7x08 Hearts Still Beating

7.2/10. Since at least mid-Season 4, The Walking Dead’s M.O. has been to divide and conquer. As the show’s cast of characters has grown, more and more often, episodes focus more squarely on just a handful of individuals, frequently separated from the rest of the group. That makes season premieres and season finales (or fall finales), when everyone joins back together, feel like something of a crossover.

But it also makes them feel like reunions. The time apart for these characters doesn’t just give us a thrill when they link up once more, but makes us miss their interactions and shows us the value of their cooperation, even their togetherness, through the absence of it. That particularly fits the theme of “Hearts Still Beating,” which shows any number of survivors trying to solve their problems on their own, trying to carry everything on their own back, only to realize that what they want, what they hope to achieve, can only be accomplished by working together. It’s not a great episode of the show, but it works.

Checking in with all of the show’s cast (including the first appearance of Carol and Morgan since the episode which introduced The Kingdom), also helps to justify the episode’s extended runtime. Previous extended episodes like “Service” have struggled to come up with enough worthwhile material to fill those extra minutes without stultifying repetition. “Hearts Still Beating” does feel ungainly at times, jumping from character to character with moderate connective tissue at best in a way that can make the episode come off as jumbled. But the number of characters and stories involved at least provides enough incident to fill the episode, even if many of the stories have a “we need something for this character to do until they can arrive at just the right time” vibe.

The majority of those stories are connected thematically, if not directly. Each features one of these characters trying to act on their own, coming with a plan to take out, or at least blunt the impact of Negan and The Saviors, until each realizes that a united effort is the only way to accomplish this. As is The Walking Dead’s wont, this naturally is preceded and followed by any number of tortured, overwritten colloquies about broad ethical and moral issues, the sort of grandiosity TWD has never really been able to pull off. Spencer and Rosita’s is particularly painful, and Father Gabriel’s exchanges with Rosita aren’t much better. But they’re all in service of that idea -- that going it alone isn’t enough.

So we see Rosita telling Father Gabriel that everyone else has a reason to stick around, or people to stick around for, making her perfect to be a martyr. We see Rick trying to scavenge supplies on the other side of a zombie-infested lake without Aaron in an attempt to spare him. We see Sasha try to keep Maggie from taking on the Negan problem and Enid telling Sasha that she’s not the only one. We see Michonne continue her one-woman crusade to take out the Governor. We see Richard, the Kingdom lieutenant retreat to his isolated camper when his pitch to persuade Ezekiel to fight The Saviors fails. We see Carol try to tell Richard and Morgan that she wants to be left alone. And we see Spencer attempt to be a one-man diplomacy team to Negan. Everywhere in “Hearts Still Beating,” people are trying to work in isolation, disconnected from one another.

It’s the latter that goes most poorly. As I discussed in my writeup of “Service,” Spencer’s ploy to have Negan make him the leader of Alexandria and eliminate Rick was both predictable and doomed to fail from the beginning. It runs entirely contrary to Negan’s “might makes right” philosophy, and his natural respect (albeit respect that usually comes with barely-repressed anger) for people who stand up to him or take matters into their own hands, rather than his disdain for people who won’t take on the dirty work themselves. So in the mandatory Shocking Death™ for a Walking Dead finale, Spencer gets a knife to the stomach for his troubles, coupled with a corny “you don’t have any guts” line from Negan for his troubles.

It’s tense in that manufactured way, but it’s also one of the weaker parts of the episode, if only because Negan almost always comes off like a bear trap that could snap at any minute, and Spencer seems like a hapless cub wandering into it from the getgo. The show hasn’t given enough reason for us to care about Spencer, so his death carries little weight, and the way the show telegraphed his feelings for Rick and Negan’s likely response to makes his treachery seem inevitable in a way that makes it unexciting.

It does spur Rosita to use her one bullet, which, in the episode’s most convenient moment, only hits Negan’s barbed-wire bat, thus teaching Rosita that she too cannot accomplish all of this by herself, and leading to Negan using his Sherlock Holmes-esque powers of deduction to determine that the bullet was homemade. This leads to Rosita getting her face cut for the attempt, and a hostage situation to find out who made the bullet. Of course it leads to tertiary character Olivia, who’s barely had enough color for the audience to remember her name, kicking the bucket to up the episode’s body count, and a brief game of “I Am Spartacus” before Eugene announces himself and ends the bloodshed.

It’s the high stakes climax that’s supposed to give the finale it’s juice, but it devolves into convenience and unimpactful deaths. For as much as fans complain about the slowness of some character-focused episodes, those installments are at least taking the time to develop and make us care about the survivors, so that if and when they die, it means something. In the more plot-heavy premieres and finales, the show often stumbles, and feels compelled to keep up its “anyone can die” cred by knocking off characters who were forgettable in the first place.

So when Rick shows up, surveys, the carnage, and is told by Negan that he should get a thank you for not killing Carl and taking away a couple more mouths for Rick to feed, it’s anticlimactic despite the intensity Rick shows in the moment. We’ve already seen the major fireworks, and while seeing Rick and Negan face-to-face always works at least a little bit with the barely-restrained tension between them, there’s still a sour taste in our mouths from it.

But then, in the second half of the episode, “Hearts Still Beating” slowly but surely closes the loops on why no one can take down Negan or The Saviors by themselves. Rosita’s and Spencer’s attempts obviously fail. Michonne sees the scope and the numbers of the Saviors and abandons her solo mission. Carol and Morgan shoot down Richard’s plan for The Kingdom to attack The Saviors before they attack first, knowing the problems inherent in kicking that particular hornets’ nest. With the exception of Daryl (whose path here I’ll talk about more in his next focus episode), everyone learns that going it alone isn’t an option.

The most prominent of these lessons is delivered by Aaron to Rick on their scavenging adventure, and confirmed by Michonne. Aaron preaches the idea that gives the episode its name -- that as long as their hearts, and the hearts of those close to them, are still beating, then it’s all worth it. Aaron survives a cheesy fake out in the zombie lake, and a brutal beating from The Saviors in Alexandria, but repeats the line when Rick helps him up, reminding Rick, and showing him, that everyone’s in this, everyone’s ready to make sacrifices for the greater good. (Everyone, that is, except the guy in the hose-tied shoes who we only see from the ankles down. Elementary TV-logic suggests he’s a known character from the comic who’s being teased.)

Michonne tells him the same. After confronting the enormity of the task, realizing the difficult choices that lie ahead, she continues her journey of allowing herself to connect to the rest of the world again. Fighting The Saviors is something they have to do together, for the future, for Carl and Judith and Maggie’s kid. It requires a group of people willing to fight, but willing to fight for with each other, for each other. It’s an impassioned performance from Danai Gurira who, as usual, rises above the material she’s given.

It all culminates in the final scene at The Hilltop, where the bulk of the survivors the audience knows and cares about comes together once more. The moment is a little cheesy, with the cuts to everyone’s glances and smiles at one another coming off as melodramatic at certain points. But it’s also a warm reunion, one given weight by the fact that these individuals have been scattered to the winds, having to overcome their own individual struggles, their own not knowing if everyone else was okay. They come together, see that they’re all still alive, all still there, hearts still beating.

The images of reunion and embrace points us to the direction of the next chapter in the Saviors arc. Just as the survivors we know have been off on their own adventures, concerned with their own individual fights, and start coming together, we’ve also been introduced to more communities: the Hilltop, the Kingdom, the Pescatarians. The numbers of The Saviors and these experiences have taught our heroes that no one person, no one group, no one community can overcome these challenges alone. It will require a union, a collective effort, a unified front of those with different interest and different concerns coming together, united by a desire to keep those close to them safe and healthy.

The show as a whole has been about people being scattered, slowly grouping themselves once more and trying to find out whether trust and cooperation can bear out a return to something approaching normalcy in this brutal world once more. In the swelling tones of this mid-season finale, The Walking Dead offers hope that together, even the harshest of threats can be overcome.

I'm not sure how to feel. On one hand this episode has the right screen time with Negan (unlike the previous eps); not too long but not too short, showing his humorous mocking side, his usual front-face side, and his true self when he was raging. The part with Father Gabriel and Rosita was also good, showing character developments primarily on Gabriel: from detestable character to respectable. The part with Eugene also shows up how much he has man up.

On the other hand Carl has really lost his guts at all with him only watching Negan doing his chores. The part with Michonne feels odd that it turned that way, after all the rage and ambition she seems to bear in previous episodes. The part with Spencer and Negan feels a bit forced just for the sake of plot progression--not in their interaction, but in the way the Alexandrians just gather around the two of them while Spencer having a speech. It feels like they're watching an impending death.

Finally, the uplifting mood in the end where everyone gathers again just feels a bit repetitive after a while. We've seen that in Season 5 and Season 6. It's like the protagonists are broken with the same tactic and rebuilding their spirit with the exact same way each time they were torn apart.