell rains down on Nick when Madison does find out. She beats him, leaving him with a black eye and a boatload of embarrassment. As for Alicia? Other than breaking into Susan’s house and giving herself a tattoo, she might as well not be in the episode.
The main action is actually with Liza. The military finally brings in a doctor to evaluate the sick and injured in the safe zone. Dr. Exner’s first order of business is to call Liza on her lie; she’s not actually a nurse. However, Liza’s quick thinking and natural compassion are commended. Exner asks Liza to help her visit everyone in the safe zone in need of medical attention. They eventually circle around to the Clark house. Griselda will need surgery to save her foot. Daniel plans to leave with her. Next, they corner Nick to see if he needs help weening off the junk. Exner sees through his lies, but doesn’t make a fuss. Later that night the soldiers come for Griselda. Before they make it out the door, the switch is flipped. They’re not taking Daniel. Instead they want Nick. He’s caught and handcuffed. Madison is beside herself, blaming Liza. Nick and Griselda aren’t the only ones who leave that night. Exner more or less begs Liza to join her to help these people. After mouthing, “I love you,” to Chris, Liza climbs into the transport vehicle. She may be going to help others, but for the most part I believe she’s going to keep an eye on Nick for Madison.
Daniel is written as the Wise Old Man. It’s annoying. He more or less predicts what happens before Griselda and Nick are taken, ruining the surprise. Sure, he has a cool story to tell, but is it necessary in every episode? We get it. They want to draw parallels to other refugee camps. Having Daniel present is enough without giving him these endless monologues. It’s like they’re telling the story twice per episode. Fans aren’t that dense. Quit guiding them by the nose.
Where did they take Nick? Do we really care? I don’t. But we’ll likely see this mysterious medical facility in the next episode.
Whether it’s through bad calls from the government, medical professionals, and police forces or if the mass panic in large cities like Los Angeles is the perfect breeding ground for new zombies. More often than not, I find myself watching the background action in every scene. Why continue to shove poorly written characters in our faces when the best part of the show happens without them? Numerous fans have told me they’d much rather the show follow Tobias. He seems to be the only one fully aware of the ramifications of these attacks and what it means for mankind’s future. But he’s only on screen for a few minutes total halfway through the season. It’s like the writers want to hide his intelligence after realizing how moronic the lead characters are when it comes to common sense.
Head’s up! There’s episode spoilers in the rest of this review.
Some of you surely think I’m overreacting, that there’s no way the same people who gave us Rick Grimes and company can produce such wholly flawed characters. I’m not talking flawed like Carol’s sociopathy or Daryl’s antisocial nature. We’re talking characters so poorly written, if they were actual people, they’d find it impossible to function in normal society without ending up injuring themselves or others. Madison in particular cannot operate under basic logic. In the beginning of this episode, not much time has passed since we left off in episode 2. So she should still feel the adrenaline rush—or at least the let-down from it—after bashing in Artie’s head with a fire extinguisher. You know, her friend and coworker. The man she risked her life to help despite Tobias’ warnings. At no point does reason say Madison should force her children to wait at the house for Travis and his family when she knows these infected people can and will hurt others. Not to mention, she watched an infected neighbor chow down on the birthday party crew, so she knows danger is at their door.
Does she make Captain Addict and Princess Stubborn climb into the car? No. Madison sits them down to play Monopoly. Her dingbattiness must be inherited by the kids.
When they hear a noise at the door, Nick just wanders over to open it, letting in a stray German shepherd. Hold that thought for a second. I have a bone to pick with the writers about that dog. It’s always been a big mystery on TWD: where are the animals? We’ve seen a few, either eaten later on or too feral to re-domesticate. It only makes sense that this show would attempt to show what happened to them. It doesn’t make sense to introduce a gorgeous dog, only to kill it off-screen minutes later. There’s no point in forcing fans to listen to a dog’s whimpering and yelping as its attacked. Matter of fact, that is flat out cruel. Yes, people react when animals die. It’s a lazy way to garner emotions from the audience when they aren’t connecting to the humans in the story. Make us care when people die. Quit using animals to make up for two-dimensional characters.
When the infected neighbor breaks into their house and kills the dog, Madison and the kids return the favor and break into the house next door. Nick steals their shotgun. Madison snags the shotgun shells. Alicia wanders around, wondering what’s going on because he mother refuses to tell her that zombies exist.
Across town, Travis, his family, and the Salazars are forced out of the barber shop by a fire in the strip mall. Griselda’s foot is broken when a police water cannon topples a scaffold. Luckily they just happen to be right next to Travis’ truck. Going to the hospital isn’t an option—duh. Hospitals are ground zero for all infections and viruses. We’ve always said the first institutions to fall would be anything medical. That’s one thing the writers for the show got right.
Unable to find help for the injured woman, Travis opts to bring them with him to the house. They arrive seconds after the dog dies. Madison attempts to cut them off before they find the infected neighbor inside the house. Despite hearing the munching noises, Travis strolls up to his undead buddy and almost gets the same treatment as the birthday party crew. Daniel saves Travis, despite Travis demanding no one shoot the shotgun. The makeup effects for the infected in this scene are amazing and detailed.
Back at the neighbor’s house, Alicia backtracks by herself to grab the shotgun shells Madison dropped. She’s attacked by their neighbor, Susan. Chris comes to her rescue and gets punched in the nose as thanks. With everyone together, they should be ready to head to the desert, right? Wrong. Travis demands they wait until daylight. The Salazars argue whether or not they should go with the others, considering Liza is going to school to be a nurse and may be the only medically-inclined person they can find given the scene at the hospital they passed on the way to the Clark house. Ofelia thinks that since the others are kind, it’ll mean they survive. “Good people are the first ones to die,” Daniel tells her. They’re still arguing when Travis and Madison finally get in the car and drive away in the morning. For a heart-stopping minute, I wanted them to just drive off and never be seen again. It doesn’t happen. Susan’s husband returns home. Madison rushes back to warn him. Too late. He reaches out to embrace Susan . . . splat! A soldier puts a round through Susan’s skull.
Half the National Guard suddenly appears in their little suburb, locking it down. They catalogue every living person in the neighborhood. The corpses are taken away in body bags. Now they’re stuck huddling in the middle of a crowded city where the infection rate is climbing.
They should’ve left the minute Madison got home with Artie’s brains on her jacket.
First, adding unnecessary time to the pilot, killing what little momentum was in the episode with slow pans of Los Angeles, false zombie sightings, and sandpaper smooth character development. The latter is a huge deal-breaker for fans. They need a character to latch onto and love as a friend. I’d hoped the second episode would be better without the luxury of extra time to futz around, forcing it to focus on the plot. Yeah, not so much. All they managed was to make a bigger mess of the characters. Then, they continuously used slow-mo shots to try and ramp the tension throughout the episode. Except after an incredibly snail paced pilot, starting the second episode with a quiet slow-mo shot of Alicia walking down the street is the exact opposite of what they needed to do to catch fan’s interest again.
Caution: Show spoilers below.
The writers for this show can only write one female stereotype—the strong, independent woman who doesn’t need to listen to anyone, let alone a man, in order to keep her family safe. Madison was locked into this trap from the get-go. In this second episode, Liza is crammed into the same mold—vehemently refusing to deal with Travis even though the tone in his voice when he calls her to warn her about the strange happenings in L.A. says something is seriously wrong. Automatically, she jumps down his throat, much like Madison when he attempted to tell her there was something wrong in the church where Nick got his fix. Alicia does nearly the same thing after visiting her boyfriend Matt, only to discover he’s so sick, he should be in the hospital. Madison warns Alicia to back away, afraid Matt will turn into whatever Cal was before Nick ran him over twice. “People are getting sick. It could be contagious.” Predictably, Alicia fights her mother. “If he has it, I have it.” While it provided a great throwback to the harsh secret Edwin Jenner told Rick Grimes before the CDC building exploded on TWD, it makes no logical sense for Alicia to completely dismiss her mother’s concerns. At no point does she stop to actually process what is going on. The women all give into knee-jerk reactions, simply to create tension. It makes them all one-dimensional, dull, and predictable. Even Madison’s emotional breakdown near the episode’s end is telegraphed. Strong, independent women always cry when alone. Then when someone catches them, they brush it off. Yawn.
So what actually happened in episode two? Travis and Madison concoct a fool-proof plan: gather their kids, his ex as well, and drive out to the desert to wait out whatever is going on. Oh and detox Captain Addict. First, find Alicia. A task hindered by overworked cell phone towers and her stubbornness, as mentioned earlier. After they spend far too long arguing whether or not it’s safe to be around Matt, he finally sends Alicia away. This time she listens. Travis drops everyone off at home and heads out to pick up Chris and Liza. Chris dodges Travis’ calls like a professional disgruntled child. While he’s busy with his metaphorical fingers in his ears, Chris winds up smack dab in the middle of ground Zero for another officer-versus-undead shooting. The public doesn’t understand why the officers unloaded their magazines into the homeless man.
In a scene reminiscent of the 1992 L.A. riots, the crowd demands an explanation. Chris films the altercation, which only incites the protestors as they defend his right to film the police who tell him to stop. By the time Travis deals with Liza’s unreasonable refusal to listen to his warnings and they track down Chris, the riot is in full swing. An infected woman shuffles toward a female officer and is shot twice. The second she hits the ground, pure chaos erupts. Travis and Liza grab Chris. They run until the riot is too much to navigate, eventually begging for shelter in a barber shop owned by Daniel Salazar. His wife Griselda is the one who makes the final decision to provide a safe place for the family. Daniel’s daughter, Ofelia, is also there. The episode ends with them still trapped inside the barber shop while outside, the rioters blow up vehicles and loot shops which haven’t been locked up. Back at home, Madison is desperate to score meds to wean Nick off heroine. She leaves him with Alicia to break into the nurse’s office at the school, where she scores enough OxyContin to do the job. Hopefully. As she’s ready to leave, Tobias suddenly appears—never mind that he doesn’t have keys to the school or a reason to be there, really. But since he warned Madison about the outbreak, she relents and gives him back his knife. Oh and helps his steal food. Because that’s what good guidance counselors do, right? Sure. They also hand out drugs and encourage kids to have unprotected sex—my disbelief crash-landed the second she willingly committed a crime with the kid. Tobias and Madison aren’t alone.
Artie, the school’s principal, has a new, fresh look. He shambles after them. Stupidly, Madison tries to help and is attacked for her efforts. Her big, bad protector doesn’t so much as make Artie flinch with his itty bitty knife. When the infected principal turns on Tobias, Madison rescues her rescuer by bashing her friend’s head in with a fire extinguisher. She takes Tobias home, leaving the food they stole. Because that makes sense. If you want to die from starvation. The episode ends with the family living across the street becoming Infected Chow and Alicia finally demanding to know what’s going on.
The most frustrating thing about this episode is the fact that they more or less present Tobias as an apocalypse expert. He babbles tons of useful survival information. But when it comes to practicing these skills, nothing. Nada. It’s dumb move after dumb move. First, fruitlessly stabbing a man repeatedly in the chest. Second, leaving the food behind. They wrote him as the Harbinger and Encyclopedia, but negate these traits at every turn when Madison doesn’t accept what he’s telling her. The show is written almost as if each character is trapped in their own bubble, utterly incapable of actual interaction with each other. How do they expect fans to root for what should be a cohesive survival unit when the characters have no vested interest in one another? Yes, it’s early in the game, still. However, the season only has six episodes. There’s not much time left to build up the characters from their current two-dimensional caricatures. Without a connection to this family, all the groundwork they’re laying for the apocalypse— the riot scenes were brilliant if one ignores the family story line— is for naught.
As promised, Fear the Walking Dead starts with a little undead action. We find Nick Bennett in a church which has been turned into a shooting gallery for heroin addicts where they partake in “Junkie Communion.” He wakes, looking for Gloria, the girl he shot up with the night before. Unbeknownst to him, she’s already up and eating breakfast. Not too sure how much nutrition is in a guy’s face, but it doesn’t stop her from chowing down on a poor sap’s cheek and lips. Nick freaks, as one does when facing an aggressive cannibal with freaky eyes, and bolts from the flophouse. He’s hit by a car when he stupidly stops in the middle of the street to catch his breath.
In the first five minutes, they establish Nick as an unreliable narrator. This position is reinforced after he’s checked into the hospital. A cop asks Nick all the usual questions—what happened, why was he running, where’d he get the smack from? Despite being freaked out, Nick responds with sarcasm and lies, calling his delusional ramblings about blood and gore a, “Runner’s high.” The lies continue when he mother, Madison Bennett, arrives at the hospital. It isn’t until much later that Nick opens up to Madison’s boyfriend, Travis Manawa, about what he saw. He admits he’s terrified to think what he saw isn’t real, but cooked up by his drug-addled mind. “If that came out of me, then I’m insane, Travis. Yeah, insane. I really don’t want to be insane.”
The episode’s tempo drops drastically once Madison and her daughter Alicia leave the hospital and head to school. Alicia is a student at the school where Madison is the guidance counselor. Travis also works at the school as an English teacher. At this point in the show, Alicia is only present to show just how screwed up her brother is compared to a “normal” child raised under the same circumstances. She has a steady boyfriend, a place at Berkeley after she graduates, and a serious chip on her shoulder when it comes to trusting her druggie brother. The last, I’ll give them a pass. It’s gut-wrenching to see a sibling fall into drug dependency and unable to help them in any way that sticks. But couldn’t they do more with Alicia? Anytime she’s given decent screen time, she’s latched onto her boyfriend, repeating, “One more year,” referring to her great escape to college. And then the oh-so-essential personality point, her boyfriend, goes missing. At least she gets more screen time than Chris, Travis’s son, and his mother Liza. There is more zombie footage than their bit part in the episode.
The mid-episode doldrums grabbed hard and fast. In an eye-rolling attempt to break it up, the show kept zooming in on people facing away from the camera and playing, “OMG, this guy’s a zombie,” music. Or they latched onto Madison’s near-belligerent refusal to listen to Nick and Travis when they told her about Gloria and the murders in the church. For heaven’s sake, Travis put his hand in a gore puddle, yet it’s not enough to convince Madison there’s something going on. Instead, she accuses Travis of using her son as a Band-Aid on his broken relationship with Chris. It’s not until Nick breaks out of the hospital that Madison will consider going to the church to see what happened with her own eyes. Even then, she has a minimal reaction to the blood on the floor, yet completely breaks down over a needle in one of Nick’s books.
After Travis and Madison leave the church, they hit traffic—not unheard of on L.A.’s notoriously awful freeway system. They hear police warning people to stay in their cars and gunshots. Travis pulls onto the clearer road and they head home. The next day, however, we find out what happened on the freeway via a viral video the school’s staff watches together. After a car crash, EMT’s treat the victims. One man, lying on a backboard, attacks an EMT. Police beat him with batons, to no avail. Eventually they shoot him about eight times in the chest and, surprise, he stands again. Finally, an officer shoots the man in the head. This isn’t the first documented case of this nature. Tobias, a student Madison has taken under her wing because he’s prime bully bait, brings a knife to school the morning of Nick’s accident. He says, “We’re safer in numbers.” Madison asks why, but he doesn’t really answer. She voices her concern about his future if he continues acting out, bringing weapons to school. Tobias goes on to tell her, “No one’s going to college. No one’s doing anything they think they are.” The kids online are hip to what’s going down. All the adults have their head in the sand, apparently. Well, the adults and Alicia. She assumes the footage from the freeway incident is fake. When the police order the school to cut classes short, her belief wavers a little.
Nick’s a free man. So what’s the first thing he does? Call his drug dealer, Calvin. Madison and Travis think Cal is just Nick’s friend. Yeah, the only friend a junkie needs. Cal and Nick meet at a diner, then drive down to the Los Angeles River. Nick assumes he’s about to score dope. Cal assumes Nick is an idiot and plans to shoot him. They fight. Cal gets a bullet to the gut. Nick bolts like his stolen pants are on fire. Unsure what to do with the corpse, he calls Travis. Yes, because your mom’s boyfriend is always the first logical choice when dealing with murder. Being a good boyfriend, Travis brings Madison along and they all drive back down to the river. Only, there’s no body. Now Madison and Travis think Nick’s completely bonkers. That is until Cal shuffles up behind them when they go to leave. Madison tried to help. Cal mistakes her for a hamburger. Taking matters into his own hands, Nick runs over Cal twice to save his mother. It doesn’t kill the undead, just disables him enough he can’t attack anymore.
All Madison can say is, “What the hell’s happening?” Travis replies, “I have no idea.”
Which is pretty much how I feel after watching a ninety-minute episode for maybe twenty minutes of actual plot. This isn’t TWD, with its non-stop walker action, that’s for sure. But it’s also got a long ways to go in order to become a solid genre show which will keep fans in their seats instead of wandering off for snacks every time Alicia is on screen or Madison waves off Travis’ well-founded concerns for the thousandth time. They could have done so much more with the extra time for the pilot episode, and I don’t mean just cramming in more walkers or slow pans to show downtown Los Angeles.
What do we know about the upcoming season? There’s a metric ton of walkers in the premiere. Greg Nicotero, who directed the episode, says there were over 300 walkers on set to shoot just one scene. In total, there’s rumored to be over 600 walkers in the episode. This we don’t doubt; the walker count in the four-minute SDCC trailer is staggering.
A few new faces will join Rick and company, along with a face from Rick’s past. Lennie James, as Morgan Jones, comes into season 6 as a full cast member. It’s unclear just how much of an opposing force Morgan will be when Rick puts his plans in action. Scott Gimple, TWD showrunner, won’t confirm or deny a conflict outright, admitting they did indeed make it appear so in the trailer. “We sometimes play with the truth in trailers. Rick is faced with challenges to the way he does things and including his people in the way he does things.” Lennie James sees only one outcome, there will be fallout between Rick and Morgan.
New cast members include Ethan Embry (Once Upon a Time) as Carter, Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie) as Dr. Denise Cloyd, and Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton) as Heath. Carter appears a few times in the trailer, set opposite Rick and his plans. Denise is Alexandria’s new primary doctor now that the other’s brain splattered all over the sidewalk. All we know about Heath is he’s a runner for the town. Denise and Heath are characters from the comics. Carter is described as a composite of many comic characters they couldn’t figure out how to introduce in other ways.
There’s not much else to share about season six yet. Gimple did a nice jig to get around questions about the Wolves and their part in the season—they’re still a threat, but not in a way fans can predict, and not as immediate a threat as others.
Everything else we could add is in the trailer. Let it speak for itself.
The show will air its 90-minute premiere episode on Sunday, August 23rd at 9/8c. The episode was written by executive producer Robert Kirkman and FtWD’s show runner, David Erickson (co-executive producer and writer for Sons of Anarchy).
We’re not jumping into the middle of the zombie apocalypse this time around. We’re witnessing the outbreak as it happens. Watching as the characters learn the hard way how to dispatch the undead. Observing the chaos of a civilization’s dying gasp. Kirkman promises FtWD will show, “…all the insanity of civilization crumbling that Rick Grimes slept through.”
It won’t be an instantaneous change. Producers say the full zombie apocalypse, as shown in TWD, won’t happen until the final episode. However, there is absolutely no overlap between the shows. The characters, locations, and plot are unique. A breath of fresh air for fans feeling TWD has grown stagnant with all the long forest walks and Rictatorship monologues. Alycia Debnam-Carey (Alicia Bennett) says, “You don’t have to have watched the original. It’s coming from a very different place, a very different time, it’s before everything happened, so it’s completely refreshing and different.”
Bringing the action to the beginning of the end will liven things up a bit with the zombies. The makeup design isn’t as heavy-handed as later seasons of TWD, leaving the zombies with more face to show on screen. We still have no clue how these fresher zombies will act, if they’ll move faster or retain more human characteristics. Like most things within the franchise, fans must wait and see. One thing we know for certain, they won’t be telling us how zombies are made.
This show is billed more as a family drama with an undead war brewing on the horizon. Be prepared for the initial tension to be because of family issues—a couple attempting to make their teenaged kids get along before their wedding, ensuring their grades don’t fall, and keeping one kid in particular off drugs.
Fear the Walking Dead stars:
Kim Dickens (Sons of Anarchy) as Madison Bennett
Cliff Curtis (Gang Related) as Travis Manawa
Frank Dillane (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) as Nick Bennett
Alycia Debnam-Carey (The 100) as Alicia Bennett
Lorenzo James Henrie (Star Trek) as Chris Manawa
Elizabeth Rodriguez (Orange is the New Black) as Liza Ortiz
Rubén Blades (Safe House) as Daniel Salazar
Mercedes Mason (Quarantine 2: Terminal) as Ofelia Salazar
To tide you over, here’s a look at the trailer released at SDCC:
Of Wolves and Men Review of “The Walking Dead” 516 – “Conquer”
Let’s get the messy part out of the way—this episode didn’t warrant an extra twenty minutes of screen time. All it did was give producers a chance to dump all the plot threads into a pool and pray it all untangles in the end. They should’ve refined the story into something a little more cohesive that fits the normal forty-two minutes per episode. Every plot element was unnecessarily drawn out. It’d be different if the time was spent on much-needed character development or laying down a solid base for next season. It wasn’t. They flung everything off the table and fans are supposed to be happy with how the story lands until October. As far as finales go, this is The Walking Dead‘s weakest. So what did happen in the finale? Let’s discuss.
You know the drill, there’s spoilers from here on out in this review.
After weeks wondering why Morgan was brought back during a couple quick scenes, we finally get an answer. Kinda. It’s entirely possible, given the state of things in Alexandria by the end of the episode, that Morgan will fill the long-empty “morality of the group” position. A role desperately needed since Hershel’s murder. We were led to believe Gabriel would fill the need, but he’s loonier than a monkey in rubber pants. Morgan isn’t a pushover. When he’s confronted by the men who’ve been mutilating the walkers around Alexandria, he attempts a passive resolution. It doesn’t work, so he thunks them over the head and locks them in the car he’d used as a hotel room the night before. Later, Morgan bails Daryl and Aaron out of a tight spot—they unwittingly walk into a trap set by the same men who attacked Morgan. These men, wolves they consider themselves, could be the big bad for next season. Honestly, they don’t feel too threatening now that Daryl, Aaron, and Morgan know where they are hiding their zombie collection. What kind of weirdo keeps a zombie collection, anyway? (Zombie bunnies don’t count, guys.)
The entire time Rick and company have been in Alexandria, it’s felt like he and Michonne are growing apart. She wanted to find home so bad and he’s fought it tooth-and-nail since meeting the townsfolk. It’s not until Rick wakes in a makeshift holding cell with Michonne watching over him that they finally understand—they want the same thing and are going about it completely different ways. She doesn’t care if he conspired with Daryl and Carol to secure emergency weapons. She’s willing to look the other way while Carol coaches Rick on how to Play The Part—tell Deanna and her followers exactly what they want to hear, just like Carol has done since they arrived. Michonne has overlooked and forgiven a lot in the name of keeping their newfound home. Being a pushover won’t work, she knows it. However, she also understands in order to get what they all want, someone and something’s got to give. Michonne is the law alongside Rick. She can’t run off like Carol, threatening to murder anyone in the way—a message Pete got loud and clear in this episode. Michonne tells Rick, “We don’t need (guns) here. I don’t need my sword. I think you can find a way—we—can find a way. And if we don’t, I’m still with you.” So even though he’s been a paranoid nutjob for weeks, one of his most capable allies is still at his side. How much is Michonne willing to overlook and forgive in her quest for normalcy, though?
Tensions are riding high between everyone, not just the town’s peacekeepers. Toward the end of the episode, there’s a huge clash between Sasha and Gabriel—the crew’s most unhinged members. Sasha spent her afternoon laying in a mass walker grave, wondering what’s wrong with her. Gabriel spent his strolling around, looking for a walker to do what he can’t—end his life. At the moment of truth, he kills the walker. It’s actually one of the best kills in an episode filled with walker deaths. But when Gabriel and his inability to commit to death and Sasha with her equally large death wish are in the same room, the claws come out. “I think I want to die,” Sasha tells Gabriel. He replies, “Why wouldn’t you want to die? You don’t deserve to be here. What you did can never be undone. The dead don’t chose, but the choices you made, how you sacrificed your own . . . .” He goes on, blaming Sasha for Bob’s death, saying Tyreese deserved his death because of what she’d done. Most of what he says is directed at himself, not her. It doesn’t stop Gabriel from attacking Sasha. In the end, Maggie pulls them apart and sits them down to pray.
Another tense duo come to blows in the midst of the big, “What do we do with Rick” problem. Nicholas lures Glenn over Alexandria’s walls and shoots him in the shoulder. The wound isn’t fatal. Throughout the middle and end of the episode, Glenn and Nicholas take turns beating the snot out of each other and the walkers drawn their way by the noise. It ends with Glenn pinning Nicholas to the ground, a gun pointed at his head. Nicholas begs, crying. Glenn visibly wants to kill him. Is psyching himself out for the kill, telling Nicholas repeatedly to shut up. He doesn’t do it. Should he have? Not in this instance. Nicholas is a coward. He made his attempt to rid himself of the one man who knows just how much of a coward he is. Now that the plan has failed, I’m sure he’ll back down. He may even become Glenn’s new sidekick.
The town meeting to discuss Rick’s attack on Pete, the gun he’d hidden, and the threats made after the fight is doomed from the get-go. Deanna’s motivations aren’t without bias. It’s obvious she wants Rick gone. He’s a thorn in her side and constantly questions how she’s run things since the settlement was created. She doesn’t even wait to see if Rick will show up to the meeting that’ll decide his fate—which he won’t, seeing as Gabriel let a zombie into Alexandria after failing to secure the gate and he’s tracking it while his crew stands up for him. All those kind words from Michonne, Carol, Maggie—and let’s not forget Abraham’s eloquent offering—they’re for naught. Once Rick walks in with a dead zombie over his shoulder, it’s pretty much sealed. Instead of rushing to save his own hide, Rick hunted a walker on his own to ensure their safety. Not even Deanna’s admission of Gabriel’s concerns, which we heard last week, matter after Rick’s little speech.
“The ones out there, they’ll hunt us. They’ll find us. They’ll try to use us. They’ll try to kill us. But we’ll kill them. We’ll survive. I’ll show you how. You know, I was thinking . . . I was thinking, how many of you do I have to kill to save your lives? But I’m not gonna do that. You’re gonna change.”
Rick’s place in Alexandria is cemented when Pete comes into the meeting fully prepared to kill Rick—with Michonne’s katana. Reg steps in the way to calm Pete and is killed instead. Without hesitation, Deanna gives Rick the order to put Pete down.
This is the chaos greeting Morgan after he reluctantly agrees to come back to Alexandria with Daryl and Aaron. How will the old friends get along after such a brutal reunion? Who knows? We’ve got quite some time to ponder how things will land in an evolving Alexandria.
His fiancé isn’t doing much better at keeping her head down to wait out the worst. When Madison is certain Travis won’t do anything about the possible hillside survivors, she breaks out of the fence. Up on the hill, it’s obvious the military have been through there. However, the corpses don’t look right. Madison is nearly spotted by a patrol unit and crawls under a car to hide. It puts her face-to-face with a dead woman. That’s when it dawns on her, most of the bodies stinking up the street weren’t infected. The military mowed through them and moved on, leaving them to rot. At least Madison took some form of action, though she never found the house with the survivors. When the episode opens, she’s more concerned with painting the family room again because she can still see the blood stains from when Daniel saved Travis. She has this delusion that they can host an open house to sell the place. Yeah, like the fickle market will survive a zombie apocalypse. It can’t even handle a drought. Meanwhile, she’s so tense, she’s dropping the ball on her Nick Watch. Like most unrepentant junkies, he found a way to score morphine—stealing it from the men next door with congestive heart failure. Hell rains down on Nick when Madison does find out. She beats him, leaving him with a black eye and a boatload of embarrassment. As for Alicia? Other than breaking into Susan’s house and giving herself a tattoo, she might as well not be in the episode.
The main action is actually with Liza. The military finally brings in a doctor to evaluate the sick and injured in the safe zone. Dr. Exner’s first order of business is to call Liza on her lie; she’s not actually a nurse. However, Liza’s quick thinking and natural compassion are commended. Exner asks Liza to help her visit everyone in the safe zone in need of medical attention. They eventually circle around to the Clark house. Griselda will need surgery to save her foot. Daniel plans to leave with her. Next, they corner Nick to see if he needs help weening off the junk. Exner sees through his lies, but doesn’t make a fuss. Later that night the soldiers come for Griselda. Before they make it out the door, the switch is flipped. They’re not taking Daniel. Instead they want Nick. He’s caught and handcuffed. Madison is beside herself, blaming Liza. Nick and Griselda aren’t the only ones who leave that night. Exner more or less begs Liza to join her to help these people. After mouthing, “I love you,” to Chris, Liza climbs into the transport vehicle. She may be going to help others, but for the most part I believe she’s going to keep an eye on Nick for Madison.
After weeks wondering why Morgan was brought back during a couple quick scenes, we finally get an answer. Kinda. It’s entirely possible, given the state of things in Alexandria by the end of the episode, that Morgan will fill the long-empty “morality of the group” position. A role desperately needed since Hershel’s murder. We were led to believe Gabriel would fill the need, but he’s loonier than a monkey in rubber pants. Morgan isn’t a pushover. When he’s confronted by the men who’ve been mutilating the walkers around Alexandria, he attempts a passive resolution. It doesn’t work, so he thunks them over the head and locks them in the car he’d used as a hotel room the night before. Later, Morgan bails Daryl and Aaron out of a tight spot—they unwittingly walk into a trap set by the same men who attacked Morgan. These men, wolves they consider themselves, could be the big bad for next season. Honestly, they don’t feel too threatening now that Daryl, Aaron, and Morgan know where they are hiding their zombie collection. What kind of weirdo keeps a zombie collection, anyway? (Zombie bunnies don’t count, guys.)
Tensions are riding high between everyone, not just the town’s peacekeepers. Toward the end of the episode, there’s a huge clash between Sasha and Gabriel—the crew’s most unhinged members. Sasha spent her afternoon laying in a mass walker grave, wondering what’s wrong with her. Gabriel spent his strolling around, looking for a walker to do what he can’t—end his life. At the moment of truth, he kills the walker. It’s actually one of the best kills in an episode filled with walker deaths. But when Gabriel and his inability to commit to death and Sasha with her equally large death wish are in the same room, the claws come out. “I think I want to die,” Sasha tells Gabriel. He replies, “Why wouldn’t you want to die? You don’t deserve to be here. What you did can never be undone. The dead don’t chose, but the choices you made, how you sacrificed your own . . . .” He goes on, blaming Sasha for Bob’s death, saying Tyreese deserved his death because of what she’d done. Most of what he says is directed at himself, not her. It doesn’t stop Gabriel from attacking Sasha. In the end, Maggie pulls them apart and sits them down to pray.
The town meeting to discuss Rick’s attack on Pete, the gun he’d hidden, and the threats made after the fight is doomed from the get-go. Deanna’s motivations aren’t without bias. It’s obvious she wants Rick gone. He’s a thorn in her side and constantly questions how she’s run things since the settlement was created. She doesn’t even wait to see if Rick will show up to the meeting that’ll decide his fate—which he won’t, seeing as Gabriel let a zombie into Alexandria after failing to secure the gate and he’s tracking it while his crew stands up for him. All those kind words from Michonne, Carol, Maggie—and let’s not forget Abraham’s eloquent offering—they’re for naught. Once Rick walks in with a dead zombie over his shoulder, it’s pretty much sealed. Instead of rushing to save his own hide, Rick hunted a walker on his own to ensure their safety. Not even Deanna’s admission of Gabriel’s concerns, which we heard last week, matter after Rick’s little speech.