Episode 16 - A
4 April 2014
Synopsis: Rick, Carl and Michonne get close to Terminus. Joe’s crew catch up with them and threaten to rape and slaughter. Darryl offers himself as sacrifice. Rick bites Joe’s throat out and kills their whole crew. Carl feels distant from his father as Michonne tries to reassure him. They approach Terminus with caution and sneak up on a bunch of people broadcasting and making maps. However Rick soon recognises his friends’ stuff and pulls out his gun. The four of them are ushered into a train car where they find Glenn’s group.
The Good: I really liked this. It was brave and different and memorable.
Scott Gimple has changed The Walking Dead and I think for the better. I cared about Rick, Carl, Michonne and Darryl here. I felt emotional when they had their big moments. The show has for so long got away with sub-par characterisation because the imminent threat of death was drama enough. This season has been pretty light on major Walker moments. Instead we were treated to a proper arc plot. Farmer Rick under the guidance of Hershel tries to live in peace. But disease and the Governor rob him of that opportunity. He is forced instead to explore the depths of his own brutality to the point where he rips someone’s throat out because, basically, he has become the Walking Dead himself.
And yet that inner toughness is still combined with an outward morality. Or vice versa. Rick only performs such a horrific act to protect good people from bad ones. The real message of the season is summed up in the final line. The people of Terminus have made a big mistake. Whatever they think they can do with our survivors they won’t be able to. They won’t be able to turn them, persuade them or cajole them into a new way of life. Rick knows that they’re “screwing with the wrong people” because the bonds which hold this group together are greater than any external pressure. Through the forests of Georgia the group has somehow managed to reunite and surely it’s a matter of time before they either escape Terminus or take it over. That combination of light and dark that’s personified by Rick is what will carry them through.
It’s a hell of an achievement to give a sixteen episode season a genuine, un-contrived, sense of unity like that. And in essence the message of this season is a blueprint for the whole show. Why should we care about these survivors? Because they combine the qualities we’d like to see in ourselves: toughness, intelligence, loyalty, morality. And Gimple’s sense of how to construct the season deserves huge credit. When the season began I had a real sense that we had skipped a few pages in the book. By episode two Rick was killing his pigs and I complained that it was hard to mourn the death of farmer Rick given that we’d only known him for an hour. But here we revisited that time and put emotional flesh on the bones of all that Rick has lost this year. He even brought up the moment when he beat Tyreese up (403) which at the time passed without comment despite seeming inappropriate. But it was not a needless moment of violence, instead it was part of Rick learning to accept that he isn’t and can’t be a gentle man. In this world it’s his brutality that is as much a reason for his continued existence.
The sequence with Joe’s crew was the highlight of the episode. Most viewers will have known that Rick and crew were going to emerge unscathed from this attack. Despite their “claimed” philosophy Joe’s people were always just bad guys awaiting their deaths. And yet the visual of Rick becoming a Walker and ripping Joe’s throat out with his teeth made the scene work. He literally had no other weapon but his body and no choice but to fight given what Joe planned to do to his friends. It’s testament to the visual power of seeing humans eat one another that the moment landed as strongly as it did.
The two big emotional conversations which followed worked too. Rick and Darryl have been through a huge amount together in the last four seasons. And despite being separated Darryl has no hesitation in giving up his life to save his friend. He then offers Rick reassurance about his brutal actions but Rick has already realised that he has become something else. But in acknowledgment of the depth of their reliance on each other he calls Darryl his brother and it didn’t seem cheesy or implausible. It seemed like about the only word that could express the depths they’ve been to on one another’s behalf.
Meanwhile Carl is confused about what all this means. His kind father has by now done many violent things in front of him but nothing quite so atrocious as biting and stabbing men to death with zombie-like focus. But it’s not really fear that drives him it’s more a confused realisation that Rick can’t operate a “do as I say but not as I do” policy. Carl knows that he’s more like his Dad than either had thought and that the nice-young-man Rick wants him to be just won’t be possible. Michonne is able to offer comfort and her own understanding of her humanity to the conversation and they embrace in acknowledgement of their bond and the strange emotions this new life leads to.
As I’ve implied I thought the full-on Lost use of flashbacks worked very nicely. It tied the season together while also providing us with immediate perspective on how far Rick has travelled in a short space of time. Hershel’s death has been dealt with in a manner far more reminiscent of Lost or other drama shows than those we lost in previous seasons. For the most part it’s been very effective at giving a focus to the disparate groups' sense of mourning.
The Bad: I know many will feel robbed of a mass Walker battle or shootout but I am fully behind the decision not to. Terminus clearly has a lot more story to tell, Beth is still out there and Carol and Tyreese haven’t arrived yet. So why blow the whole thing up for some thrills when you can just set next season up perfectly?
I can just about buy that Darryl would stoically refer to Beth as “just gone.” But the fact that he knows where the mortician’s house is makes it hard to accept that. And although the final line was excellent I think Rick should have hugged Glenn and Maggie on realising that they're alive. To stand as if posing for the Season’s poster and not touch anyone seemed silly given their imprisonment.
The Unknown: The scenes at Terminus were understandably weaker than the others given the need for both confusion and a dramatic ending. So to see one guy wearing the riot gear and another the poncho was a bit on the nose. And the place still doesn’t look very lived-in, lots of empty spaces made it look very much like a set. The men on the rooves armed to the teeth and well drilled enough not to hit anyone makes the unlocked gates and unguarded fences seem less plausible too.
The actual dynamics of what took place were a bit awkward too. The gang give up their weapons, which I didn’t really believe they would do, but then were given them back. Perhaps the food is poisoned? It’s difficult to imagine how else they could have been peacefully deceived . But then why did we need the whole sequence where they were marched one by one into the train car? Why not just say “all of you in there”? We of course have to wonder what the people at Terminus are trying to achieve? They wasted a ton of bullets keeping everyone alive and yet how do they expect to persuade them to cooperate if they imprison them? It was not a satisfying sequence but I will be more forgiving if next season begins strongly.
Best Moment: Rick rips out Joe’s throat. If you can’t beat them, join them.
Conclusion: I began this season unable to feel anything for the characters. Their deaths seemed inevitable and so emotional arcs had no obvious purpose. Yet piece by piece the show has built up the characters and the story. Here I was invested and emotional. By the standards I set at thetvcritic they did everything I asked. This is the first score above 70 that I’ve given since the first two episodes of the show. It’s so rare that a show can improve with age, wouldn’t it be wonderful if this did?
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