9x15 The Calm Before

[6.4/10] I am desensitized to death on The Walking Dead. We have witnessed the “shocking” slayings so many times on this show. We have seen the series slowly but surely whittle down the number of characters whom I actually care about. We have had so many dramatic monologues that are punctuated by some theoretically noteworthy character kicking the buckets. After nine seasons, it ceases to have the same, if any, weight.

Game of Thrones fans know that you can only put so many heads on pikes before it starts to feel tiresome. What “The Calm Before” lacks in import, it tries to make up for in volume, packing in tons of vaguely familiar faces in with the three actually noteworthy characters who meet their ends here. Ten characters in total go off the glory in the episode, but a solid half of them we just met this half-season, and even more of them are spare, barely there presences who didn’t exactly make an impact on the show.

But even taking the three who do matter is underwhelming. I’d actually come to like Enid despite her Dawson’s Creek-style love triangle to introduce her to the series. But the show lost track of her a while ago. While she’s been involved in the occasional significant event, she hasn’t really had a storyline all her own in ages.

Tara fares slightly better, but only slightly. She had a compelling storyline between her losing Denise and her moral dilemma over Oceanside. But the show lost track of her too, giving her an abbreviated Hilltop leadership plot that didn’t really go anywhere this season, and a tepid “can we ever trust the Saviors” plot last year. God willing, we’ll get some sort of flashback or something to underline what Tara stood for and give the death of a character who’s been with the show for half its run something more than just a bit of shock value. Still, in the moment, it’s hard to feel anything but gladness that the actress made it off the show.

That just leaves Henry, the one death in the show that feels truly shocking and impactful given his focus both before and after the time jump. But that’s really the problem. I’m tired of seeing children (or at least young adults) killed on this show. I’m tired of seeing Carol and Michonne and Morgan having to lose and suffer the loss of those young souls that they’re trying to build a better world for. That too becomes exhausting and dispiriting after a while, particularly for a character who effectively arrived recently and had plenty of room to grow and places to go.

Instead, we just get Negan’s circle of death mk. II, and lord knows I don’t need or want that. There’s some distinguishing features, but The Whisperers feel like a big rehash of The Saviors arc that was, frankly, interminable. It’s the same basic “monologuing villain tries to rule by brutality and claim dominion, causing our heroes to use their ingenuity against the bad guy’s superior numbers” setup. Sure, the whole pretending to be zombies angle is something, and the abuser angle is something, but at its core, this is the same structure and rhythm as what we just got through, which I was beyond tired of by the time things wrapped up.

There was one point where I liked the “realism,” if that’s even the right term, for what The Walking Dead did. The zombie apocalypse, to the extent you could ever extrapolate into a realistic setting, would involve frequent deaths, from walker attacks, from inter-group rivalries, and from illness and starvation. But at some point, the tenth time you see the Big Bad off one of your protagonists so that the show can try to shock you and establish the seriousness of the new threat, it just becomes rote. At some point, when you’ve already seen Carol suffer and recover from so much, it just feels unbelievably cruel to have us watch her continuing to go through this kind of crap. When every character besides the three or four who have nigh-unbreakable plot armor seem destined to be kill, you start to wonder what the point is.

“The Calm Before” tries to offer the audience a balm. Rather than ending the proceedings on that tragedy, the episode closes with Siddiq giving a speech to the rest of the folks at the fair. He recounts (and we witness), how all of these relative strangers banded together to fight back against The Whisperers, how they fought for each other despite the lack of familiarity or affection between them. It’s supposed to be a rousing counterweight, a metaphor for how these disparate communities (and what the hell’s been going on at Oceanside?) can make good on that joint defense agreement and make a stand against their attackers.

Except that working together just got all of those people killed anyway! The show wants to have its cake and eat it too, to try to hearten us with Siddiq’s recounted bit of inspiration, but also to devastate us with the demise of several longtime (or at least long enough time) characters.. And I’m just done with it. I don’t need more deaths that have more shock value than value as the culmination of character journeys. I don’t need Negan redux with a continued terrible line-delivery. And I don’t need these characters constantly learning and unlearning and learning over again that very hard things happen but that if they work together and accept others they can overcome them.

The best things in the episode just feel like teases or feints for that final twist. The opening reunion, the first time many characters have shared the screen since the time jump, has the power of separation and reconciliation that the show’s divide and conquer structure provides. And while some of it just feels like texture, seeing the various individuals roam around the fair and break bread and enjoy themselves is lots of fun in the moment. Not all of it advances the story (beyond trying to remind us that certain characters exist), but it feels earned, that there’s something of a normal, frivolous life to be had within this broader community.

But the only reason those scenes exist is to do the whole “remind you what you’re fighting for” bi and then try to devastate the audience. The theme of this episode is how you never know, as Connie’s sister says, when the next goodbye is the last one. But “anyone can die” isn’t a boon to your story if you just use that principe to puff up the latest antagonist.

Enid and Tara are both characters with enough mileage to at least warrant giving them more to do before they’re off the show. The series has invested too much time in Henry to make the end result of his existence Carol and Ezekiel having to mourn another child in their care. Sure, sometimes the shocking death can be a good in and of itself, but by season 9, all that you’re left with is the sense that characters you’ve invested in, or at least should be invested in, have been tossed off just to prove that the newest arc-length threat means business. I am so very tired of that, so not looking forward to spending more time with The Whisperers, and so considering whether my next goodbye to The Walking Dead should be my last too.

HO-LY SH¡T
I wasn't prepared for this. With each reveal I got a little closer to the edge of my seat, when SUDDENLY, I found mybself standing. Shoutin "Look away Carol! Look AWAY. It's Eze... oh. It's the Dolf Lungdren kid. Good job Daryl. Seriously Damn, though.
So some stuff need to happen now:
• Badass Bowl - Daryl VS. Beta. Oh this would br bloody.
• Queen's Judgment - Carol is going to go full Rambo on this alopha bitch (pun intended). And it's got the potential to be even bloodier.
• King's Lament - Ezekiel is going to quit acting and get into post Lorrie Rick. Man, Henry's brother, Shiba and now Henry. He probably be killed by someone only to make the queen's judgement even fiercer.
• Scilence of the Lambs - Alexandria will just be Meh (intended again) as they usually are for the last 3 seasons.
• The Return of Lucille - We need more of Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan flirting with a wooden baseball bat.
• Here comes Maggie - Maggie will return just to show us how a southern mama handles thing in the apocalypse.

A great season so far. Hope they'll play it big for the finale.
Beside, I think the show runners are some of GoT fanboys. A lot of hidden reference.

the war between the dead, the living and the living dead...
Winter is Coming! and I have a feeling its going to be a hard one.

That creepy intro with Alpha skinning a woman to use her face as a mask gave me the chills. The fair begins at the Kingdom and when Michonne shows up with familiar faces except Lydia, the leaders of the communities get together to discuss presenting a united front against the Whisperers. A small group leaves the fair to go back to Hilltop and they come across the Highway Men who show them that a group from Hilltop was ambushed. Michonne, Daryl, Carol and Yumiko look for the survivors and let the others keep going. They are then surrounded by walkers which they all kill and then Beta and more Whisperers surround them. Back at the Kingdom, Alpha, dressed a normal person, walks around trying to blend in and meets Ezekiel. The movie begins at the theater and Alpha finds Lydia. In the woods, Alpha confronts the group and shows Daryl a massive herd of walkers and Whisperers that will be sent on them if they don't say off their land. Daryl is then let free and so are the others. They find Siddiq tied to a tree and at the top of a hill, ten stakes in the ground with the heads of people from the different communities sitting on top of them. The victims are Ozzy, Alek, D.J., Frankie, Tammy Rose, Rodney, Addy, Enid, Tara, and Henry. At the Kingdom, Siddiq tells everyone what happened and explain how those ten people fought together until the end. Daryl takes Lydia to the stake where Henry was found and leaves something in memory of him. Then snow begins to fall...