6.13 The Same Boat Fortunately, this week’s episode features one of the show’s strongest characters and one of the characters that’s been neglected since the move to Alexandria. Carol and Maggie, last seen at the end of last week’s episode getting captured by a mysterious member of Negan’s crew, get to have a little time together after Maggie’s attempt to storm off and help Glenn and Rick and the rest of the crew with the Savior outpost turns into them getting captured and held for what is essentially ransom. That leaves Carol and Maggie stranded with a bunch of violent strangers—including Alicia Witt among others—who are clearly not all in the mood to play along with Rick’s little games. The story is told in very economical fashion. We jump immediately back into the assault on Negan’s compound, with Witt’s character and her flunkies jumping out and capturing Carol and Maggie. We get the exact same scenes from the end of last week’s episode, just told from the other side of the walkie talkie, which is always appreciated. It’s interesting to see just how Maggie and Carol got captured, and a lot more fun to see them get away from their captors. The episode is in no hurry, and director Billy Gierhart makes the most out of the few zombies the episode has to offer, but there’s a clear ending point for this scenario, and the show doesn’t really waste time getting there, though the execution is perfectly timed. It ends up being a very tense episode, probably because Angela Kang imbues some real menace into Alicia Witt’s character, even if the other newcomers seem to be a little less dangerous, if only because they’re a little less competent. However, for temporary characters, they’re very lived in, well crafted by Kang’s script. They feel like they could be part of the survivor groups from a Walking Dead spin-off. It’s kind of an impressive feat; as one of the characters tells Maggie, they’re not the good guys in the story, they just think they are, and it seems like they all believe that. Of course, Rick and company just broke into a building and killed every person they found inside while extorting the same amount of material support from the people at Hilltop that Negan was due, and they point-blank execute a prisoner at the end of the episode, so the moral lines are sufficiently blurred all the way around so as to make Rick and his group just as scary as Negan and his group; Rick just happens to be our main character. Carol, and the awesome Melissa McBride, get some wonderful scenes this week, and it’s nice to actually see Lauren Cohan do something other than hang out on a porch or dangle over a wall looking concerned. It feels as though Maggie’s pregnancy has been more pressure on Carol than it has been on Maggie, and it’s clear that Carol is struggling to deal with the level of violence that she’s been forced to inflict on people, which is an interesting idea for such a strong character. We’ve seen Rick go through similar, but Carol’s been immune to it so far. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Not Tomorrow Yet, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan is glad to see that Carol hasn’t lost her creativity when it comes to ways to kill people. Kudos to her. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.
