The Walking Dead is getting weird, in a good way. Margaux and I discuss it below. Enjoy.
Trevor: This show is really weird with a soundtrack, right? Especially when it’s a bunch of middle-aged white folks listening to Nine Inch Nails, like some weird form of sitting shiva.
Margaux: It was really distracting to have the cold montage blast NIN like some middle school dance. And that must be first time I’ve ever seen a middle-aged man CRY over a NIN song. No one cries at Trent Reznor’s prose, get it together, you’re a damn architect!
Trevor: I do like that five seasons in, the show is still willing to try new things and take chances. Unless I’m mistaken, this has been the first season where we heard any music other than Bear McCreary’s score. It might not always be successful – the effect is still kinda jarring, like “You got Mad Men in my Walking Dead” – but I applaud the effort nonetheless. And with that bit of non-criticism, I have officially outed myself as firmly in the tank for “Try,” because I thought this was a damn good episode.
Margaux: I was a little disappointed that Jessie/Pete storyline was just as it seemed, he’s an abuser but, the fact all of Alexandria turns a blind eye to it was an interesting turn, closer to how it usually happens in real life. Also, when Carol tells Rick that Sam has a deadbolt in his closet that his mom tells him to lock himself inside at night was a bit of a misdirection cause for a second I was still convinced that didn’t rule Jessie as the abuser.
Trevor: The Jessie/Pete/Rick triangle could use some nuance, sure – I’d like it a lot better if Pete was just a normal guy whose wife Rick wanted to steal. In my opinion, the best payoff of that whole storyline has been seeing the maternal way Carol acts towards Sam, who she threatened with death just a few episodes ago. So many actors on TV don’t get material that’s anywhere near as good as Melissa McBride’s gotten the last few years.
Margaux: You bring up a good point about wishing Pete was “just a normal guy” because, not to skip ahead too much, when Rick and Pete eventually tussle in middle of town, that whole sequence visually shows that Rick and Pete aren’t really that different. Pete smacks Jessie off him when she tries to stop the fight, Rick knocks down Carl when tries to do the same – only one is a surgeon though.
Trevor: Yeah, their similarity was well represented visually by having them be pretty evenly matched. I expected Rick to mop the floor with Pete, but he put up a good fight.
Margaux: Well, I think maybe Rick has been on the ‘inside’ a little too long to of won the fight outright. Like we learned in the scenes with Rosita and Michonne outside the walls of Alexandria, Michonne isn’t even carrying her sword with her – another jarring moment in “Try” – and her and Rosita talk about how “different” being out in the woods feels now. I don’t think the people the of Alexandria are the only ones who are “soft.”
Trevor: They’re definitely getting used to city life, for lack of a better term. I gotta say, for as much as I liked “Try” – and I really, really did – I’m still not sold on Sasha’s PTSD breakdown. I know she lost her boyfriend and her brother in short order, but it seemed like she just flipped a switch. Honestly, she’s becoming my least favorite character. I can only watch at her snap at people and tell them they don’t understand so many times. Girl is a crazy good shot, though. Holy shit.
Margaux: When Rosita and Michonne come across Sasha’s handy work, “back of the head, back of the head, she’s executing them,” it was a moment where I wish The Walking Dead was slightly in on its own self-serious joke. It felt so forced and David Caruso in CSI: Miami that almost expected someone to put a pair of sunglasses on.
I don’t buy Sasha’s mental breakdown for the reasons as you and I’m not sure what the point of making her into the new Andrea is. Okay, she’s lost some people who were very close to her but, as this show loves to repeat, that is just the way it goes now. So, are we ever going to find out what’s really driving Sasha’s mental break or is she just gonna get eaten before we find out? Cause this storyline is tired as hell.
Trevor: Glad we’re on the same page. When The Walking Dead does so much right, it really sticks out when something falls short. Everything else in “Try” was damn good. Even Carl had a good scene!
Margaux: Really? You thought all those Enid and Carl, zombie whimsy scenes were good? I was stifling laughter, I mean, I get Carl is finally a “normal” teen or whatever but, newsflash – I give zero shits about Carl’s life. And, what now, are we going to get a “Carl loses his virginity” episode now cause, hard pass on that please.
Trevor: I did like those scenes. Could the episode have survived without them? Yes, of course. But Carl and Enid hiding in the try was probably the closest that show is going to get to “sweet,” since everything has become so brutal. Although I do wonder how Carl fit his giant hat into that hollow.
Margaux: Maybe it was the sugary-ness of the scenes that made it feel out of place, hiding in a fuckin’ hollowed out tree read like a goddamn moment from a Nicholas Sparks book. Puke.
Moving on, I want to talk about those ‘W’s that keep popping on walkers foreheads. The ambiguously gay duo, Daryl and Aaron, find body parts scattered around on their recruitment run and find a woman who looks very recently murdered, tied to tree with a “W” carved into her forehead. Umm, terrifying much?
Trevor: Yeah, right now the Ws are TWD’s most interesting mystery. I’ve read speculation online that they’re not Ws, they’re Ms caved by Morgan, but I didn’t buy that when I first read, and “Try” should go a long way towards shutting those stupid fucking rumors down. Morgan isn’t exactly the kind of guy to tie someone to a tree and carve their foreheads. Unless he’s gone through some weird shit.
Margaux: When we last saw Morgan in “Clear,” he wasn’t the most mentally stable person in the post-apocalypse – he lost his son and wife and was living in an anti-walker shanty town. I wouldn’t rule out Morgan but I also don’t think it’s him, from the small Samuel L. Jackson-esque scenes he has had, it seems like Morgan is just trying to meet up with Rick. Or he’s already dead since we haven’t heard/about him in some time.
Trevor: I care way less about seeing Morgan again than I do about finding out who’s behind the Ws.
How cool was it to see Glenn totally put Nicholas in his place? Fuck Nicholas. I have nothing else to add to this.
Margaux: Yeah, Nicholas is a garbage person in any world and everything Glenn said to his face about how shitty he is and what a danger he is to everyone and himself was 100% warranted. So…blow it out your ass Nicholas. And for whatever it’s worth, it doesn’t seem like Deanna is convinced of his story of what happened to Aiden.
Trevor: Deanna is a smart lady. She knows Nicholas is made of diaper trash. She’s smart enough to see Rick is losing his goddamn mind, too.
Margaux: Rick going full-on Ricktatorship on the entire town of Alexandria went about as well as you thought it would. Actually, better, cause thank the stars, Michonne knocked him out cold before he made himself look crazier than he already did. But the damage is done, as far as I’m concerned.
Trevor: As far as the Alexandrians are concerned, too. You can’t un-wave a gun at the mayor. I love how straightforward TWD is about Rick’s craziness. They really don’t beat around the bush.
Margaux: Rick sort of showed his crazy-ass hand early to Deanna, too. When he approached her about Jessie initially, mourning at her sons grave no less, Rick made it no secret that he was all in favor of straight murdering Pete for being an abuser. But, Deanna comes at problems from a different angle, she likes to just exile people like the olden times. When Rick kept pressing his argument for a death sentence, you could tell that would simply never sit well with Deanna and that if he didn’t drop it, exile was in the cards for Rick and Co. Which, I think, is what added fuel to Rick’s crazy fire, his answer to authority he doesn’t respect is usually fuck it – YOLO.
Trevor: And this is pretty much Rick’s crusade, too. He has some moral support from Carol, but the others in the group (Glenn, Daryl, Michonne) definitely do not have his back when it comes to the whole “taking over the city” plan. Even Carl isn’t in his corner on this one.
Margaux: There is only so much goodwill Rick can expect the group to have leftover so, if it comes down a Rick or all of you situation, I don’t know that Rick will have anyone to walk out the gates with.
Trevor: Hell of a transformation. When I get mad at this show, episodes like “Try” remind me why I like it. It’s not a perfect episode, but it’s a good showcase for the lengths that TWD will go to to demonstrate the toll that this life takes on people.
You wanna talk stars?
Margaux: I really enjoyed “Try,” it’s building to something with the increase of walkers around the compound, Ws appearing more frequently, but there are still a few storylines that aren’t quite landing. “Try” was a solid four and ½ star episode, the end of the Ricktatorship is nigh.
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