The Walking Dead, Season 7, Episode 9: Rock in the Road
This is actually a very nice episode that fills multiple boxes in my mental checklist for a good Walking Dead episode. Gory action, sensible plot, character moments and hilarious jokes. But I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here to talk a bit about how characters are portrayed in the show.
So, Rick goes off to gather allies and supplies to fight Negan. Which, okay, I'll buy. The rebels fighting against the big scary empire has always been a well-tried trope that generally manages to be successful. But I felt that the opening scene, with Rick and team all lecturing and chastising Gregory for being a gutless coward, while not coming from nowhere, was weird. Like, yes, Gregory is pragmatic and a little bit of a dick, but I honestly can't help but agree with him. It might be just that the actor is just that charismatic, but he does have a point -- Rick did fail to live up to his end of the bargain, which is basically "we kill the Saviours, you pay us" and now he's trying to force Hilltop to join in the fight with no real guarantee that they're going to win. After all, to Gregory's mind, he's already doing the decent thing by not turning away Sasha and Maggie, but now they have the gall to ask him to join the fight -- the very thing he was trying to avoid in the first place?
But after all the down-talking about how Gregory is a shit leader, they go to King Ezekiel, who gives more or less the same speech, but there's no talk about how Ezekiel is weak or a coward the way Gregory is. Maybe it's because Ezekiel is just so dang charismatic, or maybe it's the fucking pet tiger, or it's the way that he at least tries to consider the plans kind of is supposed to make him ultra-heroic and everyone does this sage nod that yeah King Ezekiel is awesome.
Which, don't get me wrong, King Ezekiel is awesome. Every single scene with him and Jerry is a hoot, from him breaking character to scold Jerry, or the legitimately WTF faces on Team Rick's faces at the sight of Shiva the tiger, and all that jazz, but so is Gregory. Gregory is being a bit of a dickwad about it, but he raises the exact same points that Ezekiel did and it's a glaring symptom of one of the biggest weakness of this show. It really, really, really wants to force the pre-conceived notion of the character down the throat. Carol is a pacifist? Negan is a psychopath? Gregory is a dick? Ezekiel is likable? Rick is great at surviving? They will cram all that shit down your throat until you realize that fact, and then they will cram it down again.
Still, whatever the case, Team Rick has made his case to two of the three settlements that we are aware of (and Oceanside is Tara's little secret at this point). Honestly, I would've called both the Hilltop and the Kingdom scenes weak if not for the amazing performances of guest stars Gregory, Ezekiel and Paul.
What comes next is the bit on the highway, opened with the hilarious eulogy Negan gives about Fat Joey across the radio. "That obese bastard and I were just joking about oral sex with Lucille the other day." "Without him, Skinny Joey will just be known as... Joey. Truly a goddamn tragedy." And they go through a cool bit that finally, after 8 episodes of barely starring them, we get zombies! And it's not a bad, forced thing like the zombies that invaded Alexandria in season 6 either. The Saviours set up this huge bomb wire thing to get rid of a swarm of zombies, and Team Rick decide to steal the explosives. Which ends up having one of the coolest moments in the series as Rick and Michonne drives a pair of cars with a wire strung in-between them and murder like an entire city's worth of zombies. And then Rosita blows them up with the couple of dynamites she leaves behind, while the group makes away with the rest of the bombs.
It's a bit of a simple action bit where our heroes inch closer to defeating Negan, but it's something that's a nice break from all the depression, and I think in a show like this it's pretty important to alternate between the two.
Oh, they leave Daryl behind in the Kingdom because all Saviour/Kingdom deals take place outside of the Kingdom itself, which is fortunate because Simon (a.k.a. Awesome Beard Negan Lieutenant) shows up and starts turning Alexandria upside down looking for Daryl, who, of course, isn't there. Daryl in the Kingdom basically opens up the possibility of Daryl and Carol meeting. Carol herself gets a short scene with Morgan's apprentice, Benjamin... who's all big-eyed and happy and stuff and trying to learn from everyone. He's totally going to get his skull bashed in by Negan, isn't he.
There's this weird bit in the beginning and the end of the episode, where Father Gabriel apparently steals the entirety of Alexandria's stored food and leaves town, although the past season has shown him to basically prove his loyalty and badassery so I doubt it's anything that is actually meant to harm Alexandria. The fact that Gabriel leaves his bible behind with a clue really means that he's planning something (stashing their stuff outside of Alexandria so they can't be stolen by the Saviours?) or he's captured by the army with guns from the first place. The ending's weird because Rick seems to recognize someone... did Gabriel become the leader of an army in the short span of one episode? It's weird. Apparently, after watching the next episode, it's just because Rick sees a lot of guns. Huh.
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