The Walking Dead, Season 5, Episode 7: Crossed
We get the ball rolling on several different plotlines, which are easily divided into the locales. Team Abraham, the church, the hospital and Strike Force Rick. It's the first real ensemble 'move from one location to the next' style episode we've gotten for quite some time, and as usual Walking Dead's weakness for handling these kind of stories show. One of the reasons why spending entire episodes to a couple of characters work is not just because of the focus, but because all the slower storytelling that Walking Dead loves so much has a bit of a payoff later on.
Here? Well, Team Abraham has, what, Glenn, Tara and Rosita catching fish? Maggie telling Abraham to get over himself, which he does? That's not the most interesting thing to happen, and neither did it need to take that much screentime either. The church? Carl tries to tell Father Gabriel to defend himself, but instead he uses the machete to break apart the floor and escape the church, nearly getting killed by a zombie he couldn't bear to kill. Gabriel... I'm not sure where the writers are going with him, to be honest.
Hell, not even the hospital really ended up being relevant. Dawn trusts Beth, the lady who literally escaped like yesterday, to do things that other members of her other officers object to. Mostly wasting resources on the dying Carol... who, by the way, is only admitted to the hospital because the police jackasses run her down. Apparently a group of the police that rule Grady hospital don't like Dawn's leadership (understandable, the lady's psychotic) but they didn't take over before... because... um... reasons? If everyone but a few loyalists dislike Dawn, why is she even in power? Bit strange.
Anyway, Strike Force Rick (Rick, Daryl, Tyreese, Sasha and Noah) head into Atlanta to fuck shit up and get their people back. Rick's ruthlessness is shown when Tyreese questions his method of basically playing Assassin's Creed and killing everyone in the hospital, and even Daryl had to old him back -- both in the meeting by supporting Tyreese, and later in the field when he has to stop Rick from cold-bloodedly executing one of the police officers.
By the way, the image of those walkers melted onto the street thanks to the napalm bombs that happened an eternity ago (well, four seasons ago) is an awesome backdrop for the fight between Daryl and... Officer #2. Can't remember their names of the police people. That is one of the most awesome action scenes we've gotten in Walking Dead for quite some time, though. Officer #2 is apparently one of the 'good guys', as Noah points out, and he's also quick to contradict the other lady cop on how to deal with Dawn. But he also manages to fool Sasha and knock her out at the end of the episode.
Speaking of which, yes, I know Sasha is grieving over Bob, she's hacking up Gabriel's congregation chairs, she's angry at Tyreese... but really? Just because that officer that you're at war with told you that his buddy is on the street and that he's super-sad about it you just buy into his sob story? Jeez, after getting tricked and nearly eaten by cannibals, you'd think Sasha would be a tad smarter than that. It just really felt like a really stupid 'come on Sasha' moment.
Well, apparently next episode is the mid-season finale so it's going to be explosive if nothing else. Not a very solid 45 minutes, to be honest, and it's more concerned about setting things up on all the different locales, and I suppose it just couldn't be helped.
No comments:
Post a Comment