The Walking Dead: One More (10x19)

This was all in all a good installment, certainly more invigorating than the first two episodes of 2021. But that doesn't mean it was perfect, by any means.

Cons:

So this is one of those episodes that is good enough that it could have been great, if not for some relatively small aspects that could have been easily fixed. The big one is that the character of Mays comes on too strong. I don't mean in the sense that he's antagonistic and mean and has this ugly outlook on the world. I was totally caught up in it when he sat down and ate the boar meat, when it was slowly revealed that the boar and the booze had been his, that he considered Gabriel and Aaron to be interlopers. Then, the moment with the gun, shooting it through the wall, realizing that Aaron was tied up on the other side... that was chilling.

And then, after a great deal of excellently paced buildup, we get... Russian Roulette? Really? That's so unsubtle and lame and played out. We get this speechifying about how the world is bad and people are bad, and then Gabriel and Aaron being like "no, we're good actually" and it was just... incredibly on the nose. We slipped right back into some of this show's most common issues, spelling out the messaging way too obviously. There's no room for nuance when you have characters start speaking out a fully realized moral debate like they're ancient Greek students of Socrates or something.

There's another moment, too, that demonstrates how this shows prizes shock over subtlety, obvious themes over nuance. When the reveal comes that Mays' brother is alive and tied up, that he's been forced to play Russian Roulette with his family as well, I was thinking: oh wow, this is so interesting. This is a man who is undeniably a victim of circumstance, but he's so fucked in the head that he's not going to be trustworthy or reliable... what a test, to see what Gabriel and Aaron will do. Will they take him with them? Is it possible to integrate him into Alexandria? And then... nope. The man shoots himself. It cuts off a potentially interesting plot right at the start, and basically makes the whole episode self-contained. It's just Aaron and Gabriel wrestling with some tough moral questions and then turning around and going back home. There's no momentum to it because of how it ends.

That's one other thing to say here in "cons" before moving on... I don't get what this second half of the season is about. We learned about the baddies who are hunting Maggie's new people, then we get some relationship angst with Daryl and Carol, and setup for their spinoff, then we get this episode about gathering resources and ruminating on the essential goodness of humanity. Next week it looks like we're checking in with Eugene and his whole crew. There's a remarkable lack of focus, here. I don't know what we're building towards.

Pros:

As I said, this episode was good enough that it could have been great. If they'd toned down some of the more on-the-nose speechifying during the Mays scenes, if they'd let the threat of this strange loner speak through the acting and more subtle conversations, instead of going straight to outright insanity and a stating of opposing worldviews, this would have been a truly stellar installment.

But even taking it for what it was and not what I wish it could have been, I was really impressed! I've never been much of a Gabriel fan, so I wasn't really looking forward to spending so much time with him... and yet I thought he was incredibly captivating! Aaron too, although I've always enjoyed him. Seeing these two men, these two fathers to little girls, out here on a helpless hunt for supplies, the action sequences, the drinking and gambling and talking about god and faith and the future of the world... it was all The Walking Dead at its best. Character moments that didn't feel too overwrought, performed by actors talented enough to smooth over any of the more cheesy aspects of the writing.

And then, the introduction of Mays really ratchetted up the tension. When Gabriel first sees him at the end of the hallway, and then the whole scene where he's eating the food, shooting the gun, when Gabriel realizes Aaron is tied up... gah. All of it was so excellent. There were also two legitimately shocking and excellent twists here. First, when Gabriel killed Mays after he decided to let them live. Second, realizing that his brother, the one he'd spoken of with such hate, was in fact still alive and being tortured. As I said, this second reveal was somewhat undercut by the brother's immediate fate, but still. Seeing him tied up there was a real shot in the arm there at the end of the episode.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed spending time with Aaron and Gabriel, which surprised me, and I thought the refrain of "one more" was a great way to highlight their desperation. They just want to bring something home to their families, but they live in this world where even a lucky break like finding shelter and good booze and meat to eat doesn't actually mean they can let their guard down. It's a bleak world, and I feel pretty bleak watching the show, to be honest. Episodes like this one make me less miserable about coming back for more.

8/10