The Walking Dead tends to grow laborious at times and it often does when its principal characters are gathered in a group. So it is rather delightful to see the show picking up pace and going on-point with its tense second episode ‘Strangers.’ The whole lot is compact (if talky), bringing together two major arcs in a single run and somewhat cramming encounters that move through the central relationships in the series. Tara (Alana Masterson), for example, just had to remind Rick of her previous affiliation with the tyrannic Governor. Yet, this is a welcome development especially with the themes at play in the episode; further reconfirming that showrunner Scott M. Gimple might just have learned a thing or two in the somewhat dragging fourth-season run of the series.
The series had dealt a lot about families and surviving, yet there is something that speaks fresh in the episode. Is it that Rick asks in sheer sincerity if Carol wants them in her group? (“Will you take us,” Rick inquires in a hearty drone.) Is it that Bob’s (Lawrence Gillard Jr.) optimism refresh to Rick the idea of “living” and not merely “surviving”? (“This is just a nightmare,” he notes. “And nightmare ends.” Or is it that Maggie (Lauren Cohan) accepts Tara for whom she is now? (“You are one of us now,” she tells her.) It can be any of these or an entirely different thing, and can I opt for the latter, because there is a scene in which Rick threatens that should harm come to his “family,” his group, he will kill. It is an affirmation of how he has been accepting his own idea of living, protecting the ones under his wing. And when Michonne (Danai Gurira) speaks of the thing she misses–not her sword, certainly, but Andrea and Hershel–Rick knew that whether there is real promise of security at Washington, he can take it, so long as he protects the group. “That’s livin’,” snickers katana-less Michonne.
And so we have come to this: a mysterious priest named Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) whose overt God-fearing shtick stenches suspicion from twenty miles away. There is a scene in a terrific action set piece–a flooded, rundown Food Centre & Thrift Shop–in which he encounters a seemingly familiar Walker and refuses to go near it and hurries to the far-end of the flooded supply area. To those who are familiar to the comics, this flicker-display of remorse is attuned to his dark past.
The closing sequence finishes with not ambiguity, thankfully. It features the remaining Terminus survivors and Bob by a bonfire. The scene is gorgeously lit and framed (as the rest of the episode). Gareth starts yammering on the randomness of their act against Bob, telling him that they have somehow “devolved” from being cannibals into hunters. Like they feel sincere pride from it. It’s an unnerving close, and strikingly so, but then Bob has been asking for it, what with his cutesy game with Sasha () and their “kiss, one more” commotion. You are all familiar with The Walking Dead form, are you not? Stay centered in the frame long enough, you find yourself high on the series’ kill-list.
[wp-review]
Next Episode’s Promo:
Stray Observations:
[columns][two-three-columns]
- The whole episode is well-shot. The first half is littered with all-talk hum-drum business until it picks up in the latter half replete with much-needed gore and violence, and of course, a welcome and quick-paced resolution.
- There are now traces of dear Beth, although we fear that only Daryl cares for her now. Maggie has Tara. Beth might have to sing a couple more country songs to win back ‘sis.
- Carl (Chandler Riggs) has always been the smartest character in the series. It’s utterly ridiculous how Rick underestimates his son.
- Gramma Walker is terrifying.
- Bony Walker is not. Bleh.
A spinal decompression table provides levitra tablets continue reading this the precise motion and decompression needed to repair and heal damage to discs and surrounding nerves. Others play and spend many hours after the game with ice packs and tend to have to take medication for this ailment but with the introduction of wonder drug overnight cialis tadalafil in 1990s, men have come forward to treat ED. It is very difficult to be successful at buy levitra online http://www.icks.org/data/ijks/1483475739_add_file_1.pdf work, in individual relationships, in study and learning, and in life. If you want order cheap levitra to become a teacher, then B.
[/two-three-columns]
[three-columns]
THE EPISODE IN ONE QUOTE:
This is just a nightmare. And nightmares end.
~Bob
[/three-columns][/columns]
