Review: Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 5
by Steve Tenney
Ok, I’m going to pitch a scenario at you and I want you to
respond with how you feel about how I told the scenario. Ready? Ok, I’ll wait…
Ready now? Good, here goes….
“So the other day I was surrounded by a never ending horde
of mindless killing machines and stuck in a Winnebago. But yada yada yada, here
I am. I am safe and sound, back at
home and no worse for wear.”
How does this make you feel? Do you find yourself saying, “
Well, I certainly have all the details I need on the topic and feel this is a
complete and detailed telling of events.”? If you do, you have legitimate
mental problems. Like, serious ones.
Most of us would respond with, “ Hey! Whoa whoa whoa. You ‘yada yada’d’
over the part I really care about! How did you survive?!?!” This is a normal
response. You would want to know the answer to survival. Well, this weeks
Walking Dead basically said, “Oh you have questions? Nah, we aren’t going to
answer them. Instead, here is an hour long episode about human beings being
shitty to each other and virtually NONE of your questions being answered.”
Thanks Kirkman, did Damon Lindelof give you plot advice on this one? (Sidenote:
F YOU DAMON LINDELOF!)
So, I could stop my review of this episode right here. 25
seconds into the start of the show, where the writers asked us to, effectively,
“just be cool” and suspend our intelligence and just believe that Rick was able
to get out of a seemingly impossible to escape situation WITH ZERO
REPRECUSSIONS. This dude was
trapped in a Winnebago with THOUSANDS of walkers surrounding him. HOW THE
BLODDY HELL DID HE GET OUT?!?!?!. We will never know and we just have to be ok
with that… Its insulting and pisses me off.
Anyways, so this episode is effectively devoted to showing
how the entirely soft population of Alexandria deals with the “New World”. They
have been shielded from the zombie holocaust thanks to an inventive, ingenious
engineer and his horrible crone of a politician wife. Yes, I said it. Deanna is the worst. She has no clue about
the new reality and when she is confronted with it, she effectively goes
catatonic and her response is to just walk away. She does somewhat redeem
herself later, but she is the reason that Alexandria is in this mess to begin
with. Soft, Soft, Soft… But the Alexandrians, now confronted with this reality
do exactly what you’d think humans faced with adversity would do. Turn into
horrible, shitty, selfish, defeatist losers. They steal from each other, commit
suicide, and get drunk. Way to go mankind. A few holdouts like Jessie and “New Doctor” (I refuse to
learn her name because she HAS to be dead soon) look giving up in the face and
decide they wont do it. For a second you think Spencer might be the new leader
the town needs, but instead we realize he is a giant liar and fake who
undoubtedly will die soon also. Cowards and frauds… humanity is lousy with them. Spencer and
Deanna, his mom, are a matched set. Fakes who want people to think a certain
way about them, but go on being douche bags all the same. Spencer confronts his
mother and blames her for the situation, rightfully so. She put her desire for a new better
world ahead of a solid grip on reality. But Spencer is no better, he is a
coward and a liar.
Meanwhile, Maggie has had enough. Glen isn’t back and if the
show writers aren’t going to do something about it, she is. She decides to go
look for her true love with the aid of Aaron. She doesn’t really want Aaron to
come, but he is so pained with guilt that he refuses to let her go alone. See
Aaron thinks everything is his fault, because the Wolves followed him back to
the camp. So they head out through a grate in a field somewhere, again great
job with the detailed and believable story telling guys, to find her true love.
They are just gonna follow the pipes and shoot out in the city and search for
Glen. Unfortunately they quickly encounter a harsh reality, the sewer is
completely disgusting. When trying to move a downed ladder, they encounter a
Shit Zombie that is all covered up in, well, shit. Aaron is injured while
moving the ladder so Maggie is left to dispense the lone Poo-Walker. Well, when
she makes her move she soon comes to the realization that she is dealing with
two Feces Roamers. I have to stop here and say that these walkers were
particularly heinous. Maggie tries to push one of them away and her hand sinks
into a chest cavitty of death and shit. Very rough. Eventually Aaron comes to
her aid and they dispense the stinky monsters together. I can only imagine the smell… Like
being stuck in small car with Mike “The Food Nerd” Quezada. No extra details,
he just smells. Anywho, Maggie and
Aaron continue on their way till the come to the end of the line. They can hear
walkers and soon realize this whole attempt has been a fruitless endeavor.
While they slowly come to this realization, we are confronted with the biggest
soap opera move the show has ever thrown at us. Maggie, the wife of our missing
hero Glenn is… PREGNANT! How hack
can this shit plot arc possibly get? Of course, Maggie has to be pregnant the
minute her husband disappears. It’s almost infuriating how cliché this is. We
as an audience have come to expect more.
The show has also thrown in a Dawsons Creek-esque story line
with two young men fighting over the affection of a lone teen female. I have
never met a cast that I have cared less about or wanted to see die more than
Carl, Ronny, and Enid. All three of them are just awful. Carl has been getting
people killed for 6 seasons, Ronny is a complete and total bitch, and Enid
might be a freaking WOLF. I would gladly feed them to awaiting zombie cleaning
crew hanging outside the gates. In short, Carl wants to know where Enid is,
Ronny is busy being a angsty wiener, and Enid is nowhere to be seen. Dawson and Pacey get into a shoving
match and Pacey tells Dawsons dad that he went to look for Joey, end of story.
New Doctor is having a hard time as well. She can’t seem to
not kill any of her patients these days and its wearing her out. She gets a
visit from Tara that cheers her up and suddenly she quits letting people die!
Oh what the love of a good woman can do. This romance was set up a while ago
and comes as no surprise. It’s actually a solid move. It gives both characters
depth and gives them something to live for. Unfortunately, New Doctor is softer
than baby shit and will undoubtedly be dead before the end of this half of the
season.
The lone member of the Alexandrians who will be around next
season, Jessie, is making strides to become a survivor in the new world. She is
dragging bodies and killing undead bitches because she’s a bad ass.
Unfortunately her oldest son, Paceyerrrrr Ronny is a whining pain in the ass
and her youngest, Sam, simply cannot comprehend what he has seen. I’m thinking
that Sam will eventually go Lizzie and become a murdering psychopath. Little
kids in the zombie world all become crazy murder monsters. That’s my new
rule. But Jessie… yeah, Jessie
will stick around for a while. After all, she watched her husband get shot in
the face a few days ago and proceeds to make out like a hungry dog with his
killer this week. She is clearly well adjusted and stable, definitely a
survivor.
The episode ends with Deanna going to the gate and defiantly
shouting back at the walkers. When she gets eaten AND SHE WILL GET EATEN, I
hope the walker who does it is all, “Remember when you defiantly shouted at us
from behind the protection of your fence? Well, now I’m eating your face.” As
she walks away we see blood trickle down the fence from the lookout post that
her son, Spencer, recently manned. I hope to god in heaven that coward is dead,
but I somehow doubt it.
We still don’t know what happened to Glen, Abraham, Sasha,
or Daryl, but I think we will have them safely back within the walls of
Alexandria before the holiday hiatus. Abraham has been sorely under utilized
this season, so I hope next week we get to see everyones favorite redheads
smiling face as he hacks his way through sea of walkers.
My final thought on the episode, and on the season as a
whole, is that this whole sequence is being used to remind us about the horror
of the zombie holocaust. The old gangs, and we as viewers, have become somewhat
desensitized to the zombie culture. By seeing a whole new group deal with the
reality of this new economy for the first time, we are reminded of the
amazingly high stakes in play every week.
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