*SPOILERS … AND DEATH, LOTS OF DEATH AHEAD*
No surprise that Death reared his black-hooded head again this week on The Walking Dead.
And as is the usually when he turns up, no one was particularly thrilled to see him, most particularly the one person you would think has him on speed dial – Carol (Melissa McBride).
Captured by some of Negan’s outliers, led by Paula (Alicia Witt), who just happened to be out of the building when Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the gang did their murderous barnstorming last week, Carol and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) found themselves held hostage, at the whim of people who clearly didn’t like them or for that matter each other.
If the relationships between Paula, Molly (Jill Jane Clements), Michelle (Jeananne Goossen) and Donnie (Rus Blackwell) are any indication, life in Negan’s world is not exactly potluck dinners and cosy nights by the fire.
More likely it’s knife fights at dawn, poisoned chalices and every person for themselves, come what may. Not exactly a warm and friendly family environment, something that was immediately apparent to Carol and Maggie.
Dragged to a supposed “safe house” by their captors, which turned out to not be very safe at all thank you very much, what with pilfered food and gas supplies, and more walkers that you could swing a katana at – if only they had one! – the two women were trounced up with gaffer tape and gags while Paula and her posse did the usual sneering bad person routine.
You know the one “We’re going to kill you, you’ll regret killing our compatriots, we’re going to kill you, how could you shoot Donnie (who frankly handled it like a baby; OK babies would have borne their injuries with more stoic silence), we”re going to kill you” and on and on and one.
The thing is, they didn’t kill them, with Paula, who talked a tough game, regaling them with all the people she’s killed and how she cares not that she’s a mass murderer of long standing because she did what she had to do etc etc, with the clock ticking by and not so much as a paper cut.
That was until poor injured Donnie aka The Biggest Crybaby of the Apocalypse decided to mete out some rough justice to Carol who had shot him earlier when Paula’s group has captured her and Maggie.
He came off not very well out of it, not so much thanks to Carol, who put up an impressive fight until Donnie had her prone on the ground being kicked in the back, but to Paula who didn’t appreciate Donnie breaking rank and going rogue.
The interesting part of “In the Same Boat”, written by Angela Kang, was its focus on the women of the two groups, and the fact that appearances can be quite deceiving when you want them to be.
Paula, for instance, as noted, talked extremely tough and bitter, but you have to wonder if that’s not a byproduct of being in the company of a sociopath such as Negan for as long as she has been. In fact, everyone in the group spoke in public with the same abrasive edge and it wasn’t until Michelle was alone with Maggie, the better to interrogate her and Carol faced off against Paula and Molly after biding her time, that we saw the chinks in their armour.
Paula did some of the best dithering ever seen on The Walking Dead, preferring to hold Rick off until such time as reinforcements arrived from Negan’s camp. As it turned out that was too late with Rick tracking down Paula’s hideout and storming in to see that Carol and Maggie had taken care of things quite nicely.
All of Negan’s crew were dead, some in a pretty fiery way, but rather than Carol and Maggie exulting in their victory, there was a profound sense of exhaustion on both their parts with Maggie telling Glenn (Steven Yeun) that she can’t do this anymore.
And that the salient lesson in what was in many ways a fairly disjointed and lacklustre episode.
Strong intent yes, and certainly quite revelatory as we realised that Carol’s assumed act as a spineless, scared pathetic woman wasn’t wholly an act. Certainly she worked hard to lull her captors into a false sense of security, doing her best to look entirely not up to the talk of fighting back in any meaningful way but behind this cunning plan, there was real exhaustion with seeing death once again sashay his way into her presence.
There had been telltale signs over the last few episodes that Carol was done with being the slayer of worlds but it was never more apparent than in this episode when all the regret, sadness and loss seem to come crashing into her.
Of course she did what she had to do but reluctantly and only because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.
“The Same Boat”, a sneering reference by the Neganites – they all said they were Negan, a weird cultish reference if there was one – that all of them were fated to die, was a powerful statement of the will to live but ultimately lacked the oomph it might have had, despite an impressive performance by Melissa McBride.
Now that they’re free, of course, with evidence mounting that Negan is everywhere and not just in the buildings taken by Rick and the gang, the question is where to next? Death won’t leave them along anytime soon, a problem when the appetite for confronting it seems so thin on the ground.
- Next week’s episode “Twice as Far” is going to be pivotal – they think they’ve taken out Negan but it’s obvious they haven’t and way more trouble lies ahead.
