Margaux and I discuss another uneven episode of The Walking Dead, and speculate where the show is headed now.
Trevor: I honestly don’t know how to fix this season of The Walking Dead. The disjointed structure is the same thing that hamstrung season six, but short of making everything a two-hour episode, I’m at a loss. Part of it is because the characters are all scattered to the wind (four different locations), which is understandable, but it doesn’t change the fact that it makes things kind of boring. This is, so far, a very talky season, and the amount of world-building is making things move at a glacial pace. What did you think of “Go Getters”?
Margaux: It was a lot of, start to get interesting…and then stop. Too much show without enough action or tension to propel it further, although the end gave me hope (foolishly, I’ll wager) that things might finally pick up steam. Oftentimes, the problem with The Walking Dead is its ability get real navel gazey, and focus so singularly on one issue and character (that may or may not warrant it) that it becomes just a circle jerk of a conversation; this season is starting to feel like The Farm, but set against four different backdrops.
Like, for instance, the opening. It should feel heavy and sad when Sasha and Maggie discuss the rather tragic demise of their boyfriend(?)/husband, respectively, but three weeks after the fact, it’s anticlimactic and doesn’t hold any weight.
Trevor: Totally agree (but I was surprised that Maggie didn’t lose the baby; considering how relentlessly bleak this season has been, I thought a miscarriage was a foregone conclusion). I think the show is setting up a connection of sorts between Maggie and Jesus (who I think is tiny, or was just framed weird, because most of the time he looked almost shorter than Maggie and Sasha), evinced by him bringing her flowers, much like Daryl did for Carol in season two. I will say I was interested in the Hilltop, namely in Gregory, who is going full-on Renfield. Although it feels like a shame to waste a good character like Xander Berkeley by turning him into a piece of shit and painting a target on his back.
Margaux: Wasn’t surprised Maggie was still with child, it seems like they’re going to follow the plot line from the comic where Maggie becomes, Maggie Rhee: widowed, single mother of two by “adopting” Enid. “Go Getters” only reinforces this with Enid on a mission to see Maggie at Hilltop.
Gregory’s introduction in this episode felt like he was there to explicitly to be an asshole and then die, but (and AV Club kinda confirmed my inkling) Berkeley seemed to be fighting the material on the page and resulted in a confusing, at least for me, performance. I wasn’t sure if he was going for over-the-top, mustache twirling camp villain, or if he was trying to give dickhead with a heart. Either way, no good sentence or introduction has ever began with, “look, I’m a nice guy, but…”.
Trevor: That’s a good way of putting it, Berkeley fighting the material, because Gregory was drawn in very broad strokes. He called Rick “Rich” and Maggie “Marsha,” which was kind of funny, but then when he called a Hilltop resident by the wrong name it came off as almost intentional. And we all know that an easy way to establish a guy as an asshole is to have him be sexist, so we got Gregory calling women “dear,” “honey,” and “sweetheart.” We never got any indication of this before (although to be fair to the show, this is the most time we’ve spent with Gregory), so it just seems lazy on TWD’s part, like a shortcut to turn the audience against him.
Margaux: Well, poor man’s Richard Dreyfuss (Gregory) was almost another iteration of Father Gabriel, in the sense that he’s a rat that’s willing to compromise and sell out anyone in order to save his own neck. The subtext I glean is that this is who Rick will turn into if he keeps saying yes to Negan, but in having “Go Getters” back-to-back like this, how are we supposed to feel sorry for Rick and Alexandria for having to suffer humiliation after humiliation one week, but vilify Gregory for basically doing the same the next? I mean, he gets pat on the head like a dog by Mustache Negan, which elicited more of a chuckle than the downright disgust of Jesus; who should take a look in the mirror before he looks grossed out, the facial and wig are…distracting.
Trevor: I think where the episode perked up most was in the Saviors’ visit, which is never a good sign, because you can’t rely on your villains to make your story interesting. Regardless, I like Steven Ogg, even if the only direction he seemed to get from director Darnell Martin was “Do your impression of Walton Goggins in Justified.” Maybe it’s because Ogg voiced a character named Trevor in Grand Theft Auto V, maybe that’s why I like him. But speaking seriously, we don’t know anything really about Simon, which is interesting because in this season’s premiere Negan made reference to Simon as his right-hand man, likening him to Abe or Glenn. We haven’t seen any of Simon’s backstory (the same can’t be said for Dwight), which makes him more intriguing than Negan a lot of the time. Or am I just looking for something to like? Could be. I mean, he hates scotch, which is a mark against him.
The main problem with Simon’s visit is that it lacked the tension it was going for, because we knew there was little to no chance of him finding Maggie and Sasha (not for lack of trying on Gregory’s part, though). So it might have been entertaining, or at least not boring, but it wasn’t as dangerous as TWD seemed to think it was. It just put the writing on the wall, telling the audience that the Hilltop will have a change of management soon.
Margaux: So far, this season hasn’t lived up to the edge it thinks it has. Simon is a more interesting character than Negan right now only because we don’t know as much about him as we do the actual Negan. The only scene that worked for me was the zombie knife with Sasha and Jesus because the stakes were so low, and there wasn’t the least bit of tension, whether that was intentional or not, I was able to sit back and enjoy it. I thought setting it to classical music was a nice touch, and the sheer ridiculousness of Maggie running over the steel reinforced car, the source of the blaring music attracting the walkers, made it feel like something straight out of Ash vs Evil Dead.
Trevor: Absolutely, it was campy and operatic at the same time, in the sweet spot that The Walking Dead often aims for but rarely hits. I also like the touch that someone had soldered a middle finger onto the car to keep Sasha from getting into it, because it’s funny to think of someone putting in that amount of time and effort. Who did that? Cause I want an episode about him.
How did Carl and Enid’s road trip work for you? Because I’ll be honest, it didn’t really do it for me. I feel like TWD is shoving them down our throats as a couple, and it’s tough to see what Carl sees in her. Maybe it’s her sullenness, or her open displeasure at his presence. Whatever it is, he’s head over heels.
Margaux: At first when they cut back to Alexandria, I was excited. I thought they finally figured out how to cut between characters, and we were going to follow Michonne and her quest to, “sort some things out”; Rick’s scavenger mission for Negan goods. But instead we got Enid and Carl, which was supposed to be some John Hughes, post-apocalyptic romantic teen comedy, but all I gathered from their storyline was it took them one day to get to Hilltop, yet it took Alexandria MONTHS to figure out their were other communities out there? Fucking a. Maybe children really are the future. Nonetheless, roller skating and first kisses isn’t the way to add dramatic tension to your episode, I know that much. And I don’t want to live in an apocalypse where, somehow, fucking roller skates managed to survive.
Trevor: That’s how you know it’s the end times. What really didn’t work for me about “Go Getters” is we now have three characters – Carl, Rosita, and Sasha – who are determined to take out Negan on their own. Obviously they won’t succeed (maybe Sasha could), because in what world will anyone besides Rick, Daryl, or maybe Maggie kill Negan? But it lays the groundwork for the group rebelling against him. The thing is, though: Jeffrey Dean Morgan has said he’s going to be on the show for a long time, and we already knew that the group would rebel against him.
Is there anything else you want to touch on, or do you want to talk stars?
Margaux: So, the first person (probably Rosita and her magic bullet) to try and take out Negan will most definitely get clobbered. It’d be cool if Carl or Sasha, or even as the ending of “Go Getters” stands to reason, Carl, Sasha, with an assist from Jesus, kill Negan or at least will attempt to. Since JDM is here to stay, I think they’ll stick closely to how events unfolded in the comic (eventually, Rick employs a criminal justice system of sorts and jails Negan till TBD and he and Carl eventually have a Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter-like relationship), but after reading news recently that Coral’s, aka Chandler Riggs, contract was up and he was accepted to college in the Fall, maybe Carl is the first person go up against the King and gets dead, that’d be something. As always though, this show is far more fun to speculate about than it is to watch it, and “Go Getters” is no different. With a resounding sigh, which could double as the motto of this season thus far, three stars.
“The Walking Dead is far more fun to speculate about than it is to watch”
3/5
“Good”
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