And while the episode of The Walking Dead Season 6 was filled with good, tense action and some nice character development, it falls into a Walking Dead trap we’ve all become far too familiar with.For a group of people who spent an incredible amount of time trying to find a permanent, safe home, this crew really loves to leave that permanent, safe home for really bullshit reasons.
On the list dealt with characters acting out of character to further the plot, or force dramatic tension or unfortunate events. That, in a nutshell, is tonight’s episode. Two characters both act, if not entirely out of character, far more stupid and selfish than their characters would reasonably act.
Daryl takes off after Dwight and Dwight’s crew, apparently to get revenge for the death of Denise, a character he barely knew. I do understand his desire for revenge, and I know Daryl is a hot-headed character. Nevertheless, going after five or six armed opponents by yourself is stupid and reckless even by Daryl’s standards.
Meanwhile, Carol has left, leaving only a note for her boyfriend Tobin because apparently in the course of two episodes he’s become more important to her than Rick, Daryl, Michonne and the rest of them. She’s left also to go it alone once more, where she can make her own rules and do what she wants. Or something. Right now Carol is very hard to figure out.
In any case, Glenn, Michonne, and Rosita go after Daryl. Rick and Morgan go after Carol. In other words, five of Alexandria’s best fighters go out looking for two of Alexandria’s best fighters, for a total of seven of the most capable people around missing from Alexandria. That leaves behind Abraham and Sasha, Maggie and a smattering of others: Eugene, Spencer, Tobin, Aaron. Not the creme de la creme exactly, should Negan and the Saviors come to retaliate.
But of course, nobody communicates with anybody.
Glenn doesn’t go tell Rick that Daryl took off. Rick doesn’t check in with the others when he finds out Carol is missing. Nobody talks to one another, so presumably neither group is aware that the others are out there searching. Why nobody thinks to do this is puzzling. It’s not like Daryl and Carol are such gentle flowers that they can’t take care of themselves for a while. And if Glenn and Rick had spoken and, I dunno, come up with a plan, when they’d found Daryl they could have at least told him that Carol had run off almost certainly shifting his priorities away from vengeance.
So Alexandria is left almost defenseless, and off our heroes go to find our missing heroes.
Carol, meanwhile, is busy proving to viewers once again that she’s more than capable of taking care of herself. When she’ waylaid by Savior bandits on the road, she blubbers and cries but not because she’s afraid of them. No, her emotions go haywire because she’s once again forced to kill or be killed. At least she does it with style, taking out the bulk of the enemy in a brief volley of automatic gunfire. She doesn’t get them all, unfortunately, and when Rick and Morgan show up they don’t find her or the surviving bogie. On they go, after her unaware that the Savior is also on the hunt. We’re left to assume Carol is wounded, but still in reasonably good shape since she seems to be making good ground.
Glenn, Rosita, and Michonne find Daryl but he refuses to give up his silly quest. In fact, Rosita decides she’ll join him. They both want some payback they just don’t want to come up with any kind of plan. Glenn and Michonne head back toward Alexandria which is when everything goes awry.
Out of nowhere—once again! Dwight and his band of super silent, well-placed bad guys suddenly materialize. Glenn and Michonne are outgunned and surrounded, just like Daryl and Rosita were last week. It’s…incredibly almost the exact same scene minus Denise taking a crossbow bolt through the eye. But other than that, our heroes—our heroes who are well aware of the danger and still manage to get surprised and captured—are in an identical predicament. Glenn and Michonne are captured, of course. But look, there’s Daryl and Rosita sneaking up to rescue them! Daryl the tracker, the warrior, the seasoned veteran and Rosita who is almost as badass, coming to the rescue!
Except that Dwight and his Saviors are even more savvy at this, apparently, and get the jump on Daryl and Rosita instead. At this point, I’m seriously calling into question the skills of our band of survivors, who can’t seem to move ten feet without being ambushed or outmaneuvered.
Then something bad happens. We’re not quite sure what. Dwight shows up with a gun pointed at Daryl. We can’t quite see Rosita in the frame anymore. Then Blood everywhere, all over the camera’s lens. It’s impossible to tell precisely what happened. Who was shot? Did Dwight just shoot Daryl? I doubt anyone was killed, but that sure was a lot of blood. The screen goes to black, credits roll. We’re left with a huge cliff-hanger as we await next week’s season finale.
Negan are coming. Something bad may have just happened, but something worse is on the way.
In the end, we’re left with questions and answers both.
Who was shot? How badly were they wounded?
We know that up to four of our heroes have now been taken prisoner or wounded or killed by the Saviors. We know that Carol and Morgan are out of play at least for the moment, as Morgan continues to pursue her. Whether either will return by next week’s confrontation with Negan remains to be seen.
We know that something bad is going to happen, but because there are so many characters captured by Negan, there are quite a few choices as to who might get offed in the end. Will the show follow the comic books? Or will it go its own way? Which character is most likely to die? Of the four captured, my money would be on Rosita simply because she’s the least important of the bunch, and the show hasn’t killed off a core character in ages. Any of the other three would be a huge deal, since Daryl, Michonne, and Glenn are all fan favorites.
Of course, as I noted up above, it was Daryl’s stupid decision to go after Dwight that led to this. It was the other threes’ stupid decision to go after him without talking to anyone else in Alexandria first that cemented the predicament all of which feels rather contrived to me. The show has now gathered three of its best, most beloved characters. A little twist to catch us off guard. But the way in which our survivors were ambushed and captured leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If they’re really this incompetent still, they deserve to be caught and whatever else happens next.
I’m still worried, though. The tension is still difficult to take, and the wait will be grueling.
I’m also increasingly dismayed by Carol’s trajectory. Rather than have her go through a reasonable passage of self-doubt and interior examination, the writers have her doing a complete 180. Sobbing Carol, who is suddenly so consumed by the thought of killing someone, is utterly unbelievable. What a total waste of a good character. She’s struggled and evolved in the past in far more subtle ways. This change is too sudden, too maudlin, and also feels pretty contrived. The show apparently had to get all its best characters out of town and vulnerable, and what better way to do it then have them make stupid, out-of-character decisions?
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