The Walking Dead: Splinter (10x20)

I keep coming back to the fact that this whole back half of the season has been a disjointed mess. What's it all building to? Anything at all?

Cons:

I want to tread lightly when talking about the character of Princess. I think the actor is doing a fantastic job, I find her compelling to watch... but on the flip side, I can't imagine that people who actually have various mental illnesses that include psychosis are thrilled with this representation. The violence, especially. I don't know. Maybe I'm treading too lightly. The episode explains that Princess isn't "crazy," that maybe her overactive imagination, her way of coping, is actually the only sane response to an insane world. But is that enough? Do I think this portrayal of a mentally ill woman in the apocalypse is being realistic about the challenges therein, or do I think some unfortunate stereotypes are being reinforced? It's unclear.

In the same way that when Maggie showed up and mentioned a new group of baddies who want to hurt everyone, this particular group of people, wearing what looks like stormtrooper armor, is already kind of exhausting to me. See, I have this glimmer of interest. The man that Princess talks to mentions paperwork, and a process, and authority, and rank, and it seems like a more legit operation than really anything our characters have come across thus far. That could be really cool! I want to find out more! But remember when Eugene said he knew how to make a cure just to get Abraham and Rosita's protection? Or remember when a helicopter took Rick away and we never saw him again? There are all these tantalizing hints of a bigger, structural, scientific next step, people with a better grip on the situation than the characters we've been focused on... and we never get to actually see it. I want to see it. I want some follow-through, please and thanks.

Pros:

I will admit, I was all ready to put Ezekiel in the "cons" section when he first turned up, because he was acting super weird and out of character and I was not at all pleased with this strange turn for his character... and then the reveal that he wasn't really there came in, and it definitely worked on me. Both Ezekiel and Princess are quite the... characters, shall we say. They're over the top, they have very bizarre and theatrical coping mechanisms. So having those energies play off of each other could have been really annoying to watch, but it turned out that with this strange twist, with Princess's perceptions of Ezekiel ruling the day, it actually became a very interesting dynamic to play out.

I also liked Princess's negotiations with the man that she attacked. I really could not tell if I should trust this guy. Sure, he was saying what he needed to say to get away with his life, since it seems clear Princess was angry enough to kill him or severely injure him... but how honest was he about being a grunt? About not having the answers? About the place they live being a good one? We've seen our heroes employing some pretty severe measures to make certain that new people aren't going to be a threat to their community. Can we blame strangers for doing the same? I like that we're keeping some mystery here.

I liked that we got only frustratingly small glimpses of Yumiko and Eugene, and in fact no glimpses of the real Ezekiel... there's a question as to how much of what we saw was even real, with anybody Princess spoke to in the whole episode. There's a narrative power in withholding information from us like this, as long as the payoff is satisfying later on. I found Princess's care and worry for Yumiko really moving. Like she says, even though she's only known them for a week, that's a long time in apocalypse years. She already cares about them. They're already her friends. And now she's gone back for them, and ended up trapped alongside them. Did she make the right decision? I guess we'll find out!

So yeah... on a larger structural level, I find this episode frustrating because of all we still don't know this season. So many dangling threads, not nearly enough time in the season to deal with it all satisfactorily. I'm also hesitant to praise the way Princess is being written. But from a viewability standpoint, I definitely found myself compelled watching this one.

8/10