The Walking Dead, S07E14

“The Other Side” Cannot Get Here Fast Enough, As In I Hope We All Die Before Another Episode of this Shit

 

Opening on a dialogue-free montage at the Hilltop sanctuary, we see Maggie, Sasha, Daryl and Jesus silently living out their lives: training the people of Hilltop in how to fight, tending to the graves of fallen friends and giving each other strained glances of support. It’s pretty boring, but it is nicely shot, while the backing music is akin to the sinking strings on the Titanic compounded with rural depression. That is, at least, until we get a shot of devilish alcoholic Gregory, the former de facto leader of Hilltop who has essentially been usurped by the main group. He glares out onto the domain that once was his, downing the last of his whiskey with a pained grimace, as the music switches to a suggestively strummed… I wanna say, banjo? Now this guy, I get!

Then Rosita shows up and, as per her dumb request from two weeks back that she and Sasha team up to kill Negan, we already know what she’s gonna say; doesn’t make it any less fuckin’ stupid: “I need your help.” Anyway, the credits roll and we’re back with Jesus and Maggie, having a very on-the-nose chat about trust and belonging. Jesus, apropos of nothing, comes out as gay while basically grinning straight at the camera as if to say, “What of it, dudebros!” I guess it makes sense that we should start learning more about this enigmatic figure with kind eyes at this point, but having him flatly state, “I’m ready to let people know who I am now and this is it”, feels beyond inorganic. It’s egregiously shitty character work and writing. But, wait, there’s more!

Up next, Sasha is confronted by Jesus and also… holy shit, I have no idea what that other girl’s* name is (and she’s been on the show for a good while now; y’know, the one Carl wants to bone but keeps going about it reeeeally awkwardly). Anyway, they realise Sasha’s taking some of the Hilltop’s bullet stockpile, so that she and Rosita can use them in their really, really fuckin’ stupid plan to kill Negan. Jesus is surprisingly cool with this even when Sasha, refusing his help, says he needs to stay put because, “The Hilltop needs to be ready for what happens after.” Let’s analyse that: she’s taking their bullets with her on a suicide mission, leaving their weaponry depleted even when she knows her actions will inevitably result in conflict between the two factions, and she’d like it if Jesus could be a little less selfish and consider that before making any rash decisions, please! Goddamn, the cognitive dissonance on this show is staggering.

The exchange that ensues, I swear to God, almost killed me:

Sasha: “Maggie needs you!”

Jesus: “She needs you, too.”

S: “Not anymore. She has everyone else… and they have her.”

J: “You can stay. I know you can… but I know you won’t.”

It’s an unnatural experience, screaming at your television. Maybe, in writing, that excerpt doesn’t quite convey why I felt the sudden, irrepressible need to beg it all to stop, to quit telling me the same thing over and fucking over with no nuance or craft or even a withering glance at a fucking thesaurus somewhere along the way. This was that point, where every overwrought, unnecessary conversation this show has ever subjected me to finally rubbed up against my dwindling will to live, where every character desire and motivation that could have simply been conveyed with a look or three word sentence was verbalised and hurled into the dank chamber of my soul, clattering all the way down like a spastic monkey banging its hammer against a cracked vat of dolphin shit.

I snapped. Seriously, there was a physical, involuntary combustion inside of me and, I don’t want to get too real here, but I’m pretty sure my colon either exploded or ate itself. I am not well, and will not be well again for a long time because fuck this show. All of that to say, if your sensibilities are even close to as delicate as mine, you might just wanna skip that entire conversation.

Moving on, in the next scene the Saviours arrive (led by Steven Ogg’s Simon, who is always fucking great!), forcing Daryl and Maggie into hiding. This is just as Sasha and Rosita begin their long day’s journey into stupid. So, apparently, now this is the entire episode: interspersed cuts between the put-upon Hilltop and a road trip with two of the least interesting characters on the show (which is saying something) while they discuss how much they dislike each other. Fuck me, is it my birthday?

It proceeds basically as you’d expect from there: a rote zombie fight leads to a hot-wired car, leads to an abandoned warehouse on the outer perimeter of the Saviours’ compound. The ladies – inexplicably bonding over knots, shitty vantage points and poor character development – bury the hatchet over their shared love for Abraham. It ends with a mutual assurance that they’ve got one another’s backs, which is swell and all, but happens so quickly and unnaturally that I was actively hoping for a twist ending, where one murders the other for their own benefit (y’know, like last week).

No such luck: they move to break into the compound, only Sasha uses the most obvious stall tactics in the world to lock Rosita out so she can go all martyr with it alone. Rosita runs away crying and spies Daryl’s silhouette. Cut to black.

Hmmmm.

You know, we don’t typically do grades here but I think, in this case, I can give this episode a big ole…

 

Quotes & Random Thoughts

 

• *Enid, which I found out by typing into Google “Walking Dead Girl No Parents”. So, at least I remembered that.

• Everything to do with the drawing of the “blueprint” for the Saviours’ compound was so fucking stupid. To start with, it looks like it was drawn by a four-year-old making a fire escape plan for his house but then he just forgot to actually include the house. Then the shot of Sasha underlining “WALKERS” with such intensity to like, what, remind herself that zombies are a thing? Seesh.

• Jesus’s hair sure is puurdy.

• All jokes aside, I admire this show having another openly gay character after the torrent of bullshit that erupted when Aaron kissed his boyf a few seasons back. I mean, it wasn’t subtle, but good for Jesus. Lean in, dude.

• “I was… looking… for something to… read…”. Sasha does not lie well under pressure.

• “It’s a long life, and then it isn’t.” Jesus’s platitudes perfectly straddle the line between profound and infuriatingly vapid.

• I am convinced Steven Ogg improvised that entire speech about his tastes in grog. It was awesome.

• “We’re out, so now what?” “Y’know.” Well I fuckin’ hope Rosita knows, Sascha, ’cause it’s all she’s been talking about for the last eight thousand episodes. [Sigh] If they actually kill Negan, I’ll buy them both a new TV show.

• Sasha wants to take Negan out from a distance; Rosita wants to do it up close. Those crazy kids, will they ever agree on anything?!

• That said, that was a very nicely done longshot following the two of them from the abandoned car to those two zombies, which they dispatch mid-conversation.

• “I think my look may have conveyed the information.” Steven Ogg, you are everything to me. Please, never leave this show.

• Little of what happens at Hilltop this episode is worth discussing but, for the record, Norman Reedus’ crying face as Daryl in his basement scene with Maggie nearly broke me. Dude can really bring it.

• Rosita thinks Eugene is “playing some angle” with the Saviours. It certainly doesn’t seem that way when she attempts to rescue him and I, personally, would be way more invested if it turns out his defection is legit.

• Eugene’s radio transmission near the end is a thing of glory.