Monday, October 19, 2015

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 






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