First off, sorry it's a week or so late, but we only decided to create a blog yesterday and unfortunately I can't reverse time. Every episode from now will be reviewed on time.
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| Fun fact: Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh) was a man named Douglas in the comics More fun facts to follow. |
All in all, season six of The Walking Dead is off to a solid start. Morgan’s back! And he’s here to stay – I checked the new opening credits (in which the series logo has decayed even more after another year of apparently being a dead thing), and Lennie James’ name was in the main cast, so he has to stick around for at least eight of this season’s sixteen episodes or his name will be on there and he won’t be in it and it’ll look stupid. And hopefully, he’ll be around until long after those eight because he’s the only character left who can challenge the almighty Rick. Thrilling and emotional, the premiere also revealed how Alexandria has remained so relatively walker-free all this time, and let’s just say it’s not a permanent solution. But Rick has a plan that is a permanent solution, and it’s risky, and it’s The Walking Dead, so there’s bound to be a few bumps in the road.
Everyone’s back on top form (particularly Melissa McBride, Josh McDermitt and Michael Cudlitz), but it’s still leading man Andrew Lincoln who steals the show from his stellar support cast in his portrayal of Rick Grimes. It’s a joy to watch Rick, who’s now totally unhinged. He doesn’t care anymore. One of my favourite moments of tonight was when asking the residents of Alexandria to help him further fortify the place and Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam, aka The Wire’s Carver) says, “I’d like to help,” and Lincoln’s immediate deadpan delivery of, “No. Who else?” Rick just doesn’t care anymore. He’s realised he doesn’t have to conform to social conventions now that society has collapsed, but this realisation couldn’t have come at a worse time as he’s now a part of a society. People either listen to what he has to say or he threatens to kill them. He carries himself like a normal dude, he doesn’t make a big, dramatic deal out of being crazy anymore. He’s a little scary, but scary in a good way. Rick may be my favourite character. He’s so layered, and watching him transform from a frightened, straight-laced cop to a criminally insane murderer has been unbelievable. However, for all his wacky antics, pulling a gun on anyone who questions him, I do fear he may be becoming predictable. It used to be that you couldn’t see his next move coming, but now that you expect him to be irrational and do whatever’s necessary to intimidate people into respecting him, it’s taken out the impact. It seems there’s nowhere left for him to evolve as the metamorphosis into a psychopath is complete, but he can’t stay like this. Hopefully they can find a new and unexpected place for the character to go, since the number one highest-rated show in the world certainly isn’t going anywhere.
I think the writers’ room must have had a shakeup between this season and the last, since there’s a lot more humour thrown in this week. Humour is never a bad thing, but it feels so out of place in a show as depressingly bleak as this one. They’ve also decided to throw in a lot of walkers, and I mean a lot of walkers. Literally hundreds on-screen at once. But I’ll try not to spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it, but man, there’s a lot of walkers in this episode, which again, is never a bad thing. They’re still writing in Rick’s group’s assimilation into the more civil community of Alexandria, having been out in the elements and seen what the world is like, witnessed horrific things, experienced harrowing losses, braved the apocalypse. Compared to most of Alexandria, Rick and the gang are savages. I like to think of it as Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer moving into an apartment across the hall from Monica and Rachel and being baffled by how mentally stable and emotionally vulnerable they all are.
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| Daryl, look behind you! |
Carter (Ethan Embry) was a fun little side-character. The fact that Carter thought he could take on Rick Grimes is hilarious, but this is a testament to the character’s transformation. Current Carter (well, semi-current) might’ve stood a chance against naïve season one Rick, but a conniving, loudmouthed weasel trying to take season six Rick’s power away from him stands very little chance of success. The gun-waving and the “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” speech was too easy to see coming to have an effect, but Lincoln and Embry played their parts perfectly. These performances, along with butting heads and bouncing off each other, continued until a much more effective scene in which Carter is bitten and silence is needed. Rick breaks Carter’s neck, and the acting and the direction and the cinematography is all on point in walking a fine line between Rick wanting to do it and having to do it for the sake of everyone’s survival. I’m sure it’s just in the way they’re playing their characters at this point in the story, but when Embry revealed on Talking Dead that he’d originally auditioned for the pilot to play Rick, I erupted with laughter. It’s because I’m picturing Carter in Rick’s shoes, and Andrew Lincoln has immersed himself so well into the role of Rick that it’s impossible to imagine anybody else playing the part as well as he does.
I thought this episode was perfectly scored. Bear McCreary (assuming he still composes the show's music) really knocked it out of the park in capturing a suitably eerie sound for every scene, particularly when Daryl was riding his motorcycle and then a horde of walkers followed. Norman Reedus didn't break face, you could tell he wanted them to follow him, and it was going to plan, and he wasn't scared, and the music captured the creepiness of that perfectly.
The black-and-white was an interesting effect to use, but given this show’s huge attention to detail, particularly in visual style, it felt like it might have been a last-minute decision – later viewing of Talking Dead confirmed this theory, as they only changed their mind from desaturated colour midway through production – because it was simply black-and-white. It was the black-and-white filter on any basic video editing software. It felt flat, it wasn’t interesting to watch. When Tarantino uses snippets of black-and-white, it’s sort of grainy. It feels old and rough. It’s interesting to watch. It makes the film a character in itself, if that makes sense. The black-and-white in this episode was simply the same, with the colours turned grey. Now that I think of it, the comics are in black-and-white – maybe it’s a reference to that. (And a little side-note: this week's "Hey, it's that guy" appearance was Straight Outta Compton's Dr. Dre, Corey Hawkins.)
It was a good episode. The single criterion for a good episode of The Walking Dead is actually very simple: Was it exciting? Ask yourself that, and you single-handedly decide whether or not that episode was good. “First Time Again” was very exciting, so it was good. Now, what makes a great episode is a whole other can of worms I won’t get into yet because this was not a great episode. The first great episode of the season, I promise I’ll tell you why it’s great. But the premier was good, it was fun, it gave us closure on the season five finale’s open-ended turns that have been boggling our minds for the months since it aired, and most importantly, it’s got the season off to a refreshing start. They’re not keeping it going for the sake of it, like The Big Bang Theory. The show’s not in a rut – the showrunners still have a lot to say, and a lot of places they can take these characters, and I can’t wait to see where.
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