The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live has been a bit of a mixed bag over its first five episodes, but I’m starting to worry. I really disliked last week’s episode and the season premiere, and I really loved episode 2. Episode 3 was okay, but nothing special. With such a short season, each episode matters a lot.
We’re on the second-to-last episode of the season tonight and while it wasn’t as tedious as last week’s, it was absolutely preposterous in almost every way. The sheer number of ridiculous coincidences and TWD bad habits that come up throughout left me cold. I was really hoping we’d get back on track this week. Instead, outside of a few good bits, we just get a lot of ridiculously convenient plot points because the writers apparently couldn’t come up with anything better.
Spoilers ahead.
Tonight’s episode—“Become”—begins and ends with Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), a surprising cameo that I certainly wasn’t expecting. Everybody knew a cameo was coming, but a lot of people had guessed it would be Morgan (Lennie James) who had set out to find Rick (Andrew Lincoln) when he left Fear The Walking Dead. I must say, after years of Fear totally ruining his character, I hope we never see Morgan again. At one point he was one of my favorites. Now . . . well, let’s just say they wasted a talented actor season after appalling season. The sad thing is, he wasn’t put to very good use on the main show before that, either, with his random moments of insanity and the whole “You know what it is!” nonsense. Such a shame.
In any case, I enjoyed the flashback scenes with Gabriel and Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh). It built some suspense, especially when you learned that she’d killed a confidante. I thought for sure we were going to see Gabriel die. I actually think that having her kill him would have been a lot more gutsy for the series, but this is a series that’s deeply risk-averse these days. Instead, Jadis is the one who bites the bullet—or, well, gets bitten. And she goes out with a bit of cheese on the side, rambling about choosing sides and who she has become (see there’s the title of the episode!)
Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes
What didn’t work for me this episode was just how implausible pretty much all of it was. Rick and Michonne (Danai Gurira) are on the run and have apparently made it. They’re long gone, presumed dead, etc. They decide to hike to a cabin in the woods and run across a trio of extras being attacked by zombies who have somehow calcified, turning into stone walkers—or stoners, as I shall call them from here on out. These appear to be hard to kill at first, since their skin is rock-hard and metal bounces off of it. But it’s no trouble at all. Barely an inconvenience!
Michonne, feeling extra friendly, gives them some of the “Tasteful Noods” ramen (which is a wonderful name for a Ramen brand, by the way) and then the survivors turn on them, holding the pair at gunpoint, demanding everything. Rick and Michonne barely bat an eye. This is no tense showdown like “Nebraska”. Our heroes seem aware of their own plot armor, and quickly overpower their enemies. Then they make them promise not to be bad anymore, and even return them one of their revolvers along with bullets. I found this totally baffling. Sure, don’t kill them, but don’t give them their weapons back on a promise to be nice.
Of course, all three of these morons will be dead by the end of the episode, which makes me ask a question I’ve asked countless times before: How on earth do these people survive over a decade into the apocalypse when they’re this stupid and incapable of basic survival skills? It’s truly baffling. I’d expect that at this point, anyone you came across would be some version of Rick and Michonne, at least in terms of skillsets. They’ve made it this long so they must be pretty smart, determined and capable. Almost anyone who’s made it this far would be a dangerous fighter (unless they were in some kind of safe zone where they never really had to do much surviving, which these three were not).
I was half-expecting Rick and Michonne to start kissing in the middle of the fight, actually, since they seem to do this at every possible opportunity now. It’s kind of funny, to be honest. They did so little romantic stuff in the main show and now it’s just endless smooching.
Rick and Michonne, sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G
It’s fine. I would expect them to be more than a little ravenous for one another at this point. Good for them. They’re lucky, too. Last week they found a fully-powered smart home to stay in—such a nice place, they decided to have sex there while the building was literally collapsing! This week, they make it to the Three Pines Cabin, a cozy retreat where they light candles and drink booze and all is light and breezy.
Of course, it doesn’t last. Jadis shows up the next morning, pistols drawn, and here is where the episode nose-dives into blatant stupidity. The sheer absurdity of Jadis tracking them down is just beyond the pale. I am incapable of suspending my disbelief. I’m also annoyed, because if they’d wanted Jadis to catch them, they could have had her do it as they drove out of town. They could have had her cleverly waiting nearby and she could have ambushed them with some soldiers to help her.
Instead, she goes by herself and somehow tracks them all the way to this cabin in the middle of nowhere and her explanations are preposterous. She noticed the car that they got away in was gone when she came back to the crash site. That, by itself, is extremely unlikely. It’s also not proof that Rick and Michonne took it, since this is an entire city with many potential inhabitants.
But okay, Jadis has her hunch and then she uses her godlike tracking powers to somehow find them because they tossed noodle wrappers out the window of their vehicle, leaving her a trail of breadcrumbs right to their location. Only, how did she spot the noodle wrappers? It’s not like they’re super obvious. It’s not like she was on foot. Most of the wrappers would just blow away. And why are they tossing noodle wrappers out in the first place? Aren’t Rick and Michonne on the run? Aren’t they smart enough not to leave any evidence behind, even if it is monumentally unlikely that anyone would see noodle wrappers and use them to track them down.
I have no clue how she tracked them through the forest. There was no path. But at this point, we have to just dispense with any kind of plausible story because it’s The Walking Dead, and they just write whatever they want and expect viewers to just accept it, no matter how little sense it makes. And it’s frustrating—and insulting—because there are countless ways they could have made this work better.
Jadis has them tie one another to the bed and she’s going to shoot them—after some villain monologuing, of course—and is sure seems like they’re going to have trouble getting out of this situation . . . but no. Once again, no trouble at all. Barely an inconvenience!
Despite being tied up with guns drawn on them, our heroes escape. Leaping out of the way of point-blank gunfire, Rick tosses the bed at her (it can stop bullets) and then Michonne hits her with a hatchet. You’d think her thick Kevlar body armor would protect against a hatchet, but no. It’s barely an inconvenience! (Sorry, but there are just so many of these moments in this episode). Mortally wounded thanks to her useless body armor, she flees from Rick and Michonne, who are unscathed thanks to their extraordinarily thick plot armor.
Danai Gurira as Michonne
They pursue her all the way back to the road, which is a pretty long ways given the trek to the cabin the day before, but even grievously injured Jadis manages to make it back to her vehicle and a high speed chase ensues. Jadis gets away and runs into the same exact three bandits that Rick and Michonne encountered the day before. She enlists them to her cause and they set an ambush in a nearby building.
Rick and Michonne walk right into it. “Four against two!” Jadis brags, and it does seem like it’s going to be tough for our heroes to get out of this one! But you know what I’m about to type next already. Rick and Michonne are just too good, and when a stealth zombie silently sneaks up on one of the three morons—zombies are so quiet when they need to be!—everything goes to hell for Jadis. Soon all three morons are zombie lunch—I’m pretty sure one just dove into the zombie pile—and the remaining main characters are at a stalemate. If Jadis dies, Alexandria is screwed. But they can’t let her live, either.
They strike a deal that neither party intends to keep. Michonne will be allowed to return to Alexandria and Rick will go with Jadis. When Jadis makes it clear she’s going to kill him, Michonne returns and points one of the CRM rifle things at her. In the end, it’s another sneaky ninja stealth assassin zombie that pops up out of nowhere, silent as death, and bites Jadis in the neck.
We also learn about this time that she spared Gabriel one year earlier. Throughout the episode, we get flashbacks of them meeting once a year for the past three years in secret; she chose not to kill him and tie up her “loose ends” which we are supposed to take as part of her redemption arc.
Naturally, the rest of her redemption arc comes in the form of her telling the lovebirds where her secret files are kept. She asks Rick to kill her and he does. I’m skipping over the rather long farewell monologue here because it felt very Gimple-speaky to me, like much of this episode.
The Ones Who Live
So that’s the plan. Rick and Michonne will find a way to get into the base where the files are kept, steal them and break out again, returning to Alexandria with their secrets safe. The preview for next week’s episode certainly looks action-packed, though I have no idea how they wrap up this story in a satisfying manner with just one more episode.
The episode ends with Gabriel returning on the chosen day to meet with Jadis and not finding her. He waits, but soon realizes that she must be dead, or at least that she has chosen not to come for some reason. This is the same scene from the start of the episode, when he heard what sounded like two helicopters fly over him. In the end scene, however, we only see one. Could it be a CRM scouting chopper headed to Alexandria? An invasion force? Rick and Michonne making their triumphant return?
I suppose we might find out next week. Or in Season 2, if there is a season 2. Scott Gimple said, of a potential second season:
“Anything is possible — even if Rick dies in the last episode, anything is possible… We’re focused on this one right now. But this one came together in a really amazing way, where there were all sorts of plans. And then the world changed and we altered those plans.”
So I guess Rick dies next week. Maybe. Thanks for that little tidbit, Gimple. Nobody spoils their own shows like the producers and marketing department of The Walking Dead.
Seth Gilliam as Gabriel
All told, while there were some good moments here and there, overall this was another huge letdown. Jadis tracking Rick and Michonne like that was just too much. The fact that our heroes get out of every scrape with such ease kills the tension. Introducing cool new zombies that actually look difficult to kill, and then showing Rick stab one with a tiny knife a few scenes later, is really annoying because the cool new zombies should have been a much bigger threat.
So yeah. Bummer. I was hoping for a lot more. The production values continue to be top-notch for the most part, but other than that this feels like a half-baked story with altogether too much filler for such a short season. We’ve had years to look forward to this—and they’ve had years to come up with a compelling story—and this is all we get?
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