Back by one person’s demand! Take a break from the holiday weekend shopping to read our Walking Dead blog. We’ll comment on episode 7, “Heads Up”, and add a little commentary on tonight’s upcoming finale. We have some great new TWD action figures in the store for you to check out as well. The commentary is in two takes without a huge recap on the plot points, but of course, Spoilers Ahead.
Take one, since I’m writing a commentary, I read other commentaries. If you do too, this next point will sound redundant. Worse… fake… death… ever…
When Glenn and Nick had their emotional dumpster fall I wrote then and forward treating Glenn as dead. Everybody likes Glenn. You like Glenn. Who doesn’t like Glenn? More important than Glenn, though, is the unspoken promise of The Walking Dead for six seasons. The dead are dead. Dale, Herschel, Lori (brought up in this episode. Judith looks more like her every day!), Beth, Tyreese, etc. All heart wrenching, all dead, permanently.
They couldn’t even come up with a great scenario to fake kill Glenn with. Why? Because when the world exists as hordes of creatures looking to eat you, it’s hard to come up with a plausible trapped individual survival situation. The Walking Dead hasn’t fired on every cylinder in a couple of episodes this season. Glenn, not dead, isn’t a misfire. It’s a betrayal of a critical theme of the show.
Take two, that doesn’t mean The Walking Dead’s best days are behind it. Yes, logically, the surprise tower crash doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We spent notable time seeing, talking about, or referencing the project of strengthening the town’s wall in the last couple episodes. You think somebody would have caught the cracking tower of Alexandria.
You, however, only have to look back to the Morgan episode for the improbable to make a good story. The mid-season finale has the chance to offer up great action, a real impetus to change how the Alexandrians see the world, and therefore the ability to make some of the secondary cast more impactful. Not related, how improbable is it that Rick isn’t picking up on little teen Ron “Murder Eyes” Anderson? Spoiler alert. That’s not ending well.
Most importantly, the show has the chance to move the story forward in a way that makes us want to come back in the spring. We already know that Jeffrey Dean Morgan makes his appearance in the “real” spring finale. Andrew Lincoln has said that it will be the darkest episode in the show’s history (this a show, mind you, with a past episode plotted around the morality of killing a kid). So, even though I can’t overstate my disappointment with Glenn’s story, I still look forward to tonight. And you should too.
What do you think of the past and future of Season 6? Leave comments below!
