The Walking Dead: The Calm Before (9x15)

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Cons:

I'm going to start with some personal context here: when I watched this episode, my DVR recording for some reason cut it off early, at the cliffhanger moment when Alpha sits next to Lydia in the movie theatre. I wasn't paying much attention to how long the episode had been, so I thought that was the final moment of the episode. I was all geared up to write a quite favorable review - lots of tense moments, good character buildup, etc. etc. But then I realized there was still fifteen minutes to go, and now I have to deal with this bullshit.

The problem with The Walking Dead is they have this huge over-bloated cast of people, most of whom we don't really care about, and then periodically in order to make us understand how evil a villain is, some of these characters will get killed off. But there's always some problem with the way they pull off the deaths: either they are way too built up and foreshadowed, and every ounce of drama is wrung out of the moment (Glenn, Carl), or else it's a character we kind of care about, and they're given a bunch of attention and more character development suddenly, and it becomes obvious they're about to die (Jesus), or they're someone I barely know at all and I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be so devastated about it (several of the deaths in this episode).

Really, we should talk about the Big Three Deaths.

Enid. She falls into the "Jesus" category for me, in that we suddenly get all these moments with her being all cute with her boyfriend, and I instantly thought she was going to get killed off. Or he was. One of them, anyway. It's hard to care about this, because I don't really feel like I know Enid at all, especially post time-jump. She's just another random Hilltop community member at this point.

Tara. I'm too exhausted to repeat my tirade about this show killing off all its queer characters. At least there are still those two girls whose names I don't know yet. Or whatever. And at least there's still Aaron. The thing with a big ensemble cast like this is that it's not necessarily the end of the world if some queer characters die, as long as there are plenty of other ones on the show, and that kind-of-sort-of is what's going on here, so I won't repeat myself on explaining why it sucks to kill off queer characters. Instead, let's just talk about how stupid it is to kill off Tara specifically. Hilltop just lost Jesus, and now it's lost Tara, and it all feels so pointless. And I don't mean pointless in the way it's supposed to feel pointless. It feels narratively pointless. Tara has been around for a really long time, and she never really came into her own as a character. I've never disliked her, but I've never felt all that invested in her either. Maybe she was somewhat superfluous to the story that this show wants to be telling. But instead of constantly bringing in new characters and over-extending the cast, and then killing off people who have been around for years to make room for newbies, why not take the time to actually develop these characters? Why not make us care about Tara the way we care about Daryl or Carol or Michonne, so that if she dies, it means something?

Finally, Henry. I will admit, there are some aspects to Henry dying here that I'm going to put in the "pros" section too, because I genuinely did not see it coming, and there are some interesting possibilities coming off of this. But on the other hand... why now? Henry was an annoying brat when this season started, and I had just started to get a bit invested in him... and then he's dead. It would have meant a hell of a lot more if we'd had a whole additional season with him, if we'd seen him grow, if I came to care about him the way I once cared about Carl. This show has this problem of dragging some things out waaaayyyy too far, and then cutting other things off before they've had a chance to develop and mature. It's annoying. I'm always feeling robbed of the better show that we could have had if certain plot threads could be disposed of, and different characters could be given the limelight.

The frustrating thing about this dramatic mass-killing is that so many people had to make mistakes in order for it to happen. It was just so contrived that when various groups started splitting up, Carol, Michonne, and Daryl would be the three together, along with one of the new-ish characters whose name I still don't know. They're idiots to let themselves get surrounded by the Whisperers. After all these years, do they not have any tactical common sense? And also, not to put too fine a point on it, Alpha is an idiot for not killing Daryl, Michonne, and Carol when she had the chance. If she really wanted to punish the various communities for their defiance, that would have been the way to do it. These three characters are protected because they're the most popular characters on the show (they're certainly the only three that I personally care about at this point), not because it makes sense in-universe for them to be the ones to always survive.

Pros:

One of the reasons that I found the deaths to be so unsatisfying is that the rest of this episode was doing some really good work. I was completely drawn in, loving the suspense, enjoying the happiness of the Fair, dreading Alpha's retaliation... it was all great stuff, and even the setup for the deaths, seeing the heads on spikes, would have worked really well for me if it weren't for the buildup resulting in those specific characters' deaths.

The first thing that was awesome about this episode? The Fair. I resisted Carol being a part of the Kingdom for a long time because I didn't like how it separated her from the rest of the group, and I was skeptical of Ezekiel. He just seemed too goofy to me, even though I know that's sort of the whole point. But now? I understand their relationship, I understand the Kingdom, and I believe in it. That scene where the leaders of the various communities signed the Constitution was incredibly moving. I think it's important in a show like this for the characters to have something they're fighting for. Despite all of the loss and pain, they have to remain strong for something bigger than any one person. The Fair was a great symbol of that, and I like the fact that we lingered on it long enough to understand what's really at stake here.

This episode did a great job being genuinely scary, too. As predictable as some of the deaths were, in terms of the character set-up as I've described above, I'll admit I wasn't expecting the slaughter in this episode. I thought maybe it would wait until next week. Everyone thought that Hilltop would be the target of the Whisperer's wrath, and I'll admit that I got caught up in that assumption as well, even though the Kingdom made more sense in terms of the narrative. And when the groups went out to go defend Hilltop, I was scanning their numbers, wondering which among them were going to die, so it was a doubly effective twist that the victims were people supposedly safe at the Fair. When we first see Alpha in that dress, with the wig, just wandering among the people, it genuinely startled me and made me very nervous. That tension kept escalating throughout the whole rest of the episode. The whole scene in the movie theatre freaked me out. I kept waiting for a mass attack to happen, and when it didn't, the tension stayed with me as we saw Lydia and Alpha talking. Great pacing, great acting, great score, all in service of a very frightening atmosphere.

Lydia has really grown on me. Obviously there will be some people who are livid that so much was lost because of her, but I think we're seeing that these communities don't want to give up their values, no matter the cost. They've offered Lydia asylum, and even though the consequences of that decision were devastating, it was still the right thing to do, and I believe that Daryl, Michonne, and the others will continue to protect her, in honor of the people who lost their lives, especially Henry. Lydia has a great moment where she stands up to Alpha. It's important to remember the degree to which this poor girl has been brainwashed throughout her entire life. Escaping an abusive parent is no easy task, and I think we're going to see the trauma play out in interesting ways. Or at least I hope that's where this is going. Lydia could be a really cool and interesting character to explore more deeply.

Oh, Daryl. He was killing it in this episode. I loved the little nod he gave to Carol when Alpha led him away at gunpoint. It was him saying "it's okay" and "goodbye" and everything else all at once. We get two Carol and Daryl hugs, once when Daryl, Lydia, Henry, and Connie show up at the Kingdom, and once again when Daryl returns after his one-on-one with Alpha. He just loves Carol and Michonne both so much. When we see the heads on spikes moment, Daryl notices Henry first and runs to Carol, desperate to save her this pain. He holds her and tells her to just look at him. My heart broke for the both of them. I also liked the little detail of Daryl taking Lydia to the spikes (heads removed, of course), so that Lydia can say goodbye to Henry. Daryl has been isolating himself since losing Rick, but we can see how community-oriented he really is, how much he cares about the people around him and how much he wants to nurture them.

A few other little details that I enjoyed: I surprisingly didn't mind Rosita and Eugene's little moment, even if the whole plot scenario is still a little eye-roll worthy. I liked seeing Judith playing with other kids, enjoying the freedom and fun of the Fair, and I loved when she and Carol had their little moment. It's so sad to think of Carol not being a big part of Rick's daughter's life, but we see that Judith still remembers her, and I'm sure they'll be together again now. Ezekiel's opening speech at the Fair about Rick and Carl was really great, and helped to tie together the themes of this season. Connie and Daryl's goodbye, with Daryl asking Connie to watch the dog... I could see a real friendship developing between those two. Connie and her sister's conversation, hinting at some backstory stuff that I'd be interested to get back to. Luke being buddies with Enid's boyfriend, excited to play music at the Fair. I actually really like Luke and I hope we get to spend more time with him.

Finally, Siddiq's speech at the end. It's taken a whole season to unpack the reasons for Michonne's fear and isolation. It's taken all season to start getting some answers about the communities being estranged from each other, and we still don't have all the pieces of the puzzle. When I saw those heads on those spikes, one of my first reactions was to be worried that we'd backslide on all that character development. Michonne and Aaron would pull back and stay in Alexandria, Ezekiel's dreams of union and trade would collapse, and we'd be back to square one. It's possible that that's where we're going with all of this, but I actually doubt it. We can see how devastated everyone is, obviously, but hopefully this latest challenge will bring them even closer together, and when the Whisperers are gone, harmony can continue to grow.

So yeah. I liked so much of this episode. I liked the build-up and the atmosphere and several of the character beats. And yet here we are with another slaughter, a bunch of characters that were only just getting interesting, suddenly killed off so that we're clear on the fact that the Whisperers are bad guys. Yeesh. Annoying.

7.5/10