Ripp Off: The Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 14 “Twice as Far”

The good news is, Daryl’s been reunited with his crossbow. The bad news is, so has Denise.The last ten minutes throw all of this into utter turmoil. The town loses Denise and seemingly Carol in staccato fashion, one after the other. As shocking as it was to see Denise’s death, Carol’s decision to simply leave Alexandria was an even bigger bombshell. The only doctor in town should never go out scavenging. Lets wrap up the walking dead season 6 episode 14 for what is happen.

That’s what I said to my TV screen when Denise asked to tag along with Daryl and Rosita on a trip to an apothecary. They brought her along anyways. I also said it about the Hilltop community’s doctor, who had to be rescued by Rick and Jesus et alia a couple episodes back.

Say it with me, one more time: you should never take the only doctor in town scavenging.

I thought, for a moment, that ”Twice as Far” would end with Denise as zombie food. Turns out, that wasn’t quite the case, even if Denise did act pretty erratically throughout. We don’t know exactly what was motivating her, of course, since we don’t hear her entire speech, so I’ll try not to pass too much judgment.

Besides, one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.

So long Denise, we barely knew ya. Seriously, here we have the one Alexandrian with any real character development this season already shuffling off this mortal coil, and I wonder what the point of it all was. What the point of her encounter with the Wolf, or her relationship with Tara, really even meant.

Let’s back up a minute. The three intrepid explorers find lots of drugs at the apothecary, after finding some booze on the road. Sounds like they’ll be having fun later! But it’s at the apothecary that Denise starts acting like an idiot, and I start seriously questioning whether she’ll make it to the credits.

She very foolishly goes alone to investigate the sounds of a zombie in another room. Whoever it was apparently drowned their baby in the sink before turning. It’s super creepy, though most of the time I spent just yelling at Denise to stop being stupid. She brought Daryl and Rosita along as muscle. Why are they loading up the drugs instead of her? Shouldn’t they be investigating the walker? What is this opposite day or something?

In any case, to get to the apothecary they had to park the car and walk. Daryl wanted to take the woods, seeing it as less exposed and safer than following the rail. Rosita took the tracks, because she’s being defiant and angry in her new post-Abraham life. Everyone makes it there okay, so on the way back Daryl takes the train tracks. It’s faster, he’s being cool to Rosita, whatever. They take the tracks.

Big mistake. Denise nearly gets herself killed by a walker over a cooler—of all things, a cooler?—once again forgetting that Daryl and Rosita are there to protect her and she shouldn’t be putting everyone at risk for no reason. But Denise doesn’t see it this way and goes on a big rant about things she barely understands when THWACK.

There is a crossbow bolt sticking out of her eye. In perhaps one of the most disturbing yet brilliant flares of genius the show has given us so far, Denise actually keeps talking for a couple seconds before dying. It’s really awful to watch. It’s like her brain has already sent those signals to her mouth and she carries on after she’s already effectively dead. No pain, no surprise even, just BAM. Dead.

I didn’t see it coming, though I probably should have.

She hits the dirt and then out of the woods come seven or eight guys with guns, led by a familiar face: Dwight. Though, to be fair, his face isn’t entirely familiar. It’s half burned away, a not insignificant change from the last time we saw him, when he stole both Daryl’s crossbow and motorcycle. Daryl should have killed him then, but it’s too late now.

Thankfully for all of us, Eugene was there to save the day.

Eugene and Abraham had gone out to a machine shop where Eugene says he can start manufacturing ammunition. He rightfully notes that it’s basically currency now, and that they’ll need it both for defense and trade. Then he and Abraham get in a big fight and they both say things they’ll regret later. Abraham leaves after Eugene says he no longer needs the big guy’s services, and tells Eugene to find his own way home. Fortunately, that’s just a bluff. When Eugene is captured by Dwight and his thugs, Abraham follows.

Eugene notices Abraham off in the bushes when he’s brought out onto the tracks by Dwight, bound and on his knees. He even gives Abraham’s location away to the enemy, and for a brief second we think maybe he really is that dumb and vindictive. But it’s all part of his very…unique ploy. When the guards move off to investigate Abraham, Eugene leans over and bites Dwight.

Right in the crotch.

No shame, only a ruthless, hilarious, and honestly pretty brilliant use of his mouth for once. One almost feels bad for Dwight. Almost.

In any case, Abraham starts shooting the guards. Daryl and Rosita get guns and start shooting also. Eventually Dwight and company flee, though Eugene is shot. (Oh, and Eugene in a ponytail is perhaps even worse than the straight mullet, but I’ll forgive him all that for now. He deserves real points for badassery this episode.)

In any case, all of this is rather tense and exciting. We know now that Dwight, and by extension Negan and the Saviors, know of Alexandria. They are aware of it and ready to come in full force, with a vengeance—literally. Whatever time Rick and company had before is gone. They’ll need to build up their defenses and get ready to do battle. Their only doctor is dead now, too, which will only make matters worse.

Never take your only doctor out scavenging, people! It’s just dumb.

Now, certainly, Rick and the remaining survivors will need all hands on deck. Every able-bodied fighter will need to work together if they stand any chance of survival.

In the course of three episodes or so, Carol has gone from resolute warrior and killer of all wicked men and women, to someone so squeamish about killing she’ll happily abandon all her friends when the going gets tough. I am not a fan of this development at all. Not one little bit.

See, I was a fan of Carol growing more complex. I was a fan of her struggling with her past, doubting herself, questioning whether her way truly was so much better than Morgan’s way. I love this introspection she’s had. But I don’t believe how quickly it’s developed. I don’t believe that Carol of all people would willingly abandon her friends and strike out on her own because she might have to kill another human being if she stays.

I mean, she might have to kill another human being if she goes, too. It isn’t a particularly challenging line of thought to get to that realization. Carol is smart. She knows perfectly well that striking out on her own could result in more killing. So why go? I just don’t buy it.

Perhaps part of my reason for finding her departure so sudden and unbelievable is how it’s shoehorned into the end of this episode. It felt like part of another episode jammed in at the end. The beginning and end of “Twice as Far” are actually almost identical bookends to the rest of the episode, but I guess I don’t really see the point. To show us routine? Okay. But what does this have to do with Carol leaving? Why tell it this way? Is it just to show Morgan staring at Carol’s old bench? Will he go out looking for her?

Sometimes the plotting can be so abrupt and jarring in this show. One minute we’re thinking about the Saviors coming to Alexandria. We’re thinking about Denise dying, and Eugene being wounded, and Dwight’s burnt face. All the things that just happened. We see Carol and Daryl having a smoke, a conversation.

The next minute, Carol is gone. She’s left a good-bye note for Tobin. It’s just a really odd transition from one part of the story to the next. It took me a second to figure out what was going on. The whole thing is just very sudden and bewildering.

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Ripp Off: The Walking Dead Season 5 Episode 13 Same Boat

Sunday night’s episode of The Walking Dead was one of the most tense, frustrating, thrilling episodes of the season so far. I was, quite literally, on the edge of my seat through much of it, assuming something awful would happen though nothing really did. Not yet.



When a show has been on for a few seasons and established an emotional status quo among its characters, it earns the right to give us episodes like “The Same Boat,” an incisive chamber piece that serves as a compelling analogue to last week’s “Not Tomorrow Yet” in its surprisingly deep examination of moral relativism, ably penned by Angela Kang and directed with claustrophobic intensity by Billy Gierhart.



Instead of focusing on a larger group going up against the Saviors, as we saw in last week’s bombastic installment, ” The Same Boat” gave us a chance to sit with Carol and Maggie as they argued the merits of their choices against an equally tight-knit posse of survivors one that was arguably every bit as justified in their defensiveness as our group. We’ve been told that the Saviors and Negan are bad news, thanks to the residents of Hilltop (and Daryl, Sasha and Abraham’s encounter on the road), but when you take a look at the damage inflicted so far, Rick’s people have a much higher on-screen body count, and far less justification to attack the Saviors than the Saviors have to harm them, given Daryl’s rocket launcher trick in the midseason premiere.



This proactive approach of “do it to them before they can do it to you” may be logical and even advisable in a zombie apocalypse, but overall “The Walking Dead” seems far less interested in delineating the line between “good” and “bad” this season than it has in years past, a narrative choice that is proving to be a creative goldmine in terms of character development. We’ve seen Carol evolve from a meek and battered housewife into the hero of her own story over the past six seasons, but despite her battle-hardened exterior, this is a woman who still clearly has a conscience and a conflicted soul a fact that’s sometimes easy to forget, given her pragmatic outlook.



While Rick is unflinchingly mutilating zombie faces and shooting men in the head at point blank range, Carol is still keeping a running tally of all the human lives she’s taken and giving her enemies second chances to do the right thing, even when logic says killing them would be the safer route. While I don’t believe that Rick takes these acts of violence lightly either, it’s been fascinating to see where each character lands on the spectrum of whether the ends truly justify the means in recent episodes. That these characters remain likable even when doing heinous things is a testament to the groundwork that the writers have laid over the past few years, and the show is finally venturing into territory so expertly trodden by another AMC hit, “Breaking Bad,” which wasn’t afraid to take its “hero” to dark places in the name of good storytelling. While “TWD” often lacks the elegance of Vince Gilligan’s TV masterpiece, it’s nice to see the show tackling those thorny ethical questions without worrying too much about whether a few shades of grey will put us off.



In seasons past, it’s been easy to talk in absolutes: Rick’s group = good, Governor = bad. But as “The Walking Dead” expands its world and introduces more characters who have all found their own means of surviving this long, we’re finally starting to get a more nuanced look at what the cost of living is in this new world. Is one group more entitled to live than another? How is that worthiness determined? That tension was personified in Paula, Carol’s dark mirror image, who believed that shutting off her conscience made her stronger. “I’m still me, but better,” she told Carol. “I lost everything and it made me stronger.”



The same is undeniably true of Carol, but it’s interesting how subjective the idea of strength is in this apocalyptic landscape: I’d argue that it takes far more strength to allow yourself to feel in a world where loss is a constant, relentless certainty making yourself numb might be easier, but it doesn’t require much intestinal fortitude, if you’re just trying to sleep at night. Carol, on the other hand, has been an insomniac for a long time now, and these decisions weigh heavy on her as much as she was adamant that Maggie should stay outside during last week’s episode (a choice that inadvertently got them both captured), this episode crystallized the fact that Carol was probably trying to find a way to avoid bloodshed just as much as she was concerned for Maggie’s safety. The point isn’t just to stay standing, as Maggie points out to her own dark reflection, Michelle because “the walkers do that” too they’re choosing something else: to try and find a better way to live than the way they’ve been living up until now, whether that means opening themselves up to the possibility of love, or children, or the ideals of Alexandria that Deanna believed in.



“The Same Boat” eventually bore out Rick’s warning that everyone they let go will inevitably come back to bite them (no pun intended), after Carol gave Paula multiple choices to run rather than to pursue violence and yet still ended up having to kill her. But was Carol and Maggie’s decision to lure the remaining Saviors to the kill floor and burn them alive an act of resignation a concession that there’s clearly no point trying to give people second chances? That remains to be seen, but the events of the episode clearly took their toll in the closing moments, an emotionally drained Carol told Daryl that she wasn’t okay, while Maggie admitted to Glenn “I can’t do this anymore,” after narrowly avoiding having her stomach slashed by Michelle. Everyone should have a line they refuse to cross – and this season seems determined to test whether that’s a hill that each character wants to die on: Morgan refuses to kill under any circumstances, perhaps for the sake of his own sanity, but Glenn, who had previously been the only member of the group never to take a human life, was willing to make that sacrifice for the supposed greater good, and both will have to live with the consequences, just like Carol’s decision to take out the Saviors to ensure their own survival. On



e of the most interesting aspects of the episode was the way that a number of the Saviors decided to channel their inner “Spartacus” and take credit for being Negan implying that this many-headed beast can’t be so easily eradicated, and that this leader clearly espouses a philosophy that the Saviors believe is worth dying for. While we’ve heard enough from the cast, executive producers and comics to know that the real Negan is no laughing matter, it’s still interesting to consider, from a hypothetical standpoint, what it would mean if Negan wasn’t real, and really was just the boogeyman that Daryl suggested he might be. What if we met Negan and he was actually a nice guy, and all our characters had turned themselves into human-killing monsters for nothing? Would all this have been worth it?

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