The Walking Dead, Season 7, Episode 6: Swear
Shit, we are visiting a different locale and spending most of our time in it every episode! It's six in a row now, and we're now focused on Tara and Heath (well, mostly Tara) and apparently they went on a lengthy scouting mission sometime before Denise got an arrow in the head, which explains why Tara is conspicuously missing throughout so much of the finale -- not that she's ever been important before this episode, really, but I genuinely thought the writers forgot about her. Apparently she's on this long-term mission.
And, well, through a series of anachronistic scenes, we discover that after a fight with zombies that rose from a pile of sand (it's cool to see zombies that are not just, well, generic walkers -- it's been some time since we had one of these more weird variants) Tara finds herself separated from Heath, unconscious and discovered by these little kids that apparently belonged to a community that sustains itself with food from the sea. Oh, and it's populated almost entirely by women, they are very, very distrustful of outsiders thanks to previously being one of the Saviours' thrall communities, and train their children in dogmatic 'trust no one but our own' spiels. It's basically Themyscira, if Themyscira had ladies with machineguns instead of Amazonian armour.
Of course, I'm entirely unconvinced that Tara's story here was really worth telling. Sure, it's interesting enough to discover another potential ally, even if they're unwilling they can be united with Alexandria, Hilltop and Ezekiel's Kingdom with their mutual hatred of Negan. It doesn't really do much other than give us a Tara-centric episode, and while I always appreciate when minor characters get the time of the day, she honestly doesn't do much but react and try to convince the crazies living there that she's not a threat and she's friendly. And I wonder whether this introduction to Oceanside (I'm not going to pretend that I haven't googled the name of the settlement) couldn't have been done better beyond 'Tara has to escape from this xenophobic village, and befriends the open-minded kid among them'. Though kudos that the Oceanside inhabitants didn't immediately sway over thanks to the main-character charisma, and were fully intent of bringing Tara into the woods and putting bullets into her skull before her wild escape.
Tara's funny, though, and I really enjoyed her being a snarky girl way, way more than when she's trying to be earnest with Heath or the Oceanside leader. Her immediate and non-hesitating "yeah I was lying" when Nathania calls her bluff about a larder, her later shrugging it off as "I really thought there was a boat type called a larder", her very cheerful bird-flip to the psychotic Rachel with a smile as she leaves the community, and best of all, that badass slow walk back into Alexandria with the most dopey-ass pink sunglasses you can imagine. Shame a crapton of revelations had to ruin it for her.
I honestly don't have that much to say about this episode. It's not that Tara isn't interesting -- she's charismatic enough to lead the episode on her own and make us root for her, and by god she is funny with her deadpan snarking, but she's been such a blank slate despite having hung around for, what, three and a half seasons now? Jeez, has she really done nothing beyond being a love interest and giving the odd 'oh I used to fight for the Governor' bits? Beyond being a new setting Oceanside doesn't offer much in lieu of actual characters we'll care about (compared to the colourful insanity of the Kingdom, or Hilltop's weird politics), though their insistence that Oceanside be kept a secret lest Negan directs his vengeance towards them causes Tara to lie to Rosita and Eugene when asked later on if she saw anything with guns in her journeys, which was a nice scene. Also a powerful scene is Eugene's absolutely crestfallen face as he breaks into tears and tells Tara about the shit that's happened in a wordless scene. Overall, despite the attempts, it's actually a rather underwhelming episode once again though the change in scenery is definitely welcome after so many seasons of nothing but our characters slaying zombies in forested areas.
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