by Ben Sherlock
OK, this was a great episode. This episode knocked my socks off. It was action-packed, emotional, mysterious, terrifying, and it even raised a few questions amid the chaos. All right, let’s start at the beginning, where we got Enid’s tragic backstory. I feel like I’m the only person in the entire world who even likes Enid, but she’s a misunderstood kid, an orphan, figuring out her teen angst in the middle of all the fucked-up zombie apocalypse riff-raff. I know I’m definitely the only one who likes Carl, or can even stand Carl. But for what the character is, whether you like him or not, you can’t deny Chandler Riggs is doing a great job of bringing him to life. When he saw Ron with the girl, you could see the jealousy in his eyes. The pain was real. Maybe something’s going on off-camera between those three. So anyway, it looks like now, unfortunately, we’ve got a Carl/Enid/Ron love triangle situation to deal with. With any luck, the writers will deal with it in true Walking Dead fashion and have Ron killed off in a couple of episodes’ time (if the Grimes family would just stop saving him) so we don’t have to deal with that shit. Speaking of Ron, he isn’t exactly a nuanced, three-dimensional character. He seems like a comedy sketch of a rebellious teenager whose mother just wants to cut his hair. I bet we could sell that to SNL. When he stormed out at the end of that scene, in my head I heard him shout, “This house is a prison! On Planet Bullshit!” And while we’re on the subject of dialogue I created in my mind, when Morgan saved Gabriel, during the silent pause I heard him say, “Gotta look out for a brother.”
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| So pissed that we didn't get to see this showdown. |
So many questions about Morgan and the Wolves. Was he previously associated with them? They know him, they share an averseness to guns, he was reluctant to kill any of them, or even hurt them, despite what they were doing. He was just asking them to leave. And when he finally made an appearance promised after the credits of the season five premier in the season five finale, about six whole months later, he ran into a couple of Wolves in the woods. But if I recall correctly, they were all playing it cool, and Morgan didn’t want to hurt them then either, they just forced his hand.
I knew the horn at the end of “First Time Again” had something to do with the Wolves, but the revelation that it wasn’t intentional was a total curveball, as was a machete-wielding savage taking out the housewife who’s having a sneaky cigarette as Carol watches. That was really something. It was one of the scariest moments in the series’ history, completely out of the blue and “WTF”-inducing. Melissa McBride was great in this episode as she finally got to drop the innocent cookie baker act and let loose as the closet one-woman army that is Carol. The Wolves’ invasion that followed reminded me of The Purge a lot. When the world goes to shit, all crime becomes legal, so it’s only natural the writers would do a Purge episode, just like Rick & Morty did the very same year.
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| Maybe she'd be a good fit for Rick after all... |
I'm starting to think Rick and Jessie may be quite well-matched for each other after all, after she showed her crazed homicidal edge in this episode. Turns out she'll kill someone who threatens her family, unless it's her husband in which case she'll defend his actions. And while we're on the subject, there was no Rick this week, unfortunately, but with such an engaging story brimming with pulsating action, and with other great characters like Morgan and Carol and Tara and Rosita featured so prominently, I hardly noticed our sheriff was absent from the proceedings. Rick-less episodes that you notice are the ones that don’t involve any of his group, like the near-unbearable trio of Governor-centric episodes that redeemed themselves by being bookended by a heart-pounding cliffhanger that saw the Governor standing just outside the prison gates, watching it, and the fantastic “Too Far Gone.” But we’re not here to talk about season four, we’re talking about season six’s “JSS.” I won’t spoil for you what the titular acronym stands for because, while it’s not shocking, it is a sweet moment and almost completely re-evaluates the point of the story.
It puzzled me that Morgan was the only one to return, but wondering what Rick, Michonne, Daryl and co. are getting up to has me intrigued for next week, which I assume will jump back to the honking of the horn and show us why they couldn’t make it back. What I’m loving about this season so far is that the writers have addressed the criticism of the Alexandria storyline that it’s boring and without danger by sending thousands of walkers its way and having the place invaded by the Wolves, a savage cult. I throw the word “savage” around a lot to refer to people who flout the rules of etiquette, but I mean it when I say the Wolves are savages. The introduction of the Wolves has been a long time coming, by the way. It's been teased for years, and they're not even in the comics, so we had no idea what to expect, and these insane psychotic murderers did not disappoint.
For an episode in which innocent people were mauled and attacked in almost every scene, such a gnarly, gory, violent, visceral episode, it was beautifully directed. It’s no surprise – episode director Jennifer Chambers Lynch is the daughter of a director who’s mastered creepy stuff on film, David Lynch. Ryan Murphy may think he’s the master of horror on television, but with David bringing Twin Peaks back to our screens and his daughter behind The Walking Dead cameras, Lynch still reigns supreme in that department. This week's "Hey, I know her" appearance was Merritt Wever, Schmidt's annoying and way-less-cool-than-Cece ex from New Girl.
So, this has been a tough review to write as I’ve tried to convey all the great moments whilst spoiling as little as I can, but I simply can’t stress enough how great this episode was. After a suitably short and tense setup, it was all-action, but then it wasn’t just action. Calling it all-action doesn’t do it justice. It was jump scares and tension and character growth and intrigue and mystery and twists and turns. There was so much going on. And I can’t wait until next week when we’ll see what kept Rick, Daryl, Michonne, Abraham etc. from coming back in the hurry Morgan did.
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