11x23 Family

[6.4/10] You can’t review your way into caring about something that your brain has tapped out on. For that, I’m sorry. I have a compulsion to review the things I watch. It’s my sorry way of trying to hold onto my thoughts before they slip through the cracks of my mind and dissipate into the ether. Part of the goal is to make myself watch more closely, to strive for a deeper, richer experience from the art I consume rather than to just shut my brain off and imbibe uncritically.

But I have written something about the significant majority of The Walking Dead for years and years now. And one episode away from the series finale, I can hardly be bothered to give half a damn about anything here.

Stuff happens, at least! The Virginia Survivors invade The Commonwealth! Mercer foments rebellion on the side! Pamela spurs a zombie attack that leads them to start climbing the walls! Eugene escapes! Judith gets shot! Nearly everyone reunites! This isn’t a boring episode.

Except, it kind of is? Because none of this stuff really matters. Few of the characters feel like characters anymore. Instead, they’re just action figures to be moved around the Commonwealth play set. I don’t really know what’s at stake for anyone personally, and even the more practical stakes are pretty vague. Take out Pamela? What happens then? Presumably Mercer takes over and Yumiko advises him and things go easier, but even then, the problems of the Commonwealth run much deeper than one person, and rolling into take her down doesn’t seem like much of a fix.

I also low-key hate Pamela, and not in a “I want to see that villain get her comeuppance” sort of way. She turned from a semi-interesting character who thought the ends justified the means and felt like a formidable player even when she was doing bad shit, to snarling bad guy who’s all “Leave the poor to die to save the rich!” and shoots a child. I get that she’s supposed to have snapped after the loss of her son, and even the kid-shooting thing is an accident that leaves her aghast and blaming the other side. But she’s become a much less complex and less interesting character since Sebastian died.

I also low-key hate the Judith getting shot beat. It’s a lose-lose. If she lives, it’s more plot armor for the important characters. If she dies, then it seems extra stupid that Daryl and Carol brought her on a veritable suicide mission for the flimsy reason that “She wants to fight for what comes next” and cruel to have the death of another child on this show.

And miss me with this “last scion of the Grimes family” nonsense. I get that Rick and Lori and Carl and Michonne were are all a big part of the show once upon a time, and Judith is the closest thing season 11 TWD has to pay tribute to them in some way. But the way they shoehorn the homages to them,awkwardly saddling Judith with them and giving the poor young actress reams of clunky dialogue that immediately fall flat to work with, is the pits.

If you want clunky dialogue, “Family” has plenty of it. The first two-thirds of this one is “calm before the storm” type material with various characters having overwrought, portentous conversations meant to put a bow on several relationships or emotions before the shit hits the fan. Normally, I love this sort of thing. It’s a chance to do character work instead of just immediately devolving into grand action. But even after eleven seasons, the writers have never been able to consistently make that sort of thing work. Why change now, I suppose?

There’s a few exceptions though. I love the exchange between Ezekiel and Negan over why one chose to save the other and why one tried to martyr himself for the cause. Khary Payton just quietly kills it every week despite being stuck with the same rough dialogue everyone is. The reprise of his “And yet I smile” speech is an all-timer. Even Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who’s another consistent highlight, isn’t quite as good in the same scene, but his explanation of knowing the Virginia Survivors are better than him, and wanting to redeem his name a little for his wife and kid after all he’s done, is a good one.

God help me, I also love the exchange between Princess and Mercer. Princess making her code name Aurora is a funny little gag. And I don’t know, there’s just something about their chemistry together that’s impossibly cute. Chemistry is magic sometimes. The way the two gently, verbally nudge each other on the radio, and even the way Mercer says, “yeeeaaauuuhhh” when he realizes Princess is coming back works like gangbusters. Why do the two of them soar when I couldn't give a damn about, say, Gabriel and Rosita, who are theoretically more established and have more scenes together? I wish I could tell you, but how two performers, and two characters snap into place, or don’t, is part of the peculiar alchemy of television.

Hell, I even liked the business with Lydia’s amputation. It feels like a throwback to the earlier days of TWD, where the stories were somewhat smaller in scale and the danger was as focused on the threat from the walkers as anything. Losing loved ones in the horde, a major character paying a cost for an understandable but emotional and dangerous decision, and Aaron reassuring her having been through the same thing all contribute to an effective vignette amid the other world-shaking, bullet-blasting nonsense. The events feel tense and personal in a way little else here does, and as meh as I’ve been on this particular corner of the show, it’s the most personal, lived-in element of this one, and stands out for that reason.

Otherwise, I appreciate that they at least set up the climbing zombies a few episodes ago, thereby earning it a little when they begin scaling the walls of the Commonwealth and screwing up Pamela’s plans. It still feels really late in the day to go back to that idea, but whatever. Our heroes are very conveniently able to beat armored stormtroopers carrying guns on a regular basis, which strains credulity. Likewise, I don’t know why we’re pulling a Jaws and shooting a fire extinguisher like that turns it magically into a Batman-style smoke bomb. And the geography of what happens, and where the good guys can advance from or retreat to, is really opaque.

But honestly, those are trifles at this stage of the game. As The Walking Dead approaches its final stand, it gathers every major character into a big bunch for the last battle. And I’m struck by how little I care about most of them. It’s been a long time since the series gave me a reason to, and this batch of episodes in particular has turned into a shallow pulp so quickly. I will watch next week, because I’ve already wasted twelve years of viewership on this show. What’s one hour more? But my brain gave up long before I did, and I can’t pretend to be even halfway moved by the impending conclusion to a series I’ve watched for that long -- a sad indictment of a series I’ve somehow stuck with to this bitter end.