[This is a review of The
Walking Dead season 6, episode 5. There will be SPOILERS.]
Watching the opening sequence
to ‘Now,’ it’s difficult not to see Rick and his merry band of survivors as
equal parts savior and violently destructive force – at least from the
perspective of the Alexandrians. They’re not quite the ants that ruined the picnic
– that would describe the zombies now milling around outside the town’s walls –
but as The Walking Dead presents the scenario, with Rick
running back to the community’s front gate, a herd of hungry walkers shuffling
behind him, it looks remarkably like inviting Rick to the picnic was a bad
idea.
Rick’s potential status as
the would-be destroyer of everything that he touches doesn’t stop the series
from doing whatever it can to remind everyone what a hero Rick is. After he
literally brought the moaning horrors of the outside world to Alexandria’s
doorstep, others speak up in his defense. Aaron falls on his sword in a way,
taking blame for the
Wolves crashing the party, and then does his level best to convince
everyone things could be far, far worse. That’s the advantage of living in the
sort of post-apocalyptic landscape the show depicts week after week: no matter
how bad things get, someone can say, “It could be worse,” and most of the time
that person would be right.
The thing is, as Deanna says, Rick probably is exactly what Alexandria
needs in order to survive in the long term – provided they can survive him, of
course. The rotting herd of used-to-be people surrounding their walls probably
would have arrived on its own, and in far greater numbers had Rick not organized
theFirst Annual Walker Marathon.
Nevertheless, the sight of so many zombies is, for many of Alexandria’s
residents, confirmation that the world really had come to an end. And in The Walking Dead‘s typically bleak worldview, opening people’s
eyes to the harsh realities of the “real world” is what earns one humanitarian
status.
Although it is a
slight and somewhat disappointing episode – especially following in the
footsteps of last week’s terrific ‘Here’s Not Here‘ – what
makes ‘Now’ stand on its own is the way it illustrates how the series has
learned to temper its grim depiction of survival at any cost by offering its
characters a reason to want to survive. And for the show to do that against the
backdrop of a community that has largely been isolated from the worst of the
apocalypse is another indication it is, under the guidance of Scott Gimple,
shedding the worst of its bad habits.
While it can sometimes
be necessary, an episode like ‘Now’ isn’t really the strong suit of The Walking Dead –
which explains why the hour feels mostly like it’s just waiting to be over.
That’s because it is mainly comprised of dialogue-heavy moments like Deanna
telling Rick Alexandria
needs him as their leader, Spencer (Austin Nichols) drunkenly berating his
mother after raiding the community pantry, or Jessie telling everyone they have
to fight. The purpose of these scenes is clear: to inform the audience just how
ill prepared the people of Alexandria are for the what’s coming, but they don’t
necessarily add anything to that idea other than what the audience already
knows. What’s worse, these moments do nothing to make the audience care about
this enclave of survivors, which is going to be a problem when things
inevitably go bad for them.
Thankfully, the
deliberateness of the dialogue in these moments and the unpleasantness of
people like Spencer wind up being undercut by actors like Ross Marquand and the
great Merritt Wever, who at least manage to make their scenes feel a little
livelier. Both actors are front and center in a handful of key scenes that
don’t drive the plot necessarily, but do try and color the world as something
other than completely hopeless. Wever makes the most out of her character’s
interactions with Tara, which turn romantic after her patient makes a turn for
the better. Admittedly, Aaron’s segment is aided by the presence of Maggie and
her efforts to find Glenn, which continues to be the show casting doubt on his
demise. But mostly, Aaron serves as the conduit through which news of Maggie’s
pregnancy is delivered to the audience, which is as another indicator Glenn
isn’t wandering the digestive tracts of several walkers, but
miraculously wandering the surrounding area outside Alexandria.
Each passing week, the delay of confirmation regarding Glenn’s status
only serves to demonstrate how the season’s use of the character is something
of a no-win for the series. Having Maggie announce her pregnancy could afford The Walking Dead the
chance to have it both ways – to kill
Glenn off but still
keep him on the show in a series of flashbacks. That is something the show
could conceivably pull off more convincingly than having him live through the
ordeal he was last seen in, and it might help them legitimize a death that
seemed unbefitting a character such as Glenn. Still, the timing of Maggie’s
pregnancy and the rapidly approaching mid-season finale makes the writing on
the wall clearer than what she and Aaron were scrubbing off as the episode came
to a close.
By and large, though,
the hour is mostly concerned with establishing where the characters are, after
several episodes of successfully overlapping narratives and flashbacks. While
this is arguably necessary to push the story forward, it also means The Walking Dead delivers
its first episode of the season that failed to be on par with its predecessors.
Every season is going to have episodes that don’t work on the same level as the
rest, and ‘Now’ certainly seems to be that for season 6.
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