[rating=2.00] “Swear”
It’s hard to imagine a conversation inside The Walking Dead’s writer’s room where someone comes up with an idea to focus an entire episode on a second-tier character, then pairing them with one that barely registers on the relevance scale. It’s even harder to imagine that this idea would get any support whatsoever, let alone from the show’s producers who decided to make it a reality.
And yet, here we are, given not only that exact premise, but one that stretches out an already unnecessary episode fifteen by extra minutes.
This isn’t a knock against Tara as a character. Since she was brought into the fold during the hasty retelling of The Governor’s story, she’s been a reliable source of unconventional and quirk, and her reaction to his assault on the prison (“He cut off a guy’s head with a sword!”) will remain one of the show’s all-time greatest moment of self-awareness.
So anyway, last season, before Rick and company took down an outpost of Saviors, Tara — a reliable second-tier character — and Heath, who’s had about six lines and twelve minutes of screen time, went off on a supply run to help solidify their alliance with the Hilltop Colony. According to Heath, that didn’t go so well, with only a couple rusty cans of okra to show for their efforts. (It also notches his speaking lines up to somewhere in the low teens). Then they get trapped by a bunch of zombies were being kept in a dump truck full of sand, a subtle reminder of how completely out of ideas this show is.
After falling off a bridge, Tara is washed up on a shore somewhere, and instead of being killed in her sleep, she has her life spared by a stranger who even shows back up to leave her food and water. This leads her, and us, to the Oceanside Community, a fishing village made up of all women who kill all strangers on site. It’s basically the same premise as the trailer for Wonder Woman, but with zombies.
In true Walking Dead style, Tara goes from target to prisoner to dinner guest to potential inhabitant over the course of a couple scenes. She lies about her past before the outbreak (for no discernible reason), and tries to pitch Alexandria as a new home, touting their willingness to kill Saviors to keep everything safe.
The only purpose that Tara’s humblebrag about their assault ton the Saviors is that it allows for the backstory of the Oceanside camp to be told, with all the nuance and subtly of a piano falling from a sixth floor window. Tara learns that they had also gone to war with the Saviors, only to have all their men executed in the process. While Tara talks of the Ricktatorship’s might in killing off what she assumes to be all of the Saviors, the Oceanside Community is quick to retort as to their strength and overwhelming numbers. It also ties in this episode to the season’s larger story, albeit just barely.
For the record, I also have reservations calling what The Walking Dead is doing this season as a “story.” While the running theory/desperate hope among critics is that this is all part of a larger, world-building phase for the show, which will create an army’s worth of opponents when a confrontation with Negan eventually comes to a head.
Anyway, Tara elects to go back to Alexandria and keep the location of Oceanside a secret, until the group escorting her gets far enough away from their camp, when Tara reverts back to being a target, and is saved by Cyndi, Oceanside’s lone keeper of compassion. Then, of course, despite being gone for two weeks, her trip back is covered mostly via montage, including spending a night in a store that sells cheap sunglasses.
When she does return to the gates of Alexandria, she’s greeted by Eugene’s massive frowny face, where she (we assume) learns about the death of her girlfriend, Denise — which happened last season weeks before the big finale. Between the off-screen grieving and the time-lapse of events, any and all emotion is completely sucked out of the moment. It’s an amateurish, frustrating, and outright terrible storytelling choice, one that’s downright offensive considering that it happens in an episode that’s dedicated entirely to Tara.
But, hey, at least we got to spend some time unlocking the mystery of those sweet shades!
Also, Heath may or may not have gotten away, and considering his importance to both the other characters on the show and to the audience at large, I look forward to the inevitable three-hour episode where he finds some old tennis balls and learns to appreciate the true meaning of Valentine’s Day.
