“East”

“It’s gonna go wrong out here”, Glenn had warned Daryl earlier. And it certainly did. In this weeks installment of The Walking Dead, the show flirted with the idea of a riot breaking out. The lens was sprayed with what looked like Daryl’s blood after a bullet from Dwight struck from close range. We also had Carol leaving as promised from last week, to me it does hint a little of acting out of character by leaving when she cares so much for the other members of the group. I think we can say the same for Daryl taking off on his own to look for Dwight. A mindlessly gung-ho action even by his standards. All in all the episode was enjoyable, tense and included some productive character development.

Rick’s plans for securing the safety of Alexandria took a big hit in the penultimate season 6 episode of The Walking Dead.  In “East”  Daryl leaves to go after Dwight, with Michonne, Glenn and Rosita going after him. We also had Morgan and Rick go out after Carol, who once again proved that she’s very capable of defending herself. The sheer number of important fighters, not to mention core characters, all leaving the town pretty recklessly leaving Alexandria open to attack. I get that they are important members of the group, but Carol and Daryl left of their own free will and considering their stubborn nature I’m surprised at the decision to go after them.

The Walking Dead has been slowly building up to the arrival of Negan, or whoever the leader of those Saviors is for a while now and it makes sense that all will be revealed in next week’s season finale. With so many main characters already in vulnerable positions, I’m pretty certain that we will lose one of them in the final episode. I don’t think they explored them as as well as they had previous bad guys. We got to see and hear a lot more character depth on say, the Governor or the people at the Terminus and their reasons behind their method. To give the show its credit they did try this successfully a few weeks back with the Saviors and the character Paula. Unfortunately the only member of the group still alive who we really know anything about is Dwight.

“East” gave us more evidence of the extremes Carol is capable of. Leaving Alexandria to “It’s all over” by Johnny Cash. It’s pretty evident that this was appropriate for more than just Carol thanks to the camera work and the involvement of other characters throughout the song. I’ve tried to hit the point over the last few weeks that Carol leaving and the whole shift in her character seems slightly manufactured and forced. Whatever the reasons for her change in dynamic, it really came in to light when she had a panic attack before gunning down a car full of men. She was clearly in a lot of distress about what she was going to have to do, fortunately for her this isn’t the first time she has been able to act in a pathetic way in order to lull her enemies in to a false sense of security. Regardless, it was a really enjoyable action scene and her extremes make her a pretty dangerous woman. We then have Morgan and Rick show up who are trying to track her down and bring her home. After the trail going cold Morgan decides to look alone and let Rick return to Alexandria where he is needed. I did like the realisation Rick has when Morgan convinces him to go back. It seemed to dawn on Rick that his obsessive need to control everything that goes on is unsustainable which made him seem more like a real person.

Meanwhile, we have Glenn and Michonne taken hostage by Dwight and co. who just happened to be in the same woods at the same time. We hear a gunshot on what appears to be Daryl. I thought the blood spatter on the camera lens was pretty cool, and just as the screen goes dark we hear Dwight say “You’ll be alright”. We don’t actually know if he is talking to Daryl or Rosita at this point. However, I do imagine that the hostage situation might make up a large portion of the finale next week.

Verdict

This episode of The Walking Dead had enjoyable and tense moments involving a lot of key characters which seems to set us up for an action packed finale. I think some of the reckless behavior shown by Daryl and Carol was a bit out of character but if it can be used for the good of the story next week then I cant be too critical. I did think there was some redeeming character development in the form of Rick backing down for once thanks to one of Morgan’s “all life is precious” speeches.