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The Walking Dead 7.14 – The Other Side

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Two blank slates – Rosita and Jesus – were finally given some back-story. It would take some mental gymnastics to justify why these two characters were neglected for so long, given how central they are to much of this season’s story, but it’s pleasing that we finally have some additional context for them. At this point in The Walking Dead, it isn’t unusual for random outbursts of character development – without warning or lead-up – so it’s easy to assume that these two are going to play a major role in the ‘All Out War’ story-line of season eight.

It will be a breath of fresh air to see Rosita doing something other than being angry at everything and uncooperative because…feelings. Her pouty face and clenched teeth aren’t enough. It looks like the writers are getting ready to give her a lot more to do, and it will be a welcome change of pace. This entire season, she has been a two-dimensional, boring bundle of “I hate life.” It’ll be nice to see her behave like a woman with cunning and agency, rather than a pissed-off teenager.

With regards to Jesus, backstory is nice – in this instance, however, it’s not entirely necessary. I think that the show has established, pretty clearly, that he’s something of a loner, who probably didn’t get along with a lot of people in the world before the fall. Background and motivation is always welcome – and it was touching for him to have a low-key coming-out moment – but audiences already know that he’s something of a loner, and his sexuality is immaterial. Not a tremendous amount of depth or insight, but the character is definitely becoming more three-dimensional and relatable – hopefully this doesn’t mean he’s about to be axed.

(I doubt it does)

Truthfully, not a whole lot happened during this episode, despite tense moments for Maggie & Daryl hiding in the cellar, political power-plays at The Hilltop, and Rosita & Sasha deciding it’d be a great idea to try and single-handedly assassinate Negan. This episode was about little moments, between Daryl and Maggie, Sasha and Rosita. It’s a reinforcement of Eugene’s cowardice, and it buttresses our understanding of how shaky the politics of The Hilltop are. If you think that Sasha is going to make it out alive, I’ll go ahead and leave you with this:

Actress Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays Sasha, has signed a contract and will be a recurring cast member in the next Star Trek television series. No wonder her behavior at the end of this episode seemed so painfully shoe-horned. Gee-willickers, I wonder what’s going to happen…

Sigh…

And, dollars to donuts, the crossbow-wielding silhouette isn’t Daryl. That’s Dwight. Guaranteed. And he’s willing to join the Alexandrians in their upcoming conflict with Negan. I’d place a very stiff bet on it.

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The Walking Dead 7.11 – Hostiles and Calamities

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As mentioned in previous commentaries – and I like to believe that the issue is rather obvious – the cast of The Walking Dead has swollen to an almost unmanageable size. It’s a problem, because the idea of the world expanding, of civilization taking root after the apocalypse, is an intriguing one. It’s a great idea, in fact, and lives well on the page in the printed comic book series. But it appears to be more of a logistical and narrative nightmare to have this expanding world come alive on the screen.

We can probably assume, however, that the “All Out War” section of the story these recent episodes are building towards will cull the herd significantly. My fingers are certainly crossed that we eventually see some of the excess baggage cut loose. The garbage pickers, guaranteed, are going to be bullet-sponges; they are the least interesting, least developed characters, and they offer the least in the way of answers as to how their society functions, how they have survived, and why eighteen-months of story-time (roughly) has been enough time to influence the very structure of their language. Who is this Jadis, and through what mechanism has she achieved a leadership position? Raw physical power, charisma, persuasion, and extortion all seem unlikely – especially that ‘charisma and persuasion’ bit – her verbal communication skills have been reduced to two word, stilted sentence fragments. I predict that these characters will be quick to die.

But we all know who’s going to be sacrificed first though, don’t we? Why of course we do! It’s going to be none other than the young and lovable Benjamin from the Kingdom. Don’t remember him? Well, he’s the young one who has taken up the bo-staff under Morgan’s instruction. He’s baby-faced and sympathetic, trying his gosh-darned best to learn how to defend the kingdom like his father before him, all while taking on the responsibility of raising his younger brother. Morgan even appears to be influencing the young lad, injecting his philosophy of non-aggression. This kid was marked for death from the moment Benjamin’s sob-story character was introduced, and every little moment with him has been specifically designed to make audiences like him, pity him, and quietly root for him, so as to make his unavoidable – I guarantee it, unavoidable! – death a sad and meaningful one.

My guess is that Benjamin’s death is what’s going to change King Ezekiel’s mind about joining in the battle against Negan. I’d put money on it.

That all being said, this episode isn’t about the Kingdom or Hilltop communities at all. With all of the different communities and the bloated cast, all of this season’s episodes have been reduced to focusing on one group at a time, save typically for the cliffhanger-heavy outros. In this episode, we get more details as to how The Sanctuary functions, more specifically focusing on Dwight, who clearly appears to be having a change of heart regarding his position, and Eugene, who has recently been kidnapped and taken under Negan’s wing.

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It isn’t challenging to overlook characters like Eugene. Even dramatic moments – chomping Dwight in the crotch outside Alexandria last season – are easily funneled into humor, and Eugene has mostly been written as the butt of the joke. Despite this, actor Josh McDermitt turned in an exceptional performance. Throughout the episode, we are made to wonder whether he has some kind of secret plan to assist the Alexandrians (or maybe escape), or if he truly has accepted his role as one of Negan’s soldiers, along with all the responsibilities and, more importantly, with the sense of safety and all of the creature comforts. This question isn’t answered by the episode’s end, and I’m doubting we’ll have an answer until the season finale.

Negan’s fate is in the background of the whole episode. We wonder about Eugene’s allegiance, Rick and the Alexandrian’s are hunting for weapons and recruits to storm Negan’s compound, Dwight appears to be having second thoughts about his life with the Saviors, and even Negan’s wives are plotting to have him killed, requesting that Eugene manufacture poisonous pills. And, of course, just like Walter White’s ricin, we have some pretty obvious foreshadowing – lest we forget that we don’t ever see Eugene destroy the pills, even though he didn’t give them to the wives.

I’m guessing they’re going to make an appearance in the near future. Time will tell.

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The Walking Dead 7.10 – New Best Friends

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Inexplicable “hell-raiser” walkers. There’s no sense or reason to most of this episode, and it is painfully disappointing.

This episode, titled “New Best Friends,” is a clear example of the best and worst qualities of The Walking Dead. The small character piece between Daryl and Carol after their long-awaited reunion demonstrates a tendency toward emotional and arresting tension, depth of character, and attention to human detail. On the opposite side of the coin is the introduction of the garbage pickers, a collective of horrendously one-dimensional personalities in an already crowded cast. In these scenes, Rick – one of the only, if not the only, immortal characters – is the one pushed into danger. We already know he’s going to survive, so we don’t care when he’s fighting the most inexplicable and improbable of creatures. Meanwhile, we have characters like Rosita, a small scar on her face, now reduced to a character who is solely defined by her anger.

Roughly half of the episode concerned itself with this new community, who have set up their civilization in a garbage dump. Few details are introduced as to how this community functions – unlike The Hilltop, The Kingdom, and The Sanctuary – and there is little rhyme or reason as to how their leader, a woefully underwritten character, has ascended to a leadership position among them. The stilted language of these people, the icing on the cake, makes the explanation of their survival in the zombie apocalypse even more confusing than their terrible choice of locale.

That’s the bad part. The show hasn’t completely lost its way, and there is a great deal of solid source material – the comic book series – that the television show has to draw from.

Carol’s character is one of the show’s most complex creations, with one of the most engaging character arcs, and actress Melissa McBride has delivered consistently powerful performances. There was a palpable emotional pay-off when she and Daryl are finally reunited, after having been separated for the space of an entire season. Chemistry is real – Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus (who plays Daryl) have it.

The show is setting up, as it often does, all of the chess pieces in preparation for a grand finale. It will likely be a satisfying spectacle, and there’s nothing wrong with moments of levity. It’s just that the show has a tendency to stretch the narrative beyond it’s audience’s patience. As things stand now, not only is the narrative being drawn out, but ridiculous and improbable scenarios are cluttering up the story.

No community is going to risk its safety pouring melted pewter over a walker’s head to create some kind of “super walker” pin-head confection, only to give it up as a sacrificial lamb. Additionally, there is no sense in a community committing itself to war against total strangers (The Saviors) when other strangers (The Alexandrians) arrive and show that they have the gumption to kill their pin-head walker. This isn’t how trust is established, and this isn’t how war is waged. Period.

Rick and the Alexandrians need lots of guns, eh? Well shucks, I guess that’s why Oceanside (equally as underdeveloped as the garbage heap survivors) was introduced during the front-end of the season. Whatever will Tara do? Will she eventually tell Rick? You betcha, she will.

Yes. We all know. She’s going to betray Oceanside’s trust, and they’re probably going to join the fray against The Saviors, too. Because? Plot. Transparent, predictable, underwhelming plot.

I think we all know that Carol is eventually going to learn the truth about her fallen brothers and sisters, too. Daryl might have had her best interests at heart, but the truth will out, creating dramatic tension between these two soul-mates, and it’ll draw Carol into the conflict we all know is coming. There’s nothing wrong with foreshadowing, and there will always be predictable arcs in a serialized drama, but The Walking Dead is going too far. The surprises are never major plot points, but only involved with “which beloved character is going to die next?”

It feels lazy. It feels like the show is disrespecting its audience’s intellect.

Why does it feel like that? Because it absolutely, one-hundred-percent is doing just that.

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The Walking Dead 7.9 – A Rock In The Road

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Fans have been waiting for the ‘back end’ of season seven to begin, in lurid anticipation after the significant character deaths that have colored the ‘front end.’ Diverting from the comic book, communities like Oceanside – and the new garbage-heap group introduced in today’s episode – have surfaced, keeping fans engaged and completely disrupting the prognostications of comic-book fan-boys like yours truly.

For the first half of the season, the narrative has been exceedingly involved in illustrating the psychological wounds endured by Rick Grimes and the entire Alexandria contingent in the wake of their brutal first encounter with Negan and The Saviors. Regardless, audiences have been waiting to see the Rick Grimes character rediscover his courage and fighting spirit, and it seems pretty evident that this is exactly the theme of ‘Rock In The Road.’

Unfortunately, it also appears that this episode is falling victim to the program’s tendency toward slow-paced “filler.” Character development is important, but when the pace is slowed, it’s important for the character interactions to feel authentic and significant, and there’s something about the scripted dialogue in the opening scenes of this episode that feel painfully wooden and inauthentic. The way Jesus explains his knowledge of another community, “The Kingdom,” feels light and casual, with absolutely no gravity (even though he is forbidden from revealing details about the community). It is also important to remember that the Alexandrians have been isolated survivalists who were, just one season prior, completely shocked by the existence of “The Hilltop.” And there is something about the frenetic and exasperated utterances by The Hilltop’s leader, Gregory – “rheeee-tor-i-cal” – and the interjections by the lovable hayseed “Daryl,” that just don’t ring true when we examine the character.

“Yer either with us or you ain’t! Yer talking out of both sides of yer mouth!”

Watching those words come out of that particular character just seemed awkward and completely out of style for a reasonably unthinking rough-and-tumble man who relies on his instincts and skills and not his diplomacy and intellect. Action set-pieces like a herd of walkers being sliced apart by a taught cable strung between two cars, while visually impressive and undeniably fun, seemed like an implausible afterthought designed to help the episode recover from its painfully shallow dialogue.

Yes. We now have a unified group of people who want to fight – exactly what audiences want – but we also have flagging character development and the introduction, at the tail-end of the episode, of yet another underdeveloped community of people who may or may not aid our heroes in the war to come. And let’s face it – we know that the hooded garbage-pickers are going to fall in line, eventually, in armed conflict with Negan’s Saviors. Little has been left to the imagination and characters are being rewritten and yanked from the thoughts and actions we would naturally expect from them after seven seasons of development.

There is absolutely no reason why Rick would smile after his group is besieged by hooded, gun-wielding kidnappers. But hey, it sure does make for a great cliffhanger.

Has the show jumped the shark? Certainly not. It’s engaging and entertaining, and I can promise you that I’ll be tuning in next week. But something about this episode just didn’t feel right. Let’s see if the ship corrects itself.

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Better Call Saul 2.07 – Inflatable

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This week’s episode of Better Call Saul opens in the summer of 1973, with an establishing shot of a magazine rack reminding us of the downfall of Richard Nixon. On the cover of the magazine, with Nixon’s stern portrait, the headline reads: “Can Trust Be Restored?” As the scene unfolds, we see a young Jimmy McGill, who eventually takes a hard (and wrong-headed) lesson from a grifter.

“Listen, kid. In this world there are sheep, and there are wolves.” Any Breaking Bad fan will remember that this exact line is spoken by a fully-grown Saul Goodman to Walter White and Jesse Pinkman midway through the series.

This opening scene clearly establishes young Jimmy as a preternaturally wizened student of the human carnival. He sees right through the grifter’s con, even trying to warn his father – a message that falls on deaf ears – before taking the con-man’s advice and yanking a few bucks from the till when dad isn’t looking. It’s an oddly moving scene, witnessing a twelve-year-old boy decoding the vulnerability of his father, the man who is supposed to have all the answers.

“And so we see Jimmy steal from the till, out of resolute bitterness. With a rejection of his father’s soft-hearted gullibility, and through extension the whole sucker-generation of sheep-idealists that let themselves be cheated by the wolves of violence and corruption.”

Clearly, the theme of this episode is occupied with corruption.

As an adult, we know that Jimmy McGill is incredibly good at spotting the long-con; that’s how he landed the lucrative Sandpiper class-action case and parlay that into a company car, corporate apartment, and cushy salary. He knows how criminals work because he is, in no uncertain terms, just like them. Rather than conning convenience store clerks, he has evolved into a legal animal hoping to justify his cons by going after other con artists – for the most part.

This episode sees Jimmy admitting to certain truths about himself openly. He comes clean and admits that his atrocious behavior at Davis & Main was a ploy to escape his contract (but not the signing bonus). He admits that he’s a “square peg” that needs to do his own thing. He drops the British secretary charade when he nestles back into his nail salon back-office. Kim, having absorbed Chuck’s story about Jimmy’s youthful thievery, also confronts Jimmy in more concrete terms. She cannot allow herself to partner with Jimmy and expose herself professionally to any of his shenanigans. Jimmy can sense her distrust even if he isn’t privvy to Chuck’s meddling.

Will Jimmy accept Kim’s proposal? The episode doesn’t seem to want to reveal this until next week, but my guess is that he eventually will.

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Carl – We Have An Eye Donor For You

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It didn’t take long for the inter-webs to begin flooding with outcry after the latest gruesome death in AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” but this outcry is a little different than usual. Most of the time, the audience is saddened by the unexpected loss, or horrified when pivotal characters are presumed dead – let us not forget the miserable weeks when Glenn’s fate was left completely up in the air. While several plot-lines have been changed in order, presumably, to keep the narrative fresh for fans – and to prevent comic book enthusiasts like myself from spoiling upcoming events – Mr. Abraham Ford was spared the eyeball-skewering he was destined for.

Abraham Death

The problem? His replacement on the post-apocalyptic chopping block was Doctor Denise, one of the series’ only gay characters. If fact, it was only two episodes ago that Denise told her girlfriend Tara before an extended supply run that she can’t go. “I need to be here,” she said. “I’m the only doctor now. I can’t. But I want to.” This week, Denise admits that she could have gone, that she could have confessed her love to Tara, but was unable to because she was afraid. The moment she appears to arrive at romantic clarity – and the humorous macguffin of the orange soda is satisfied – Denise is killed.

The macho alpha-male is spared his scripted death, replaced by one of the only gay characters on the show. Given the nature of the show, one likely has nothing to do with the other, but that doesn’t prevent message boards and conspiracy theorists from beating their chests about what this may possibly imply.

The show has gone off-script in a variety of ways, in a calculated and creative attempt to make the content as surprising and narratively strong as possible. In this instance, the turn of events may be as easily explained as the availability of an actor on set. Tara (played by Alanna Masterson) is off for the foreseeably near-future because of a pregnancy, preventing any resolution with the Tara/Denise subplot by the end of the current season.

It ought also be noted that Denise doesn’t survive the comic book, either. She makes it much further on the written page, sure, but she is no more immune than any other beloved character. Additionally, the Denise character is straight in the graphic novel, not gay. But a little bird tells me these tidbits likely won’t quell the current outrage.

I can’t speak for the writers, producers, show-runners, or anybody else on “The Walking Dead,” but I’m guessing that the current insult was unintentional. Besides, there’s still that lingering speculation that Daryl is gay, so we may yet be able to reexamine this topic as the story continues to unfold. And what’s that, I hear? Jesus – you know, that devilishly handsome blue-eyed little thing – might be gay? Time will tell, I suppose…

For the time being, let’s raise a glass while we mourn the loss of yet another undeserving victim. The loss is always hardest to accept when the character is so intrinsically good. Let’s hope she is avenged. It couldn’t happen soon enough.

Cheers.

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