The Walking Dead, Season 6, Episode 15: East
This episode is the penultimate episode of Walking Dead's sixth season, a season that's easily one of the more uneven attempts in Walking Dead's relatively long and varied history. Its back end recouped a fair bit of quality, but it doesn't really forgive the huge slog we went through during the season's earlier half where it took more than half the season to finally finish the exhausting quarry zombie arc. Here, again, it's returning to a bit more of a comfort zone similar to the previous seasons where it's less ambitious. The community in Hilltop is mentioned, but not seen and doesn't seem like it's going to play a huge part in the climax.
It's basically a lot of characters making absurdly stupid decisions, which leads to the group's main characters being split up across multiple locations. Add that to copious amounts of "oh look at our main characters being cute and shit" with the characters in love having a montage of loving each other (Abraham/Sasha, Rick/Michonne, Maggie/Glenn, Carol/LoveInterestMan before Carol leaves) and it's honestly a bit too much on-the-nose.
Carol leaves, and Rick and Morgan pursue her while having a huge discussion about the merits of letting people live. Daryl also leaves on a one-man warpath to avenge Denise -- or, as Glenn puts it, doing his own thing to murder Dwight to 'correct' his mistake. Of course, a huge chunk of Alexandria's badasses, Michonne, Glenn and Rosita, go out to get him back. It's honestly silly, and for a show that has spent its past few episodes building up our heroes as these badasses for the inevitable downfall, the way that downfall happened -- not because the Saviours stepped up their game, but because Daryl's too angry, because Glenn and Michonne decide to have a conversation next to a lake instead of hightailing it back to Alexandria, because no one brought a walkie-talkie, and most of all, because so many of the established warriors split up. Alexandria's left with, what, Abraham, Carl and Aaron as the actual fighters? And Maggie's going into labour or some shit despite being only pregnant for two months because rule of drama?
And a huge part is honestly because of how utterly uninteresting the Saviours are. Dwight is the only one who barely has any sort of personality beyond 'stupid evil asshole' but he's a stupid evil asshole with a grudge against Daryl, which isn't much of a step up from, say, those dudes that Carol kills on the road. Again, Carol makes a great usage of her trick of pretending to be a helpless puppy before murdering three people with a concealed gun, stabbing another man with one of the spikes on her awesome spike-adorned car, before buggering off because shit, she can kill but she feels so bad about it. Again, while the transition from 'Alexandria's Biggest and Scariest Badass' into 'I Can Kill So Well But Shit I Feel So Bad About It' isn't done well, but I can totally buy that this is who Carol is now, even if it's not a transformation that felt organic. I think her panic attack felt so much more ambiguous whether it's actually her dreading having to kill the Saviour assholes more than a feigned panic attack to get them to lower their guard.
Meanwhile, Morgan goes on his 'it all comes back in a circle' speech and reveals to Rick about keeping Wolf the Wolf in his basement (which Rick apparently didn't know about! That was a decently done scene) and says about how because the Wolf kept Denise safe during the Alexandrian battle, it's the Wolf who indirectly led to Carl's life being saved... ignoring the fact that the Wolf's whole presence is why Denise is put in danger in the first place instead of her being safely holed up with Rosita's group, and the Wolf knocking out Morgan and Carol cost Alexandria two of their best fighters being put out of commission during one of their most dire moments. Like, I appreciate what Morgan is doing in that he's one of the more interesting characters in the show thanks to his moral outlook, but still. Thankfully Morgan's other speeches, like his long line about how Rick accepted that Carol can change, while Rick tries to keep his pragmatic outlook and noting that he would've done the same with the infection carriers is definitely well done.
Meanwhile, Daryl, Michonne, Glenn and Rosita are held hostage by Dwight's group and the episode ends in typical Walking Dead fashion with a gunshot without us really seeing the outcome, but at least unlike Glenn I probably don't have to wait half a season for the conclusion.
So yeah. It's a real sloppy episode that jumps a lot of hoops to set things up for the finale, and while not entirely bereft of great moments (mostly courtesy of Carol and Morgan) it's still pretty dang clunky and that Negan fellow really needs to deliver on a huge payoff for all the bullshit that this season has been putting us through.
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