Posts tagged: The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead S06E16 “The Last Day On Earth” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on FOX, Mondays, 9pm
Writers: Scott Gimple, Matt Negrete
Director: Greg Nicotero

Essential Plot Points:

• We cut between a terrified man running through the woods and Maggie being loaded onto the RV to be taken to Hilltop for medical attention.

• Enid tries to persuade Carl to stay and, rightly, points out he’s looking for a fight. He tricks her, locks her in a closet and leaves along with his dad, Abe, Sasha, Eugene and Spencer. Alexandria is left under the command of Gabriel who is now frighteningly good at this.

• The man running through the woods is brought down and dragged into the road.
• Elsewhere, Morgan finds a horse. It is lovely and will be heretofore referred to as Morgan’s Lovely Horse. Not long after, he finds a badly injured Carol and takes her to shelter.

• The RV runs into a barricade. Rick has a very tense conversation with one of the Saviours manning it which, it being Rick, he gets needlessly macho about. The Saviours ask for half their stuff, Rick turns them down and asks if they want this to be their last day on Earth. The Saviour leader replies that it may be for Rick or one of his people and he should be extra nice to them.

• Back at Morgan and Carol, he treats her wounds and tells her that he’s come to take her back. She refuses, pulls a gun on him and finally begs him to leave her. Morgan simply refuses to leave.

• In the RV, Abe and Sasha are talking about whether they want kids. Abe is all in favour of it, as is Sasha. This totally isn’t foreshadowing or a really bad thing to talk about unless there’s a second roadblock or the Saviours are herding them.

• There’s a second roadblock.
• The Saviours are herding them.

• Back at Morgan and Carol, Morgan kills a Walker hanging from a noose and returns to find Carol gone. He grabs Morgan’s Lovely Horse and sets off tracking her.

• The RV reaches a third barricade but this one is different. It’s a group of Walkers, chained across the road. They move forward to clear them and realise the Walkers are oddly familiar… One is peppered with crossbow bolts, another is wearing Daryl’s jacket.
• Another has a pair of Michonne’s dreadlocks stapled to it.

• As they realise this, the Saviours open up. The Alexandrians return fire and Rick opens the blockade before running back to the RV. They escape but realise that all they’ve done is go exactly where they were told.
• The Saviours were firing at their feet. They want them to keep going. Almost immediately the RV encounters another heavily armed roadblock and they realise they’re being herded.

• Morgan and Morgan’s Lovely Horse find Carol’s dropped rosary. Nearby Carol is jumped first by a Walker she barely kills and secondly by the Saviour she didn’t kill last week. He knows he’s dying but he plans on torturing her until she dies first. Carol laughs at him, finally at peace because her life is about to end. He shoots her in the arm and leg. She goads him into finishing her and just as he’s about to…

• Morgan appears. With a gun. He begs the Saviour to let her live and when he tries to kill Carol anyway, Morgan empties the clip into him.

• As he tends to Carol two other men appear. One is the previous owner of Morgan’s Lovely Horse. The other is a fellow Lovely Horse enthusiast. After a mildly tense stand off, they agree to help and take Morgan and Carol off to season seven.

• Back at the RV, Maggie is getting much, much worse. Worse still there’s another barricade, this time made of wood. It’s huge, well built and not the only obstacle. As they approach, the survivor the Saviours captured earlier is hung from a nearby bridge. Aaron tries to save him but Rick tells him not to as the barricade is set on fire and they retreat once again. As they go, the Saviour leader reminds Rick about it being one of his people’s last day on Earth.

• The Alexandrians regroup. Eugene points out the Saviours are looking for the RV and have no idea of how many people are actually inside it… He volunteers to drive the RV away as a distraction while Rick and the others load Maggie on a stretcher and make a run for Hilltop. Before they separate he gives Rick the breakdowns on how to make bullets and reconciles with Abe. This feels very like goodbye for at least one of them.

• They run through the woods and hear the same whistling they’ve heard every time the Saviours have been nearby. Picking up the pace they sprint out into clearing to find…
• The Saviours.
• The RV.
• A badly beaten Eugene.
• The Saviour leader tells them all to get on their knees and, reluctantly, Rick does. Daryl, Michonne, Rosita and Glenn are unloaded from a nearby van and join them.
• Then, stepping out of their own RV, Negan makes his appearance.

• Speaking with a combination of good humour and rage, Negan tells them they work for him now and he doesn’t want to kill them. But, they killed a lot of his guys and that can’t stand. So, he’s going to beat one of them to death with his baseball bat, Lucille, and then let the others go.

• Glenn panics, breaks ranks and tries to save Maggie but is brought down.
• Negan walks up and down the line, toying with them all until finally he resorts to a game of Eenie Meenie. The camera shifts to the point of view of his victim as Negan raises Lucille and murders them as the others scream. Then, the camera fades to black…

Review:

“As long as it’s all of us, we can do anything.”

There’s an old stand-up comedy routine about how money only works because we all decide it does. Society, especially the post-apocalyptic society of The Walking Dead, is the same. When every life is sacred and every life is constantly in danger you have two choices, both of which the show has explored.

The first is to retreat in on yourself, just like Morgan did. The second is to align yourself with people who make you more than you are. That’s what all the characters have done and that dedication, and price paid for it, is what drives this season finale. It’s why Rick doesn’t have to ask for volunteers to go with Maggie to Hilltop. It’s why Carl locks Enid in the closet. These people are strong because they’re together. And that’s where Negan hits them.

“This isn’t it. This isn’t it. There’s gonna be more.”

Compare this to Rick’s speech to Carl after he was shot. There he was fervently certain that his son would live to see the new world. Here he’s begging Maggie to keep it together because if she does, he can and they can both believe that their lives will be more than being hunted to death by a group of psychopaths. You build your world one step at a time in The Walking Dead. You choose what to believe and who to believe in and you put your faith in them, hoping they’ll put their faith in you.

“We need the bullet.”

This is the moment Rick breaks. It’s visible in the final scene but this is the moment where it starts. The brutalist pragmatism of the prison years bubbles back to the surface as he realises they’re outnumbered, outgunned and outwitted. It’s not even that he’s done anything wrong. He did the only thing he could, investing the blood of the Saviours and the innocence of his people in the future of Alexandria.

And it’s failed. And now someone’s going to die. Which means they’re going to need every bullet they have.

So much of this episode’s double running time is a slowly closing vice. The repeated roadblocks, the moments of desparate hope as the Alexandrians relax a little only to have it snatched away. They’ve made the only choice they could and picked a fight with a vastly superior force who have them surrounded. The roadblocks are about them realising that. This moment is about them accepting it.

“I told you not to come.”
“And I’m gonna start listening to you real soon.”

That’s why the Morgan/Carol stuff has to be in this episode, much as we’ve seen people complain about it killing the pace. Their discovery of The Kingdom, Morgan’s willingness to sacrifice his ideals for Carol’s life and the complex ethical knot they’re tied in has to be there as a counterpart to the RV ride to Hell. Rick’s right: there is going to be more. But accepting that means he has to accept that what’s next is just as likely to be forged by other people as it is by him. There is hope, but there’s none for him. At least not this time.

“…Sucks don’t it? The moment you realise you don’t know SHIT”

Because this is Negan’s world and Alexandria is sitting in the middle of it. Negan’s presence has been trailed for the entire season and when he does arrive, all eyes are drawn to him. That’s partially because he’s played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan who doesn’t know how to turn in bad work.

But it’s also because he’s in control. He’s got there by being what Rick tries to be; ruthless, brutal when needed and absolutely dedicated to his survival. The difference between them is Negan has crossed lines Rick won’t. Or didn’t until he made the deal with Hilltop.

That’s the cruellest thing in an episode full of cruelty. There was no other choice. This was always where they were going. That’s what brings Rick to his knees, that’s why Negan is so at peace and that’s why this season is both the most hopeful, and bleakest, the show has turned in to date.

Because the New World is here and in order to save it, Rick and his people will have to sacrifice their ability to live inside it. At least, those who survive will.

This is a measured, calm, bleak conclusion to a remarkable season of TV. It makes a couple of serious missteps as we’ll see below, but the show’s transition into a much larger scale, higher stakes story is all but complete. It’s rarely been better than this and has never been more interesting. Bring on season seven.

The Good:

• Morgan’s smile when Carol complains about him saving her life is positively beatific.
• “Enemy close.” Abe defaulting to military terminology under stress is a really subtle, clever bit of characterisation.
• “You think you’ve suffered enough now?”
  “No… probably not.” One of those perfect lines this show is so good at.
• “She needs help.”
  “Then let’s get you some help.” This too. It’s a tiny line but it says so much about The Kingdom in one sentence. They’re not Hilltop. They’re not Alexandria. They’re here to help.
• “We’re lucky you’re here.”
  “I won’t argue with that.” Never change, Eugene.
• Eugene’s hero moment as he drives off is lovely, especially as it’s cut so short. That half smile, half terror reminds me of the last time we see Eli in Stargate: Universe and that’s high praise.

• Some wonderful Walkers this week. The peeling one that almost kills Carol is fun but the impaled one that threatens Carl just takes it for horrific ambulatory corpse of the week.
• The whistle that permeates the episode is one of the smartest directorial touches we’ve seen the show do. Not only does it suggest Negan’s presence everywhere but the final scene with the Saviours all whistling provides an answer to the, “We are ALL Negan” moment from a few episodes ago. The Saviours are all singing from his hymn sheet, or in this case whistling and in doing so sacrificing their identity for the protection of a large group.
• Negan making his grand entrance from the RV that’s been on the show longer than a lot of the principle characters is a beautiful touch.
• “Give me your shit, or I will kill you.” Negan’s charming, chatty and completely focused. This brutal philosophy is the only mission statement and justification he needs.
• “I’m not growin’ a garden.” And that’s why he’s the bad guy. This entire season has been about trying to get Alexandria self-sufficient. Negan just takes other people’s stuff.
• “Do NOT make me kill the little future serial killer. Don’t make it easy on me.” He’s also, although he wouldn’t admit it, having some fun.
• Negan – Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s relaxed, charming take on the biggest monster in the comics is exactly how great we hoped he would be and then, somehow, better. The show finally has not just a genuinely threatening villain again but one with more presence than any of its leads.
• The complete lack of fuss over the war party going out with Maggie. This is what the show excels at; people who stand by one another through love and necessity, getting on with the business of survival.
• Eugene and Abraham hugging. Oh, you guys.
• The gradually ratcheting sense of doom. This was a slow burn episode and that’s turned a lot of people off. We liked the dawning realisation the characters had of just how much trouble they were in.
• The Walkers chained across the road, and the gradual realisation they were wearing items of the missing characters’ clothing. Chilling.
• Rick. Andrew Lincoln does some brilliant, functionally invisible acting this episode. Compare Rick’s, “I’ve got a plan” bravado at the start to how he is at the end; pale, sweaty, terrified, powerless. This is Rick’s darkest hour and Lincoln makes us see that. The phrase “nothing will ever be the same” gets bandied around a lot but for Rick, now, that’s never been true.

The Bad:

• The ending – because there isn’t one. Josh Friedman, one of the best showrunners and screenwriters in the business summed up the problem with it perfectly overnight, with mild profanity censorship on our part: “I get that TWD has earned the right to do whatever the f**k they want, I just wish they wouldn’t.” His Twitter stream is essential if you’re a writer and can be found here. He also has a point. This is cheap. This is a carnival barker routine on the same level as “Mr Worf… FIRE.” And we can only hope the payoff is so much better than that one turned out to be.
• It’s also, and this is the worrying thing, a short-term solution and one the show has now done twice in one season. We know someone’s dead. We won’t know who for months and that’s being used as a hook to drag people back and get them talking until the show starts again.
• Which we are.
• But the thing about this kind of spectacle is that it can only be done three or four times. The Glenn bait and switch earlier this season worked really well, but was already showing the strain when it was resolved. This works, just, because of the sheer magnetism of Jeffrey Dean Morgan and the way the scene is shot.
• But what happens next time?
• And the time after that?
• How do you row back from this? CAN you?
• The Carol and Morgan plot is less a plot and more a trailer for season seven. It’s not a bad thing, and we love that the pair of them are clearly going to be working together a lot next year. We even love the way this plays out. It’s not that it’s bad, but it is a little clunky.
• Whereas the Abe and Sasha conversation about having kids is very, very clunky indeed. Again the emotional progression is spot on but it puts a big old target on Abe’s forehead. We bet he’s worked out a cure for the virus, how to solve the Greenhouse Effect and who shot Kennedy too. And he’ll tell us all right after they’ve got Maggie to the Doctor…
• No Jesus! AGAIN! WHAT THE HELL?!

The Random:

• The Kingdom, where the hockey armour-wearing horsemen hail from, is the third corner of the Alexandria and Hilltop triangle. They’re a major force and a clear sign the show is following the comic into some brilliant stories about reconstructing the world instead of simply surviving it.
• Yes, GTA V fans that is Steven Ogg, aka Trevor as the Saviour Rick verbally spars with.
• Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who makes such a splash here as Negan, is the character actor’s character actor. He was fantastic as the deeply flawed John Winchester on Supernatural and has had memorable turns on Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Wife and Extant. He can be seen in cinemas right now as Thomas Wayne in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Intriguingly, Martha Wayne is played by Lauren Cohan, Maggie on The Walking Dead…

• Shot of the week is that long pull back from the group making a run for it, directly into the middle of the Saviours.

The Dead Pool – The “Who’s Carked It?” Odds:

• Rick: A MASSIVE, series changing curveball but, amazingly, there’s circumstantial evidence that it could be him. Andrew Lincoln’s talked about how traumatic the finale was film, to the extent it kept him up the night before. Plus Rick is BROKEN in that final scene. He’s shutting down, unable to understand just how badly this has gone. He looks like a victim. And Negan loves victims. So, not likely at all but holy WOW if they went for this; it would get the show a ton of attention heading into year seven. Which, interestingly, is normally when contracts are up for renewal…
• Carl: Almost as massive a curveball. A season ago we’d have said this was unlikely. After Sam being murdered on screen this pretty definitively is not off the table. It’s just not that on the table either. Especially as Chandler Riggs is one of two castmembers to publicly say he has no idea who died.
• Daryl: If Daryl dies we riot. And we might need to break out the pitchforks and flaming torches. We don’t THINK he’s the victim. We also REALLY HOPE he isn’t the victim. But, Norman Reedus is booking more and more off-season projects. That being said, Daryl is both injured now and exactly the sort of person Negan likes having on team later. So we think he’s okay. Please be okay, Daryl.
• Michonne: One of the very few characters on this list who is all but bullet (or bat) proof. If Daryl is the most iconic character of the TV show, Michonne is the most iconic character of the comics. She’s got a huge amount of story still to tell too and the fact she’s the star of a new Walking Dead computer game suggests she’s going to be okay. Please be okay, Michonne.
• Rosita: Rosita dying would neatly detonate a drama bomb under Sasha and Abe’s relationship. Unfortunately that would be about it. She’s been horribly underused this season and that invisibility may well keep her safe. And hopefully lead to more work next year.
• Abraham: The MCM Buzz office favourite. Abe’s story is largely done. In fact, we’ve already kind of seen his death scene. When Doc is murdered with the crossbow bolt? That’s how Abe originally checks out. There are a couple of other compelling reasons for it to be Abe too. The conversation about kids he has with Sasha is sweet but triggers a big red warning light on the IMMINENT HORRIBLE DEATH Warning system. Likewise the moment he reconciles with Eugene which could be read as a goodbye scene for either man. Plus he stands up to Negan, which makes him more noticeable and a more “fun” prospect to beat down. Also Michael Cudlitz Tweeted, then deleted, the phrase “I had a blast working with you” at Josh McDermitt who plays Eugene.
  Throw in the angst his death would cause for both Rosita and Sasha and we think the big guy’s toast. If so, happy trails sir.
• Glenn: The other odds-on favourite because this is the exact way Glenn checks out in the comics. There’s a ton of circumstantial evidence too including reports Stephen Yuen’s contract runs out this year and some fan analysis of that closing set of screams. Some people are saying they can hear Maggie screaming Glenn’s name. Others have apparently picked out Glenn gurgling, “Maggie?”, his last word in the comics. But then again… His apparent death earlier in the season is a knot the show really needs to untie and there’s no good way to do it. If Glenn is dead here then that will feel like a cop out. If he lives, it’ll feel like even more of a copout. There’s no win here and that’s why Abe JUST edges Glenn on the pool, it makes more sense for it to be someone else. This time.
• Maggie: The shock value of beating a pregnant woman to death is the exact sort of thing the show would run headlong at. However, we’re pretty sure Maggie’s okay. She has a huge amount of plot spinning out of this scene and that, coupled with how sickly she is, we think puts her over the top. Remember, Negan isn’t looking for easy meat, he’s looking for a victim who matters. Someone with status and authority. The fact they’re both hurt seems to the one thing that will save Daryl and Maggie. Please be okay, Daryl and Maggie.
• Sasha: Much like Rosita, there’s an interesting, small amount of drama to be mined from Sasha’s death. Like Rosita, we don’t think that’s enough for her to be the victim.
• Eugene: The case for him being the victim is surprisingly strong. There’s that Tweet from Cudlitz, the fact that Eugene hands Rick the bullet recipe and even more compelling, that he and Abe make their peace. Eugene’s a survivor, he’s made it to level two and being cut down here is exactly the sort of cruelty the show loves. But.
  Eugene is also an easy choice, not to mention one that closes off a lot of future plot. We don’t think he’s fully safe, but we do think we’ll be seeing him next season.
• Aaron: Like Sasha and Rosita there’s not been enough done with him this year for it be him. Plus there’s a ton of really fun stuff still to mine for Aaron in the plots the show is now barrelling towards. And, let’s not forget, Ross Marquand is a vocal chameleon who’s going to close this review out with some desperately needed light relief.

Coming Next Week…

• So, that was season six of The Archers In Hell. Thanks for sticking with us. We’ll be back shortly with the first episode of season two of Fear The Walking Dead. Cliff Curtis! Colman Domingo! Kim Dickens! Hopefully a massively decreased amount of black characters dying! See you then!

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read more reviews of The Walking Dead season six

The Walking Dead S06E15 “East” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on FOX, Mondays, 9pm
Writer: Scott M Gimple, Channing Powell
Director: Michael E Strazemis

Essential Plot Points:

• We see a car. We see blood. We see Carol’s rosary. We hear a scream. We go to opening credits.

• The day before Carol leaves, Alexandria is quiet. She sews, quietly packs a backpack and carefully doesn’t tell Tobin what she’s planning when he comes home. That night, she sneaks out and takes one of the new cars they put on the barricade.

• We see Alexandria wake up. Glenn and Maggie shower, Glenn examining the bruises Maggie’s carrying from her recent ordeal. Daryl squares his bike away. Rick and Michonne wake up and get ready for work. At the gate, Rosita, Abe and Sasha carefully keep their distance.
• Then it all goes to Hell.

• Daryl heads out to find and kill Dwight for murdering Denise. Rosita, Glenn and Michonne go after him. Tobin reports to Rick that Carol’s left and Rick and Morgan head out after her.

• And outside, we see Carol driving away. She passes a pickup truck that shoots her tyres out. A stand-off ensues, with, again the Saviours mistaking Carol’s terror at what she has to do with terror at their presence. She kills them all aside from two, one of whom rushes her and possibly injures her. The other, hurt and knocked out, wakes up to find himself alone aside from his dying friend. He hides…
• Back at Alexandria, Enid relieves Maggie from watch.

• Out on the road, Rick and Morgan find the site of the battle. They kill the Walkers who’ve already turned and interpret the scene. Working out where Carol went, they set off after her across the fields.
• The men Carol killed were carrying weapons made by the Hilltop blacksmith. The Saviours, again. Rick slowly realises the force he’s picked a fight with are much, much bigger than he thought.
• After they leave, the last Saviour standing comes out of hiding and takes Carol’s rosary…

• Back at the site where Denise died, Rosita, Glenn and Michonne find Daryl’s bike. They also find Daryl who admits that when Dwight captured him, he had the opportunity to kill him and didn’t.
• Glenn passionately argues that he come home and almost sways him. In the end, he can’t and Daryl heads off. Rosita goes with him and, dejected, Michonne and Glenn head home.

• They’re captured almost immediately.
• Back with Rick and Morgan, the two men finally come clean with one another. Morgan uses the events at the prison to explain how Carol’s changed. The woman who murdered two victims of the sickness isn’t the same woman they’re looking for. People can come back and Rick, a man who lives by moral absolutes, is having real trouble with that.
• “People can come back, Rick.”

• They have a shouted conversation with a man hiding in a nearby farming house looking for his horse. As he makes a run for it from an oncoming Walker herd Rick fires at him but Morgan knocks his aim away. Rick also saves Morgan from one of the Walkers and, again, the debate kicks off. Morgan comes clean about the Wolf he rescued who, in turn, saved Denise who was in turn there to save Carl.
• Rick is stunned by this news and Morgan gently, but firmly, sends him back to Alexandria. He vows to return with Carol but makes Rick promise not to look for him if he doesn’t.

• Back at Alexandria, Rick and Abe talk about the terror of connecting with people again. Both men admit they’re frightened. Both men refuse to back down. Both men wait at the gate for Michonne and the others to come home.
• Maggie calls Enid to her house to ask a favour. Her hair’s been getting in the way and she wants it cut. She’s pleased with the new look but suddenly doubles over in agony…

• Out in the woods, Glenn and Michonne are tied up and under guard. Daryl and Michonne sneak up to them but they frantically try and warn them off. Before they can, Dwight ambushes them. Daryl turns to attack him and Dwight shoots him point blank in the shoulder.

Review:

“The world’s ours and we know how to take it.”

The Alexandrians were safe for the first time. It’s this episode where the sheer audacity of what they’ve been doing really strikes home. The town is barely put back together after the herd and the Wolf attacks and Rick has already jumped head first into war with an unknown quantity of foes.

There’s a lot to be said about him there, in particular that he’s actually pretty justified. Alexandria can’t sustain itself independently, neither can the Hilltop. So this awful blood-soaked compromise isn’t even the best answer: it’s the only one on the table. This isn’t post-apocalyptic fiction any more it’s post-post-apocalyptic. The New World is here and it’s being built on the backs of people brave enough, or desperate enough, to sacrifice their morality for the greater good.
“She left because she can’t anymore. That’s what her letter said.”
“She could because she had to.”

And that’s embodied here in the long overdue talk between our two favourite pragmatists. Rick and Morgan finally get a good chunk of screen time together and it’s as impressive as hoped. Rick is back in old habits; the cop turned soldier forced to make any sacrifice for his people. Morgan is questioning everything he’s been told, little realising that his example was one of the principle reasons why Carol left. The two men are brave enough to admit they might be wrong and braver still to keep going. This is the only road they have open to them and both are prepared to face the consequences for travelling down it.

“It’s gonna go WRONG out here.”

Glenn couldn’t be more correct. That’s where the real horror of the episode comes in as the vast majority of the principal cast leave Alexandria on a wide variety of foolhardy but essential missions. The attack on the Saviours has had the biggest ripple effect of anything on the show to date and this episode shows us Carol, Daryl, Rosita, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie and all the others caught up in in different ways.

They make horrible mistakes here. Those mistakes are the only things they can do. Not all of them will live to see the consequences play out. They do it anyway. Tragic and heroic and flawed and most of all human.
“Everything gets a return.”

This is a grim episode heading towards a grimmer one but even here there’s hope. Morgan’s revelation is both the thing Rick needs to get some distance and, perhaps, the last thing Morgan needs to do. The two men certainly make their peace when they separate but whether or not we see Morgan again is open to debate. Like so many of the characters he’s heading off to do something almost impossible that may end him. Like all of them, he’s not hesitating for a momenyt.

But that line in particular has a dark underside to it. Dwight returns. The Saviour Carol doesn’t kill returns. The consequences of their attack return. No one and nothing in this world gets off easy and now, at last, the characters are going to meet the embodiment of that. Next week, Negan takes the spotlight. And the war truly begins.

The Good:

• Mad Max hatchback! Carol’s car was great. (It actually reminded me of cult ’70 Australian movie The Cars That Ate Paris – ed.)
• “Michonne did steal that protein bar.” All the Rick and Morgan stuff this episode is great but this is the standout. These two men have finally cleared the air. I’d love for their relationship to evolve next season but if, as seems possible, this is the last time they see each other it’s a hell of a sign off.
• Morgan hasn’t read the script. We’ve talked about this elsewhere before but it’s hugely important to praise every time it comes up. Any TV show brave enough to have its characters make valid, but wrong, calls based on evidence is always a cut above its competitors. The fact Morgan is convinced Carol is hurt due to the blood on the stake is subtle, clever writing. It becomes even more impressive when you realise she might actually be hurt too.

• The ongoing conflict between Carol who wants to live and Carol who knows how to kill is brilliant TV. That entire opening sequence, especially the aftermath of the fight, is untidy, brutal and tragic. There’s no romance to these deaths, no redemptive action, just people trying very hard to not die and in most cases failing.
• Morgan on a horse next week! Maybe!
• That ending! Dwight has gone from being a weird, creepy dude to the Anti-Daryl and he’s suddenly both a very credible threat and clearly a bad guy in the way the comics version wasn’t quite. Also, while Daryl will be okay, that’s not a good place to be shot. I mean nowhere is, but he was turning as Dwight fired. That bullet is either lodged somewhere in the complex meat and bone of his shoulder or has punched through the front of his chest. Neither is going to be fun to deal with.

The Bad:

• So many people leave and wander around the wilderness putting themselves in danger that it almost feels like there should be a queue at the gate. It’s not that any of them are being dumb either, but the sudden exodus of three quarters of the main cast feels a little forced this close to the season finale.

• That ending! The COPOUT! It’s almost impossible not to hear Dwight’s dubbed-in, “You’ll be alright,” as a sop to viewers after the great Glenn non-death from earlier this season. It’s understandable but man is it clunky, and that’s something this show has not been at all this season. He may as well as say “He’ll be fine so you can be worried about him next week, see you then viewers!”
• No Jesus! Again! Again with the booing!

The PT Barnum:

• Not so much a criticism more an observation. The Walking Dead is trying out new ways to engage its audience and a lot of them are based on twists and showmanship. We saw that specifically with Glenn’s “death” earlier this season and the fallout was as bad as it was good.
• That’s continued here with the way the episode ends, which, as you see, is definitely a Bad thing.
• However it also ties into the rumoured ending of next week’s episode which we can’t talk about yet. If what we’ve heard pans out, then this is a show fully prepared to torture its audience almost as much as its characters. If it doesn’t, then we’ll tell you what we heard and compare it to what we see. Or perhaps don’t see… Regardless, the show’s to be commended for trying new stuff but it’ll be interesting to see how much of it is successful.

The Random:

• The song playing in the early scenes is, appropriately, “It’s All Over” by Johnny Cash.
• Pretty much the entire central cast is in jeopardy next week from what we see here and what’s rumoured. So, instead of baseless speculation on who dies, we’re going to speculate on who lives.
  • Eugene! The redneck genius has hit level two and he’s in Alexandria. We think he’s good to go.
  • Everyone else, though, is on their way to meet Lucille…

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read more reviews of The Walking Dead season six

The Walking Dead S06E13 “The Same Boat” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: FOX, Mondays, 9pm
Writer: Angela Kang
Director: Billy Gierhart

Essential Plot Points:

• We flashback to the confrontation between Maggie and Carol last week. Carol draws her gun and fires, injuring a man holding a gun on Maggie. They’re jumped by Paula, Donny, Michelle and Molly who hold them hostage.

• We see the other side of last week’s closing scene with Paula negotiating for her fellow Saviour, Primo’s, release in return for Maggie and Carol. The pair have their heads covered and are driven to an unknown location. As they go, Carol overhears Paula talking to someone on the radio. They have back-up, staged fall back points, code words and military experience. The Saviours are far bigger than they’ve been led to believe.
• They arrive at a not-especially-secure safe house and are tied up. Immediately they’re interrogated and Paula makes it clear the pair of women are going to die, soon. Carol begins to hyperventilate, panicking and gasping for air until her gag is removed. She begs them to leave Maggie, who’s pregnant alone and their captors mock her for getting pregnant “at a time like this”. They also reveal that every Saviour is Negan, implying that he’s a boogeyman used to terrify people into subservience rather than an individual.

• The pair are left alone and immediately try to escape. Their captors are panicky and overtaxed, Molly dying of lung cancer, Donny bleeding badly from the wound in his arm and only Paula holding it together. Things come to a head and Donny tries to kill Carol, believing she’s mortally wounded him. The two women hold their own against him, even though they’re tied up and Donny is eventually knocked out by Paula.

• Rick and Paula negotiate, badly, while fellow Saviour Michelle talks to Maggie. What becomes apparent is just how alike the groups are. Michelle loved her dad like Maggie loved Hershel and the pair bond over their shared brutal practicality. Meanwhile, Paula reveals to Carol that she was a quiet, put-upon woman who worked in DC. She was trapped with her boss when the officials were evacuated and, realising he’d slow her down, killed him. She was, in many ways, Carol.

• Carol tearfully tells them that the Saviours attacked her people first and explains about what happened to Sasha, Daryl and Abe. Paula and Molly concede that the man Daryl killed was almost certainly overreacting. Finally, Paula hears from her back-up and makes the call to Rick, arranging a handover. She figures out Rick and co are very close due to how good the radio signal is and prepares an ambush. Carol. Left alone, breaks free and retrieves Maggie.

• They return to the cell, find Donny has died and is in the process of changing and form a plan. They tie him up and when Molly comes in, the newly turned Donny bites her. She kills him and Maggie beats her to death.

• The pair escape and make it to the chained walkers Paula has used as security. She appears, holds Maggie hostage and Carol injures her. Carol tries to reason with her, all but begging Paula not to make Carol kill her. A walker breaks free, distracts Carol and she fires, injuring Paula. Maggie takes the walker down. Paula disappears and Maggie goes after her and finds Michelle. The two women fight, Michelle pulling a knife and swiping at Maggie. Maggie panics, convinced she’s been stabbed. Carol steps around the corner and shoots Michelle in the head.

• They find Paula nearby. Badly injured she confronts Carol and asks what she was so afraid of. Carol replies, “I was afraid of this,” and Paula laughs and attacks her. The two women fight and Paula is impaled on a metal railing. She screams in agony as the walkers swarm and eat her. Paula’s back-up calls in and a visibly traumatised Carol impersonates her, ordering them to the Kill Floor nearby.

• While they wait to spring their trap Carol admits to Maggie that she’s killed 20 people. Maggie tells her they’ve done what they have to do and the pair lure the Saviours into a locked room and burn them alive.

• Carol is too traumatised to see the imminent threat of Walkers as they make their way out and Maggie defends them both. Glen and Maggie, and Daryl and Carol, are reunited. Rick demands to know if Negan was there. Primo, the Saviour they captured smiles and says he’s Negan.

• Rick shoots him in the face, apologising as he does so. Nearby, Carol clutches her rosary so tight her hand bleeds.

Review:

“We are ALL Negan.”

Just about a season ago, Andrew Lincoln managed to deliver one of the most iconic – and clumsiest – lines of dialogue from the comic: “WE ARE THE WALKING DEAD!”

The line itself may be clunky but the point is a good one. It’s also one that, a season or so into Alexandria, is being proved wrong. The characters aren’t just surviving any more, they’re living.

But they’re also all Negan. Or all could be.

The show isn’t going to pull some blood-soaked version of Anonymous with Negan. We will get the monstrous individual and we’ll get some variation on the awful things he does. But this moment has real resonance for every character. It’s an admission of guilt for the Saviours; we’re all Negan, we’re all killers and it’s a reminder of guilt for the Alexandrians. Carol has killed 20 people now, every character has been complicit in the slaughter of unarmed men and women and they’re all, Saviour and Alexandrian, united in one cause:
Survival.

The difference, as this episode shows, is in what they leave behind in order to do it.

“I stopped counting when I hit double digits that’s right around the time i stopped feeling bad about it.”

Carol never stopped counting. In fact, it’s implied that settling down in Alexandria gave Carol the time to count for the first time. That realisation and the horror that comes with it brings us to arguably the most interesting Carol episode the show has done to date. We genuinely don’t know how much of the fearful act she’s putting on is an act.

Neither does Carol.

This is her long dark night of the soul, confronted both with the inevitability of violence and the consequences of what happens when she turns from it. She’s an endlessly ruthless, competent killer but she’s also the quiet, traumatised woman she was when we first met her. For the first time, the signal to noise ratio in her life is low enough for the two to meet and they do NOT get on.

That’s why this episode is so gripping. We see Carol at war not just with the people who’ve held them hostage but with herself. Look at the closing scenes, where she executes a woman without a second’s thought but then shuts down so badly that Maggie has to keep them both alive on the way out. There are two women here, two versions of Carol warring for control of her. Those two sides are going to have to find common ground and her final line this episode shows just how aware of that she is. It also suggests her next conversation with Morgan is going to be very interesting and probably far less violent.

“You were her, but not now right? Me too.”

Paula, and the brutal, cold bravado with which Alicia Witt plays her steals the show this week. Paula is the perfect embodiment of the Negan Ideal. Her origin story, which sounds much more interesting than a lot of what we got on Fear The Walking Dead’s first season, is delivered with a mix of self-deprecation and cold-eyed joy. It’s as though Joan from Mad Men got mad as Hell, took advantage of the apocalypse and went off to make a name for herself.

The fascinating thing about it that Paula is right, she and Carol are the same but they’re at different stages in their lives. She’s Carol when she led the rescue mission at Terminus, endless calm and planning and ruthlessness. Had she lived, it would have been brilliant to see if she’d find herself at the same spot Carol now does further down the line.

“Hey? You good?” “No.”

That’s why that final scene and the line Carol in particular delivers carries so much weight. The characters are survivors and soldiers but now they’re killers and family too. Maggie and Carol, faced with their own dark reflections, embraced those reflections to survive rather than live. They’ve been show just how thin the veneer of civilisation is and shown how many people have chosen to be the Walking Dead to survive. And the only thing that terrifies them more than how outnumbered they are is how easily they and their friends could fall into the same behaviour. Bleak, deeply philosophical and utterly character driven this is an hour of powerhouse performances, tense direction and fiercely, brutally well-written character drama anchored by the single best cast this season. Yet another bravura gear change, yet another brilliant episode, yet more evidence this show has never, ever been better than it is this year.

The Good:

• “Oh. You’re one of THOSE.” In an episode full of subtle touches this, and the clear disgust at anyone who still has faith when the dead walk the Earth, is one of the best.
• “Those things’ll kill you.”
  “They already have.” Likewise this – everything you need to know in two lines.
• “You’re NOT the good guys. You should know that.” No one is. It’s just a matter of perspective and blind luck.
• “Are you going to kill me?”
  “Hope not.” So much of this episode is perception. On the one hand this is a threat. On the other? Genuine sentiment.
• “Are you okay?”
  “I have to be.” This goes by so quietly you almost miss it. Carol choking her own emotions down to protect everyone around her. Again. Only this time she pays the price for it.
• “I can’t anymore.” And this is Maggie at the end of the path she started two episodes ago. She can’t be in the front line anymore, she can’t get her hands dirty. Because she’s too good at it and because now she can’t risk the other life she’s guarding.
• Excellent direction this week. I especially liked seeing the other side of the closing scene from last week and the POV of Carol with the sheet over her head.
• Phenomenal scripting too. Angela Kang is becoming the powerhouse of the Walking Dead writer’s room and she clearly revels the chance to do such a locked-down episode.
• HOLY CRAP the acting this week is amazing. This entire episode is basically an excuse to lock the camera off and watch four amazingly talented actresses work. Every single one brings their A-game too, with Melissa McBride getting the most to do and doing the most with it. You genuinely don’t know what’s fake and what’s genuine with Carol and the genius of the episode is that neither does she.

• Likewise, Lauren Cohan’s Maggie goes from dead-eyed relentless killer to traumatised, delayed-panic-riddled mess in the space of the time it takes to open one door. Then there’s Jeananne Goossen’s Michelle and the horror and grief she buries beneath rage at all the people she’s lost, as well as Jill Jane Clements’ cheerfully fatalistic Molly.
• But Alicia Witt’s Paula steals the show. She’s Carol and Rick, a good person in a bad way who has done everything they needed to survive. Paula is a simmering tower of rage in the episode, completely fine with surviving and glorying in the end of her old life. She’s a monster and a victim, a heroine and a villainess. She’s Carol with one extra bad day and is one of the most captivating guest stars this show has ever had.
• Little touches that impress abound. The difference between Paula’s tight, controlled voice on the radio and the panic in her group is a nice touch. Likewise the offhand way they’re dealing with the walkers throughout the episode. This show really is about people now, with the walkers as window dressing. Also interesting that Paula refers to them as “cold bloods”.
• The entire episode is built around the idea of the people holding Carol and Maggie being one bad day away from BEING Carol and Maggie. The endless circularity of that and the subtle echoes between the two groups are really smartly done. This is Carol and Maggie confronted by their own worst natures and its electric, tense, horrible viewing.
• Some great world building this episode too. The coded exchanges on the radio between Paula and their support team tells you far more about the size of the Saviours than a speech ever could.
• Not every character has read the entire script. We cannot stress how much of a relief this is because TV in particular is rife with characters acting like they’ve got knowledge of scenes they weren’t in. Carol knows the Saviours are taught to all say they’re Negan. Rick doesn’t. Rick’s justification for killing Primo is, for Rick, rock solid. For Carol it’s everything Paula and her team accused them of.
• The Daryl/Carol hug. So adorable.

The Bad:

• Carol’s turn feels a little sudden, although I trust the show to back fill context on it in future episodes.

• It feels a little weird saying this a few weeks after Sam basically gets eaten on screen but the violence this episode was a bit much. Donny’s bloated, gooey arm was unpleasant but Paula’s insanely violent death either crossed the line or got very close. Carol and Maggie burning the Saviours to death set fire to that line and watched it scream as it died. That being said, given the episode was about Carol’s hyper awareness of her own violent tendencies, it’s understandable.

• That’s three Saviours who are tropey Hispanic thugs in two weeks. On the one hand we also get three female Saviours and the hugely whiny Donny. On the other, that’s still a bad trend.

The Random:

• A couple of veteran, and welcome, faces in this week’s supporting cast. Alicia Witt is best known for her role on ’90s sitcom Sybil. She’s also recently had a brilliantly nasty turn as Morgan Le Fay on The Librarians and had a memorable nine-episode turn on Friday Night Lights.
• Meanwhile, Jeananne Goossen has done excellent work in The Following, Alcatraz, Suits and others including Debug, which starred Jason Momoa as an evil Artificial Intelligence and was directed by the splendid David Hewlett.
• Shot of the week is Carol’s bleeding rosary. A little on the nose but as visual shorthand for her arc this episode goes, it’s pretty much perfect.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read more reviews of The Walking Dead season six