Margaux and I were not crazy about this week’s episode of The Walking Dead. (Also, sorry this post is light on pictures. But putting “the walking dead now” into Google Images just brings up a bunch of dumb graphics comparing what the characters looked like in season 1 vs. what they look like now. It’s dumb.)
Trevor: I know we disagreed on last week’s “Here’s Not Here,” but I have a feeling we’ll be on the same page with this week’s “Now,” which moved about as slow as the walkers outside Alexandria. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a terrible episode, which I’m sure we’ll get to, but the last two weeks have shown us one thing: when The Walking Dead slows down, it slows down hard.
Margaux: It was a lot of speechifying and not a lot of action, it felt like it kept trying to get started only to continually stall for an hour. Overall, wasn’t the worst episode of The Walking Dead, but episodes like “Now” seem like its only purpose is to reinforce the shows theory of Rick Is Always Right, which we fuckin’ knew already. And this deep dive on the people of Alexandria only served to underline this point, so, we get it, they’re soft and weak, and now we’ve firmly established they also want to live. Which I felt went without saying.
Trevor: Rick spent a lot of time calling the Alexandrians pussies, which he does at nearly every opportunity. Before we get too deep into Pussy Town, VA, let’s talk about Rick, and by that I mean, how the fuck did he escape that RV? Do they plan on showing us? Should they? It’s one thing to shove Tyreese into a group of walkers and not show us how he gets out: that just shows what a badass Tyreese was (RIP). But doing it with two different characters is almost a bridge too far. Did that stick with you like it did with me?
Margaux: It wouldn’t have stuck as much if they hadn’t ended “Thank You” with that cliffhanger, it almost begs you to want to see how Rick gets out of the RV and back to the gates. At first, it didn’t bother me too much because I thought we’d see it at least reference verbally by Rick, but when it went completely glossed over, in addition to Rick giving the massacre the Wolves inflicted on Alexandria basically a hand wave, it bugged me. It also just felt too convenient for Rick, if he did manage to escape the RV unscathed, shouldn’t the walkers of been further behind him, not nearly nipping at his heels?
Trevor: I feel like TWD kinda has to show us that, but I also feel like they won’t, which would be incredibly lazy storytelling. We’re unlikely to get an explanation any time soon, probably because the next few episodes will be an answer about Glenn and then a supersized 120 minute episode featuring Daryl doing enough wheelies and backflips to satisfy Tumblr for months (I’m kidding, Tumblr is never satisfied).
Anyway, let’s talk about the Alexandrians! This was a good episode for Aaron. I liked that he took Rick’s side, I liked that he confessed what he feels is responsibility for the Wolves attacking, and I like that Rick basically waved that off because now isn’t the time to place blame. That being said, I still feel that with very few exceptions, there is “Rick’s group” and “the Alexandrians” and never the twain shall meet. Do you get the same sense of disconnect?
Margaux: Not necessarily, I think some of the Alexandrians will eventually end up joining Rick’s group, which ones obviously remains to be seen. I didn’t like Aaron’s speech though, it felt like Aaron was praying out loud to the The Walking Dead writer Gods, Look! I side with Rick! Please don’t kill me off! It felt very forced and much of what he said would of had more of an impact if it was left unsaid, it dampened the moment of Aaron’s discovery of his backpack and the look of sheer guilt all over his face that I would preferred to watch him deal with silently. But this episode had a lot of troll-y moments, including but not limited to the In Memoriam wall the Alexandrians felt the need to start ASAP. Adding Glenn’s name to the list, and then the back and forth with Aaron and Maggie about, “no you go. No, I’m going with you. No, I’m going. No, you can’t stop me” really didn’t need the amount of time spent on it that they did. Sure, could try and argue that it was a build up for Maggie’s reveal that she’s pregnant, but that was about as poorly a kept secret as Glenn not really being dead.
Trevor: I’m already 100% over the whole Glenn debate. If he turns out to be alive, the show will have lost a huge amount of crediblity. But that’s neither here nor there. Maggie and Aaron – a nice pairing that we haven’t seen often – got old to me as well. More than once I wanted to scream at the TV: “It’s okay to need help, Maggie, you’re surrounded by monsters!” There’s a fuckin time and a place for aggressive self-reliance (flashback to last season’s storm, where Daryl didn’t wake anyone up to help him hold the door). That said, I thought the sewage walkers were a great, scary effect.
Margaux: I loved the sewage walkers, which is an odd sentence to type out; it was the best gross out moment they could’ve given us if there weren’t going to be any outright zombie brain smashing. It had a more dangerous Toxic Avenger vibe to them that I really wanted to see more of, if only to stop Aaron and Maggie’s pointless back and forth. But I will say this, if Glenn truly is 100% dead, I hope Aaron helps Maggie raise that baby like some sort of post-apocalypse Object of My Affection spin-off.
Trevor: That’s actually a really good idea. And as tiresome as Maggie was at points last night, her breakdown over realizing the truth about Glenn was a great moment for Lauren Cohan (even if her accent gets a little broad at times – I don’t remember Hershel or Beth sounding like Foghorn Leghorn).
I think my favorite moment of “Now” was the spontaneous kiss between Denise and Tara. Merritt Wever (an Emmy winner for Nurse Jackie) is doing great work as Denise, and I loved the heartbreaking way she responded when Tara came to check on her: “Well…here I am.” It’s nice to see someone getting their shit together instead of losing it completely.
Margaux: I totally forgot that Tara is a lesbian until that moment, but kudos to Denise not letting a herd of walkers outside the gates dampen her gay-dar. I do enjoy Denise and Tara’s chemistry as a whole, and find it way more believable than Rick and Jessie, whose kiss at the end of “Now” made me roll my eyes so hard, I fear they may stay that way.
Oh, before I forget, what I hated most about Aaron’s speech (swear, this is the last time I’ll bitch about it) is that he actually called Rick’s plan a good plan! It’s not a good plan, hasn’t been and never will be because what about it worked out? It’s going to total shit and he’s cost way more lives than he’s saved with it. Aaron’s ass kissing should’ve been swapped out for a thank you to Carol for covering everyone’s ass, again, and definitely saving that town from very, very certain death. /end rant.
Trevor: Well I think at the end of the day, there could have been twice as many zombies at the gates, so that’s…good? I mean, talk about finding the silver lining, Jesus. I didn’t hate Aaron’s speech the way you did, but it’s hard not to argue with your points. You wanna talk stars?
Margaux: You don’t have any thoughts on creepy Ron and his strange brown nosing to Rick? I honestly thought he was going to shove Rick over the wall and watch him get ripped apart by walkers. That kid is creep city, population: him. Everything about Ron is deeply unsettling, he’s a baby sociopath, something about the way he looks at Carl and behaves in general in the community. And his confession that Enid was his girlfriend, implying that Carl “stole” her from him is the shit stabbings are made of.
Trevor: Oh yeah, I forgot about Ron. Probably on purpose. That kid sucks. It’s almost as if the writers give Rick’s group a bunch of bizarro versions of themselves to play off, just to show the audience how much better suited Rick’s group is to this life. In this case, Ron is bizarro Carl, and you’ve gotta be a real asshole to make Carl look like a tough guy. Your ace in the hole is “I’ll tell your dad”? Go away, Ron.
Margaux: I don’t think Ron’s tattletale angle is his real ace in the hole, his eyes are too dead and his emotions too non-existent for that to be true. He’s plotting something, he tells Rick that he stopped Carl from going out to look for Enid because “he’d die,” but logic would tell us that he probably wouldn’t mind if that happened to Rick or Carl, it’d be twofer if they both bit the dust.
Trevor: Good point. But it would be funny if he was just in the background of several scenes, telling on people. Little narc.
Margaux: He’s working double overtime out-douching Carl, and that is quite the feat. Both of Jessie’s kids are worthless, Sam the cookie lover couldn’t even make it part way down the stairs for his beloved treat because he’s too scared. Can you say, “dead already”?
And I thought Deanna would definitely be dead already, at the very least I thought she was going to kill herself this episode, but then a walker attacked her and it gave her the will to live AND hand over the reigns to the Ricktatorship. That’s some change of heart.
Trevor: To me, this is 2.5, maybe 3 star episode. It had its moments, but there was a lot of wheel-spinning going on.
Margaux: Trolling your audience with some overlong speeches peppered in doesn’t make an episode, 2.5 stars.
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