Is there something in Alexandria’s water? Not only are main characters losing their marbles—Maggie, Carol—but there’s another rash of B characters doing half thought out things and ending up taking tea with Death. Once again, we’re stuck waiting for the main plot to reach something resembling a conclusion while stalled with side stories writing off characters who make the show messy. Why else would they put an arrow through Denise’s eye? She’s the other half of the show’s only currently visible homosexual couple. Yes, we have Aaron and his husband, but their shock value wore off, so they introduced the lesbians. It’s like that thing they keep doing where there’s only Michonne, Glenn, and one other person of color in the main crew. Never mind them stumbling across minorities known to live in the areas they’ve visited and lived. Having visible LGBT couples is morally compromising. Bringing in Negan, Captain Inappropriate from everything we’ve been promised, means pushing boundaries which are already pretty stretched by their half-handed attempt to embrace diversity. This is where the show loses this game of chicken with the fans. They push, push, push, and when fans don’t flinch or react the way they want, they change course and drop the idea in a convenient way. Commit to something other than fanservice. We want a coherent story, not to catch them sweeping things under the rug to make room for something I’m starting to lose faith in.
We start with another poorly handled time jump, this interval expressed as a few Groundhog Day like montages featuring the town guards changing shifts, Gabriel on patrol in the fence, and Carol smoking while obsessing over the crucifix from the last episode. Morgan finishes the jail cell, telling Rick it’ll give them more options next time. He’s not wrong. This is the only time we see Rick, by the way.
After the opening credits, it’s pretty much just characters which haven’t had much screen time or character growth. Which makes one wonder why anyone would put the penultimate episode for the season in the hands of characters no one cares about anymore. “But, Daryl!” He hasn’t had a meaningful part in the plot other than playing Terminator since the season began. His part in this episode is basically to escort Denise to her poor life choices. Rosita is in the same boat, her story only complicated by falling in bed with Spencer and planning dinner with him. Denise leads Daryl and Rosita to a fully-stocked apothecary. They score the loot, but Denise plays snoop, scaring herself after finding a walker and what may have been a drowned child. No one is hurt. All they have to do is walk back to the truck and drive home. Then Denise continues to self-sabotage in the guise of self-help, breaking into a walker-protected car to raid an ice chest for soda. Daryl is pissed. Rosita is dumbstruck. Denise suddenly starts yelling a bunch of stuff which really doesn’t make sense, but the gist is she doesn’t feel brave and stupidly almost getting eaten to steal soda means she’s brave enough to openly love Tara. She only took Daryl and Rosita to encourage them and feel safe.
Safe until Dwight—the guy Daryl failed to kill when he stole his motorcycle—shoots her in the eye.
While the trio were shopping, Abraham took Eugene to a warehouse where the Brainiac wants to produce ammunition. It’s a great plan. Then Eugene gets a bug up his backside about his bravery as well, calling dibs on a walker he so cannot kill. He and Abraham fight after the big man steps in to help. It ends with Abraham just leaves his buddy after Eugene fires him from protection duty. This is all so Eugene can get captured by Dwight and his many companions and used as leverage against Daryl and Rosita. Abraham hangs around, somehow accidentally finds them, and helps send the bad guys back wherever they came from. In the process, Eugene is shot. They carry him back home to patch the wound—just a graze.
After Daryl and Carol bury Denise, Carol leaves a note for Tobin stating she should’ve never come back and she’s leaving again. For good. Don’t try to find her. Because, when they can’t figure out how to salvage a character, it’s easier to have them just walk off into the sunset. I honestly don’t think she’s gone. Carol will either end up dead at Negan’s feet in the finale, or forced to kill and save them all. They can’t spend the entire season messing with her only to have her leave a Dear John letter like a coward. Then again, character integrity seems to be the hardest continuity issue for this show to maintain.
Someone messed with the screws holding up a window-mounted A/C unit in the apartment above Leslie’s coffee shop, Positivity, and when she went outside to check out the chalk art her daughter mentions, the A/C unit drops on her head. There’s the usual suspects dragged into the fray thanks to Liv’s dead-end visions. We meet Pam, the loud-mouth inmate from Liv’s short stay in jail, as she’s holed up in the bathroom of the apartment puffing on a vape pen with cannabis oil. Leslie’s ex husband, Stan, is likewise waved as a red herring. As is Gilbert, boyfriend to Leslie’s daughter, Cher. Gilbert swears he’s this ultra deep French guy, but really he’s the son to a real estate agent. An agent with access to the apartment above Positivity. Gilbert would do anything to make Cher happy, even let her talk him into taking the fall for the murder after one stolen kiss in the police station. Cher gets away. Liv gets the jitters from her caffeine habit.
While Liv and Clive catch one half of the murderous duo, Ravi works on the cure now that they finally secured the tainted Utopium samples. Major hovers a lot of this episode—his only other bit to add to the episode involves finally outing Rita/Gilda to Liv as a spy, prompting Liv to hit Rita and kick her out. Hovering won’t make the cure happen any faster. Matter of fact, not much will at this rate. The replica of the cure which worked on Major and Blaine turns a test rat into a Romero zombie. They’re going to need that cure sooner than later if they plan to save everyone attached to Team Z.
Turns out, Boss isn’t the only bright cookie in his organization. His debt collector remembers Blaine from his days as a street level dealer nicknamed Chinatown. Not because he worked that district, but because he took the district by force. Seeing the potential for Blaine to be the one behind the new drug ring, Boss orders a hit. Blaine is kidnapped, half nude, from his funeral home. They drive him to the woods, slit his throat, and bury him alive. The next day, Blaine wakes looking like he needs to drink every drop of coffee in Positivity and stumbles away from his grave behind a Girl Scout troop. Guess trauma like that will negate the cure. How long until Blaine either croaks or stops being so picky about his meals?
The longer we deal with Drake, the more I want to not like this random man they’ve shoved in Liv’s bed for sake of giving her a male shoulder to cry on after bombing her previous relationship with the dreaded sexually transmitted disease dead horse. Thing is, they’re finding ways to make Drake vital to the overall plot, which happens to be the confrontation with Boss this season. Drake isn’t just Blaine’s spy in Boss’ camp, he’s a vice detective in deep cover spying on everyone even claiming to push Utopium. His handlers rough him up after dragging him in in front of Boss’ guys, then they gather his intel and urge him to drop Liv.
Dating someone associated with the police isn’t just a bad idea, it’s a surefire way to get dead. Which, given the way this show goes, will happen. Major only escaped death because of Liv’s scratch and then the cure. There’s no cure for a dead zombie.
I’m tired of the camera gags they use more and more often on the show to prove, “Hey, it’s from a comic book. We do comic book like things! Aren’t we cool? Don’t we do awesome, obviously cartoony things like that Dead-whatever guy?” First, they use CGI to put blood on the camera lens. In this episode, there’s more of that nonsense, plus binocular POV shots and a jump gag from Maggie’s POV shot like it was meant to be in a 3D film, not on standard cable television. We’re talking one of those monster in your face, then suddenly a knife through their head almost into the POV character, moments. They even turned the walker with the knife to give that slow dimensional pull back. Why the hell would they put in a shot which, aside from a cheap scare, doesn’t fully translate to a standard definition viewing experience? It seems like they’re toying with an idea for something down the road—maybe 3D versions on Blu-ray for season 6—and we’re catching glimpses of the man behind the curtain. It’s not my bag. None of it. 3D hurts my head. Watching them refine the process for the show’s home release is like watching water boil around food I’m allergic to.
Whoops! Watch out! Man, that was close. An episode spoiler nearly got you. They wait below.
Honestly? They could’ve skipped to the last two minutes of this episode. The whole ordeal with Carol and Maggie held captive in the meat processing plant is here to stall for time. Even the characters are stalling in the episode where they stall so they don’t blow the Negan reveal with anything considered speed or fan service. Fans have asked for Negan by name and loudly since TERMINUS was teased. Producers used it to their advantage, thinking if they keep trolling out line after setting their Negan-shaped lure, fans will gladly stay put and watch the shiny thing. Fish get bored. People get bored just as quick. They should’ve snatched that line tight ages ago and reeled everyone in for what I’m sure will be a stellar performance at least from Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Keeping us in the lurch doesn’t mean we’re eager to see what they’re withholding. It means by the time we get to Negan, who cares? There’s only so much self-inflated hype about a character people will tolerate. How many times have we all seen headlines promising a gruesome finale and Negan’s mug on our screen? Personally, if I had a dollar for each, I could afford to do makeup on my own army of undead and produce a short movie.
The plot is straight-forward: The Saviors refuse to trade Maggie and Carol for their guy Primo right away. The ladies, their three women captors, and one injured man, head to the slaughterhouse the Saviors use as a safe house. Carol plays meek. Maggie is outed as being pregnant and questioned, which leads to a lot of nothing revealed on either side. Paula, the woman taking charge, picks on Carol for being weak, does the same to Maggie for having the gall to breed given the apocalypse and all. Paula pretty much is an avatar for Strong Woman Who Needs No Man. That’s all you need to know about her. Molly is a dying smoker. I don’t know if the other woman ever gets a name. Donny bleeds out from the wound Carol gave him before they were captured after being KOed by Paula for attacking their captives to get revenge. Eventually they kill enough time to jam in a bunch of killing after the last commercial break. Carol is left alone when the Saviors, minus Donny, gear up for the trade they will turn into an ambush with their incoming backup. She gets free, using a random rosary which just happens to fall out of a walker’s pocket. Carol frees Maggie. They argue, again, about whether or not they should finish the plan or run. Carol wants to run. She’s done risking Maggie’s life. Maggie is bloodthirsty and irrational—they’ll blame her pregnancy for the a-typical character behavior, no doubt. In the end, they kill their captors, lure the backup to the slaughterhouse, and burn them. The ladies save themselves, but the menfolk and other backup are right at the door as they exit. Because in a boring as hell episode, we’ll make it all about women’s empowerment and not plot progression.
“But that whole ‘We are all Negan’ thing! It’s important!”
You’re a sheep. We know there’s A Negan. We know he’s probably not coming until the finale. Going from experience with this show, either the episode will be so much Negan, we grow tired quick or he’ll be a thirty second tease at the episode’s climactic cliffhanger ending. The Savior’s dialog is meant to be a red herring for the characters. Not us. Not in the day and age where social media ensures we know everything coming up for shows and movies. Even people who avoid as many teasers and trailers as possible are still overwhelmed with this information. There are few surprises in entertainment anymore. Negan is perhaps the worst kept considering how often people drag out interviews with the show’s actors relaying the harrowing days on set filming the finale. I’m not buying it. I can’t. They’ve talked a big game a lot lately, but cannot deliver anything nearly as solid as the prison attack story line. It’s just fluff. No substance.
I know Ravi and Liv work for the morgue and all, but they’re usually not the ones to find the bodies, let alone report them to the police. While searching yet again for the murdered Utopium dealers with the tainted batch, Major and Ravi unearth a body far too fresh to be their prize. There’s no ID on the mystery dead guy, but he does have a gun and a coaster with a phone number scrawled on the back.
Clive seems to buy Ravi’s geocaching explanation when he asks how they found the body. He still takes Major aside for a private conversation. Not about the body nearby, but the Cute Meat incident. Using the good ol’ crazypants excuse, Major dodges the questions. It’s only now that Clive sees the really weird stuff; first Major’s connection in part to the brain and Julien DuPont and then later in the episode Clive question’s Liv’s personality changes reflecting the homicide victims they’re investigating. Funny how they managed to write around this for so long, it’s almost ludicrous they’d attempt to clue in Clive about Team Z.
The coaster yields its secrets, leading the team to a woman IDing the dead guy as Corey, no last name. They’d hooked up a while back at a place called Possibilities, but Corey never called her again. Gee, would that be because he was busy feeding the ecosystem in a field? The girl also dropped a bombshell; Corey said he was FBI. At Possibilities, the bartender has great things to say about Corey “Big Fish” Carp. Namely, his ability to lie his way into the pants of any woman he set his eyes on. No lie was ever grand enough for Corey, who in reality worked for an arcade game company repairing machines and collecting quarters. Boss just so happens to own this guy’s company, too. Is there anything happening in the city not supervised by Boss? Does he check everyone’s pee to make sure they’re hydrated, too? This show puts too much on their Big Bads in order to simplify the plot.
There’s a few red herrings, some tail-chasing. It all leads to another murder case with Terrell Johnson as the primary person of interest. Liv gets a few visions magically connecting Big Fish to Terrell and later Fish’s connection to the murdered Utopium dealers planted somewhere in that accursed field. Basically, Fish killed the dealers. He then kept an eye on the field to make sure they remained buried. When Don E and Drake, of all people, started digging, Fish shot Drake. This all ties back to the night Liv made Drake a zombie. I’d call it clever story weaving, but they reached so far to make this plot tie together, it doesn’t make sense unless we’re willing to forget how heavily they rely on Liv “accidentally” discovering everything. Also, Liv seems way too okay with Drake lying to her. She still calls him her boyfriend after the vision connecting him and Don E to the murder she’s investigating. A similar lie from Major would have caused three episodes of angst.
Speaking of Major, where’s he been after helping Ravi dig up the body? Well, you could say he’s helping Blaine comfort test caskets. Don E and Chief are called by a client who trapped Major in their panic room after he went to add them to his ice cube collection. Blaine and Major eventually strike a deal—Major takes care of the zombies Blaine wants and frees Angus McDonough in exchange for living outside a six-foot deep casket. Seems fair to me. They put the partnership to test with Jimmy Chu, Blaine’s newspaper inside man. Chu is high-maintenance, something Blaine cannot handle in his sources. Major drugs Chu with no incident. Later he returns Angus to his son. Blaine has some fun, dressing like he’s aged at least thirty years. Fresh off the defrost cycle, Angus is slow to figure out what’s happening. He even begs Blaine to help—a refreshing turn in the relationship for the son since he was always the one begging when his caretakers abused him. Once Angus is more himself, he thinks to outsmart Blaine. One step ahead, Blaine brings in Chief and Candy, both of whom have suffered thanks to Angus. Blaine is assured the will, currently drafted to give his abusive caretaker the entire inheritance, will be changed soon.
The point to this episode is to finally find the bodies with the tainted Utopium. Well, they found them. Everything else is fluff. There’s no change in the case with Boss. Blaine’s personal beef takes him from the conflict with the main bad guy and the FBI. Peyton is MIA in the episode. Drake vanishes after running an errand for Boss, so there’s no emotional resolution after Liv finds out he’s deeper in Blaine’s business than she thought. The whole episode was simply to get to that discovery moment with the Les Miserables soundtrack playing. Way to have storytelling goals, guys.
I’m not sure one can write spoilers for an episode so utterly predictable, the only parts which surprised me were the few glistening moments where we saw some actual character development. Nevertheless, that’s why we’re here, to pick apart the show, find more tidbits to feed our need for decent entertainment. So many fans lay their hope for TWD’s future on the Negan storyline. This is it, the chance for the show to realign with the chaos within the comics. Producers have promised fans they’d get what they want from this whole thing. If a nap was their ultimate goal, they succeeded.
(Watch out! Spoilers lurk below!)
Maybe that’s not entirely fair. There are stellar moments in the fight at the end which made the skin on my neck tense. But, honestly, maybe five minutes of quality writing are buried deep in cliché dialog, phoned-in emotions, and Rick being Rick. Some of my favorite scenes are with Glenn and Heath.
The original survivor, Glenn, is not keen to kill again. Heath hyped himself up the moment he heard Rick’s plan at the town hall meeting—exactly the reaction their leader wanted from his little pep talk spouting how they need to “get them before they get us.” It became Glenn’s job to talk sense into the young man. A position Glenn found himself in a lot during season one. Remember the car with the alarm? Yeah, a great impulse idea, but the aftermath cost many lives and their camp. Heath may think it’s the right thing to go into the raid ready to kill, but how would he feel the day after? How about a week down the road when he remembers the way his knife wouldn’t quite go into the skull right? Killing haunts the survivors who’ve been in the wild for long. Glenn’s fault is he wants to spare Heath, retain the young man’s innocence. When it comes time for them to do some of the most intimate killing scenes on the show—attacking Saviors in their bed and dispatching them with a single knife thrust trough the eye socket—Glenn takes the kill guilt upon himself. Being no coward, Heath still gets a few kills to notch on his belt when he and Glenn hold the line to guard the enemy’s armory. But even though his kills weren’t up close and personal, Heath still flees in the morning, more than ready to go on the two-week trip with Tara for supplies.
Where Glenn grows as a character, Carol is undermined at every turn. On top of her unfounded refusal to trust Morgan—up until they created a reason with him holding the Wolf in the cell—they’re now making her the “bad boy” to ease fans into the reality of Negan’s notorious potty mouth, plus reintroducing tobacco products to the show since Daryl’s smoking has petered off. In stark contrast, she’s been acting like the town’s mother, something Tobin calls her out on during a random romantic encounter after sunset. During a day full of doubts, concerns, and knowing death is near again, Carol gathered friggen acorns to make cookies for everyone. Even Sam. It’s been a while since the show side-swiped me with emotions, but I teared up seeing the lone cookie on his grave. Then I got angry—Sam gets more care after his death than before.
Carol’s mom-ness spreads to Maggie’s welfare after the pregnant woman insists she go on the raid. Glenn gave up that fight before it started. Rick is told rather bluntly what Carol thinks, but she never spells out why Maggie shouldn’t be there. It’s more of the same when Carol and Maggie, who were left to guard the perimeter and RV, hear the alarm triggered by a Savior—Sasha kills him, but not in time—and rush to help. Carol stops in her tracks, refusing to let Maggie move. Her hesitation because Maggie will also become a mother is why the episode ended in such a convenient manner. Carol, of all the fighters they have, should understand why Maggie is at the raid. Maggie laid out the terms for Gregory. She dug this hole for Alexandria, now either she helps fill it in or it becomes their graves. In Maggie’s shoes, would Carol honestly sit at home baking? Not this Carol. Even weeks out from her last kill, this Carol wouldn’t let others take full responsibility for something she set in motion.
Short note: Abraham is an a-hole. Rosita should shoot him in the foot.
The raid itself is pretty straight-forward. The group sends Eddy to offer Gregory’s head to the Saviors. Don’t fret, it’s a walker they disguised to resemble the injured Hilltop leader. The guards take too long to examine the head, not in terms of creating tension, but it just felt like, “Oh, they’re going to be d-bags and make Eddy sweat.” After one guard fetches the kidnapped Hilltop member, the gang dispatches both guards without a sound. The Hilltop people retreat to a standby vehicle with Jesus, Tara, and Gabriel. Rick, Michonne, Abraham, Sasha, Glenn, Heath, Rosita, and Daryl enter the compound. They pair up, searching each room they pass. If the room is occupied, they kill the Savior inside. If the door is locked, they pry it open. Why the random searching? They know nothing about they layout, only a vague idea of where the armory is and the location for the pantry. The locked rooms turn up a supply closet, a marijuana growing operation, and the armory Glenn and Heath defended.
Things run smoothly until Sasha and Abraham are caught breaking into a room. After the alarm is pulled, the gang mows through the stragglers—who aren’t unarmed, but have aim like Stormtroopers. Jesus, Tara, and Gabriel join the fight. Jesus saves Glenn and Heath from the lone survivor outside the armory. The other Hilltop men take the car and head toward home. Gabriel shows his backbone, praying for a Savior before putting a bullet in his head.
At sunrise, everyone from Alexandria and Hilltop are still alive. Heath scouts the Saviors’ cars and picks one to take on the trip. He and Tara roll out without much fanfare. Michonne wants to know which dead guy is Negan. None of them, duh? Plus, not everyone died. One guy on a motorcycle makes a run for it. He’s shot down. Rick and company surround him, making demands. A woman’s voice over the radio makes her own demands. When they fail to comply, she informs them that her people have Maggie and Carol.
Of course they do. I knew the second Maggie and Carol were left on the outskirts alone that they’d become a bargaining chip. It’s easier to kidnap the women, despite Carol’s ferocity, than the men on the mission—except maybe Heath. This is how they’ll likely force the face-to-face with Negan. A kidnapping. It’s so uninspired.
So naked Rick and Michonne don’t turn Jesus into swiss cheese.
Matter of fact, once the cavalry arrives to restrain Jesus again, they somehow end up listening to what he has to say. They’re totally onboard with sending the town’s ruling council and the majority of their top-tier fighters with this stranger, as well, even after hearing he’d taken full stock of their supplies and people before essentially turning himself in to Rick. They were more suspicious of Morgan, the man who may be the sole reason Rick saw more than a week outside the hospital after his coma. Yes, Morgan snapped his Slim Jim after his son passed, but he is fully not crazy now and Carol still watches the man like he’s about the club them all to death and make sachets from their skin.
With no real concern whatsoever, Rick, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie, Daryl, Abe, and Jesus climb into an RV—there’s always one which just happens to be nearby—and take off toward an undisclosed location with only their vague threats to keep Jesus from driving them into a trap.
Which exactly what it looks like not long after we rejoin the gang on the road. A car, one Jesus swears belongs to his people, crashed on the roadside moments before they drove past. Now, not only are the fighters separated from the group, they’re being put directly in harm’s way for people who may still turn around and put bullets in their brain pans. There’s an urgent rescue. One of the guys, Dr. Carson, thanks Maggie and Glenn by being probably the only OB left alive in the state and offering to care for their baby. How’s that for luck?
During the entire episode, Jesus is essentially Google—feeding Rick and Maggie exactly what they need to manipulate Gregory, Hilltop’s chicken-livered and misogynistic leader. It’s all too easy, this plot. Somehow we end up at the right place at the right time for these unfortunate people to demonstrate the kind of antics keeping Negan top dog in the county. But with all the bad Negan has done—namely, his men murdering a sixteen year old boy upon The Saviors’ first meeting with Hilltop—Jesus seems not concerned at all about being in the room with two men confessing to blowing up quite a few of the boogeyman’s goons. If that were me, I’d wash my hands of Alexandria, not matter how badly we needed another trading post.
Hilltop itself is designed to resemble a walled medieval estate during wartime, with all the folk from the farms and homes under care of the lord encamped within the walls. It’s so blatant, Gregory turning out to be a world class jerk doesn’t surprise me in the least. It’s even less surprising that one of his own men would then stab him, hoping Gregory’s death would secure the release of a man Negan took captive. Why did he take this guy and kill another Hilltop citizen? Gregory sent his people to deliver their usual payoff knowing it wouldn’t be enough. It’s never enough. Negan will demand more and more. Though Gregory survives, this hasn’t done a thing to teach him to grow a pair and take on the man running their lives from afar.
In comes Rick and his band of killers.
Seriously? This is where the story goes? They veer from attempting to set up a functioning ecosystem in Alexandria to hired mercenaries who’ll just kill and take what they want. These are the people Rick wants to kill, usually. But when it suits them, murder is on the table. They wouldn’t need to kill Negan so soon if they’d stopped to do the boring things like clear fields. But they need food now. Hilltop has a functioning system in place which produces enough food to send half to Negan without forcing strict rationing in Hilltop. If Negan doesn’t need that food being dead and all, Alexandria will take it. Now. Half of whatever is on-hand is cheaper than the cumulative price to keep Negan at bay via bribes.
But again, this is all too easy to follow to the conclusions the writers want. They’re trying to make fans guess who’s going to die. Is it Glenn? Negan and Glenn’s comic book story is well known, spread by every reviewer trying to make the show into something it’ll never be—an accurate reflection of the comics. They drive more nails into Glenn’s coffin during this episode, finally giving us a glimpse at his and Maggie’s child in an ultrasound. Every happy character dies on this show. It’s no surprise. Abraham seems a tad happy himself after some soul searching and a near-death experience, but he’s mostly in the story now to fire large weapons and make us question Glenn’s fate going into the season’s end. Some say golden boy Dixon will bite the big one. It makes sense, seeing as he did blow up Negan’s people.
It’s all so boring, this weird dead pool going on in the fandom. I never watched the show to see who would die. I kept watching because the characters made rational decisions in an interesting setting and the story pace never lagged so much, I wanted to wander off for a snack ten minutes into an episode. They’ve killed the Negan story line before it begins.
If you aren’t an adult, this show isn’t for you; neither is this review. Also, show spoilers everywhere.
As far as plans go, it isn’t a bad one. Brujo tells Eligos to take a hike, they get back to sorting out Ash’s mental mojo, then the newly awakened El Jefe cruises to the cabin to bury the friggen book. Easy as Ash getting laid.
Except they still have the wrong person hog-tied and awaiting whatever exorcism ritual requires a knife and chicken carcass. Going out on a limb, here, but I assume the Catholic Church did not approve this method. Despite the gag in his mouth, Ash tells everyone exactly what he thinks of them, the plan, and Keligos’ taunts when Brujo and Pablo can’t see. They brush his anger off as the demon talking. Compiled with Keligos’ compelling performance as a helpless victim, Ash is about to learn first-hand what a blood ritual looks like.
Annoyed by the request, but still fulfilling it, Pablo fetches the ritual supplies and gets out of Brujo’s hair. For a guy who spent a good chuck of his life avoiding the dark and spooky family business, Pablo sure wants to be in the thick of the mess a lot. Keligos has other plans to kill time. Her original plan is to get drunk. Failing to locate the booze, they decide on plan b—Ash’s grass stash. They just need a pipe. Pablo is off to play gopher once again. At some point he has to grow more of a spine. It feels a tad imbalanced—Kelly loses her parents and is possessed, Pablo gets brains and blood splattered over his face and a hot girl practically begging to get him in bed, but she’s the emotionally stronger character. Why pick on Kelly?
If anything positive can be said about the possessed woman, she’s resourceful. Bored with waiting for Pablo and a pipe, she uses the boom stick’s barrel to smoke.
Things get super awkward when Keligos seduces Pablo. Really, she just wants him to quit paying attention so she can blow his head off. Not exactly the method Pablo has in mind, either. He hesitates. Kelios loses her patience for the second time and attacks Pablo. The creature design for the hybrid Kelly and Eligos creature is elegant almost. They didn’t take her so far from human, she looked like a deadite, but made sure to bring Eligos’ distinctive grin onto her face. The effect is startling when it first happens.
Things aren’t going right in the Brujo’s shack, either. Ash isn’t reacting the way he should when approached with blessed items. While Brujo prepares the blood sacrifice, Ash dismisses with the gag, telling Brujo the truth—Eligos is in Kelly and probably about to kill Pablo. Shots fired in the trailer.
Ash and Brujo rush to the trailer. Pablo has Keligos cornered, boom stick aimed at her head. He can’t pull the trigger. They all scuffle over the shotgun. There’s yet another hole in Ash’s trainer, but Brujo subdues Keligos without any human injuries.
Take two on the exorcism. Eligos doesn’t react to any mojo spell, totem, or blessed item. The only time it reacts to a ritual component, it’s to vomit leeches fat with Brujo’s blood near Ash’s feet. They’re getting nowhere fast. Eligos takes to beating Kelly to make the men react.
Pablo and Brujo chat outside. Pablo tells his uncle he’s sorry for leaving so long ago and hiding from the mystical side of their family. While they’re out of the way, Kelly begs Ash to put her out of her misery before Eligos kills her. She even asks him to make sure there’s a cross on her grave. Tisk, tisk, Eligos. Wrong religion.
Things heat up when Pablo struts into the shed and demands Eligos take possession of him instead. Not one to ignore such a ripe morsel, Eligos reaches through Kelly’s mouth to grab Pablo. Unlike other mouth-exiting gags, they didn’t feel the need to waste time making Kelly’s mouth do weird things. Most of the shot following Eligos as it emerges is straight-forward.
The demon claims one last victim—Brujo, startled by how quickly Eligos jumps to and fro, is impaled through the chest when he dodges an attack. His death is not unavenged. Ash uses the not-so-wise words he told himself in the vision quest to finally find the right timing to blow Eligos’ blue-goo filled head to smithereens.
Kelly wakes from the ordeal with another headache and a gap in her memory from the time they reached the ranch. Ash fills in some of the blanks after ensuring she has ice for her head. They burn Brujo’s body on a funeral pyre. Pablo makes a lot of promises to the dead guy. In return, Brujo’s spirit flings a red-hot necklace at Pablo’s feet.
For the first time in the history of history, Ash apologizes for his part in the whole raising the ultimate evil fiasco. Pablo tries to brush the apology under the rug. Kelly tells him not to, Ash owes humanity an apology, not just the people stuck in the fight with him. They can’t walk into the final stage of the battle—the trip to the cabin—without all hands on deck. The hand Pablo started for Ash magically finished itself at some point. Trying it on, the first thing Ash does is high-five his team, then flip them the bird.
Keep it classy, Ash. And keep your backside in gear. Ruby and Amanda haven’t given up the hunt. Their method to navigate just takes a little longer than Amanda likes or has the patience for. The slow-moving hand GPS isn’t her only problem. Ruby is actively dodging Amanda’s questions, and not even that well, to be honest. What isn’t the deadite slayer telling her new buddy?
I honestly thought we were past the time where everything associated with erotica was followed by a not-so witty reference to a novel/movie franchise I need not even mention because it’s right there in the title for this episode, though the erotic novel within this episode has no resemblance whatsoever to the referenced franchise. So why would they use the name? To boost ratings by using the promise of a nude lead actor—in this case, Liv—and further undermine her place as a productive member on Team Z.
Pumping Liv with “horny librarian brains” gives them a blanket pardon to sell their floundering product with cleavage and numerous make-out sessions. Jumping on the bandwagon with the episode title is like a rocket pack strapped onto the show’s pet shark. If Liv isn’t in bed with someone, they don’t know what to do with her emotionally. She’s either the postal child for bipolar, riding hard on each brain she eats, or she’s sex-obsessed and weeping. There’s few middle-ground moments where she remembers herself. They tried to establish control over the brain in this episode, but given the big picture, it isn’t effective. She still ends up in bed with a hot guy—Drake the newly undead zombie, who also happens to be a double agent for Blaine in Boss’ drug ring.
It’s all so predictable. As is the case’s conclusion.
If you follow this show regularly, you’ll notice a startling trend to their crime-solving tactics. Inevitably, the murderer is actually the first solid suspect in the case or the spouse—Often, they’re one in the same. Occasionally they’ll pull a Shyamalan, leaning hard on the plot-twist gimmick and convenient case solutions. Yes, this is a dramedy leaning harder on the comedy side at times, but there still has be natural tension resolution and variety in the cases they cover. Most episodes, we know who did it not long after they find the bodies just by following their simplistic pattern.
Long story short: All writers are petty and jealous, but not petty enough to kill. Meanwhile husbands are equally petty and jealous and they do indeed kill. The only way they managed to stretch Grace LeGare’s case to the episode’s end was to make Grace’s husband, Andy, physically handicapped and therefore not an obvious threat. His original questioning with Clive is glossed over by Liv’s incredibly raunchy day dream featuring Andy’s home care assistant, furthering the vain attempt to obscure the writer’s sole solution to any woman’s murder on the show. In the end, Andy went to a lot of work destroying his wife’s chance at a career writing erotica, then pinned the murder on Grace’s library co-worker, Muriel—who also happens to be a writer, but she pens crime thrillers. Why? So people wouldn’t think he is less of a man.
Blaine goes from having an awesome week to a not-so-awesome week overnight. Bozzio and Clive dig deep and discover his real name. No, not the one we’ve heard all the time, but his really real name. The pieces fall in Clive’s lap at last. They waste no time scooping up Blaine and hauling him to the police station for questioning. For a guy who’s had his junk metaphorically kicked twice in a row, he’s pretty smug. In comes his knight in shining armor—armor he’s seen up close and personal after drinking and sleeping with Peyton in her office the night before. Blaine is a key witness against Boss and therefore has immunity. Clive lays out what kind of guy he thinks Blaine is to Peyton. She still gets Blaine out of the handcuffs, but then turns to Liv for verification about who Blaine, John to her, really is. It breaks Peyton.
A lot of dead-ends for Bozzio and Clive in this episode. They finally get the GPS tracker in the missing guy’s dog turned on. Major overhears this plan and panics, downing a Max Rager and parkouring his way to the groomer where he left the dog. He lies to the groomer, telling her he rescued the dog from an angry cop and if the cop comes around to find him, she has to lie. Major panicked, and stupidly abandoned the dog on a city bus, for no reason. The GPS chip is in the dog’s tags, which Major ditched after he originally kidnapped it. Most heart-breaking, Major lies to Ravi about the dog’s whereabouts, saying he gave it back to the family who lost it.
It feels like they’re trying to tie up loose ends by continuing the age-old tradition of bone-headed moves by the lead characters. They want us to like Major, yet he continuously perpetuates animal neglect. Liv only has personality with a man in her bed. Peyton is set up to die soon given how deep she’s gotten in the Boss case. And Ravi? He’s keeping to himself, searching the field of woes and missing the dog which shouldn’t have been.
Ravi may be the only character fans connect with anymore.
Poor Lionel is having a bad day. His store is wrecked by evil winds accompanying a spell he did right, only for Ash to botch. Does he get thanks for a job well done? No. He gets a glass shard to the eye and a demon using him as a meat puppet to attack Amanda Fisher. I guess in a way having Amanda handcuffed in place counts as a reward.
Then Ruby happens.
In typical Ruby style, she attacks DeadLionel, impaling him with a lamppost. Pinning DeadLionel to the wall gives Ruby time to snoop around the shop. She also fills Amanda in on her side of the whole Evil Dead story. According to Ruby, Ash is a stone-cold killer who mowed down her entire family—mom, dad, and her sister Annie. Something about her story tickles DeadLionel’s funny bone. Before he says something to contradict the tale, Ruby decapitates him and stomps on his head. Completely oblivious to Ruby’s true intentions, but enjoying her methods, Amanda agrees to team up with the undead slayer to track Ash. But how? He’s in the wind. Ruby has a friend who can help—Ash’s possessed hand which he severed in one of the most memorable fights in the franchise. Seems the little fellow has an internal tracking power, making it move the closer they are to Ash. It’s not GPS, but it’ll work in a pinch.
The ladies may not have far to go to catch up. The Evil tracking Ash catches up with him, Pablo, and a severely concussed Kelly on the road to Pablo’s uncle’s. A dust cloud storms down the road, chasing the trailer Ash tows, tossing passing vehicles into the air. In the nick of time, the car turns into the Brujo’s driveway. The talismans around the property protect it from the evil dust storm. Not from Ash’s incompetent swagger.
Uncle Brujo knew Pablo would return. Not sure much could prepare him to deal with Ash as the sole Jefe available to deal with the local evil problem, but he’s game if Ash is. “When evil shows up, it blows up,” Ash tells the gang—it’s his new slogan if he is indeed this whacky Jefe thing Pablo and Brujo talk about all the time. There’s a long road ahead if Ash will become the hero they need. The Brujo says the light inside the hero-to-be is too dim, and quite frankly, Ash is a gigantic failure.
The trip they must take is an intimate one, which leaves Pablo to take care of Kelly. She’s probably going to need more than the standard, “Take two of these and call me in the morning,” seeing as she’s hearing voices in her head and all. None of the guys know. She’s really not inclined to tell them, either. You guys remember Eligos, the faceless fun n mental mindgames demon the gang summoned in the last episode? Yeah, he’s taken residence in Kelly’s brain and body. Rut roh. Pablo does his best to make sure she’s comfortable. While she rests, and is consumed by evil, he rifles through the storage shed for hand-making supplies. He creates a pretty nifty mechanical hand before Keligos electrocutes him, knocking him out.
In Brujo’s ramshackle shed, Ash is given a hearty dose of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic meant to draw Ash into himself to find the answer to their troubles. It takes a while for the potion to kick in, but once it does, whoa. We’re treated to an odd TV montage acid trip sequence, followed by footage from Evil Dead and a map tracking Ash’s nomadic life from ValueStop to ValueStop. At last Ash drops into a freshly dug grave. His eyes are sewn shut. Vaguely Ash-like masked men roam around, searching for our hero-to-be. Brujo, as a voice from above, instructs Ash on how to control his trip. The minute Ash has a grip on things, he travels to Jacksonville, FL. But not the real city, just an idealized version Ash saw on a postcard. He’d planned a trip to the city thirty years prior. A trip he was supposed to take right after visiting the cabin where he obtained the Necronomicon.
Eli the lizard, who can talk in this vision, verbally abuses Ash until they work out what’s in Ash’s subconscious that can point them to a solution to the evil problem. It all has to go back to the beginning, Ash and the book. Great news for long-term ED fans, they get to see the infamous cabin again.
Ash is vulnerable, trapped in the vision quest. He’s ripe for Eligos to screw with mentally. The demon hijacks Ash’s trip and drags him mentally back to ValueStop, where the possessed Little Lori doll waits to finish their fight. But this is Ash’s vision. He’s the head honcho in charge. Ash changes the vision, attacking Eligos. In reality, he’s strangling Kelly’s possessed body. Unaware of the real situation, Pablo whacks Ash over the head to save Kelly.
Well, that’s a strange turn of events. How will Keligos fit into the new plan: Bury the Necronomicon at the cabin in the woods? Will Pablo trust Ash after the attack? Is this the delay Ruby needs to finally catch up with her prey?
There’s two dead bodies in this episode. The first is Santa. Not the real Santa, but a poor sap in a Santa suit who’d been beaten to death. His brain is nice and normal. Liv is almost a real person. But she’s also written to be as boring as possible just because she’s not actively working with Clive. We see none of the visions for Santa’s case, just a couple instances of Liv helping from afar—sending a witness Clive’s way, as well as a note stating the suspect Clive already had in for questioning was at the crime scene. During this time, the main focus is on Ravi, Major, and Liv digging up a field to find the drug dealers stuffed with tainted Utopium. It’s like geocaching, but far more boring. The only thing you need to know about the first act in the episode is that Major and Blaine both know they may revert back to zombies soon. Ravi takes blood samples from both to see if he can figure out when they’ll revert.
Then suddenly, there’s random Romero-zombie action and a panicked girl running into a high school. It took me half a second to realize it’s footage from the Zombie High show referenced early in the episode—a show Liv loves as much as I love Z Nation for its over-the-top ridiculous zombie antics. Sadly, there’s more energy in this intentionally awful show than then entire second season of iZombie. While shooting this particular scene, there’s an accident with a prop gun, killing Jordan, the show’s star. It echoes the incident that happened while filming The Crow, which took Brandon Lee’s life. Except this wasn’t an accident. The prop gun was swapped with a real gun.
Liv and Ravi arrive on the scene and Liv proceeds to fangirl herself into a puddle of embarrassment. Again, a writing decision meant to prove she has the know-how to navigate this case but ends up making her come off as a psychotic fan who’d probably try to steal the leading man’s underwear from his trailer. Nevertheless, Clive thinks it’s best to have Liv onboard since she knows so much about the show, its actors, and the drama on set. Like we didn’t see that coming from ten miles away while blindfolded.
Over the course of the episode, we learn that Jordan was a d-bag. Scratch that. He was the d-bag. The only one anyone on set needed in their life. He gave everyone nothing but grief, insisting he delve so deep into the Method school of acting, he wouldn’t even say two civil words to his faux-zombie costars. His kinda-girlfriend, Starlee was only with him to keep him from blackmailing her with a horrifically insensitive impression of their deaf costar. The other male lead, played by Wyatt, doesn’t paint a pretty picture of Jordan’s on set tantrums. Tara, the director’s assistant, gives the crime-fighting duo a red herring, saying Wyatt had motive to kill Jordan and take his place as the sole leading man she told Wyatt he’d be the next character killed off on the show.
Basically, it’s half an hour of Liv and Clive chasing dead ends, Liv putting on her Serious Actor Face, and them completely ignoring the fact that it’s painfully obvious who swapped the prop gun for the real one. Oh, you know, the guy who is charge of the weapons. Fitz was shagging an assistant director who died in a car accident a year ago after one of Jordan’s routine late-night filming sessions where he insisted they do thirty takes of each shot. He blamed Jordan for the accident, but stewed in it. That is until learning the show would move production to Los Angeles just so Jordan could become an even bigger star.
While they demonstrate great police work, Major is dodging metaphorical bullets from Vaughn Du Clark and his daughter, Gilda. She questions Major’s every move, warning VDC that he will betray Max Rager. VDC is all hakunamatata about the situation. His care-free days may be numbered. Dr. Lockett approaches Major and tells him he’s ready to spill the beans about Max Rager, their experiments, and the zombies to the press. He gives Major a flash drive with a copy of the files to use as proof should Lockett’s plan end with his early demise and suppression of the truth he’s trying to share. Sensing a trap, Major hands the flash drive over to VDC. As a reward for being a good little zombie assassin, Major gets an all-access tour of the secret underground lab. There’s a moment were VDC almost feeds Lockett to the Romero-zombies locked in the lab. When Major fails to panic and open the door to save the man, VDC releases Lockett. It is a test. One Major passed with flying colors. Why? He gave VDC a Fitbit with a bug so he can listen to every word the man says. It’s the smartest move anyone makes in the episode.
Over the Christmas season, business boomed for Blaine. He’s feeling a little hakunamatata himself, practically rolling in cash with joy. It’s a short-lived joy. Dale Bozzio is following up on information she got after checking the missing person’s phone records. Several placed calls to a number owned by Blaine. He passes it off as a business call for the funeral home. Meanwhile, he’s sweating bullets because Don E handed him one of the yellow brain transport coolers to take to an angry client; the FBI have the yellow coolers noted in the case file. Thanks to some quick-thinking, Chief and Don E work together to snag the bag before Bozzio sees it. Bullet dodged. For about an hour. When Bozzio returns to the police station, she and Clive discuss her case. Turns out Digger, the dog belonging to a zombie Major killed, has a GPS enabled chip. While Bozzio digs through papers to find that information, or something else, she sees the suspect sketch Clive has tied to the Meat Cute case. Whoops. There goes Blaine’s chance to ride this investigation out under the radar.
Clive and Liv are a team again. Yay. Maybe the writers won’t feel the need to make Liv impossibly dull anymore. I say that knowing the next episode references a novel which has become a blight on humanity. This will only end in tears. My tears, in honor of my sanity.
There’s two dead bodies in this episode. The first is Santa. Not the real Santa, but a poor sap in a Santa suit who’d been beaten to death. His brain is nice and normal. Liv is almost a real person. But she’s also written to be as boring as possible just because she’s not actively working with Clive. We see none of the visions for Santa’s case, just a couple instances of Liv helping from afar—sending a witness Clive’s way, as well as a note stating the suspect Clive already had in for questioning was at the crime scene. During this time, the main focus is on Ravi, Major, and Liv digging up a field to find the drug dealers stuffed with tainted Utopium. It’s like geocaching, but far more boring. The only thing you need to know about the first act in the episode is that Major and Blaine both know they may revert back to zombies soon. Ravi takes blood samples from both to see if he can figure out when they’ll revert.
Basically, it’s half an hour of Liv and Clive chasing dead ends, Liv putting on her Serious Actor Face, and them completely ignoring the fact that it’s painfully obvious who swapped the prop gun for the real one. Oh, you know, the guy who is charge of the weapons. Fitz was shagging an assistant director who died in a car accident a year ago after one of Jordan’s routine late-night filming sessions where he insisted they do thirty takes of each shot. He blamed Jordan for the accident, but stewed in it. That is until learning the show would move production to Los Angeles just so Jordan could become an even bigger star.
Over the Christmas season, business boomed for Blaine. He’s feeling a little hakunamatata himself, practically rolling in cash with joy. It’s a short-lived joy. Dale Bozzio is following up on information she got after checking the missing person’s phone records. Several placed calls to a number owned by Blaine. He passes it off as a business call for the funeral home. Meanwhile, he’s sweating bullets because Don E handed him one of the yellow brain transport coolers to take to an angry client; the FBI have the yellow coolers noted in the case file. Thanks to some quick-thinking, Chief and Don E work together to snag the bag before Bozzio sees it. Bullet dodged. For about an hour. When Bozzio returns to the police station, she and Clive discuss her case. Turns out Digger, the dog belonging to a zombie Major killed, has a GPS enabled chip. While Bozzio digs through papers to find that information, or something else, she sees the suspect sketch Clive has tied to the Meat Cute case. Whoops. There goes Blaine’s chance to ride this investigation out under the radar.