*Spoilers ahead*
It’s been a rough couple episodes for Rick and his crew. In the past two episodes two fellow members have bitten (no pun intended) the dust. This all leads us to tonight’s episode which finds the group struggling to move on from it.
In a way, an episode like this is necessary, the group has to go through grief for a character’s passing, especially ones they are close to, and we got two in as many episodes. So we are treated to an episode filled with miserable people being angry at the world. Normally, this sounds like it would be a slog of an episode, but the show manages to showcase the three characters most affected by this and, mostly, hits it out of the park. The three, previously mentioned, characters are Daryl, Sasha, and Maggie and they are all experiencing the losses differently.
Daryl has been taking extended trips into the wood, mainly on the pretense of searching for food, to be alone and attempt to come to terms with what happened to Beth. This leads to a scene where he burns himself with a cigarette to see if he can feel, it’s not the most original way to grieve but that doesn’t really matter. In the end, Daryl ends up being the only one out of the three to actually give in to his feelings and break down.
Sasha has gone through a lot this season losing both her boyfriend, Bob, and her brother, Tyreese, it makes sense then that she would be the most hostile of the trio. Thankfully, the hostility doesn’t go toward to group so much as towards the shambling corpses that follow them as they walk down the long road to DC.
In one of the key points of the episode, the group waits for the herd to catch up to them on a bridge and casually toss the zombies off the side. Sasha, however, has so much pent up frustration that she can’t help but unleash it on the creatures that took her brother away. The whole group has to get involved and slay the remaining walkers and she gets a warning from Michonne that she’ll end up dead at the rate she’s going. Sasha gets the most of the trio to do this episode, which is welcome as her character is still a bit vague, she even gets to kill some roving dogs that are about to attack the group.
Then we get to Maggie, her portions this week are the most troublesome for two reasons. One, she suffers from a lack of character when removed from Glenn and while Glenn is around in this episode the focus is solely on her this time around. The second part is a bit weirder, her grief doesn’t feel completely earned. Unlike the others, Maggie seemed to have forgotten about Beth after the prison and only remembered her just in time to see her dead body. This makes her grief, while understandable, less compelling.
The group eventually gets caught up in a storm and must seek shelter in a nearby barn that Daryl finds. While there Rick tries to reassure everybody by telling them that they do what they have to and to tell themselves that “they are the walking dead.” It’s a good speech but the group doesn’t get to dwell on it too long before the actual walking dead show up at the barn and they all have to hold the door shut together.
The group manage to fend off the horde and make it til morning when the storm has passed. Maggie and Sasha head outside to find the surrounding area trashed by the storm and, right at the end of the episode, they encounter a “friend” who calls himself Aaron.
All in all, I’m pleased the show took the time to examine how some of it’s characters are dealing with the recent deaths and my hope is the show won’t just leave it there, as it has done before, I hope they continue to look in on all of the characters and actually make me care about them. They’ve done a decent job of that so far this season so I’ll remain optimistic for now.
As for the mysterious friend, we’ll have to wait til next week to see what his deal is.
Bits ‘n Pieces
- Rick finally makes his “Walking Dead” speech from the comics this week and I actually enjoyed this version better. It feels a lot less melodramatic and much more natural.
- Zombie of the Week: The female zombie in the truck was creepy mainly because of the implications her being tied up bring about.
- I love that even with very little dialogue Abraham and Eugene still feel more unique than half the cast.
- How did Aaron even survive that storm?
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