[7.1/10] The Walking Dead spends a lot of time ruminating about killing. It’s inevitable in zombie stories. You may have to kill the undead; you may have to kill rival survivors; you may have to kill good people for your own survival. Weighing these decisions is the bread and butter of works in the genre and post-apocalyptic fiction of all kinds.
But most of the time, at least on The Walking Dead, that’s framed as an ethical choice, or one about what having to take a life does to the human soul. For all the hand-wringing about the potential bad messages this show sends, it is and always has been one very centered on moral questions. People don’t always like the answers it provides, but it’s a show that has been repeatedly concerned with the ethics of killing, the impact the act has, and what morality can withstand the fall of civilization.
For once, however, The Walking Dead offers an episode anchored around people deciding whether to kill or not to kill, but treats it as a question of prudence, of strategy, of planning. Whether it’s Sasha, Gregory, or Natania, the major characters in this episode contemplate killing and forbear, but they don’t seem to be affected by moral considerations so much as practical ones. Will it help them accomplish their goals? Will it move the ball further? Will it hurt, help, or even save their people, or their own skins? It’s not a typical tack for this show, and that makes it interesting even as the slow table-setting for the finale feels a bit rote.
The easiest person to see this in is Gregory. He’s already long since started to see his power slipping through his hands, and Maggie proving herself the better and more capable leader is clearly rankling him. Maggie is what she’s always been -- tough but yielding, corrective but understanding, and capable of moving forward with a good amount of inner strength. It becomes clear quickly, just from her instruction to one of the Hilltoppers on how to farm, that she’s better suited to the job and the rest of their community is noticing.
Gregory’s noticing too. When he walks outside the walls to talk to Maggie, he seems to be pushing her to leave, suggesting that her people have moved on and it’s time for her to do too. Maggie seems either onto his game or oblivious, but either way is unpersuaded. And Gregory, nominally keeping watch while Maggie nabs a blueberry bush, looks at the silvery knife in his hands and contemplates ending his problems with her then and there.
But he can’t do it. He doesn’t have it in him. Maybe he just doesn’t think it would work out in that exact moment, but it seems like Gregory just doesn’t have the stones to follow through on his impulse. That’s underscored when a walker advances and Gregory means to take it out, but falters when he gets too close, forcing Maggie to dive into the breach. Just to prove it’s no fluke, he gets tackled by a surprisingly silent walker and has to be rescued by Maggie in that too.
Rather than being grateful, however, Gregory is humiliated by Maggie informing a pack of onlooking Hilltoppers that it was Gregory’s first time taking on walkers. He makes plans to head to The Saviors’ Sanctuary, to try to enlist Negan’s roughians to take her out. Gregory is incapable of killing himself. He just doesn’t have the experience or the gumption to do it. But he’s not above weaseling his way to people more lethal than he is to implore them to do his dirty work. I can only assume that’s going to go really well for him.
Things go a bit better for Rick, Tara, and the usual suspects when they head to Oceanside to pick up guns for the impending war with Negan. Not for nothing, the Alexandrians’ operation feels like a stickup, with the catch being that we know our heroes genuinely don’t want to hurt anyone.
Still, it creates several moments where people have to consider whether to take out someone else, whether it will save lives or cost more. Tara has a gun trained on Natania, the Oceanside leader we met back in “Swear,” and Cyndie, Natania’s granddaughter who helped Tara escape. It turns out the gun isn’t loaded, an empty threat. Tara feels bad for breaking her promise and letting her compatriots know where they can find more guns, and it influences how serious she is in her threats and intentions to convince Natania to join their cause or at least stand down.
Natania, however, is not so timid, and when she and Cyndie get the upper hand, she’s more than willing to take Tara hostage and bring her to the rest of the Alexandrians as a bargaining chip. Rick and company have the rest of the Oceansiders squared away thanks to some explosions, but are making their pitch for the group to join them. Natania will have none of it. She admits it’s a fait accompli, but she is willing to kill Tara, knowing that it will result in her own death, in order to keep her fellow Oceansiders from joining this cause. It’s a form of attempted self-immolation. She declares that it’s not worth it, that she’s already made this calculation, and if it takes her death to do it, she’ll remind everyone of that fact.
Then, naturally, a convenient zombie attacks interrupts the proceedings, with them presumably attracted by the sound of the explosions. The waterlogged zombies show off some cool makeup effects, and the Alexandrians and Oceansiders working together to take out a threat is a nice illustration of how they could be powerful allies, but it does feel like a thrown-in bit of action. Still, the Alexandrians get their guns for their upcoming battle, a battle Natania was willing to die for and to kill for, to prevent her people from being a part of it.
And last but not least there’s Sasha, who is in the same sort of cell Daryl once found himself in, being offered a chance to become a part of the team. It’s the most implausible part of the episode. We know from Carl’s escapade that Negan respects people with, as he very unfortunately puts it, the “lady balls” to go after him. But it just strains credulity that Negan would keep so many people who might still try to kill him around, even if he’s smart enough not to let her hang onto the big knife he hands her.
But despite the unsettling scene involving Davey, most of her part of the episode is about whether to try to kill or to die, about whether she thinks her shot if finished or that she’ll get another chance to neutralize Negan, whether ‘tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and all that good stuff.
She chooses to go on, to try to complete her mission, albeit in a different fashion, and that means dealing with Eugene. She tries to get Eugene to give her a weapon in the guise of a need not to be a weapon herself, not to be made into something that can hurt her friends. It’s a feint, but a seemingly unsuccessful one, that only nets her the poison pill he prepared earlier. When we see Sasha, she is shot from above, emphasizing how little power she has here; when we see Negan, it’s shot from below, emphasizing the opposite, and when we see Eugene, he is bathed in darkness, showing what he is now a part of.
But each of them, along with Gregory and Natania, aims to kill, or to allow death to happen through their intervention, because they believe it’s the right call. For some of them it’s moral, for some of them it’s ethical. Morals aside though, most contemplate it because of what it would change, because of how it could save or solidify their positions. The Walking Dead isn’t typically a show that looks at the loss of life in a goal-focused way. Still, when war is on the horizon, each death that secures your place, that could save your friends, that could end this before it begins, becomes a strategic decision as much as an ethical one.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-03-29T22:56:24Z
[7.1/10] The Walking Dead spends a lot of time ruminating about killing. It’s inevitable in zombie stories. You may have to kill the undead; you may have to kill rival survivors; you may have to kill good people for your own survival. Weighing these decisions is the bread and butter of works in the genre and post-apocalyptic fiction of all kinds.
But most of the time, at least on The Walking Dead, that’s framed as an ethical choice, or one about what having to take a life does to the human soul. For all the hand-wringing about the potential bad messages this show sends, it is and always has been one very centered on moral questions. People don’t always like the answers it provides, but it’s a show that has been repeatedly concerned with the ethics of killing, the impact the act has, and what morality can withstand the fall of civilization.
For once, however, The Walking Dead offers an episode anchored around people deciding whether to kill or not to kill, but treats it as a question of prudence, of strategy, of planning. Whether it’s Sasha, Gregory, or Natania, the major characters in this episode contemplate killing and forbear, but they don’t seem to be affected by moral considerations so much as practical ones. Will it help them accomplish their goals? Will it move the ball further? Will it hurt, help, or even save their people, or their own skins? It’s not a typical tack for this show, and that makes it interesting even as the slow table-setting for the finale feels a bit rote.
The easiest person to see this in is Gregory. He’s already long since started to see his power slipping through his hands, and Maggie proving herself the better and more capable leader is clearly rankling him. Maggie is what she’s always been -- tough but yielding, corrective but understanding, and capable of moving forward with a good amount of inner strength. It becomes clear quickly, just from her instruction to one of the Hilltoppers on how to farm, that she’s better suited to the job and the rest of their community is noticing.
Gregory’s noticing too. When he walks outside the walls to talk to Maggie, he seems to be pushing her to leave, suggesting that her people have moved on and it’s time for her to do too. Maggie seems either onto his game or oblivious, but either way is unpersuaded. And Gregory, nominally keeping watch while Maggie nabs a blueberry bush, looks at the silvery knife in his hands and contemplates ending his problems with her then and there.
But he can’t do it. He doesn’t have it in him. Maybe he just doesn’t think it would work out in that exact moment, but it seems like Gregory just doesn’t have the stones to follow through on his impulse. That’s underscored when a walker advances and Gregory means to take it out, but falters when he gets too close, forcing Maggie to dive into the breach. Just to prove it’s no fluke, he gets tackled by a surprisingly silent walker and has to be rescued by Maggie in that too.
Rather than being grateful, however, Gregory is humiliated by Maggie informing a pack of onlooking Hilltoppers that it was Gregory’s first time taking on walkers. He makes plans to head to The Saviors’ Sanctuary, to try to enlist Negan’s roughians to take her out. Gregory is incapable of killing himself. He just doesn’t have the experience or the gumption to do it. But he’s not above weaseling his way to people more lethal than he is to implore them to do his dirty work. I can only assume that’s going to go really well for him.
Things go a bit better for Rick, Tara, and the usual suspects when they head to Oceanside to pick up guns for the impending war with Negan. Not for nothing, the Alexandrians’ operation feels like a stickup, with the catch being that we know our heroes genuinely don’t want to hurt anyone.
Still, it creates several moments where people have to consider whether to take out someone else, whether it will save lives or cost more. Tara has a gun trained on Natania, the Oceanside leader we met back in “Swear,” and Cyndie, Natania’s granddaughter who helped Tara escape. It turns out the gun isn’t loaded, an empty threat. Tara feels bad for breaking her promise and letting her compatriots know where they can find more guns, and it influences how serious she is in her threats and intentions to convince Natania to join their cause or at least stand down.
Natania, however, is not so timid, and when she and Cyndie get the upper hand, she’s more than willing to take Tara hostage and bring her to the rest of the Alexandrians as a bargaining chip. Rick and company have the rest of the Oceansiders squared away thanks to some explosions, but are making their pitch for the group to join them. Natania will have none of it. She admits it’s a fait accompli, but she is willing to kill Tara, knowing that it will result in her own death, in order to keep her fellow Oceansiders from joining this cause. It’s a form of attempted self-immolation. She declares that it’s not worth it, that she’s already made this calculation, and if it takes her death to do it, she’ll remind everyone of that fact.
Then, naturally, a convenient zombie attacks interrupts the proceedings, with them presumably attracted by the sound of the explosions. The waterlogged zombies show off some cool makeup effects, and the Alexandrians and Oceansiders working together to take out a threat is a nice illustration of how they could be powerful allies, but it does feel like a thrown-in bit of action. Still, the Alexandrians get their guns for their upcoming battle, a battle Natania was willing to die for and to kill for, to prevent her people from being a part of it.
And last but not least there’s Sasha, who is in the same sort of cell Daryl once found himself in, being offered a chance to become a part of the team. It’s the most implausible part of the episode. We know from Carl’s escapade that Negan respects people with, as he very unfortunately puts it, the “lady balls” to go after him. But it just strains credulity that Negan would keep so many people who might still try to kill him around, even if he’s smart enough not to let her hang onto the big knife he hands her.
But despite the unsettling scene involving Davey, most of her part of the episode is about whether to try to kill or to die, about whether she thinks her shot if finished or that she’ll get another chance to neutralize Negan, whether ‘tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and all that good stuff.
She chooses to go on, to try to complete her mission, albeit in a different fashion, and that means dealing with Eugene. She tries to get Eugene to give her a weapon in the guise of a need not to be a weapon herself, not to be made into something that can hurt her friends. It’s a feint, but a seemingly unsuccessful one, that only nets her the poison pill he prepared earlier. When we see Sasha, she is shot from above, emphasizing how little power she has here; when we see Negan, it’s shot from below, emphasizing the opposite, and when we see Eugene, he is bathed in darkness, showing what he is now a part of.
But each of them, along with Gregory and Natania, aims to kill, or to allow death to happen through their intervention, because they believe it’s the right call. For some of them it’s moral, for some of them it’s ethical. Morals aside though, most contemplate it because of what it would change, because of how it could save or solidify their positions. The Walking Dead isn’t typically a show that looks at the loss of life in a goal-focused way. Still, when war is on the horizon, each death that secures your place, that could save your friends, that could end this before it begins, becomes a strategic decision as much as an ethical one.