Margaux and I bid farewell to an uneven half season of The Walking Dead.
Trevor: I want to start off our review of The Walking Dead’s midseason finale with a pretty petty complaint: why don’t characters ever keep their beards? When Rick shaved his after arriving to Alexandria, it made sense (even if it pissed me off because man, what a beard it was), because he was trying to become a new man, a more civilized one. When Negan does it, I just don’t get it. I don’t think he’s trying to become more civilized – he kills one person and orders the death of another in this episode – and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the rare person who actually looks older without a beard. I don’t get it. You take away Negan’s jacket, scarf, and beard, and he just looks like some dick with a bat. Which I guess he is.
Margaux: The way I read Negan shedding his beard is his transformation into Single White Female-ing Rick is now complete, I don’t think Negan as a character is capable of sweeping internal changes, he’s pretty one note. And that note is usually monologue.
“Heart Still Beats” is a good episode, but could’ve been an excellent episode if it happened four episodes ago, and if The Walking Dead always held themselves to this level of plot structure, which is to say, enough with the “bottle episode.” Stop trying to make them happen, they are not happening, and it’s reflected in the ratings.
Trevor: I think we’re going to disagree here, because for the most part I didn’t think this was a very good episode, because like TWD has been doing all season, it took a long time to say or show something very simple. Since Negan killed Glenn and Abraham, the show has been sowing the seeds of revolt, most notably in Sasha and Michonne, both of whom are easily talked out of killing Negan. We’ve known since the moment Negan arrived that eventually enough would be enough and the communities paying him tribute (Alexandria, Hilltop, the Kingdom) would join forces against him, so at the end of “Heart’s Still Beating,” we learned that…the communities paying him tribute will join forces against him.
Don’t get me wrong, though; I didn’t think this was a disastrous episode, and there were some character moments I liked, but I felt like it took 90 minutes to tell me something I could have figured out for myself. In fact, I already had.
Margaux: I think we’re actually on the same page here, this episode isn’t as weak a mid-season finale as say, last years. But yes, they took their sweet time getting to this point that all knew would happen, and it sort takes the wind out the sails to meander as much as they did. What they succeeded in doing is what they should do all along which is cut between storylines to give us a little check in on how everyone is doing. Is Jeffery still an asshole? Yes. Do we need an entire episode of that? Not at all. Same would go for Daryl’s escape of The Sanctuary, do we really want to watch him eat peanut butter in the dark like feral animal before he bludgeons Fat Joey to death? It works in the two minute increments, but not as a whole plot device.
Trevor: I’ll agree with you there, “Heart Still Beating” successfully made TWD feel like an ensemble drama again. And like I said, there were some parts I actually liked quite a bit. For instance, Rick and Aaron in the lake of walkers, which was a pretty cool visual and a way to remind viewers that, hey, zombies are still a problem here. I’m glad the show didn’t make a bigger deal out of Daryl’s escape, which we all correctly predicted as inevitable (RIP “Will Daryl become a Savior?” thinkpieces). And I thought it was a nice touch that Daryl returned Rick’s gun to him, although I think it’d be hilarious if Rick took it and said “Oh thanks, Negan will love this.”
I was baffled by that pool game, though. On the one hand, I like that Negan saw right through Spencer’s act; on the other hand, why did the whole town come out to watch? That looked so incredibly forced. Also, random observations about Negan: I love the way he told Rick “And I fed him spaghetti!” and I also noticed that when he’s addressing a big crowd, JDM goes right into an impression of Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds.
Margaux: That’s who he remind me of! Thank you! There was something about that swaggering and his small chuckles that smacked, “where have I seen this before?” Spencer and Olivia’s deaths felt like they had to kill somebody and why not have it be these two? Spencer is a rat and we threatened Olivia’s life earlier, this all tracks, doesn’t it?
Trevor: Don’t forget this show’s pathological antipathy towards heavier characters, starting way back in season two with Otis and continuing its dubious legacy to Fat Joey.
Margaux: RIP Fat Joey.
What this show does have a knack for doing is making ancillary characters vaguely interesting right before they die. Spencer practicing how normal people say “hi” in the mirror felt like American Psycho shit, in his collared shirt and pullover. And who knew Olivia took her job as Judith bodyguard so seriously? I mean, who even heard her talk before Negan showed up on the scene?
I can’t justify or understand the rationale behind playing pool in the middle of the street, the staging of that shot was confusing in and of itself. Where did the pool table even come from? Wouldn’t it be filed under “cool shit” for the Saviors? Did the Saviors bring it with them?
I do agree that Negan did Rick a favor by taking out Spencer, and I don’t think Rick is going to lose any sleep about him either.
Trevor: I was surprised by how graphic his death was; TWD shows us gory walker deaths all the time, but it’s been a while since we saw an actual human disemboweled. So I appreciated that. I also appreciated that Negan took Eugene away from Alexandria, for two reasons. One, it’s one of the few actually intelligent things he’s done so far. Two, Josh McDermitt has only a few tricks in his acting bag, and for the entirety of this season Eugene has always looked or sounded like he’s about to start crying. I mean, I get it, but Christ it gets old.
Margaux: Can we back up a couple beats and talk about how thoroughly stupid Rosita’s plan – FOR HER ONE AND ONLY BULLET – was? It was set up for her to fail from the start, but they couldn’t even wait for a better time or a closer range to fire? It just makes her plan feel more hollow, she hadn’t thought beyond just crafting the bullet and even though she said she’d “pay the price,” we knew that couldn’t hold water. At least she wasn’t easily talked out of attempting to kill Negan, and went through with…something. But it really was dumb.
Trevor: I agree, at the very least she did something, and had the horrible luck to hit Lucille. Of course, by Negan deciding not to kill her, you can see how hard the show is bending over backwards to keep main characters alive now (Spencer and Olivia’s death were firmly in TWD’s wheelhouse: expendable Alexandrians who the audience either doesn’t know or actively hates). And did you notice that Rosita was chalk white this whole episode? Is she a vampire? What the fuck. TWD does pretty good by minority actors and actresses, so I don’t think they were trying to lighten her skin, but it stuck out to me every time she was on screen.
Margaux: She looked pale, maybe it’s an irony deficiency or bad color correction. While we’re on the topic of Rosita, I really liked the scene between her and Father Gabriel. I’m glad they gave Seth Gilliam something to do other than be hateable, they’ve managed to turn his character around, but without Spencer running for “Worst Person of the Year”, time will only tell if it holds up.
So, what do you think about Michonne’s mission taking a sudden and strange turn?
Trevor: A lot of it bored me. There were what seemed like minute-long shots of her silently holding a gun, which gave me flashbacks to the silent and boring Michonne of season three. Then she decides “I’m not going to kill Negan,” which came out of nowhere, then it sounded like she was going to look out for herself (understandable), then she showed up at the end to give Rick a big speech about sticking together. She was all over the place, and while it’s nice for Danai Gurira to be given more to do, I wish she was given something else to do.
(And why hasn’t Negan taken her katana? It makes about as much sense as it would if he left Rick his gun.)
Margaux: Sometimes it seems like this show has a selective memory of its own rules, even if the characters have intoned it many times over.
They didn’t give Michonne much to do during the first half of this season, and same goes for Carol. Recluse Carol can’t last, can she? It seems like they’ve taken Carol’s character backwards lately.
Trevor: I hope she makes a big comeback. It was nice to see her again, and goddamn does Melissa McBride command the screen. But no, I don’t see her staying a recluse forever, and her coming back guns-a-blazing would be the good kind of fan service. I really thought the Kingdom would have factored more heavily into the first half of the season, especially considering that “The Well” is probably the episode of this season I remember best.
Margaux: It is disappointing that they didn’t take better advantage of the communities they spent setting up, but it’s safe to say that now everyone is coming together, we’ll seeing more of them.
But holy shit, the straight minute of meaningful glances when the gang is finally brought back together after a painful first half of season seven, is ridiculously hokey. It looked like, at any minute, they would burst into a Mentos commercial, give the camera a thumbs up and a huge grin.
Trevor: In a weird way, I would have respected the show more if they did.
I feel like we’ve said everything we need to say about “Heart Still Beating,” so I’d like to talk stars if you’re down. You know the drill: episode first, then the grade for this half-season.
Margaux: If “Heart Still Beating” happened sooner, I think I’d rate it as a stronger episode, but since that’s not reality, 3 stars. And this season was mostly boring, and hard to generate excitement or hope for, but I’d like to think all this drudgery was not for nothing, yet until that happens, season 7a: 2 stars. (I would even entertain 1 ½ stars).
Trevor: I’m okay with 2; certain episodes (like “Swear” and “Sing Me a Song”) that showed glimpses of a show that still knows what it’s doing. Let’s hope that’s the show that comes back next year.
“Heart Still Beating” score: 3/5
The Walking Dead season 7A score: 2/5
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