[7.3/10] There’s a strange sense in which this felt like an installment from original recipe Walking Dead. It’s hard to put my finger on why. Maybe it’s because the episode almost exclusively focuses on the characters who’ve been around the longest, and almost groups them into different epochs of the show. Maybe it’s because the episode is almost entirely our heroes away from the camp, wandering along the countryside, which was a familiar trope early in the show’s run. It’s tough to articulate, but something about this one just played more like the show’s early days than the twisty, political worldbuilding and machiavellian schemes that have been the show’s bread and butter of late.
I think I liked it? “Outpost 22” returned to some of the show’s main themes: the power of working together, the ability to do some good even in a harsh world, and the challenges of parenthood after the end of the world.
Most come to a head in the powerful scene at the episode’s midpoint, where Maggie blames herself for not stopping Hershel’s kidnapping and Carol reassures her that with their collective strength and new family they’ve built, they can recover those they love. The images of a tearful mother who misses her child, receiving comfort from one who’s lost two herself, resolving that they’re still stronger together, is powerful.
It’s also not hard to see what the show is gesturing at here with the treatment of the Virginia survivors. The likes of Ezekiel, Negan, and Kelly being exiled to a work camp where the warden practically tells them “work will make you free” shows the brutality at the core of this regime. At the same time, it reveals the horrors that make the “paradise” of the Commonwealth possible. The community rests on prison slave labor, and treats it as just and right, to the extent its acknowledged at all. Throw in the fact that the Commonwealth’s enforcers seek to impose their will through family separation, and particularly leveraging people’s children, and the parallels the show’s attempting to draw are not particularly opaque. Still, the social and political critique is a strong one, and I like seeing the rotten wood that Commonwealth was built on, however harrowing it may be.
Granted, this is another “Big Dramatic Conversation: The Episode”-type installment. Some of them are better than others. Gabriel stepping into Daryl’s interrogation of a Commonwealth guard, persuading him to tell them where to find their people through common understanding and the possibility to do something good, rather than through torture, is a nice beat. Similarly, Negan and Ezekiel hashing out their past grievances, but also the need for a spark of hope to give the prisoners anywhere approaching enough good spirit to break out is solid as well. But the Gabriel/Rosita back-and-forth, and some of the other usual meditations on what it all means left me mentally tuning out.
Granted, realism is again out the window. The lot of them being no worse for wear after jumping out of a moving vehicle, ending up in a car crash, or getting into a firefight with the Commonwealth stormtroopers, strains credulity. But if you haven't made your peace with that sort of thing at this point in the show, I don’t know what to tell you. Some of the plot movements do feel cheap though. Maggie’s “Madonna and Child” imitation with a zombie kid is a little on the nose. The guy killing himself with a knife rather than risking reprisal for his family drives the point home, but plays as overblown genre T.V. business. I also find it rather convenient that the mysterious, just now mentioned outpost where the prisoners are taken turns out to be Alexandria, but whatever.
I’ll admit to being curious, to say the least, how the show is going to turn this into a rollicking series finale from here. There’s a lot of ground to cover with a ton of characters, including two separate prison breaks, Eugene’s trial, a rebellion at the Commonwealth, the rescue of the kids, and several other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. I appreciate the show gathering up many of the original survivors (or at least those who are still standing) for one last big push, but I worry with only three episodes left, TWD may have bitten off more than it can chew. (Or god help us, pushed off the true resolution of all of this for one of the spinoffs.)
Still, this was a solid outing for the series, if you can forgive the plot contrivances and focus on the core ideas. (As a Community fan, it doesn’t hurt to hear Yvette Nicole Brown’s voice on the other end of that radio either.) I could be overreading, but this felt like TWD returning to its roots. Maybe I’m just nostalgic, since candidly, I didn’t necessarily love the early years of the show either, but there’s something a little refreshing to see our heroes out on their own again, banding together to stand against difficult odds, bulwarked by the shared love and trust that give them an anchor of certainty in an uncertain world.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-10-25T23:20:28Z
[7.3/10] There’s a strange sense in which this felt like an installment from original recipe Walking Dead. It’s hard to put my finger on why. Maybe it’s because the episode almost exclusively focuses on the characters who’ve been around the longest, and almost groups them into different epochs of the show. Maybe it’s because the episode is almost entirely our heroes away from the camp, wandering along the countryside, which was a familiar trope early in the show’s run. It’s tough to articulate, but something about this one just played more like the show’s early days than the twisty, political worldbuilding and machiavellian schemes that have been the show’s bread and butter of late.
I think I liked it? “Outpost 22” returned to some of the show’s main themes: the power of working together, the ability to do some good even in a harsh world, and the challenges of parenthood after the end of the world.
Most come to a head in the powerful scene at the episode’s midpoint, where Maggie blames herself for not stopping Hershel’s kidnapping and Carol reassures her that with their collective strength and new family they’ve built, they can recover those they love. The images of a tearful mother who misses her child, receiving comfort from one who’s lost two herself, resolving that they’re still stronger together, is powerful.
It’s also not hard to see what the show is gesturing at here with the treatment of the Virginia survivors. The likes of Ezekiel, Negan, and Kelly being exiled to a work camp where the warden practically tells them “work will make you free” shows the brutality at the core of this regime. At the same time, it reveals the horrors that make the “paradise” of the Commonwealth possible. The community rests on prison slave labor, and treats it as just and right, to the extent its acknowledged at all. Throw in the fact that the Commonwealth’s enforcers seek to impose their will through family separation, and particularly leveraging people’s children, and the parallels the show’s attempting to draw are not particularly opaque. Still, the social and political critique is a strong one, and I like seeing the rotten wood that Commonwealth was built on, however harrowing it may be.
Granted, this is another “Big Dramatic Conversation: The Episode”-type installment. Some of them are better than others. Gabriel stepping into Daryl’s interrogation of a Commonwealth guard, persuading him to tell them where to find their people through common understanding and the possibility to do something good, rather than through torture, is a nice beat. Similarly, Negan and Ezekiel hashing out their past grievances, but also the need for a spark of hope to give the prisoners anywhere approaching enough good spirit to break out is solid as well.
But the Gabriel/Rosita back-and-forth, and some of the other usual meditations on what it all means left me mentally tuning out.
Granted, realism is again out the window. The lot of them being no worse for wear after jumping out of a moving vehicle, ending up in a car crash, or getting into a firefight with the Commonwealth stormtroopers, strains credulity. But if you haven't made your peace with that sort of thing at this point in the show, I don’t know what to tell you. Some of the plot movements do feel cheap though. Maggie’s “Madonna and Child” imitation with a zombie kid is a little on the nose. The guy killing himself with a knife rather than risking reprisal for his family drives the point home, but plays as overblown genre T.V. business. I also find it rather convenient that the mysterious, just now mentioned outpost where the prisoners are taken turns out to be Alexandria, but whatever.
I’ll admit to being curious, to say the least, how the show is going to turn this into a rollicking series finale from here. There’s a lot of ground to cover with a ton of characters, including two separate prison breaks, Eugene’s trial, a rebellion at the Commonwealth, the rescue of the kids, and several other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. I appreciate the show gathering up many of the original survivors (or at least those who are still standing) for one last big push, but I worry with only three episodes left, TWD may have bitten off more than it can chew. (Or god help us, pushed off the true resolution of all of this for one of the spinoffs.)
Still, this was a solid outing for the series, if you can forgive the plot contrivances and focus on the core ideas. (As a Community fan, it doesn’t hurt to hear Yvette Nicole Brown’s voice on the other end of that radio either.) I could be overreading, but this felt like TWD returning to its roots. Maybe I’m just nostalgic, since candidly, I didn’t necessarily love the early years of the show either, but there’s something a little refreshing to see our heroes out on their own again, banding together to stand against difficult odds, bulwarked by the shared love and trust that give them an anchor of certainty in an uncertain world.