The Walking Dead S07E15 Review: Return to Oceanside

The Walking Dead, Season 7,  Episode 15: Something They Need

So... yeah. As a penultimate episode, it's nowhere as bad as, again, last season's equivalent. It's still kind of clunky, though, and it basically involves them getting guns from Oceanside. Tara (whose loyalties naturally lie with her own people -- who, by the way, are at least doing something about Negan) still tries her best to convince cranky leader Nathania to cooperate and fight alongside them, Hilltop, the Scavengers and the Kingdom, though the way it ended up happening isn't super interesting. I was never in actual fear that Tara's going to bite the dust, and her actress is entertaining enough to sneak in moments of wry sarcasm into her dialogue as she speaks with Nathania. There's some scare tactics with bombs before they come in and basically strongarm the guns from the Oceanside people, and Cindy even helps them out by knocking out Nathania.

I did find it rather odd and hard to swallow that Tara would even go for such a brutal plan, but I guess she has very little say in the matter, and at least Rick trusts Tara enough to not shoot the Oceansiders dead on the spot. But the end of the episode has Team Rick get the guns in a rather ridiculous bit of strongarming. They bond over their mutual enemy of the walkers, Rick and Tara's speech manage to sway public opinion somewhat, but they just strongarm all the guns and explicitly don't leave any behind for the Oceansiders to protect themselves.

And honestly? Dick move, Rick. I know you're desperate for the Scavengers' help, and the Oceanside is led by someone who's dead-set in her ways, but on the flip side you know who goes around with a huge bully army stealing all the guns in someone's community? That's right, Negan, the very person you are trying to stop. It's a clumsy, clunky way and this is one of those times when everyone is totally behind on one of Rick's decisions and worships him like a god, but it's a jackass decision. Sure, Rick doesn't eenie meenie miney moe his way to baseball bat people to death, but he is threatening to shoot people in the head if they don't comply. The show would actually be great if someone actually calls Rick out on this, but no. It's annoying.

Meanwhile, in the Sanctuary, Negan tries to woo Sasha to the cause, the fourth member of Alexandria he's done this to. And, yeah, Negan saves Sasha by killing some jackass who tries to rape her, but considering Sasha literally goes into the base with the express purpose of putting a bullet in Negan's head, no amount of brainwashing is going to change that. Negan gives the very, very flawed choice of "kill yourself with this knife" or "kill the soon-to-become-a-zombie-corpse", which somehow equates being part of Negan's organization? The what now?

Again, it's starting to hurt Negan's credibility that he's so murder-happy with valuable allies like dr. Carson, yet at the same time Rosita tries to shoot him, and he doesn't do jack shit but kill someone else. Sasha tries to murder him, and he doesn't kill her either. The idea that Negan thinks he can break Daryl over a period of time? Pretty believable. The idea that Negan can break a weakling like Eugene? Actually worked, with the whole carrot-and-stick thing. The idea that Negan is interested in a weird little badass like Carl? He ends up actually getting bored with that idea after an episode and a half. But this weird thing with Sasha makes Negan look like a complete moron. At least he apparently knows that Rick's up to something (no shit, Sherlock, have your people really not been doing their homework?) and has plans to shut it down, plans that involve Sasha. Mind you, he's still as charismatic and entertaining as ever, but so was fucking Wile E. Coyote and he wasn't an effective villain by any stretch.

There's these moments where Eugene confesses what a coward he is, but he is trying to survive. Sasha's crying attempts to trick Eugene to give her a weapon to kill herself with (she's totally going to use it against Negan) is well acted on both parts, and Eugene, happy in his throne with his video games and a powerful boss that appreciates him, being conflicted to give someone who he'd rather see survive something to end her life is also a neat bit -- and we see the return of the suicide poison pill. 

There's a couple of other scenes, too, showing that Gregory is hilariously a coward (who doesn't even dare to stab Maggie in the back! He'd fail, mind you, but still) who seems to end up cutting his losses and just running the fuck away somewhere at the end of the episode.

Oh, and Dwight decides he feels bad and wants to switch sides. Yeah, just because you now feel bad for yourself doesn't mean you can just apologize and make up for all the people you killed. What do you think this is, some horse crap like Fairy Tail? It's far from a good episode, still, though at least both Negan and Rick are planning something and are moving to a confrontation. But god, all the nonsense about Sasha is honestly something I didn't really care about.