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The Walking Dead: Forget

Rick: “They're the luckiest damn people I ever met and they just keep getting luckier.”
Daryl: “How’s that?”
Rick: “We’re here now.”

Alexandria, our group's new home seems perfect but can our characters forget enough of who've they become to fit in?

They have all the comforts possible in this new world but as Sasha says, it doesn't seem real. Olivia and her prosciutto, Mrs. Neudermyer and her pasta maker, even the poor women who wants to make Sasha dinner, all seem ridiculous in the face of what the world has become. Yet, as Jessie points out, they have all been through something and lost a lot. They are basically good people trying to make the best of what they have now and what they have isn't too bad.

Our characters are adapting in different ways and at different speeds. Maggie and Glenn seem to be doing the best they can to fit in and buy into the hope that Alexandria offers. Abraham is willing to go wherever the beer is and Rosita seems to be going with him. Noah is skittish but malleable. Sasha is still traumatized by the death of her brother. The triumvirate of Rick, Carol and Daryl are the most interesting for me. Daryl actually seems to be the least traumatized of the bunch. Aaron reads him well and gives him exactly what he needs - a bike, acceptance and value. Daryl will be a good recruiter if he doesn't scare the crap out of people first. Rick is trying his best but he is still teetering on the edge. He went for his gun as Jessie and her husband walked by and I thought he would take the first chance he got to take Pete out of the picture. Carol truly chilled me with her threats to Sam. She is very, very broken.

There are some problems with Alexandria. While Deanna is a good mayor, she makes a lousy chief. She has thought about security from the walkers but hasn't thought through the dangers from people. In this way she is still holding onto the past. Not having a lookout in the clock tower seems like a major oversight and she is defensive about it, as she should be. Her dreams for the future are pie in the sky. There is a lot of work to be done before things like commerce can happen. Hope is important but not when it comes from denial and willful ignorance. We get to meet Deanna's husband who looks exactly like a professor. Somehow I can't see him killing walkers with his bare hands. I will say that Deanna is smart enough to not put Sasha up in the clock tower with a gun until she has gotten to know her a bit better. She also wants to make sure that our group gets to know the people that they might consider killing - hence the requirement to come to the party.

I like the people I have met in Alexandria, but they seem like walker fodder. I don't want to get attached because I can't see them lasting too long.

Bits and Pieces

Aaron is a very good judge of character. No wonder he was a recruiter. I can't see Eric being much use in that capacity.

Michonne putting her sword on the wall seemed particularly symbolic. I'm not sure why she isn't part of the "in" group. I don't think she is as settled as she appears.

The party was particularly effective at illustrating how out of touch Alexandria is with what's happening outside their walls. Of course, I've been to parties where I wanted to yell the same thing at people as Sasha did, for similar reasons.

Poor Buttons. Aaron is smart enough to know that Alexandria is somewhat ridiculous. He explains to Daryl that it was a child who gave the horse its name. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been one of the adults.

Of course Daryl can tell the difference between how a walker and a human move. They are completely different. Oh and the walkers growl/moan.

Where were Tara, Eugene and our preacher this week? Tara would have liked a beer.

I would lay money that they find out about the stolen chocolate before they find out about the guns. I'm not sure if Carol was doing that to cover up why she was there or if she just wanted the chocolate.

Quotes

Sasha: “Come and get me.”

Rick: “Us, we don’t need to be lucky.”

Rick: “People are the real threat now.”

Carol: “You know what’s great about this place? I get to be invisible again (emphasis added).”

Daryl: “The longer they’re out there, the more they become what they really are.”

Aaron: “We’ve heard our share of well-meaning, but hilariously offensive things from some otherwise really nice men and women.”

Abraham: “I don’t know about this.”
Rosita: “They have beer.”
Abraham: “I’m gonna try.”

Maggie: “You’re here with us now. You’re here with family.”

Abraham: “You packing different steel nowadays?”
Michonne: “Yeah.”
Abraham: “Live by it, die by it, and eat potato puffs by it.”

Daryl: “I met a lot of bad people out here doing a lot of bad shit. They weren’t afraid of nothing.”
Aaron: “ Yeah, they were.”

9 comments:

  1. Carol, Carol, Carol. What a badass. As horrible as her describing in excruciating detail what would happen to that little boy, it almost made me laugh. You'll get torn apart and eaten alive... or you'll get cookies. Sort of like our heroes these days. (I think she just wanted the chocolate. :)

    I absolutely loved the scene with Michonne and the cocktail skewer shaped like her sword, too. Like the cookies, it was pretty much perfect symbolism for what's going on in Alexandria. And how nice and perceptive of Aaron to give Daryl something to make him feel more at home, too.

    Turns out the reason they got Rick to remove his psychotic-looking beard is they're giving him a love interest? I'm wondering how her husband the doctor is going to react. If he's smart, he won't challenge Rick in any way. But I bet he's not smart.

    Loved your review, Doc. You're posting them so quickly, too!

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  2. Glad to see they are still getting great mileage out of the tension created by putting our group into normal settings. That cocktail party was nuts! I’m not saying I object to people trying to maintain civilization, but as you say, Doc, the Alexandria crew seems dangerously out of touch with reality. “That’s what you worry about?!” Then again, some of our crew seem dangerously out of touch as well, particularly regarding what’s necessary to “make it work” in this place. I’m looking at you Rick and Carol. I’m glad we’re getting some middle-ground perspective from folks like Michonne and Daryl, and a little with Abraham. They seem to be aware they need to maintain the skills and techniques to cope with the assorted threats from outside the walls, but they don’t need to reject or tear apart the community inside the walls to do that. I’m digging the tension between the Rick-Carol approach and the Daryl-Michonne one.

    The Rick and Jessie thing developed a lot faster than I expected. Obviously, I wasn’t feeling the vibes last week, but as soon as she walked into the party this week and he looked at her, I saw it. I still didn’t expect him to almost immediately make a move on her. (I guess I should have because of the scarlet letter A’s and all. Sheesh.) But I like the way it underlines his whole messed up “want, take” mentality now. He’s certainly not the guy he was. Making a play for another man’s wife, and then acting like a crazy, jealous asshole in the street at the end --- Rick’s basically become Shane at this point. And Carol, I fear, has gone a step beyond that.

    Loved the Aaron and Daryl bonding material. I’m not entirely sold on Deanna’s trustworthiness yet (although the character is engaging), but I genuinely like Aaron at this point, and hope he isn’t revealed down the line to be something other than the nice, perceptive guy he seems to be.

    Jess’s Crazy Nitpick of the Week: They are killing me with all these shots of the full moon in the recent run of episodes! We saw one the night the group took the zombie-infested road to Alexandria; we saw one two nights later when Rick was taking his walk and meeting Jessie’s husband for the first time; and we saw another one during the party in this episode, which is two nights after Rick’s walk. Since when is a completely full moon visible for 5 nights in a row? As though tracking the timeline isn’t hard enough with all the weather/time-of-year inconsistencies, they had to start trolling me with this moon thing. :)

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  3. Oh Jess, what would I do without you! You are so perceptive when you watch this show and see all the bits that I miss or can't figure out how to shove into my review. I didn't even notice the moon! You should be working on this show!
    I think the Jessie thing has been a bit rushed but if we believe evolutionary sociobiologists (I mostly don't) then Rick is the much better bet for keeping Jessie and her children alive in the new world. On the other hand having a doctor around is pretty important as well.

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  4. It’s a sickness, Doc. I’m sure most folks wouldn’t notice the moon thing at all. But because of my weird timeline obsession, I had noticed a few key shots of the moon back in 5A that were helping me sync up the disparate stories when the group was split up. So, I was already sensitive to it when we came back from break. The first one we got in ‘The Distance’ had me all excited because I was like “Awesome! So it’s been about 1 month since the hospital!” (even though Rick said 3 weeks in the previous episode). But then the full moon kept popping up in subsequent episodes and I was like “What the hell?!”

    I think you are being overly kind with the evolutionary biologist assessment. :) Even if Jessie’s husband turns out to be an alcoholic dick --- and I’d say they are laying down some indicators that may be the case --- and Rick takes him out, I’m going to have trouble seeing that as a good thing. Even aside from the “we need a doctor” issue, we all thought Shane was an asshole when he insisted his “mass macho” crap would be better for Lori and Carl in the long run. So what makes it any better coming from Rick? Especially when he’s getting territorial over a married woman he just met! Right now, it seems like the parallels being drawn are deliberate and the show wants us to see Rick (and Carol) as way out of line. I’m hopeful they’ll keep things in that zone, because I think that’s more interesting. But I’m not necessarily optimistic. They’ve let me down on sticking to the interesting grey areas before.

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  5. P.S. Yes, I’m aware that the moon can appear close to full for multiple nights in a row, but five nights at the level of fullness shown in these episodes stretches the bounds of credulity for me. Three nights, sure no problem. Four, I could go with. But, five? It’s too much to ask. People coming back from the dead as flesh eaters? I can totally accept that. But I need some semblance of our reality in the passage of time, dammit! (I mentioned this was a "crazy nitpick," right? This is what happens when I’m trying to avoid working on my tax forms.)

    Also, to echo Doc on another issue: I’ve been missing the secondary characters these last several weeks, too. The absence of Father Gabriel is particularly notable. I’m happy about the new setting and the character focus we’ve been getting, but the influx of new characters means a lot of our existing crew is getting shoved even more into the background. It sucks that Maggie and Rosita have been mostly reduced to brief face time only. And it totally would have been awesome to see Tara and Eugene at that party! I read an interview last week that said some scenes of the others reporting for their first day of work at their new jobs had to be cut for time, and it bummed me out. I found myself wishing we were getting more insight into how everyone besides the main crew were coping with all this change. Perhaps soon?

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  6. Any theories on the W carved on that walker's forehead, anyone? Another one of Aiden's stupid stunts?

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  7. I don't think it is Aiden. The torsos that fell out of the truck near Hoah's community had the W's carved on their foreheads, too. And there was graffiti on the wall there that said "Wolves Not Far."

    It could be linked to the men that were exiled. I guess if they were in cahoots with Aiden prior to getting tossed out, he could be tied to it somehow. But either way, I think at this point it is more to it than just him being an idiotic jerk.

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  8. sunbunny, I'm sure that whatever is cutting walkers in half and putting W's on their foreheads are going to be a threat to Alexandria because we can't just have our heroes re-adjust to suburbia and live happily ever after.

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  9. Whatever the show is doing with Carol might be my favorite thing they've _ever_ done. Thank you for the review, Doc. Just catching up now.

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