6.11 Knots Untie One of the good points of the beginning half of this season of The Walking Dead was the way it moved from episode to episode in pretty steady rising action. Events lead to events, plateau, more rising action, climax, vacation. It worked very well. From week to week, there was typically some tension lingering, something to mull over; there was plenty of action and killing, but it was never over until it was definitively over. This week’s episode, Knots Untie, feels like a return to the rising tension of the first half of the season. Jesus, last seen escaping from Dr. Denise and coitus-interruptusing Rick and Michonne, wants to bring his new friends home to meet the family. In this case, the family is another survivor community hiding behind sheet metal walls in a place called Hilltop, a reclaimed living history museum called Barrington House that features all the amenities of a mansion of the time, including a sawmill, a blacksmith’s shop, and lots of old farming implements. As Gregory (a deliciously smarmy Xander Berkeley) explains, it’s a place that existed for hundreds of years before the modern world, why wouldn’t it survive the end of the modern world? However, the outbreak of violence isn’t contained to just a single stabbing and some broken arms, it’s more than that, because there’s a clear threat on the horizon returning to Rick’s field of vision: Negan. Writers Matthew Negrete and Channing Powell lean heavily on foreshadowing this week to build tension for next week and the big promised assault on Negan and the Saviors for the Hilltoppers. Abraham is working over his future, trying to decide if he wants to settle down. Rick and Michonne are a new couple, and we know what happens to women Rick’s interested in. And Glenn and Maggie, well… Glenn should already have been dead at least twice this season and being pregnant doesn’t keep you safe on The Walking Dead. By itself, Knots Untie is a decent episode of television, but as something designed to whet the appetite and create some serious tension, it’s even more effective. Negan may not even kill anyone in Rick’s group next week, but I’ll be surprised if we don’t see several deaths before the end of this incredibly long bifurcated season. Negan and the Saviors are the toughest threat Rick’s bunch have faced since the fall of civilization; even Daryl admitted not too long ago that they were tougher than they look, and Rick is leading his people right into their home base. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, The Next World, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan thinks that plenty of people are going to meet an early ending before the sixth season of The Walking Dead ends. It’s only a matter of who, not when. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.
