7x10 New Best Friends

[7.1/10] Realism is always going to be a tricky needle to thread for The Walking Dead. On the one hand, a big part of the show’s claim to fame is that it takes the premise of the zombie apocalypse and plays it seriously, sometimes overly seriously. On the other, it’s also a show where the dead reanimate and civilians use weapons well with minimal training and zombies show up in some new obstacle course-like form on a weekly basis. The premise of the show means it can’t exactly be as down-to-earth as its hardscrabble style suggests.

But sometimes, it just pushes things too far. The Junkyardigans (my current name for the collective that congregates at the dump until an official one is offered) read as silly from the word go. This show’s run into plenty of exaggerated groups before -- the Terminites, the Wolves, the dibs-based biker gang -- but they tend to run pulpy rather than cheesy. It’s a fine distinction, to be sure, but the difference for me is that as goofy as those groups could seem at times, their outsized characteristics seemed to fit into certain exaggerated, over the top qualities that haunt The Walking Dead all around. TWD isn’t just real, it’s hyper-real, and its more extreme villains and opponents fit into that.

The Junkyardigans, on the other hand, feel like something leftover from a 1970s science fiction movie. Equal parts Logan’s Run, Mad Max, and Cloud Atlas this group of garbage-dwellers has a strange form of speaking that doesn’t work with the tone of TWD. Sure, the show has delved into florid or unusual speech patterns before, with Abraham, Eugene (remember that guy?), and even colloquies between Morgan and The Wolves, but the results have always been hit or miss. Offering this new crowd, with their “we take; we don’t bother” attitude, and their leader, who seems like a Vulcan offshoot of the great Allison Janey, speaking entirely in this confused, primitive patois, starts this group that makes Rick so happy off on the wrong foot.

That doesn’t even get into this week’s zombie set piece, where Rick is forced to engage in mortal combat in a pit of refuse with a walker that’s a rejected design from Pan’s Labyrinth. The look of that undead creature, who’s a cross between the usual zombie and a porcupine, was actually pretty cool, but felt like it belonged in a different show. The entire Junkyardigan encounter did, with the whole exercise feeling like a high production value version of one of those syndicated saturday afternoon action shows. Rick gets the better of the walker thanks to a “use the junk, Luke” pep talk from Michonne, and all’s well, in the latest implausible zombie engagement.

Of course, it leads to Rick having a heart-to-heart with Father Gabriel, who was taken against his will by the dump people. He is touched that Rick didn’t think he’d run away, giving the show time for a bit of unearned sap. It allows the show to turn subtext into text, with Gabriel asking Rick why he was smiling, and Rick responding with a groaner of a line implying that Gabriel taught him enemies can become friends. The storyline, at least in this episode, feels very off-brand, and I can only hope the unavoidable future encounters with the Junkyardigans dial back the cheese a bit.

But it’s cuts such a contrast with the understated, achingly real reunion between Daryl and Carol. The moment of their meeting is one of the most potent in the show, and as I noted in regard to the mid-season finale, proves the benefits of The Walking Dead’s divide-and-reunite tack for the past few seasons.

It’s great acting from both Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus. The shift in Carol’s expression, from annoyance at another visitor to disbelief and joy when realizing who’s come to call, power the moment. And Daryl, with his taciturn, reserved demeanor, melts in Carol’s arms. I don’t know if I necessarily ever want this pair to be romantic, but there is a sacredness to their pairing that the show has not been able to muster anywhere else.

It’s not just fanservice though. As heartwarming as it was to see the two of them together, the moment when they sit in the glow of the fireplace informs the emotional states and connection of both characters. I know I just complained about the show turning subtext into text with Rick, but Carol confiding her reasons for leaving in Daryl, who was clearly hurt by her departure, drives home the severity of what Carol has gone through. The steely, self-assured warrior talking about how being in the world meant having to either suffer when people you love die or suffer when you lose parts of yourself by taking lives drives home the catch-22 of her misery. McBride absolutely sells Carol’s desperation, the difficulty that drove her away, and it’s the kind of vulnerability that works best when the character is speaking to someone she trusts and loves more than any of the other survivors.

But the scene tells us more about Daryl too. Daryl’s time with The Saviors seemed to have changed him, made him more brutal and vicious. His killing of Fat Joey didn’t seem like the measured act necessary for survival that almost all of the survivors have had to make at this point, but something borne out of anger and frustration as much as need. Daryl seems, and has seemed, ready to fight fire with fire, believing that responding to these butchers with more butchery is the only way to win.

And yet, he spares Carol from that. He sees what she has been through, what being a part of that struggle has taken from her, and he lies to her. For as much as he wants to defeat The Saviors by any means necessary, and as much as he wants the group’s best fighter at his side, he wants his best friend to be happy and well more. It is a kindness, one buoyed by their amusing rapport when breaking bread together, and it seems to give Daryl pause. The tiger warming up to him after is a bit too much, but it’s a sign that this visit has softened Daryl a bit, reminded him what’s at stake and who he is, in the way that only a kindred spirit can.

It ties into the episode’s other major narrative through-line, where Daryl and Richard are trying to convince The Kingdom to join the upcoming war against The Saviors, and Ezekiel and Morgan are reluctant to engage in such potentially deadly combat. The focal point of the arc is Morgan, who seems poised to slowly but surely move away from his no-kill stance and, as portended by the Season 6 finale, gradually see the need to use his abilities to protect people in mortal terms, to attack and not just defend.

Much of that is pretty tedious in “New Best Friends.” There’s more of a back and forth with the usual suspects, and another confrontation with The Saviors that feels a good bit like the last one. But the kicker of it, that Daryl is becoming more like Morgan, softening and tacitly acknowledging that he’s “holding onto something” too that keeps him from turning into the butchers he’s fighting, and Morgan is becoming more like Daryl, increasingly feeling the righteous anger at these monsters, is sound.

The cumulative effect is an episode that zips back and forth between tones, from the cartoonish qualities of Rick & Co.’s exposure to the Junkyardigans, to the quiet emotional moment shared between Carol and Daryl, to the Kingdom’s denizens’ waffling, which splits the difference. For a long time now, The Walking Dead has tried to have its cake and eat it too -- deliver a show high on genre thrills and outsized storylines, but grounded in real feeling and characters at the same time. It’s a tricky balance, one that TWD can’t quite manage in “New Best Friends.”

The events in the Scavenger's group is interesting. Particularly the armorized zombie, it's a nod to the zombie genre once again. Pollyanna McIntos's performance as Jadis (the Scavenger's leader) leave a strong impression for this new group: a distinctively group isolated from everything else that's been going on, with a peculiar, cautious approach to outsider.

Unfortunately Scavengers' introduction is as isolated as their aura in the film: it is a bit janky and deus ex machina-ish, with them being suddenly introduced with no prior foreshadowing that they existed. In a huge pile of rubble in the middle of the woods-laden zombiescape, even. The deal they made with Rick and co's is also unnervingly pragmatical. Why would they trust a group of strangers to bring loads of gun into their territory? More so with Rick's group. Why would Rick trust in giving such a large group with such a big loads of gun? What would not prevent them to scavenge Alexandria in return with that mass of power? Season 3 played this tense very well - distrust, cautiousness, distance. This season has been downplaying that human element in an attempt to sprint for the fateful showdown with Saviors, and it seems to show its worst part with this the Scavenger's plot.