The Walking Dead is back and uneven as ever. Margaux and I discuss “No Way Out.”
Trevor: I found myself enthralled by the cold open of The Walking Dead “No Way Out.” For a second there, it looked as though the leader of Negan’s thugs might take out Sasha, or Abe, or both. I felt genuine tension. It seemed as though a character – a main character, no less – might die in a brutal, offhand fashion. Has the show gotten its groove back? I thought. I dared to hope. Then Daryl blew up everyone with a fucking rocket launcher, Abe dropped a one-liner, and I remembered that The Walking Dead has long since given up any narrative stakes. “No Way Out” wasn’t a bad episode – when it was good, it was pretty damn good – but it was uneven in the way seemingly unique to this season of the show. What are your thoughts?
Margaux: “No Way Out” was the finale The Walking Dead needed (and the audience deserved), but it was unfortunately three months late. I definitely think the cold open was the most suspenseful and intriguing scene in the entire episode, I actually really enjoyed the head henchman and his distaste for awkward carpools because you’ve just murdered someone’s friends. But everything after that, probably because I spent a lot of time digging up internet theories of what was to come, sort of played out exactly how I suspected it would. Though we could argue the realism (and near perfect timing) of Daryl killing of some random guy in the crew, assembling the rocket launcher, and blowing those biker assholes to bits (why they didn’t just…DRIVE THROUGH THEM IN THEIR GIANT GAS TRUCK, I DO NOT KNOW), I think more than anything, Walking Dead is doing something they almost never do: laying groundwork for upcoming episodes. Because you don’t just make a bunch of people go boom and NOT get some blowback for that.
Trevor: I found myself wondering that too: how’s Negan going to react? Then I realized: is he? We don’t know how involved he is in the day-to-day operations of his gang (called the Saviors, if I’m not mistaken, but I never got that far in the books so I’m not sure). Is he going to know who they went out to rob? It raises a lot of questions, but what the hell, let’s give the show the benefit of the doubt. The Internet has been abuzz with mentions of Negan ever since the Governor died, so TWD knows it can’t afford to shit the bed with his portrayal (especially in the wake of the Glenn fiasco).
This show still has a massive problem, though: Daryl Dixon. Daryl is the show’s coolest character (non-Carol division), and also its worst (non-Morgan division). I don’t mean “worst” in the way I’d apply it to, say, Sam or Father Gabriel, I mean that Daryl’s invincible badass persona undermines any sense of realism the show tries to establish.
Margaux: I think that if someone or something is going to take out Daryl, it’s not going to be a walker or some haphazard Alexandrian, it’s going to be someone as batshit insane as (I’ve been told) Negan. Though it is hard to speculate too much about Negan since neither you nor I ever made it to that point in the comics, but by all accounts, Negan is just super evil Rick. He doles out justice based on mood and a set of shaky morals, and unlike Morgan, has absolutely no problem with taking a life – or multiple lives. And clearly there’s some trickle down to his followers as well. All that being said, and considering the somewhat pointless (at least at the time) firefight Team Sad (Daryl, Sasha, and Abe) got into last season that ultimately lead to Daryl getting his crossbow stupidly snatched, will end up supporting Negan’s reason for bashing in Daryl’s skull with Lucille. I mean, at this point, it’s all but confirmed that Norman Reedus is a goner (he’s going to have his own AMC motorcyle travel show soon).
Trevor: I’d have a hard time believing that this show would ever kill off Daryl – according to a lot of Hot Topic and Etsy merchandise, the response would be no less than a full-scale riot. My point being, it would take serious balls, the kind I thought the show had when Glenn “died.”
Speaking of balls: we saw some in “No Way Out”! Like I said, I didn’t hate this episode. Most of the stuff happening in Alexandria was pretty engrossing. I particularly liked the subplot of Denise and the Wolf. It seemed like a condensed version of the philosophical debate that “Carol vs. Morgan” wanted to be. I was hoping that they’d make it out, and that would be last we see of Denise until season 8, when she’d show up with fucked-up teeth and a W carved in her forehead.
Margaux: I really liked the arc between Denise and the Wolf, too. In the end, the Wolf didn’t spew any philosophy that wasn’t too far off from what the group likes to tell itself, and in the end, the Wolf proved that he wasn’t total shitbag – he sacrifices himself so Denise could make it to safety. Even his pump up speech to her when they try to make a break for the exit was strangely touching – I mean, he wasn’t wrong and I think the time she was forced to spend with him changed her for the best. And yes, we could’ve cut out about 99% of the Carol/Morgan moot point argument and just had Denise captured and it would’ve been a way more interesting point that got made. The three month break between the mid-season finale actually helped smooth over how plain dumb Carol and Morgan were being. And Morgan saying “sorry” to the Wolf when he killed him as a walker, UUGGGHHH SHUT UP MORGAN.
Trevor: I wrote in my notes, “Morgan is the villain of this show.” I want Carol to kill him more than I wanted those walkers to kill Sam’s stupid ass.
Which they did! That’s what you get for going “Mom? Mom?” over and over again while surrounded by zombies. Then Jessie got it too! Don’t get me wrong, Jessie died largely so Tumblr could once again make heart emojis over “Richonne,” but it was still a ballsy move on the show’s part. Then Ron – FUCKIN RON, I think is his actual name – shot Carl through the eye before getting taken out by Michonne. That whole sequence was pretty incredibly done. Like I said, when “No Way Out” is good, it’s pretty damn good.
Margaux: I thought we were going to start the episode with Sam getting eaten by a walker, so I was surprised Sam lived as long as he did, I mean he was even offered a way out – he could just go to the church with Father Gabriel and baby Judith and cry and listen to his creepy 45s in peace, but noooooo. When it finally did happen, it was awesome – he got his head bitten into for Christ’s sake, that’s BRUTAL. But that corny ass montage of moments of Jessie basically smiling and looking away from, I assume Rick, was unbelievably lame. Not only did I never, for one second, buy their love story, but can we just…not? Was she ever that important? Michonne katana-ing Ron’s ass was fantastic, that kid was a garbage person from the jump, and the fact that he was even aiming at Rick to begin with, lolz 4 dayz. CHILD, PLEASE. But at least we got rid of that dead weight family all in one fell swoop. Goodbye and good riddance.
Trevor: And now we don’t have to deal with any lame-ass grieving plotlines. Nice job, Walking Dead. I will say this for Alexandrians: they finally did something worthwhile. It was pretty stirring to see the whole town rally around Rick and help stave off the walkers; I particularly liked Eugene’s line “No one gets to clock out today.” Eugene has been underused since the DC plotline fizzled out, but Josh McDermitt always makes the most of his screen time.
Margaux: Why is Eugene even still here? I mean, really. Can we examine this? I know The Walking Dead has a huge ensemble cast and not everyone can get an entire episode of character development, but Eugene should of died when Abe beat the shit out of him in the middle of the road. Like, golf claps for finally doing something…literally ANYTHING AT ALL other being useless and the odd bit of pop culture reference, but his reasoning to help out is because “it’s a story everyone is going to tell” and he, in essence, wants to be a part of history. I get that, but we could of had at least one (or even two) more characters die. Speaking of near death, are we just going to pile on the Glenn death fake outs now? Is that going to be his “thing” because it’s already annoying.
Trevor: Agreed. The show is just flat-out cheating to keep its main cast alive. And yes, it is very annoying. This was definitely an episode of peaks and valleys – like I said, pretty indicative of the quality of season six as a whole.
Margaux: I understand keeping Rick and Carl alive, they’ll shoot that kid ten more times and he’ll live to tell the tale, but Rick’s emotional bedside chat with an unconscious Carl not only sounded like way too similar to Aladdin’s “A Whole New World,” but if Carl wasn’t already in a coma, he would’ve been put in a one by that speech. On the bright side, maybe Carl will finally lose his goddamn sheriff hat, why he’s sporting it well into his awkward teens years is BEYOND ME.
Unrelated but somewhat relevant, I think Glenn and Maggie are going to adopt Enid. Glenn and Enid’s little exchange in the church when they’re trying to find supplies to save Maggie, I wrote down: “ADOPTION, ADOPTION, ADOPTION!” It’s as subtle as a walker eating Sam alive. OH! I can’t believe I nearly forgot to mention this, but I love that Sam heard Carol’s voice in his head, “they’re going to tear you apart, bit by bit,” right before he met his fate. SWEET DREAMS, SAM.
Trevor: He died like he lived: being scared shitless by Carol Peletier.
To me “No Way Out” is a 3.5-star episode. It wasn’t as bad as a bad episode, and not as good as a good episode – but it was more good than bad. See that word salad? That’s why I get paid the big bucks.
Margaux: Is 3.5 a solid B? Because that’s what “No Way Out” was to me, they didn’t totally fumble it or isolate its audience too much by telling an hour long origin story co-starring a goat, but like you said, there were valleys. Lots of them. Daryl saving the day with a the lake of fire only served to underline the fact that they should set that fuckin’ quarry on fire in the first fuckin’ place, but I digress. I shouldn’t focus on what we don’t have, but what we do, and what we had in “No Way Out” was a wholly decent episode that will hopefully pave the way for more interesting episodes to come and fingers crossed, a thoroughly insane villain in Negan because that’s what this show needs now.
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