Margaux and I had very different feelings on last night’s The Walking Dead.
Trevor: I didn’t think it was possible, but in scaling down the action from last week’s “Not Tomorrow Yet,” The Walking Dead was still able to maintain its tension and remain engrossing. I really liked “The Same Boat,” but that would have been pretty easy to predict. I mean, it was basically a Carol bottle episode with a great guest star, what’s not to like? How did you feel about the episode?
Margaux: Um, there was a hell of a lot not to like. First of all, it was straight up not a well-written episode. How many times are we gonna drag back in Carol’s backstory? We didn’t need to hear again in order to get that Paula is a telegraph of Carol. Second of all, it was snoozefest for first half of it, and all the action that did follow was the typical in its frustration. I do like that Maggie went all Rambo: First Blood on everyone, but that time jump did no one any favors. If we can’t see it on screen, it’s just fan fiction, and Carol’s internal struggle with getting back in touch with her humanity doesn’t have the gravitas The Walking Dead thinks it does. All “The Same Boat” did was heavily allude to the death of Carol, and after all the brilliant work they’ve done with her character, if they kill her off for having a momentary personality crisis it’d be incredibly annoying.
Trevor: I gotta say, I love it when you and I have wildly different takeaways from an episode. It shows that no matter how much wheel-spinning The Walking Dead indulges in, we can still find passion with which to talk about it.
I agree that we don’t need more of Carol’s backstory – the show has ably demonstrated how her abusive past doesn’t define her – but I did like the parallel between her and Polly, who seemed like an alternate-universe version of Carol. Polly had lost her family too, and I buy Carol’s internal crisis more because I think in Polly Carol sees what she might have become had she let the apocalypse warp her and not forge her. I also like what Alicia Witt did with the role. (Side note: Witt’s IMDb page says the character’s name was Polly, but it sure sounded like “Paula” on the show. I’m going to defer to IMDb and call her Polly.) (Double side note: Margaux just double-checked and Witt did in fact play Paula. She is Paula from now on.)
Margaux: I liked that Paula was a worthy adversary, only difference between her and Carol was that she (and the Saviors) know they’re the bad guys, but this crew was definitely the B-team. But through this smaller, surviving subset, we find that we may only be scratching the surface with the Saviors, between the elaborate walkie-talkie Military code and the safe house, Rick’s group has really underestimated what they’re up against.
Trevor: I liked seeing the inner workings of the Saviors. It was a much different approach to last week’s episode, where we saw how Rick’s group handled a threat. Now we get to see how the Saviors handle a threat, and yeah, the group is totally unprepared. Notwithstanding the fact that Paula was the only one with a good head on her shoulders, the others seemed, if not as capable, then just as sadistic, which is a scary quality. Paula was hard, but not dumb. People like that are strong adversaries.
Margaux: She was a little dumb, she didn’t see through Carol’s act (or at least, I think Carol was putting on her suburban mom persona) and kept antagonizing Carol by calling her a ‘scared bird’. And Paula did spent an awful lot of time with her villainous pontificating, it was fucking exhausting; the chick with the missing pinky and boyfriend who was exploded by Daryl was slightly more interesting, but the chain smoking Mom (I dunno, Paula yelled Mom at her a couple times, so I’m going with it) was by far the best character of the trio (that prick with the shot off arm doesn’t count, that guy can suck exactly one million dicks). Wheezing and short breathed trying to finish off a walker, or telling Carol that the least of Maggie’s pregnant woes is second hand smoke, Mom was the only redeeming person on the B-team.
Trevor: I’m still Team Paula, but that’s possibly because I’m Team Alicia Witt in General, but I will concede that Mom got in one of my favorite lines: “We are all Negan.” It’s something that was repeated later by Primo, Rick’s hostage, and it adds a creepy, cultish dimension to the Saviors. They aren’t just mercenaries, they’re straight-up brainwashed, and conviction is a scary thing. My only concern is that TWD is building up Negan so much that I worry it won’t be able to deliver. But I trust Scott Gimple (for the most part) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, so hopefully this worry will turn out to be unfounded.
Margaux: The way I see it, they’re letting Rick’s group dig a big enough hole that will force Negan to show up, and the only people who will be surprised will be Rick and the gang. When Carol tells Paula the reason why they launched a full scale attack on the Savior’s, it sounded weak even to her – oh, we murdered you and your friends in your sleep is because we blew up your recon group. I mean, not only did Carol give them away by telling her this, it made their massacre seems like overkill, pun intended. To Negan’s eyes, this will seem like three separate, unnecessary attacks; the blown up biker crew, the satellite house, and safe house.
Trevor: Well, as Mom told Carol, “You’re not the good guys.” This episode wasn’t perfect, but at the end of the day it put Melissa McBride front and center, which has seldom been bad for the show. Unfortunately, TWD has a habit of featuring cast members heavily when they’re about to get killed off. A lot of people have been thinking Daryl will take Glenn’s place at the business end of Negan’s bat, but “The Same Boat” makes a strong case for Carol going down instead. Which would be a shame, and yeah, it would sour my feelings toward this episode. I guess we’ll wait and see.
I can’t remember us being this divided about an episode since “Here’s Not Here,” so what I’m proposing is: two different scores. Radical, I know, but hear me out! I have the floor! I’ll give it my grade, you give it yours? Unless they’re close enough that we can meet in the middle and be happy with it.
Margaux: Look, you don’t have to make things so complicated and shit, I didn’t outright hate the episode, it’s not even the worst episode of the series or this season. I was only disagreeing with your point of it being a great episode – it’s not. We’ve gotten a lot of really wonderful Carol-centric episodes, one of them spurned our favorite nickname for her. With that being said, the bar is set very high, and “The Same Boat” didn’t not stick the landing. Well, the landing, sure – minus the awkward, surely sweaty hug with Daryl at the very end, but the “you good?” line is the dumbest non-concern greeting ever, but that’s a personal pet peeve. I DIGRESS. What I had gripes with was the fact that after Carol had her point rightly proven in the debate of Morgan v Wolf, now she’s suddenly questioning herself after aggressively never questioning herself. If she started to feel poorly about having serial killer levels of straight murder notches in her belt, let it be because she found out what really happened to Sam – and let us see it. I think what bothered me the most about “The Same Boat” is when Carol started to hyperventilate, I could not and still cannot tell if that was an act or real or a little bit of both. They muddied waters too much with Carol in this episode and now all I think is that she’s gonna die as stupidly as Beth, and Carol deserves better than that.
Trevor: Okay, fair enough, but one day I will get you to commit to some needlessly complicated scoring methods involving brackets and a card game I invented. You make a lot of good points about “The Same Boat,” and I’m willing to admit that the combination of McBride/Witt might have put some rose-colored glasses on me. Ultimately I think we disagree about more than a few things, but that’s why we co-write these reviews and that’s what makes it fun (which is why Fargo was so maddeningly difficult to review; you can only write “Best show ever!!!” In so many different ways). All that being said, to me “The Same Boat” is a 3.5-star episode (you talked me down from 4; you’re very convincing). What do you think?
Margaux: Cracks knuckles That’s what spending two years on debate team in high school will do for you. Welp, we learned that you can lead a group of people to being burned alive in an ominously named room called the “kill floor,” but you can’t always get a 5 star episode from The Walking Dead. 3.5 stars fits this episode like a sharpened rosary ripping through duct tape.
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