To be honest, I'm feeling a bit disappointed. That really wasn't a strong mid-season opener. Surprisingly, it seems like the reviews for this episode have mostly been highly complimentary. I'll talk about the things that worked well, too, but I guess I don't agree with the overall acclaim. Let's go through the plot.
After Beth's death, the group decide to honor Beth's wishes by going with Noah to the walled community where he used to live with his family. They all make the journey, and then a scouting party runs ahead to check out the walled community and see what's what. This scouting party consists of Rick, Tyreese, Michonne, Glenn, and Noah. When they get there, they find to their horror that the community is no more. Everybody is dead.
Michonne thinks that maybe they could settle down here, because she thinks they need to have a purpose again, instead of just trying to survive. Rick points out that the location has no good sight-lines because of the trees. Later, Michonne suggests that they try to get to Washington DC. Even though Eugene was lying about the cure, he was right to think that they might have a better chance of a life in DC.
Inside Noah's house, Noah finds his mother's body. As Tyreese looks at a picture of Noah's little brothers, he is suddenly bitten on the arm by one of the reanimated brothers. Noah takes care of the Walker, but Tyreese is already losing a lot of blood. Noah runs off to find the others.
Tyreese hallucinates the dead - he sees Lizzie, Mika, Beth, Bob, the Governor, and Martin (the man he couldn't kill before, when Martin was threatening baby Judith). Tyreese also hallucinates radio news reports. Earlier, we learned that Tyreese's father had always made him and Sasha listen to reports of terrible things going on in the world, so that they would be informed citizens of the world. As he hallucinates the news reports, he also hears Lizzie, Mika, Bob and Beth all telling him that it's okay to let go and die.
Rick and the others get to him and cut his bitten arm off, but Tyreese sadly dies in the car on the group's way back to the others. We see his funeral, as Brother Gabriel presides over the burial, and Sasha looks on, devastated by the loss of her brother.
It looks like the group will start heading towards DC now, in honor of what Beth would have wanted. They can't give up hope yet.
I don't even know where to start with my problems. I have a lot of them.
So, first of all, Tyreese's death felt like such a gimmick. We just lost Beth, and now we have another main character axed off. It feels like it just happened to shock and upset the audience. The purported in-universe reason for his death is also pretty silly. This episode really nailed it in - Tyreese didn't want to be a killer, and so he had to die. He's "the kind of guy who saves babies," and so his death was pretty much preordained. I mean yeah, I get it. Most of our principal characters have this streak of darkness within them, and since Tyreese wasn't willing to go down that path, there was no place for him in this world. But my God, did they belabor this point! I got sick of it!
The use of hallucinations to bring back dead characters is a trope I've always really hated. I hated it when they did it in the House finale, too. It's just so... lazy. Now, I think there could have been a way to do the hallucinations really effectively. If nobody had talked, and he had just seen strange flashes of his lost loved ones, that might have been really effective. Or, maybe if Beth had appeared and sang her song, but not said anything to him, that would have worked. But all of Martin's blabbering on, and the repeated phrases that Beth, Mika, and Lizzie were saying? Well, they were all pretty stupid. They took me out of the moment.
Also, this episode had a lot of characters standing on their soapboxes. Glenn speechified about how nothing matters any more and they're all going to die. Michonne speechified about how they need a new purpose. Rick speechified about honoring Beth's memory. Tyreese speechified about being a citizen of the world and never giving up. It was just exhausting. On their own, I didn't necessarily have a problem with any one of these speeches or the thematic resonances being brought to our attention. But there were a lot of monologues going on here, and I found it a bit exhausting.
Then there's the fact that if you were going to kill Tyreese, shouldn't we have been focusing on Sasha and Carol as his two principle mourners? I mean, maybe we'll get more of that next episode, but as it was, I felt like it was a really cheap trick to make us think it was Beth's funeral, and then surprise us with Tyreese's funeral instead. And what about Beth's funeral, for that matter? Why did Glenn run off on a scouting mission and leave the freshly grieving Maggie behind? Why would this show decide not to go into the implications of the sudden and traumatic loss of Beth, and instead shove another death in our faces for no good reason?
But this is The Walking Dead. Even the episodes that have a lot of problems are still obviously impressive in some ways.
First of all, I have to admire the fact that of the five characters we focused on in this episode (Tyreese, Michonne, Glenn, Noah, and Rick) only one of them was white. Yay for media representation!
The main thing to praise is the visual look of this episode. I don't normally comment on things like that, but the actual look and atmosphere of this episode was very, very impressive. Even though the hallucination scenes were overplayed in my opinion, some of the visual trickery was very impressive. When the Governor reached for Tyreese and then turned into a Walker, for example, or the first shots of the devastated walled community. The sound design was also excellent. I particularly liked the way the radio broadcast and Beth's song faded in and out as Tyreese struggled with his decision.
Of all the speechifying moments, I think I liked Michonne's the best. She stated it very well: if they don't have a goal, something to hope for, they're going to stop living and start just getting by. They need Washington DC. Even if it's another dead end, at least they'll have hope for the remaining leg of their journey. That's an important theme that's been tied through a lot of this show, and I liked the way it was expressed here.
There was one quick moment in this episode that I really liked. Tyreese is looking at a picture of Noah's brothers, and then he is attacked from behind by one of these brothers, reanimated as a Walker. He reels back in pain, and Noah runs in and stabs his erstwhile brother in the head. This sequence of events only took a few seconds, but there was just so much happening and it was such a nuanced moment. Tyreese was contemplating the terrible loss of life, Noah was outside the room weeping over his mother's corpse, then suddenly Tyreese is being attacked by the little boy he was mourning just one second earlier. Then, Noah is forced to stab his brother in the head. You can see the way he reels back from what he's done, in horror, even as he turns to see what can be done for Tyreese. So much was packed in to this quick little moment. Very impressive.
Unfortunately, that's all I've really got on the positive side of things. There were certainly elements that worked out okay, but I wasn't impressed overall with what I saw in this episode. Here's hoping for a stronger outcome next week!
6/10
The use of hallucinations to bring back dead characters is a trope I've always really hated. I hated it when they did it in the House finale, too. It's just so... lazy. Now, I think there could have been a way to do the hallucinations really effectively. If nobody had talked, and he had just seen strange flashes of his lost loved ones, that might have been really effective. Or, maybe if Beth had appeared and sang her song, but not said anything to him, that would have worked. But all of Martin's blabbering on, and the repeated phrases that Beth, Mika, and Lizzie were saying? Well, they were all pretty stupid. They took me out of the moment.
Also, this episode had a lot of characters standing on their soapboxes. Glenn speechified about how nothing matters any more and they're all going to die. Michonne speechified about how they need a new purpose. Rick speechified about honoring Beth's memory. Tyreese speechified about being a citizen of the world and never giving up. It was just exhausting. On their own, I didn't necessarily have a problem with any one of these speeches or the thematic resonances being brought to our attention. But there were a lot of monologues going on here, and I found it a bit exhausting.
Then there's the fact that if you were going to kill Tyreese, shouldn't we have been focusing on Sasha and Carol as his two principle mourners? I mean, maybe we'll get more of that next episode, but as it was, I felt like it was a really cheap trick to make us think it was Beth's funeral, and then surprise us with Tyreese's funeral instead. And what about Beth's funeral, for that matter? Why did Glenn run off on a scouting mission and leave the freshly grieving Maggie behind? Why would this show decide not to go into the implications of the sudden and traumatic loss of Beth, and instead shove another death in our faces for no good reason?
But this is The Walking Dead. Even the episodes that have a lot of problems are still obviously impressive in some ways.
First of all, I have to admire the fact that of the five characters we focused on in this episode (Tyreese, Michonne, Glenn, Noah, and Rick) only one of them was white. Yay for media representation!
The main thing to praise is the visual look of this episode. I don't normally comment on things like that, but the actual look and atmosphere of this episode was very, very impressive. Even though the hallucination scenes were overplayed in my opinion, some of the visual trickery was very impressive. When the Governor reached for Tyreese and then turned into a Walker, for example, or the first shots of the devastated walled community. The sound design was also excellent. I particularly liked the way the radio broadcast and Beth's song faded in and out as Tyreese struggled with his decision.
Of all the speechifying moments, I think I liked Michonne's the best. She stated it very well: if they don't have a goal, something to hope for, they're going to stop living and start just getting by. They need Washington DC. Even if it's another dead end, at least they'll have hope for the remaining leg of their journey. That's an important theme that's been tied through a lot of this show, and I liked the way it was expressed here.
There was one quick moment in this episode that I really liked. Tyreese is looking at a picture of Noah's brothers, and then he is attacked from behind by one of these brothers, reanimated as a Walker. He reels back in pain, and Noah runs in and stabs his erstwhile brother in the head. This sequence of events only took a few seconds, but there was just so much happening and it was such a nuanced moment. Tyreese was contemplating the terrible loss of life, Noah was outside the room weeping over his mother's corpse, then suddenly Tyreese is being attacked by the little boy he was mourning just one second earlier. Then, Noah is forced to stab his brother in the head. You can see the way he reels back from what he's done, in horror, even as he turns to see what can be done for Tyreese. So much was packed in to this quick little moment. Very impressive.
Unfortunately, that's all I've really got on the positive side of things. There were certainly elements that worked out okay, but I wasn't impressed overall with what I saw in this episode. Here's hoping for a stronger outcome next week!
6/10
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