Walking Dead Episode Review 6.3 Thank You

Those are the words I'm should be saying after tonite's episode because I got a few things I wanted, but not necessarily the way I wanted them to happen. I'm distinctly reminded of my favorite of the three Matrix movies, The Matrix Reloaded. Watch this excerpt and keep it in the back of your mind.

This episode is another part of the Herd sequence. Now we're back with Rick and his crew right after the horn blared. After a quick conversation on codec with Daryl and Sasha/Abraham, they deduce that half of the herd has split off from the group Daryl and Sasha/Abraham. Rick leaves Michone and Glenn in charge with getting the Alexandrians back, while he goes back for the RV to lead the other half of the herd back. Rick mentions to try and save them all but that not all of them (the Alexandrians) are going to make it back. 

A couple of the alexandrians get injured and one gets bit, but is able to shake it off. They end up in the town where Nicholas on an earlier run abandoned his crew. they shack up in a pet shop when they get surrounded by zombies. Daryl decides to double back to Alexandria to see if there is anything he can do, having faith that Sasha and Abraham can lead the herd away. Glenn and Nicholas go to try and set the feed store on fire to draw the attention of the walkers away from the pet shop boys. 

Alexandria's runner Heath has a bit of a spat with Michone over what Rick had said. He wants to bring everybody back when the injured folks ask to be left behind. Michone echos that sentiment, but defends Rick because He's been out there and she's been out there having to do things that make them afraid of themselves afterwards. it's a pretty good scene there. The gun fire from the Alexandria schermish draws a chunk of the walkers past the pet shop, but 

Two walkers wake up behind a locked door and make a huge racket. They eliminate the threat inside, but it attracts the attention of the outside walkers and they are quickly swarmed. Michone and company lead a desperate gambit out the pet shop and lose two of the remaining Alexandrians. but are able to escape behind a steel cage door. Meanwhile the feed store is already burned to the ground when they arrive leaving Glenn and Nicholas to a corner. The two unload their ammo before assending a dumpster. Nicholas has one of those moments where everything slows down and then Glenn shakes him out of it. Nicholas then says "Thank you," puts a gun to his head and blows his brains out. the momentum knocks Glenn off the dumpster as well and he is ripped to shreds by zombies. It is GLORIOUS!

Rick makes it to the RV and speeds off towards his destination, while Michone Heath and the other guy make it back to Alexandria, with Heath having an interesting moment looking at his face in the water. Rick tells them to continue the mission even though they hear the gunfire back home. Daryl heads back and reunites with Sasha after losing contact with Rick. Who is attacked in the RV by the Wolves, but not just any Wolves, the ones the Morgan let live in the previous episode. the leader of the ones he let go, took a gun and that one led the attack on Rick. He kills them but inadvertanly damaged the engine when he shot one behind him. the herd descends upon the RV with Rick unable to get the vehicle started as the episode ends.

So we get both Glenn and Nicholas dying tonite and while I should feel bad for Glenn, I can't find myself feeling this way. He had the chance to justifiably kill Nicholas during the season Five finale when Nicholas lead him into the woods and tried to kill him more than once. If that person ends up getting you killed it's your fault. 

Yea, I was not expecting to kill both Glenn and Nicholas in the same episode. I figured this would linger on longer in to the season or even not at all and Glenn would die in a more dignified manner, (kinda like how he did in the comics) after Maggie was revealed to be pregnant although they can still do that and introducing Heath as another runner kinda made Glenn expendable. 

This also harks back the whole cause and effect thing that the Merovingian was babbling about. This has been going on in these three episodes since they are so exclusively connected. Things that are happening in other places are affecting what happens here and visa versa. It is also becoming more prevalent now that Morgan and his pacifist ways have arrived. Rick and his crew have generally had more of a kill or be killed mentality. The wolves attack caused the whole herd separation issue, which caused Rick to go off on his own and Glenn to get stuck in the town and get killed and so on. 

My bet based on the trailer for next week is that we're going to get a full Morgan's backstory episode and leave our jaws on the floor waiting to find out Rick's fate. Hopefully these won't be as stupid and unnecessary as the Governor's two solo episodes were in Season Four.

In light of the deaths of #2 & #1 on the Who I Want to Die List, I'm suspending the list until more people come along and get on my nerves. Most of those people these days are the Alexandrians and the show kills most of them off before I can learn their names.

Those are my thoughts, feel free to comment below

C.J. Foxx 

Author of Super-Hero Bowl VI
@CJFoxxAuthor on Twitter
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Walking Dead Episode Reviews 6.2: JSS

So after the Horn that just wouldn’t die what horrible fate would ensue for our heroes? We’ll have to wait until next week for that because JSS was the other half of the first episode. While Rick and the boys were leading the Zombie herd around Alexandria was attacked by the Wolves.

The opening of the episode was a reveal of the events leading Enid (Carl's Girlfriend) to Alexandria doing anything under the sun to survive, even eating a turtle. Could she be related to Shredder?

She keeps writing the three letters “JSS” anywhere she can before she winds up at the gates of Alexandria.

After a few minutes of conversations between the citizens of Alexandria and Father Gabriel admitting he was wrong about Rick. A look out gets hit with a Molotov cocktail and the attack begins. All the poor defenseless citizens get cut to bits by the savage wolves who repeatedly attack their victims even after they are dead. A few of them do try and capture citizens which is kinda inconsistent. Carol reverts to Snake Pliskin mode and starts shooting everyone in her path and dons a disguise to further infiltrate and ultimately keep the wolves from the Armory.

Morgan returns and engages the wolves in combat, trying to scare them off rather than kill them. He runs into Carol and the two have a conflict of interest while they try and push back the assailants. Morgan doesn’t believe in killing anyone and Carol does without hesitation, even when one of the subdue wolves is trying to convey info to Father Gabriel and Morgan. The two separate and during a skirmish with Morgan and the wolves, he convinces them to leave, but not before one of them sneaks off with a gun from a fallen Alexandrian.

The whole horn was kinda of an accidental occurrence. Spencer, the sniper in the bell tower sees a tractor-trailer truck (presumably coming with a payload of Walkers in the back) and unloads a bevy of shots and causes it to crash into the wall. The driver in the truck is killed in the crash and the horn goes off. Spencer goes to tend to it where he meets up with Deanna and Maggie. They are able to shut off the horn. It’s unclear whether this had any effect on the zombie herd.

Carl and Enid spend the episode together until she disappears leaving a note with the words “just survive somehow,” on it. After the battle, Carl hears an alarm going off indicating that his lasagna is done. I’ll call Garfield over.

Morgan heads back to a house and has an encounter with the wolf he met at the end of the last season who realizes that he won’t kill him, instead Morgan knocks him out.  Carol and the other survivors efforts eventually send the remaining wolves running but not without much causality Unaware of the new danger approaching.

This was another solid effort although I preferred last week’s episode, with the strategy planning. It was kinda of a live or die test for most of the Alexandrian and like the plague bit from season 4, most of the extras were killed off. No one really important died, just a few of the cannon-fodder characters whose names I didn’t bother to learn for that reason. Other minor characters such as the doctor lady had a step up moment (after Eugene telling that you don’t want to be a coward, echoing his own experiences) when she tried to save the life of and Rick’s Girlfriend savagely killing an invader to protect her son.

It also left things up in the air with the whole Zombie herd thing and that builds suspense towards next week, although I think now that the horn is out, they’ll be able to fix things quickly.

I really enjoy the tension between Carol (Rick as well, but Carol in this episode) and Morgan who have conflicting viewpoints about what to do with the attackers. Morgan doesn’t want to see any more human life be extinguished and Carol who will kill anyone that threatens her or comrades. I’m curious to see the direction this story arc. Morgan’s line about Carol not liking to kill was interesting.

The wolves are amateur hour villains. These guys are pathetic compared to the earlier rivals Rick’s company have faced off and a large part of that is because they don’t have guns! The only reason they caused as much damage as they did is because of the expendable nature of Alexandia’s citizens. Gareth’s group were cunning enough to trap a bunch of Rick’s group in a train car and the Governor at one point had a bloody Tank! Those were far more effective antagonists and the wolves would have been completely annihilated had more of Rick’s group been there. Attacking while they were separated may have been the plan but you wouldn’t know it by the way these guys behave. Many will continue to bash the brains of someone they’ve killed until Carol walks up behind them and shoots them point blank. I thought the one Morgan encountered last season was a blockhead, but he’s a genius compared to the rest of them.

“Who I’d Like to See Die List!” Wait, they killed off half of Alexandria which was awesome but nobody who was on the list last week even appeared this week's episode so we'll postpone an until next week when everyone is back.

Those are my thoughts, feel free to comment below

C.J. Foxx 

Author of Super-Hero Bowl VI

@CJFoxxAuthor on Twitter

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Walking Dead Episode Review 6.1: First Time Again

Welcome back to the world of Zombies

I did not take a detour through the Walking Dead Los Angeles, I mean Fear the Walking Dead. I'm not particularly fond of the whole spinoff series of the main one Concept, like all the Law & Orders, CSIs, NCIS', etc. It's worse when they are all episodic shows in nature and it becomes derivative in nature. Maybe I'll watch Fear of the Walking Dead at some point, but I'm not going to go out of my way to watch that bloody show when I can write my own Bloody book...

Tonite's episode was one of the best in the series even though there wasn't a whole lot to it. Unlike last season's finale when it felt like they were just stretching things out unnecessarily to fit 90 minutes. This one actually needed the whole amount of time. Immediately upon viewing we are thrusted into the middle of a gargantuan herd of zombies, wedged behind tanker trucks. Rick is leading the group with some kind of a plan that they have to execute earlier than schedule to lead the herd of zombies away from heading to the camp.

The whole sequence felt reminiscent of the barricading scene from Dawn of the Dead where our heroes block the doors to the shopping mall with trucks. I was itching to hear the bitchin Goblin soundtrack that played. This is on a much bigger scale with some epic images including Daryl leading a mass of zombies on his Harley.

The large caper portion was mixed in with B & W filtered scenes that encompassed the events from the end of the previous season until now, almost like a bridge so to speak and for the most part they blended the two stories together quite well. This part echoed the Christopher Nolan masterpiece Momento albeit the story here is told in a linear fashion.

There was a mini mutiny going on with Carter, (who I swear just showed up for this episode) wanting to kill Rick to take back the camp.  He thinks that Rick's plan is going to get people killed.  Eugene bumbles into the discussion and then Carter nearly kills him until Rick steps in and turns the tables on Carter with a gun to his head.  Rick spares him and eventually as the plan unfolds they shake hands with Carter admitting that he was wrong.

Shortly thereafter, Carter is bitten by a zombie and Rick ends up knifing him in the head when he wouldn't keep quiet. In a previous scene, Rick had admitted to Morgan that he spared Carter because he'd die anyway.

The episode ends with the plan going perfectly until a blaring horn goes off sending the herd straight to Alexandria. Great cliffhanger finish! Now will they keep it up? That remains to be seen.

Let’s update the “Who I’d Like to See Die List!”

#3 Sasha, Last Season #1

She and Abraham are hanging out together now and it seems like each of them have deathwishes now. This could be an intriguing arc if they actually give Abraham more than a couple of minutes of screen time each episode. 

#2 Glenn - Last Season, #3

Glenn lets Nicholas lives and then is trying to play boss over him since he's covering up for the events of last season's finale. He's just annoying again with the "I should be delivering Pizza's line."

#1 Nicholas – Last Season Unlisted

He's just a little shithead and it's going to take a lot for me to forget that he killed Everybody Hates Chris. They used the comparison of Tara being on the wrong side when Hershel was killed last season, but Tara didn't actually kill anybody, Nicholas did and somebody needs to acknowledge that!

Those are my thoughts, feel free to comment below

C.J. Foxx 

Author of Super-Hero Bowl VI
@CJFoxxAuthor on Twitter
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http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GGTL79M