[rating=7.00] “Thank You”
It’s hard to muster the same enthusiasm for a program when it’s been spoiled multiple times over, not just by a cousin I’m no longer friends with on Facebook or a handful of people I no longer follow on Twitter. There’s also the fact that the outpouring of emotion over a fictional character was so massive that the character’s name was trending at number one in the U.S. for hours on end.
Notice how I didn’t use their name? See how easy that was?
That aside, “Thank You” continues the momentum set in motion throughout the sixth season so far. Part of the success comes from showrunner Scott Gimple, who took the reins in season four, and his increasingly confident use of alternative narrative structure. He’s also kept one of his strongest attributes frequently in play—episodes that focus on only a handful of characters at a time. While one of the most prominent critiques of past seasons was the over-abundance of needless filler between the gory and the tragic moments (which are usually one in the same), Gimple has addressed this problem by having the first three episodes concentrate on a single afternoon.
So far this season, it’s all been based around the most terrifying cattle drive of all time, the herding of walkers out of a quarry and down the road. The second episode, which saw the invasion of The Wolves and Carol’s brutal retaliation finding itself at odds with Morgan’s more tranquil (and, as we see at the end of this week, incredibly poorly thought-out) approach to the enemies that are still living, this one rejoins where the first left off, the sudden blaring of horns, followed by gunfire, from within the walls of Alexandria.
As the herd began to break apart, we see the bulk of the characters staying behind to finish the job that they’d started, as Rick would later explain “for them.” Since The Ricktatorship 2.0, he’s rallied around Carol’s severely pragmatic way of thinking (instead of banishing her for it). It’s a kind of zombie apocalypse equivalent to the dad that wouldn’t hold your bike seat when the training wheels came off. They need to know how to take care of themselves, which now means knowing how to kill the dead and the living, as the notion behind building anything that vaguely resembles the old world continues to erode into hopelessness.
Speaking of hopelessness, even with the aforementioned spoilers I’d encountered online (thanks a lot you dicks!), there was something heavy throughout the episode, like it wasn’t going to be just Alexandria red-shirts biting the dust this time. Of course, the actual event was at once heartbreaking and stomach churning, vaguely resembling the fate of Noah, with no last words or grandiose gesture. There was no cinematic complexity or moral dilemma, but simply death. The kind where mourning over the static of radio silence is the best you can hope for in its wake.
One Response