Posts tagged: The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead S06E04 “Here’s Not Here” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: FOX, Mondays, 9pm
Writer: Scott M Gimple
Director: Stephen Williams

Essential Plot Points:

• We see Morgan talking to someone in Alexandria, agreeing to tell them his whole story. Then, we see Morgan ranting to himself as a building burns around him. Then he’s out in the open. He kills zombies, build a bonfire and waits for more zombies to arrive, then he kills them, even one that comes through the fire at him. Less flambe, more zombe. 

• Slowly, Morgan creates a world for himself, a tiny space defined by punji stakes and the pile of zombies he’s killed. He does what he does; clears. Kills anything that isn’t him. Including two luckless scavengers whom he murders.

• One morning, out hunting, Morgan hears something impossible; a goat, alive. He tracks it and finds a beautiful cabin with a goat outside, tethered up. A disembodied voice asks him to put down his rifle and discuss matters. Morgan ignores it. He’s promptly knocked out and wakes up in a cell in the living room of the cabin.

• There, he meets Eastman, the cabin’s owner. Polite, friendly and a master with a bō staff, Eastman diagnoses Morgan with PTSD and reassures him that he will heal. Morgan is insistent Eastman kill him. Eastman refuses. Morgan is in this for the long haul.
• Finally, one day, Eastman tells Morgan the cell was never locked and gives him a choice between leaving or crashing on the couch. Morgan promptly tries to kill Eastman, breaking a piece of art on the wall as he does so. Eastman fights him into sumission, repeats the choice and Morgan storms back to the cell, closing the door behind him. Eastman opens the door and the stalemate continues.
• Later, he explains that he used aikido to beat Morgan, and that he started training in the martial art the day after his daughter gave him a lucky rabbit’s foot.
• One day, Eastman goes out and asks Morgan to protect Tabitha the goat. He sits, brooding, in his cell as Walkers appear and the terrified goat begins screaming. Finally, he snaps, runs out and kills the two Walkers. He’s on the verge of sliding back into PTSD when he sees the wedding ring around one Walker’s neck and realises they used to be people, with lives, too. He kills them, then brings Tabitha inside and disposes of the bodies.
• In doing so, he finds a graveyard Eastman has maintained of every Walker he’s had to kill.
• When Eastman returns, he helps Morgan and reminds him to use driver’s licences to identify the dead men. He also tells him he “fixed” his spear. Eastman has taken the pointy tip off. It’s now the bō staff Morgan uses in the present.

• The two men slowly become close friends, Eastman training Morgan in aikido and teaching him his belief that all life is sacred.
• One night, Morgan asks why Eastman has a cell in his cabin. He explains that he interviewed an inmate who was the only, truly, evil human being he’s ever encountered. Eastman describes seeing the man realise his charm wasn’t working, smiling then attacking Eastman. Eastman used aikido to defeat him and was instrumental in the inmate, Crighton Dallas Wilton, being denied parole. The inmate broke out anyway, slaughtered Eastman’s family in revenge then turned himself in.
• They begin packing for a trip. Eastman is cheerfully honest about not knowing where to go but has his eye on the coast and some of the islands offshore. He mentions they need some supplies and Morgan, repulsed by the thought of what he’s suggesting, tells Eastman he knows where to find what they’re looking for.
• They return to Morgan’s minuscule “safe zone” and find what they need. A Walker emerges from the trees and Eastman asks Morgan to kill it. He’s about to when he realises it’s one of the men he killed earlier. He blanks out, Eastman steps in to save him and is bitten.

• Morgan loses it and the men fight, but Eastman bests Morgan again. Visibly weakening already, Eastman takes the Walker corpse up to his graveyard.
• Morgan goes hunting, kills a Walker and, to his own surprise, saves two refugees. He’s about to go for them too when they offer him tinned food and a single bullet as thanks. Returning to himself, he leaves them be and returns to the cabin. He finds Tabitha being eaten by a Walker, which he kills, then carries the two corpses to the graveyard. He helps Eastman finish his work there and then gets his friend back home.
• Eastman, close to death, confesses everything. He kidnapped Wilton from the work gang he was put on, locked him in the cell and let him starve to death. That gave him no peace but his refusal to kill, anything, ever again, did. He offers Morgan the cabin but tells him he shouldn’t stay there but go find other people. Eastman reassures him that he’s ready for death and has a gun put to one side.

• We see Morgan, dressed for the road, leave the cabin. We see him pass Wilton’s grave in the graveyard and find the sign to Terminus.
• We see Morgan in the present day, talking to a Wolf he’s captured. The younger man accepts everything Morgan said but then points out the wound he’s carrying. He tells Morgan he’ll either die or have to kill everyone in Alexandria. Morgan leaves his prisoner then hears someone screaming for the gate to be opened…

Review:

Yet again: bloody hell!

Late in this episode, Eastman talks about how he kicked Morgan’s ass by redirecting him. That’s the basic principle of aikido, a martial art designed to be less about physical action on your part and more about using your opponent’s energy and decisions against them.

This entire episode is televisual aikido. It constantly surprises, constantly upends your expectations and never once takes the easy way out. It’s brave and difficult and immensely moving and quite unlike anything else the show has ever done before.

So much of that is down to the minuscule cast. A few other tiny guest roles aside, this is a two-hander. Lennie James, an actor who has never turned in bad work in his career, is on exceptional form here. He’s constantly working hard, showing us the gradual journey Morgan takes from the grief-stricken loner he was in “Clear” to the tormented but ethical ass kicker we met at the end of last season. It’s subtle, constant work that’s telegraphed in James’s shoulders and posture, in his repetition of some phrases and his constant numb demeanour. There isn’t a character on the show who’s escaped suffering but Morgan has suffered far more than most and been denied the luxury of company too. This episode, finally, we see what that cost him and it’s very nearly everything.

Then there’s Eastman. Played with endlessly calm, charmingly verbose restraint by John Carroll Lynch, he’s one of the most interesting characters the show has ever introduced us to. There’s more than a hint of the hippy to him – from the vegetarian diet to the obsession with cheese making and aikido – but he’s never a stereotype. Instead, he’s a man further along the path that Morgan’s on. He’s got the distance from his wounds, and crimes, to see them for what they are. Defining yes, but not controlling.

The equal ground that shared experience creates between the two never waivers, even when you expect it to. There’s no getting around the racial element to their relationship, especially as Morgan, who’s black, spends most of the episode apparently locked in a cell in the house of Eastman, who’s white. But time and again, the show not only addresses but subverts what you’re expecting. The fact the cell was never locked is clever. The fact that Morgan voluntarily goes back inside it is heart-breaking. The fact Eastman leaves the door open is quietly, patiently, hopeful. There’s no power dynamic here beyond compassion. No agenda beyond survival, healing and redemption.

The gradual changes in Morgan, the gradual unwrapping of Eastman’s tragedy and the fact we know this can’t last makes for an intensely emotional, moving episode. You want both these guys to be okay. You want, somehow, Eastman to live even though what’s coming even though you know he doesn’t.

That’s the genius of Gimple’s script and Williams’s direction. They put us inside both men’s heads and then, like them, show us the way out. Williams’s use of a tilt-shift style effect for Morgan’s perceptions is especially clever, showing us just how zeroed in he is. Likewise, the use of sound is incredibly smart. The fact that Morgan has a near panic attack when he realises he can hear the goat is one of the episode’s highlights precisely because it’s so subtle. It shows us just how hyper-attuned Morgan is to everything around him and just how dangerous he’s become. That makes his slow struggle to change, and Eastman’s trust in him, all the more emotionally charged.

The script is shot through with moments like that too. Morgan seeing the wedding ring around the Walker’s neck is one. The sight of the grave Eastman dug for the murderer of his family is another. Together moments like those create a script that’s both a fight and a conversation, just as all good martial arts are. On one side is the belief both men have; that all life is precious. On the other is the brutal, harsh reality of their world. There’s no clear victor by the end of the episode but there’s also no clear loss. Like Morgan says, “World hasn’t ended”. That’s not enough, but as starts go we could do a lot worse.  Especially if that prisoner Morgan’s keeping in Alexandria has anything to do with it…

The Good:

• Everything. Seriously this isn’t just a five star episode this may be the best episode the show’s turned in to date. But here are a few specifics:
• “Why don’t you put the gun down and we’ll talk. Have some falafel? Looks like you haven’t eaten in a while.” What makes Eastman work so perfectly is the combination of Lynch’s physicality and intellect. He’s a big, hulking guy who’s a clear physical threat but he’s also endlessly calm and articulate.
• “You saw it happen. That’s how it started, right? It’s all happening in front of your eyes, over and over? Your body’s here, but your mind is still there. There’s a door and you wanna go through it to get away from it so you do and it leads you right back to that moment and you see that door again and you know it won’t work but, Hell, maybe it’ll work. So you step through that door and you’re right back in that horrible moment every time. You still feel it every time. So you just wanna stop opening that door. So you just sit in it. But I assure you, one of those doors leads out, my friend.” To see a show like this peel away not just the layers of PTSD but the impact PTSD has on the psyche of a male lead is staggering. This is intensely brave, compassionate writing that explores the consequence of this world in a way The Walking Dead rarely, if ever, has before.
• “I don’t have any friends!” “Get to know me.” An episode like this lives and dies on its performances. This episode soars, thanks not just to Lynch’s good-natured chattiness but James’s constant, scowling, frantic presence. This exchange sums up the two men perfectly; one desperate to be alone and desperate to not be, the other calm and ready to let his friend come to him on his own terms.
• “We’re not built to kill. We don’t have claws or fangs or armour. Vets that came back with PTSD? That didn’t happen because we’re comfortable with killing. WE’RE NOT. WE CAN’T BE. WE FEEL. WE’RE CONNECTED.” The entire scene is the highlight of the episode but this line is the one that hits you right between the eyes. To hear anyone say that in the post-apocalyptic world of the show, let alone someone like Eastman, is a lifeline and one Morgan ultimately grabs with both hands.
• “It’s all a circle, and everything gets a return.” The show also never lets Eastman off the hook. As well as showing us what he’s capable of it also shows us what he’s pushing against. That philosophy isn’t just a life raft for him it’s a door he chooses to close on his past life. That realisation that he’s got blood on his hands too is what ultimately makes it work.
• “It was aikido. That was how I kicked your ass, earlier. Well… that’s how I redirected your ass.” – A perfect description of a gentle, politely brutal when called upon to be, martial art.
• “I don’t kill but I’m not giving up on chocolate any time soon.” And with this line, Eastman ascends to the pantheon of polite, over-articulate asskicking big guys.
• “What we’ve done, we’ve done.” This is the crux of the conflict, and dialogue, between the two men. Accepting and embracing the past rather than being trapped there, folding your failings into what makes up your life and doing something better with them. It’s enlightened compassion of a sort Rick and co haven’t been able to afford for a while and seeing it expressed here perfectly explains why Morgan is like he is.
• “I have come to believe that ALL life is precious. That’s why we’re having oatmeal burgers.” “You’re good at it…redirecting…” I love this exchange. Eastman is open, charming and evasive. And Morgan sees it and calls him on it. It’s the moment where we know Morgan’s back, even if he doesn’t quite know it himself.
• “Who did you lose?” “My wife and son.” “WHO you lost? Their names.” “Janet… and Dwayne…” Again this is a lovely encapsulation of their relationship. Eastman gently showing Morgan his wounds and forcing him to realise that his family were people, not just casualties.
• “If they caught me it’d have been fine… it’d have been better.” The final speech is heartbreaking but this line, and everything behind it is the killer. Eastman’s endlessly calm and aware and compassionate and, just like Morgan chooses to go through the door out of his PTSD, Eastman can’t ever quite go through the door that leads out of what he did.

The Bad:

• You’re going to see some, at least partially, justifiable criticism of this episode being put where it is in the running order. Coming the week after the apparent death of Glenn it looks a lot like gamesmanship on the part of Gimple to keep the tension up. That’s valid but this episode is so good and so unusual that you don’t mind.

• In an episode full of sublime subtlety, this thuddingly obvious visual metaphor comes across more like a bad pun. Pointless? Sharp pointy things? Yeah, we geddit.

The Random:

• John Carroll Lynch is the patient zero of ‘That Guy Who Was In That Thing That Time!’ actors. His CV includes movies like Fargo, Gothika, Zodiac and Shutter Island while his TV appearances take in everything from Voyager to Lie To Me and an upcoming episode of American Horror Story: Hotel. So we’ll be talking about him again shortly in those reviews.
• His character is named Eastman, I suspect, as a nod to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One of whom, Donatello, uses abō staff as his weapon of choice. Lennie James’s trainer, martial artist Stephen Ho, is the fight double for Donatello. So, like the man says, everything’s a circle.

• Shot of the episode is this. Morgan, running forms one last time before leaving to join the road to Terminus and, from there, to Alexandria.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read more reviews of The Walking Dead season six

Have you seem our Buzz exclusive Walking Dead interview yet?

The Walking Dead S06E04 “Here’s Not Here” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: FOX, Mondays, 9pm
Writer: Scott M Gimple
Director: Stephen Williams

Essential Plot Points:

• We see Morgan talking to someone in Alexandria, agreeing to tell them his whole story. Then, we see Morgan ranting to himself as a building burns around him. Then he’s out in the open. He kills zombies, build a bonfire and waits for more zombies to arrive, then he kills them, even one that comes through the fire at him. Less flambe, more zombe. 

• Slowly, Morgan creates a world for himself, a tiny space defined by punji stakes and the pile of zombies he’s killed. He does what he does; clears. Kills anything that isn’t him. Including two luckless scavengers whom he murders.

• One morning, out hunting, Morgan hears something impossible; a goat, alive. He tracks it and finds a beautiful cabin with a goat outside, tethered up. A disembodied voice asks him to put down his rifle and discuss matters. Morgan ignores it. He’s promptly knocked out and wakes up in a cell in the living room of the cabin.

• There, he meets Eastman, the cabin’s owner. Polite, friendly and a master with a bō staff, Eastman diagnoses Morgan with PTSD and reassures him that he will heal. Morgan is insistent Eastman kill him. Eastman refuses. Morgan is in this for the long haul.
• Finally, one day, Eastman tells Morgan the cell was never locked and gives him a choice between leaving or crashing on the couch. Morgan promptly tries to kill Eastman, breaking a piece of art on the wall as he does so. Eastman fights him into sumission, repeats the choice and Morgan storms back to the cell, closing the door behind him. Eastman opens the door and the stalemate continues.
• Later, he explains that he used aikido to beat Morgan, and that he started training in the martial art the day after his daughter gave him a lucky rabbit’s foot.
• One day, Eastman goes out and asks Morgan to protect Tabitha the goat. He sits, brooding, in his cell as Walkers appear and the terrified goat begins screaming. Finally, he snaps, runs out and kills the two Walkers. He’s on the verge of sliding back into PTSD when he sees the wedding ring around one Walker’s neck and realises they used to be people, with lives, too. He kills them, then brings Tabitha inside and disposes of the bodies.
• In doing so, he finds a graveyard Eastman has maintained of every Walker he’s had to kill.
• When Eastman returns, he helps Morgan and reminds him to use driver’s licences to identify the dead men. He also tells him he “fixed” his spear. Eastman has taken the pointy tip off. It’s now the bō staff Morgan uses in the present.

• The two men slowly become close friends, Eastman training Morgan in aikido and teaching him his belief that all life is sacred.
• One night, Morgan asks why Eastman has a cell in his cabin. He explains that he interviewed an inmate who was the only, truly, evil human being he’s ever encountered. Eastman describes seeing the man realise his charm wasn’t working, smiling then attacking Eastman. Eastman used aikido to defeat him and was instrumental in the inmate, Crighton Dallas Wilton, being denied parole. The inmate broke out anyway, slaughtered Eastman’s family in revenge then turned himself in.
• They begin packing for a trip. Eastman is cheerfully honest about not knowing where to go but has his eye on the coast and some of the islands offshore. He mentions they need some supplies and Morgan, repulsed by the thought of what he’s suggesting, tells Eastman he knows where to find what they’re looking for.
• They return to Morgan’s minuscule “safe zone” and find what they need. A Walker emerges from the trees and Eastman asks Morgan to kill it. He’s about to when he realises it’s one of the men he killed earlier. He blanks out, Eastman steps in to save him and is bitten.

• Morgan loses it and the men fight, but Eastman bests Morgan again. Visibly weakening already, Eastman takes the Walker corpse up to his graveyard.
• Morgan goes hunting, kills a Walker and, to his own surprise, saves two refugees. He’s about to go for them too when they offer him tinned food and a single bullet as thanks. Returning to himself, he leaves them be and returns to the cabin. He finds Tabitha being eaten by a Walker, which he kills, then carries the two corpses to the graveyard. He helps Eastman finish his work there and then gets his friend back home.
• Eastman, close to death, confesses everything. He kidnapped Wilton from the work gang he was put on, locked him in the cell and let him starve to death. That gave him no peace but his refusal to kill, anything, ever again, did. He offers Morgan the cabin but tells him he shouldn’t stay there but go find other people. Eastman reassures him that he’s ready for death and has a gun put to one side.

• We see Morgan, dressed for the road, leave the cabin. We see him pass Wilton’s grave in the graveyard and find the sign to Terminus.
• We see Morgan in the present day, talking to a Wolf he’s captured. The younger man accepts everything Morgan said but then points out the wound he’s carrying. He tells Morgan he’ll either die or have to kill everyone in Alexandria. Morgan leaves his prisoner then hears someone screaming for the gate to be opened…

Review:

Yet again: bloody hell!

Late in this episode, Eastman talks about how he kicked Morgan’s ass by redirecting him. That’s the basic principle of aikido, a martial art designed to be less about physical action on your part and more about using your opponent’s energy and decisions against them.

This entire episode is televisual aikido. It constantly surprises, constantly upends your expectations and never once takes the easy way out. It’s brave and difficult and immensely moving and quite unlike anything else the show has ever done before.

So much of that is down to the minuscule cast. A few other tiny guest roles aside, this is a two-hander. Lennie James, an actor who has never turned in bad work in his career, is on exceptional form here. He’s constantly working hard, showing us the gradual journey Morgan takes from the grief-stricken loner he was in “Clear” to the tormented but ethical ass kicker we met at the end of last season. It’s subtle, constant work that’s telegraphed in James’s shoulders and posture, in his repetition of some phrases and his constant numb demeanour. There isn’t a character on the show who’s escaped suffering but Morgan has suffered far more than most and been denied the luxury of company too. This episode, finally, we see what that cost him and it’s very nearly everything.

Then there’s Eastman. Played with endlessly calm, charmingly verbose restraint by John Carroll Lynch, he’s one of the most interesting characters the show has ever introduced us to. There’s more than a hint of the hippy to him – from the vegetarian diet to the obsession with cheese making and aikido – but he’s never a stereotype. Instead, he’s a man further along the path that Morgan’s on. He’s got the distance from his wounds, and crimes, to see them for what they are. Defining yes, but not controlling.

The equal ground that shared experience creates between the two never waivers, even when you expect it to. There’s no getting around the racial element to their relationship, especially as Morgan, who’s black, spends most of the episode apparently locked in a cell in the house of Eastman, who’s white. But time and again, the show not only addresses but subverts what you’re expecting. The fact the cell was never locked is clever. The fact that Morgan voluntarily goes back inside it is heart-breaking. The fact Eastman leaves the door open is quietly, patiently, hopeful. There’s no power dynamic here beyond compassion. No agenda beyond survival, healing and redemption.

The gradual changes in Morgan, the gradual unwrapping of Eastman’s tragedy and the fact we know this can’t last makes for an intensely emotional, moving episode. You want both these guys to be okay. You want, somehow, Eastman to live even though what’s coming even though you know he doesn’t.

That’s the genius of Gimple’s script and Williams’s direction. They put us inside both men’s heads and then, like them, show us the way out. Williams’s use of a tilt-shift style effect for Morgan’s perceptions is especially clever, showing us just how zeroed in he is. Likewise, the use of sound is incredibly smart. The fact that Morgan has a near panic attack when he realises he can hear the goat is one of the episode’s highlights precisely because it’s so subtle. It shows us just how hyper-attuned Morgan is to everything around him and just how dangerous he’s become. That makes his slow struggle to change, and Eastman’s trust in him, all the more emotionally charged.

The script is shot through with moments like that too. Morgan seeing the wedding ring around the Walker’s neck is one. The sight of the grave Eastman dug for the murderer of his family is another. Together moments like those create a script that’s both a fight and a conversation, just as all good martial arts are. On one side is the belief both men have; that all life is precious. On the other is the brutal, harsh reality of their world. There’s no clear victor by the end of the episode but there’s also no clear loss. Like Morgan says, “World hasn’t ended”. That’s not enough, but as starts go we could do a lot worse.  Especially if that prisoner Morgan’s keeping in Alexandria has anything to do with it…

The Good:

• Everything. Seriously this isn’t just a five star episode this may be the best episode the show’s turned in to date. But here are a few specifics:
• “Why don’t you put the gun down and we’ll talk. Have some falafel? Looks like you haven’t eaten in a while.” What makes Eastman work so perfectly is the combination of Lynch’s physicality and intellect. He’s a big, hulking guy who’s a clear physical threat but he’s also endlessly calm and articulate.
• “You saw it happen. That’s how it started, right? It’s all happening in front of your eyes, over and over? Your body’s here, but your mind is still there. There’s a door and you wanna go through it to get away from it so you do and it leads you right back to that moment and you see that door again and you know it won’t work but, Hell, maybe it’ll work. So you step through that door and you’re right back in that horrible moment every time. You still feel it every time. So you just wanna stop opening that door. So you just sit in it. But I assure you, one of those doors leads out, my friend.” To see a show like this peel away not just the layers of PTSD but the impact PTSD has on the psyche of a male lead is staggering. This is intensely brave, compassionate writing that explores the consequence of this world in a way The Walking Dead rarely, if ever, has before.
• “I don’t have any friends!” “Get to know me.” An episode like this lives and dies on its performances. This episode soars, thanks not just to Lynch’s good-natured chattiness but James’s constant, scowling, frantic presence. This exchange sums up the two men perfectly; one desperate to be alone and desperate to not be, the other calm and ready to let his friend come to him on his own terms.
• “We’re not built to kill. We don’t have claws or fangs or armour. Vets that came back with PTSD? That didn’t happen because we’re comfortable with killing. WE’RE NOT. WE CAN’T BE. WE FEEL. WE’RE CONNECTED.” The entire scene is the highlight of the episode but this line is the one that hits you right between the eyes. To hear anyone say that in the post-apocalyptic world of the show, let alone someone like Eastman, is a lifeline and one Morgan ultimately grabs with both hands.
• “It’s all a circle, and everything gets a return.” The show also never lets Eastman off the hook. As well as showing us what he’s capable of it also shows us what he’s pushing against. That philosophy isn’t just a life raft for him it’s a door he chooses to close on his past life. That realisation that he’s got blood on his hands too is what ultimately makes it work.
• “It was aikido. That was how I kicked your ass, earlier. Well… that’s how I redirected your ass.” – A perfect description of a gentle, politely brutal when called upon to be, martial art.
• “I don’t kill but I’m not giving up on chocolate any time soon.” And with this line, Eastman ascends to the pantheon of polite, over-articulate asskicking big guys.
• “What we’ve done, we’ve done.” This is the crux of the conflict, and dialogue, between the two men. Accepting and embracing the past rather than being trapped there, folding your failings into what makes up your life and doing something better with them. It’s enlightened compassion of a sort Rick and co haven’t been able to afford for a while and seeing it expressed here perfectly explains why Morgan is like he is.
• “I have come to believe that ALL life is precious. That’s why we’re having oatmeal burgers.” “You’re good at it…redirecting…” I love this exchange. Eastman is open, charming and evasive. And Morgan sees it and calls him on it. It’s the moment where we know Morgan’s back, even if he doesn’t quite know it himself.
• “Who did you lose?” “My wife and son.” “WHO you lost? Their names.” “Janet… and Dwayne…” Again this is a lovely encapsulation of their relationship. Eastman gently showing Morgan his wounds and forcing him to realise that his family were people, not just casualties.
• “If they caught me it’d have been fine… it’d have been better.” The final speech is heartbreaking but this line, and everything behind it is the killer. Eastman’s endlessly calm and aware and compassionate and, just like Morgan chooses to go through the door out of his PTSD, Eastman can’t ever quite go through the door that leads out of what he did.

The Bad:

• You’re going to see some, at least partially, justifiable criticism of this episode being put where it is in the running order. Coming the week after the apparent death of Glenn it looks a lot like gamesmanship on the part of Gimple to keep the tension up. That’s valid but this episode is so good and so unusual that you don’t mind.

• In an episode full of sublime subtlety, this thuddingly obvious visual metaphor comes across more like a bad pun. Pointless? Sharp pointy things? Yeah, we geddit.

The Random:

• John Carroll Lynch is the patient zero of ‘That Guy Who Was In That Thing That Time!’ actors. His CV includes movies like Fargo, Gothika, Zodiac and Shutter Island while his TV appearances take in everything from Voyager to Lie To Me and an upcoming episode of American Horror Story: Hotel. So we’ll be talking about him again shortly in those reviews.
• His character is named Eastman, I suspect, as a nod to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One of whom, Donatello, uses abō staff as his weapon of choice. Lennie James’s trainer, martial artist Stephen Ho, is the fight double for Donatello. So, like the man says, everything’s a circle.

• Shot of the episode is this. Morgan, running forms one last time before leaving to join the road to Terminus and, from there, to Alexandria.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read more reviews of The Walking Dead season six

Have you seem our Buzz exclusive Walking Dead interview yet?

The Walking Dead S06E02 “JSS” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: FOX, Mondays, 9pm

Writers: Seth Hoffman
Director: Jennifer Lynch

Essential Plot Points:

• We see an SUV, with a couple in it trying to work out how to fix the engine. Enid is in the back and scream when a pair of Walkers appear. Her parents reassure her but then more arrive. The camera smash-cuts to End, in the back of the car, watching the Walkers feed.
• We see Enid cowering, Walkers nearby. She writes JSS.
• We see her kill her first zombie and hide out in a new car. She writes JSS on the window.
• We see her find a tortoise and eat it raw, desperate to survive.
• We see her, filthy, exhausted and stunned by the sound of celebration coming from inside Alexandria.
• We see the gates open, Enid walks in. JSS written on her hand.
• In the present day we check in on the team who didn’t go to the quarry. Maggie helps Deanna lay out some new land for the vegetable gardens, and come to terms with the death of Reg. Carl finds himself increasingly jealous of Enid and Ron’s relationship while Ron rejects any attempt by his mother to talk about the death of his father. Elsewhere, Gabriel persuades Carl to teach him to fight and Carol cements her status as most terrifying housewife in Alexandria. She watches a neighbour, who she chastised into smoking outside, have a fag in the garden…

• Then she watches the woman cut down by a filthy, machete-wielding attacker. The Wolves have arrived.
• Across town, battle breaks out. Carol disguises herself as a wolf and heads to defend the armoury. Nearby new town doctor Denise gets the single worst first day anyone could possibly imagine. Carl and Enid stand guard over the baby while nearby Morgan rescues Father Gabriel. Countless Alexandrians fall and some can’t take the horror of the battle. The mystery of the truck horn from last week is solved when the Wolves use a zombie tied into a truck to smash through the walls of the town.
• Ultimately, thanks to Carol’s ruthless quick thinking, the Wolves are seen off. Along the way, Morgan and Carol clash over the necessity of murder and both find themselves on the other’s side. Carol finds a quiet moment to break down after the loss of her neighbour and her having to euthanise another. Morgan encounters the Wolf he met last season and, finally, realises he has to kill the man.
• While cleaning up, Aaron finds his pack on a dead Wolf and realises, to his horror, they found the town because of him…

Review:

Bloody hell. Again.

Lynch’s direction is amongst the best I’ve seen on this show, or any other. She constantly gives us a sense of the scale of the assault, but never lets us lose sight of the human cost of it. The abrupt butchery of Carol’s neighbour is one of the show’s most horrific moments but it’s Carol ending the life of the other woman that stays with both you, and her. It’s a single, quiet, awful moment of mercy in the middle of endless brutality and horror. It may not have broken Carol any more than she already is, but it’s a wound she’ll carry for a good long time. The emotional impact that has all comes from Lynch’s clever, subtle framing of the woman’s final moments.

There are many similar examples throughout the episode. Lynch is happy to lock her camera off and show events at multiple depths of field instead of running after everything like a Bourne movie on a sugar rush. It’s the best possible approach to Hoffman’s script and gives everything a measured, relentless, apocalyptic weight that neatly matches the flashback structure from last week. This season is two for two on experimentation and massive success. I honestly think they could pull off a musical episode at this point. Although the odds of it being all Nick Cave, all the time, are pretty high.

On the other side of the ethical divide from Carol the Doombringer, is Morgan though he’s having a similarly terrible week. It would have been easy for the show to set him up as a stereotypical pacifistic asskicker but it’s going somewhere much more fun. Morgan is in many ways the ultimate expression of Tyreese’s closing episodes; a man who refuses to kill but is prepared, reluctantly, to compromise if he has to. Director Lynch and writer Hoffman cleverly use the two fights in which Morgan is involved here to show us how he’s changing. The four-on-one with the Wolves where he scares them off plays like a father scolding children. Yes he’s phenomenally gifted with the staff (and judging by how many close-ups we get, most of that’s Lennie James) but he’s also making a little more noise than he should. Working as hard as possible to show them mercy.

The fight in the house at the end couldn’t be more different. It’s ugly, scrappy, up close and personal stuff that sees Morgan confronted with the very real consequences of his choices. It also sees him not so much cross a line as define one. Everyone gets a second chance with Morgan but, judging by this episode, no one gets a third. Regardless, he’s the only person hurt worse than Carol by the consequences of the Wolf attack and I can’t wait to see both more of that and more of those two working together.

Morgan and Carol get the majority of the heavy lifting this episode, although we get some good stuff with Maggie, Eugene, Tara and new character, Denise. Those last three in particular are an interesting study in how smart Hoffman’s script and Lynch’s direction both are. As well as cutting from moments of brutality to moments of silence, neither let these characters off the hook. Denise is a sweet, nervous, not-quite doctor on her first day. She’s terrified of losing people. She’s in the middle of a war. She loses people and she is really not okay with it. There’s no calm, no moment of sympathy, just her, Eugene, Tara and a dead woman. Tara’s final line to her, reminding her to destroy the brain of her dead patient, is a perfect embodiment of this show and this season in particular. It’s not bitchy or mean, it’s just a truth that the Alexandrians haven’t learnt and Rick’s people have; just survive, somehow.

Which brings us to Enid, and that incredible opening scene. Lynch and Hoffman fire on all cylinders throughout this episode but that opening is staggering. Katelyn Nacon’s work is haunting; her gradual slide into traumatised survival machine is another perfect embodiment of who the “walking dead” on the show really are. Even better, the episode leaves us with some chilling ambiguity about whether or not she led the wolves in. We see Aaron’s pack on a Wolf body but Enid’s “That’s how we…” line implies a lot.

It also shows just how great this episode is. There’s no resolution to last week at all, a second equally massive plot has been put in motion and we’ve got Alexandria rung like a bell by the incredible trauma they’ve all gone through. The only closure here is that the battle has been won. The war is another story and one that, if it’s delivered as well as the first two episodes have been, will be unforgettable.

Good:

• “Your dad used to hit you and he got himself killed. It happened. You live with it or it eats you up.” Carol, ultimate tough love auntie is just the best thing.
• “Everyone that’s here is here because of you. You need to show ’em you’re still here.” Lauren Cohan’s one of a couple of characters who’ve been given short shrift recently so this was really nice to see. It’s one of Rick’s people coming in from the cold, and shows the natural authority they have that the Alexandrians don’t. Plus it’s a really sweet tribute to Maggie’s dad.
• “Thumpers shouldn’t get dibs.” Eugene! All kids love Eugene! No one else does, but hey it’s still a great line.

• “You’re my first patient, and with that symptom I’m pretty sure I can’t kill you.” Thanks, Doc. Not only is Denise immensely good fun, and clearly one of the few competent and fairly together Alexandrians but she’s played by Merit Weaver. Weaver wins this week’s Cast Member In Cult Movie You Should See award thanks to her role in the excellent Series 7: The Contenders about a reality TV show based around competitive murder. She’s also appeared in movies like Michael Clayton and Birdman and had a recurrent role in Nurse Jackie for which she won an Emmy. Oh and she’s brilliant as Matt Albie’s endlessly competent, put upon assistance in the overlooked Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.
• “Come by around three – we’ll start with the machete.” Chandler Riggs is another cast member who hasn’t had much to do recently but he’s on great form this week especially in this scene with Gabriel. It’s interesting too that Carl is so like his dad in mannerism but prepared to make exactly the opposite call to Rick with regards to Gabriel.

The Bad:

• Nothing. Seriously. From the clever business with Carol’s baking timer to the careful use of soundscape the episode was directed, scripted and acted incredibly well. Right now this is a show at the top of its game.

The Random:

• So is Enid a spy? The “JUST SURVIVE, SOMEHOW” note could certainly be viewed as a confession of sorts.
• Apparently Morgan learned his staff fighting skills from a “cheesemaker”. That Morgan flashback episode on deck for later this season honestly cannot turn up fast enough for me. (I wondered if it was a Monty Python reference – as in “Blessed are the cheesemakers” – because he was talking to a priest at the time and was just being sarcastic – ed.)
• WHAT ABOUT THE HORDE?!
• Carol’s unlucky neighbour smokes Morley’s, a fake brand that appear in numerous TV shows and films. Notable appearances include Psycho, Warehouse 13 and The X-Files in which, of course, they’re the favoured brand of the Cigarette Smoking Man.
• It’s a shot of the week triple crown this week. The first is this shot of Enid, exhausted, traumatised and almost unable to face the idea of safety.

• The second is this shot of the worst day in the town’s history. The bike, the blood, the running man. All wrong, all horrifying.

• And the last is this gloriously framed ambush. Lynch is an amazing director and I really hope, after this and her work on “Spend” in season five the show has her back.

Reviewed by Alasdair Stuart

• Read our other reviews of The Walking Dead season six

The Walking Dead S06E02 “JSS” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on: FOX, Mondays, 9pm

Writers: Seth Hoffman
Director: Jennifer Lynch

Essential Plot Points:

• We see an SUV, with a couple in it trying to work out how to fix the engine. Enid is in the back and scream when a pair of Walkers appear. Her parents reassure her but then more arrive. The camera smash-cuts to End, in the back of the car, watching the Walkers feed.
• We see Enid cowering, Walkers nearby. She writes JSS.
• We see her kill her first zombie and hide out in a new car. She writes JSS on the window.
• We see her find a tortoise and eat it raw, desperate to survive.
• We see her, filthy, exhausted and stunned by the sound of celebration coming from inside Alexandria.
• We see the gates open, Enid walks in. JSS written on her hand.
• In the present day we check in on the team who didn’t go to the quarry. Maggie helps Deanna lay out some new land for the vegetable gardens, and come to terms with the death of Reg. Carl finds himself increasingly jealous of Enid and Ron’s relationship while Ron rejects any attempt by his mother to talk about the death of his father. Elsewhere, Gabriel persuades Carl to teach him to fight and Carol cements her status as most terrifying housewife in Alexandria. She watches a neighbour, who she chastised into smoking outside, have a fag in the garden…

• Then she watches the woman cut down by a filthy, machete-wielding attacker. The Wolves have arrived.
• Across town, battle breaks out. Carol disguises herself as a wolf and heads to defend the armoury. Nearby new town doctor Denise gets the single worst first day anyone could possibly imagine. Carl and Enid stand guard over the baby while nearby Morgan rescues Father Gabriel. Countless Alexandrians fall and some can’t take the horror of the battle. The mystery of the truck horn from last week is solved when the Wolves use a zombie tied into a truck to smash through the walls of the town.
• Ultimately, thanks to Carol’s ruthless quick thinking, the Wolves are seen off. Along the way, Morgan and Carol clash over the necessity of murder and both find themselves on the other’s side. Carol finds a quiet moment to break down after the loss of her neighbour and her having to euthanise another. Morgan encounters the Wolf he met last season and, finally, realises he has to kill the man.
• While cleaning up, Aaron finds his pack on a dead Wolf and realises, to his horror, they found the town because of him…

Review:

Bloody hell. Again.

Lynch’s direction is amongst the best I’ve seen on this show, or any other. She constantly gives us a sense of the scale of the assault, but never lets us lose sight of the human cost of it. The abrupt butchery of Carol’s neighbour is one of the show’s most horrific moments but it’s Carol ending the life of the other woman that stays with both you, and her. It’s a single, quiet, awful moment of mercy in the middle of endless brutality and horror. It may not have broken Carol any more than she already is, but it’s a wound she’ll carry for a good long time. The emotional impact that has all comes from Lynch’s clever, subtle framing of the woman’s final moments.

There are many similar examples throughout the episode. Lynch is happy to lock her camera off and show events at multiple depths of field instead of running after everything like a Bourne movie on a sugar rush. It’s the best possible approach to Hoffman’s script and gives everything a measured, relentless, apocalyptic weight that neatly matches the flashback structure from last week. This season is two for two on experimentation and massive success. I honestly think they could pull off a musical episode at this point. Although the odds of it being all Nick Cave, all the time, are pretty high.

On the other side of the ethical divide from Carol the Doombringer, is Morgan though he’s having a similarly terrible week. It would have been easy for the show to set him up as a stereotypical pacifistic asskicker but it’s going somewhere much more fun. Morgan is in many ways the ultimate expression of Tyreese’s closing episodes; a man who refuses to kill but is prepared, reluctantly, to compromise if he has to. Director Lynch and writer Hoffman cleverly use the two fights in which Morgan is involved here to show us how he’s changing. The four-on-one with the Wolves where he scares them off plays like a father scolding children. Yes he’s phenomenally gifted with the staff (and judging by how many close-ups we get, most of that’s Lennie James) but he’s also making a little more noise than he should. Working as hard as possible to show them mercy.

The fight in the house at the end couldn’t be more different. It’s ugly, scrappy, up close and personal stuff that sees Morgan confronted with the very real consequences of his choices. It also sees him not so much cross a line as define one. Everyone gets a second chance with Morgan but, judging by this episode, no one gets a third. Regardless, he’s the only person hurt worse than Carol by the consequences of the Wolf attack and I can’t wait to see both more of that and more of those two working together.

Morgan and Carol get the majority of the heavy lifting this episode, although we get some good stuff with Maggie, Eugene, Tara and new character, Denise. Those last three in particular are an interesting study in how smart Hoffman’s script and Lynch’s direction both are. As well as cutting from moments of brutality to moments of silence, neither let these characters off the hook. Denise is a sweet, nervous, not-quite doctor on her first day. She’s terrified of losing people. She’s in the middle of a war. She loses people and she is really not okay with it. There’s no calm, no moment of sympathy, just her, Eugene, Tara and a dead woman. Tara’s final line to her, reminding her to destroy the brain of her dead patient, is a perfect embodiment of this show and this season in particular. It’s not bitchy or mean, it’s just a truth that the Alexandrians haven’t learnt and Rick’s people have; just survive, somehow.

Which brings us to Enid, and that incredible opening scene. Lynch and Hoffman fire on all cylinders throughout this episode but that opening is staggering. Katelyn Nacon’s work is haunting; her gradual slide into traumatised survival machine is another perfect embodiment of who the “walking dead” on the show really are. Even better, the episode leaves us with some chilling ambiguity about whether or not she led the wolves in. We see Aaron’s pack on a Wolf body but Enid’s “That’s how we…” line implies a lot.

It also shows just how great this episode is. There’s no resolution to last week at all, a second equally massive plot has been put in motion and we’ve got Alexandria rung like a bell by the incredible trauma they’ve all gone through. The only closure here is that the battle has been won. The war is another story and one that, if it’s delivered as well as the first two episodes have been, will be unforgettable.

Good:

• “Your dad used to hit you and he got himself killed. It happened. You live with it or it eats you up.” Carol, ultimate tough love auntie is just the best thing.
• “Everyone that’s here is here because of you. You need to show ’em you’re still here.” Lauren Cohan’s one of a couple of characters who’ve been given short shrift recently so this was really nice to see. It’s one of Rick’s people coming in from the cold, and shows the natural authority they have that the Alexandrians don’t. Plus it’s a really sweet tribute to Maggie’s dad.
• “Thumpers shouldn’t get dibs.” Eugene! All kids love Eugene! No one else does, but hey it’s still a great line.

• “You’re my first patient, and with that symptom I’m pretty sure I can’t kill you.” Thanks, Doc. Not only is Denise immensely good fun, and clearly one of the few competent and fairly together Alexandrians but she’s played by Merit Weaver. Weaver wins this week’s Cast Member In Cult Movie You Should See award thanks to her role in the excellent Series 7: The Contenders about a reality TV show based around competitive murder. She’s also appeared in movies like Michael Clayton and Birdman and had a recurrent role in Nurse Jackie for which she won an Emmy. Oh and she’s brilliant as Matt Albie’s endlessly competent, put upon assistance in the overlooked Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.
• “Come by around three – we’ll start with the machete.” Chandler Riggs is another cast member who hasn’t had much to do recently but he’s on great form this week especially in this scene with Gabriel. It’s interesting too that Carl is so like his dad in mannerism but prepared to make exactly the opposite call to Rick with regards to Gabriel.

The Bad:

• Nothing. Seriously. From the clever business with Carol’s baking timer to the careful use of soundscape the episode was directed, scripted and acted incredibly well. Right now this is a show at the top of its game.

The Random:

• So is Enid a spy? The “JUST SURVIVE, SOMEHOW” note could certainly be viewed as a confession of sorts.
• Apparently Morgan learned his staff fighting skills from a “cheesemaker”. That Morgan flashback episode on deck for later this season honestly cannot turn up fast enough for me. (I wondered if it was a Monty Python reference – as in “Blessed are the cheesemakers” – because he was talking to a priest at the time and was just being sarcastic – ed.)
• WHAT ABOUT THE HORDE?!
• Carol’s unlucky neighbour smokes Morley’s, a fake brand that appear in numerous TV shows and films. Notable appearances include Psycho, Warehouse 13 and The X-Files in which, of course, they’re the favoured brand of the Cigarette Smoking Man.
• It’s a shot of the week triple crown this week. The first is this shot of Enid, exhausted, traumatised and almost unable to face the idea of safety.

• The second is this shot of the worst day in the town’s history. The bike, the blood, the running man. All wrong, all horrifying.

• And the last is this gloriously framed ambush. Lynch is an amazing director and I really hope, after this and her work on “Spend” in season five the show has her back.

Reviewed by Alasdair Stuart

• Read our other reviews of The Walking Dead season six