The Walking Dead, Season 6, Episode 7: Heads Up
Oh, yeah, Glenn's alive. Woo. I'm watching these episodes relatively in decent time from each other -- I sometimes watch like three episodes in a day, two episodes in a day, write down notes and then write up proper reviews when I have the time, but man, that was a long-ass reveal before the fact that Glenn, in fact, was a fake-out. Which, really, was easy to call out considering we didn't get a super-graphic death scene and Walking Dead is all about those super-graphic death scenes. I can't say I'm sad, because I'd rather want Glenn around than not, but at the same time, jeez, the fuck was the point of putting us in suspense? Like, I'm not really sure what it's supposed to do.
The way they explain it is utterly stupid, too. After whatshisface died and fell on top of Glenn, the zombies tore into his body first, allowing Glenn to... roll under a dumpster and literally just wait things out. Apparently the horde got bored! Yeah. That fake out's just to fuck with the audience for no real reason, for an entire month (it took place in episode three, and assuming there weren't any delays, that would be four weeks to this episode).
Anyway, after that utterly stupid fake out, Glenn seems intent to just quickly run back to Alexandria and figure out what the fuck's going on, but stumbles upon Enid instead, who tosses him a bottle of water. Hey, Enid! I forgot you existed. It's basically a pretty neat bit with Glenn still clinging to his view as the show's 'be a nice guy' dude, while Enid's pretty much a nihilist who just notes that every place ends up falling down and stuff. It's not groundbreaking stuff, even internally in the show, but I guess it's nice to give Enid something to do? Also, apparently Enid has helium balloon stockpiles hidden in random spots on the road, and they use the balloons to signal their survival to Maggie. Oh, and Glenn also finds the farewell note that Random Alexandrian Fodder #25 that was too slow to climb the fence from the same episode when Glenn "died".
(Why would she think balloons = Glenn and not, oh, I dunno, Daryl or Enid or Abraham or anyone else outside?)
There's a weird sequence where Spenser tries to Batman his way between two sets of walls to reach the cars and distract the zombies, without consulting anyone. I'm not sure if he's just drunk, or ashamed of his behaviour two episodes ago, or both, But what the fuck, man? He nearly got his ass killed by the zombies (and I'm genuinely surprised that he didn't die, or cause someone else to die). I guess the point is to show Rick's outburst about how, in his mind, he still segregates 'Rick's people' with 'Alexandrian fodder', and Tara's response is a very hilarious bird-flip.
Oh, and there's a bit with Rosita teaching a bunch of Alexandrians how to fight. And Eugene is one of them and he's as shit in fighting as ever. Poor Eugene. Father Gabriel makes his first noteworthy appearance in this season, putting up flyers for a prayer meeting, only for Rick to be a dickbag and rip one up without saying a word. Like, jeez, Rick, I know he called you the devil once, but what the fuck. The dude's trying to do what he can do.
Meanwhile, Morgan is questioned for sparing the Wolves, though they don't know about Wolf the Wolf that Morgan keeps in the basement of one of the houses. Shit, even letting the five or six Wolves go ended up fucking Rick over and compromising a chance to prevent the swarming zombies outside of the walls, but at the same time Morgan is adamant that all live can be saved, just like him. The problem is that when Rick or the zen psychiatrist spared Morgan, he was clearly mentally ill. The people raiding Alexandria were doing what they do because, shit, they were evil fucks. And it's one thing to let them go, it's another can of worms altogether to keep one stashed a couple of meters away from where their civilians sleep. It's a similar conflict to one that was had between Shane and Dale all the way back in season two -- kill the invader, or let the invader go loose somewhere.
Like, I know that he doesn't want to kill the Wolf, and I can respect that decision, but at least tell everyone else that you're keeping a prisoner! Defend him from Carol and Rick if you must, but by splitting your attention between your secret prisoner and a possible follow-up invasion (and seeing the end of the episode, it's definitely in the realm of possibility) is just recipe for disaster. Worse, Morgan shares the secret with the only doctor in the community, Denise, asking her to treat the Wolf... and that can only end well.
Fortunately, Carol spots Morgan and Denise up to something shifty and decides to shadow Morgan. Unfortunately, Carol leaves baby Judith in the hands of Jessie. While I trust Jessie to be reasonably sane, neither of her children are the ideal picture of mental health. The little one, Sam, is acting up and refusing to leave his room on the top floor, and jeez, truly the definition of a creepy kid. And he just keeps asking Carol about monsters and shit. At the same time, I can't really blame him because his father was killed, his mother is a neurotic wreck, Carol traumatized the poor fucker last season and nothing's been going his way... but you just now that Sam's going to crap out in the near future and lead to someone's death.
The older one, asks Rick to teach him how to shoot, how to defend himself... but because apparently insanity runs down in that particular family, he steals some bullets to load into the empty gun that Rick lets him carry, and is apparently planning to shoot Carl for 'stealing' his girlfriend. Yeah, insane possessiveness runs in the family. Fuck off, Ron.
Back to Carol... she's being a little paranoid in this situation, though can you blame the woman? Despite my criticism of Morgan's actions earlier, it's a tricky situation and it pits two of the more interesting characters in the show against each other. We did see Carol start to confront Morgan about what he's keeping in the cage, but the cliffhanger kinds of interrupts that.
And since I mentioned it twice in this review already, boy, what a cliffhanger. There's no dialogue, just images of our cast members screaming and shouting but the only audio is the faint crashing of a building as it collapses and brings down a chunk of Alexandria's walls with it, while a dissonantly serene instrumental song plays in the background.
So yeah, after a string of relatively weak episodes, hopefully the next ones pick things up. We've got the Carol/Morgan conflict which I'm very excited about; we've got Glenn, Enid and Team Daryl all making their way towards Alexandria; we've got Team Rick dealing with the new breach (is it naturally caused by zombies, or did the Wolves cause it?) and we've got Ron and his random attempt at homicide. This is yet another relative disappointment in season six's wholly underwhelming lineup of episodes, and I'm not sure what's the problem. Is it the constant foreshadowing to the boss controlling the Wolves with no payoff? Is it the tired plot device of still extending the zombie quarry plotline from the season premiere? Either way it's annoyingly uninteresting.
No comments:
Post a Comment