11x14 The Rotten Core

[6.1/10] What do you know, it turns out The Commonwealth may have a dark underbelly! Who could have possibly guessed that the new group our heroes meet on The Walking Dead might actually have something surreptitiously sinister about them? Total shock. Flabbergasted.

Despite the lack of surprise here, the goings on involving The Commonwealth sink to a new low here through two of its most questionable operators: the governor’s son Sebastian and her ambitious subordinate Lance.

It’s hard to know who’s worse. Sebastian seems slimier for forcing desperate people to go into dangerous situations just to alleviate his cash-flow problem. It’s already scummy as hell when the heir apparent brings up Judith, R.J., and Coco to Daryl and Rosita before strognarming them into doing a dangerous off-the-books mission for him. But it’s worse when you find out that they’re not the first ones, and nearly thirty other poor souls have died trying to accomplish the same thing.

Of course, once they get there, it’s a raft of pretty standard Walking Dead business. There’s a survivor to rescue, There's walkers to bludgeon. There’s surprise and logistical hurdles to overcome. But it’s the same sort of thing we’ve seen a hundred times on this show, and by season 11, there’s just not much left in the tank in terms of excitement. The reveal here is the depth of Sebastian’s cruelty, and the rest is perfunctory.

All that said, I appreciate the setup and payoff here. Daryl makes plans with Carol to have lunch that day, and when he doesn’t show, she not only tracks him down, but brings Mercer along to help get them out of a tight spot. Mecer continues to be one of the more interesting new characters here. He knows the dirty shit that Seabstain’s involved in,and won’t tolerate the dirty cops the punk has in his employ. (Though hey, a police chief doing extrajudicial killings of his own guys, dirty though may be, raises an eyebrow as well). But he will tolerate doing his job and knowing his place to hang onto the good parts of The Commonwealth. He follows orders, but knows what’s right despite that, which makes him an interesting player.

Hornsby might be worse though, because he knows what Sebastain is up to, feigns concern and relief, but doesn’t seem to actually care. I continue to be intrigued by the pairing of him and Carol because they’re two operators trying to play one another. The moment where each puts on their game faces in one another’s presence, only to drop them once they’re out of sight, is a little chilling and tantalizing for whenever their alliance inevitably breaks down.

Lance is also worse because he’s the author of the B.S. going down at Negan’s new camp. For all the cliffhanger-y, time-jumping madness from last week, the action at the apartment complex feels totally pointless this week. It’s widow dressing to some emotional reckoning between Negan, his new wife Annie, Maggie, and li’l Hershel. I don’t mind that under normal circumstances, but we spent so much time building to a confrontation last week that the listless seek and destroy business with Carlson and his goons this week can’t help but be a disappointment.

The emotional confrontations aren’t especially interesting either. The show wants to convince the audience, and Maggie, that Negan’s changed. Showing him with a new wife and a baby on the way is a cheap way to accomplish that in the midst of a time jump. This being TWD, something tells me we’ll get a flashback at some point explaining how, but in the meantime, it’s a “tell don’t show” sort of thing for Maggie.

But I suppose the “show” part is how Negan treats Hershel. There’s some instant electricity to put the young boy in a room with the man who killed his father. It’s a little cheap that Hershel was a stowaway and is discovered just in time to share a moment with his dad’s murdered. But all that aside, Negan’s admission that he did wrong while at the wrong end of the kid’s revolver and promise that they can settle it when he gets older is a solid scene that’s reminiscent of Kill Bill. Who knows if it’s enough for a vengeful Maggie to forgive or at least trust the guy.

Once more, there’s solid material here. The depths of Sebastian’s venal cruelty and the system that allows it, Lance’s extralegal “fall-in-line” bullshit that takes equal advantage of the desperate, and Negan’s moment of penance with Maggie and Glen’s son are all worthwhile subjects to cover. There’s just a lot of filler and plots that this show has done to death at this point in the way.