The Walking Dead, Season 6, Episode 9: No Way Out
Well, that was pretty exciting. Rick's plan to walk out with sheets dipped in zombie guts ends up seeming to work despite Sam's 'mommy?' freak-out during last episode's final cliffhanger, but that's about the only thing that goes well in this episode, at least until the final scenes of the episode.
Anyway, let's begin with the opening scene, where Daryl, Abraham and Sasha are stopped by a bunch of badass bikers with guns, who demands every single thing that they have because now they're the property of a man called Negan, finally giving the leader of the Wolves a name. The buildup of the Wolves has been pretty crappy, as cryptic as the showmakers might try to make it, but at least we're getting somewhere. And as tensions mount, Daryl unleashes his inner Ezio, as he silently murders one of the Wolves that accompanies him to investigate their truck, arm a god damn missile launcher, sneak back out and then blow up the entire army of Wolves-on-bikes before they can shoot Abraham. The Wolves exploding into a stain on the ground is both awesome and hilarious at how abrupt it was.
Not that I'm complaining, that's a badass scene, and I'm willing to suspend disbelief on this one. You go, Daryl. You go.
But as we return to Alexandria, things are, well, going south. The zombies basically have the run of the town, and there are conflicts everywhere. Father Gabriel decides to take Judith to relative safety while Rick and the others try and do something, which is nice. About time Gabriel did something beyond try and reassure Rick that he's 100% sane now. For whatever stupid reason, though, the group doesn't force the issue when it comes to Sam, and decides to let him come with.
Sam, of course, freaks the fuck out and cries, and immediately gets himself eaten by zombies. It's inevitable, I suppose, and honestly something that anyone familiar to the show is going to see coming. Sam's going to crap out and freak out sooner or later, and it's Jessie that pays the price -- you can't see your kid get literally torn apart and not freak out, so it's Jessie that gets torn apart next. Rick is forced to axe off Jessie's arm to save Carl, while having flashbacks for added drama. And, of course, Ron is a moron and he blames... uh, Carl? What. He shoots, but Michonne stabs him in the chest before he fires, and Ron, too, gets devoured by zombies. It's just so rapid-fire and surreal, but at the same time I've had no illusions that Ron or Sam is going to survive. It's a matter of how many others they bring down with them.
Goodbye, freakout family! Sadly, that moron Ron shot Carl in the face. That was utterly shocking and I thought Carl was dead before the close-up that showed that, oh, it merely fucked up his eye. Somehow. Kid keeps getting himself shot, doesn't he? The ending shows that Carl survives thanks to being rushed to medical treatment quickly enough, but I actually, genuinely thought that he was going to die. Well, at least he gets to wear a badass eyepatch.
The Wolf storyline ends up being the worst part of the episode, because he's still creepy, and he wants to bring Denise back to his camp or something... only to get his ass shot by Carol to death. Ha! Fool. I guess the point was that the Wolf wasn't so bad since he ends up getting bit while protecting Denise, so Morgan didn't completely miss the point of trying to redeem people, but at the same time the whole thing was handled so poorly that I'm honestly not interested at all. I'm just happy Denise didn't get herself killed thanks to the Wolf's flip-flopping around. Carol and Morgan have some dialogue exchanges this episode, but not even the two great actors can salvage the rather sub-par script.
We did get a pretty badass moment, though. Rick getting absolutely fucked up mentally at the sight of his dying son, and having lost Jessie and Deanna (and the two moron kids but I don't think Rick cares) in quick succession ends up causing him to grab and axe and starts hacking away at the zombies outside the infirmary. Michonne runs out to help Rick and stop himself from getting his stupid ass killed, but apparently this display is so galvanizing that the entirety of Alexandria's nameless population rushes out to help out. Though none more badass than Gabriel and Eugene, both of whom are the load for the majority of their life in the show. Eugene is even given the option to sit out by Rosita, but his line about how this is going in the history books and shit as he walks out with the machete is amazingly delivered. And Father Gabriel, once the coward who can't do jack shit and is more harmful than good? He decides that God has given him the strength to defend his people, and stands outside the makeshift church with a goddamn machete, hacking zombies apart when in his introduction, he hid in the church while his congregation died around him. Those are nice bits of understated badass moments.
Enid and Glenn finally make it into the town (after a bit of bonding in a church about the people they lost, with some bad season-two-tier 'explain this line for five minutes' style of dialogue), and save Maggie, who's trapped on top of the watchtower. It looks super-dire for Glenn, who gets swarmed by zombies... but suddenly Team Abraham shows up with a crapton of machineguns, kills all the zombies around Glenn, which is pretty awesome... and then the Badass Crew solves the problem by using oil and a missile launcher to create a gigantic bonfire to attract all the zombies. Yeah, it's inspired by the burning forest that Daryl went through in his episode, I guess, but honestly, did it take them this long to figure out that they can use fire to distract and/or kill zombies? I felt that was a bit too convenient.
But honestly, it's all Daryl, Abraham and Sasha rescuing their day with missile launchers, because if it was just Rick's army against the zombie horde, I'm sure more casualties will mount. So yeah, the moral of the story, I think, is to carry missile launchers, and don't let kids that will crap out even participate in something dangerous.
Also... the show's cleared out a lot of named Alexandrians, yeah? Like, I know there's a huge ton of faceless ones that joined Rick's rage-fuelled (and stupid) rampage, but with Deanna, Jessie and the silly kids all dead, the only Alexandrians worth caring about are, what, Aaron, Denise and Enid? Is Spencer alive?
Yeah, hopefully the rest of the season can find something more interesting to do. These last two episodes are relatively decent at ramping up the action, but kind of fails in actually delivering decent emotional conflict as far as the handling of the Wolf subplot or the Andersen family's death goes.
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