The Walking Dead - "Welcome to the Tombs" - Review

Well, that was a letdown.

I should probably get into the meat of the episode and really dig into the specifics, the intricacies (or rather lack thereof) that brought down this episode, an episode that isn’t just a bad finale but just an altogether middling episode. But the real big sticking point is that there was simply very little action, and what action that did exist was some of the least interesting, exciting and most poorly executed action the series has attempted to date. 

Now I’m not some crazy action junkie who needs constant action to enjoy something.  But the one thing that might actually be meritable about The Walking Dead (a series that has so very many flaws) is how surprisingly good its action frequently is, even at times in the midst of episodes that are incredibly inconsistent or just flat out bad elsewhere. 

When a show doesn’t have great thematic aims or shoddy characterizations or premises that essentially lead them to have no real purpose or no foreseeable end, said show has to be managing something worthwhile of some kind to make up for it. A show that I turn to time and again for this point is It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The characters of It’s Always Sunny never act like real people and they’re written in such a way that they only exist to be put into crazy scenarios and do terrible things. But what allows It’s Always Sunny to get away with this is that it’s in many instances very funny. It’s often making you laugh so much that it can sometimes make you forget and forgive the questionableness of certain things you’re watching. 

   

The Walking Dead had one element that covered up for many of its flaws and that was its action. Its action is usually well-staged, well-choreographed, inventive and filled with the most zombie kills you’re going to see this side of cable. I keep returning to the first eight episodes of this season because I think they exemplify the things this series does best. They’re not the best episodes of television (or even this season - that honor would be "Clear", the rare example of a truly good episode in this back half of the season), but they have something going for them that lots of other series either don’t have or aren’t particularly good at, and that is above all else action. They’re not completely action-packed. Actually there are at times long stretches of (and I say this knowing it’s awfully uncritical sounding) boring followed by exciting action sequences that make you slightly forgiving of the shortcomings of the show.  

That is to say: [*in my most “bro” voice*] dude, where’s the action?

Oh, sure, there’s action in the episode but it’s not really the action the show does well. There’s no tension to many of these scenes. So the whole season the show has been building towards a conflict. Now, it wasn’t the most interesting or well-crafted conflict, but it was practically the sole purpose of the show during this season. The show had even shown parallels between the two groups at odds; they weren’t strong or fascinating ones, but they were better drawn than much of the conflict the show had done prior. And then it’s as if the writers had this moment of self-actualization where they realized that a direct conflict between our protagonists and the Governor and his redshirts couldn’t logically end in any other way but with a lot of major characters dead. But it comes off as if the writers couldn’t think of an interesting reason to justify most of the characters living to fight another day and so a number of hugely contrived things take place. 

First is a twist that really isn’t a twist. The characters leave the prison and the writers want to convince us that these people have finally wised up and done what I’ve been suggesting all season: get as far away from the prison as possible. Soon after the Governor and those extras who have been hanging around Woodbury show up, grenade launchers at the ready. And wouldn’t you know they’re searching an empty prison. 

PSYCH! 

Turns out those crazy kids set up some traps, sicked some zombies on their enemies, and bottle necked a number of them into a crossfire. 

So that was our long awaited conflict. Man, how explosive… 

The staging of this is just so poorly done. You can understand all the intentionality of it, but it doesn’t work. They want to misdirect us so we truly believe Rick and co. have left, before having this twist triumphant moment. However, we know that the writers are going to feature some form of the battle between these two groups of people. How do we know this? Well, for starters, The Walking Dead isn’t exactly what you’d call a clever or smart series. Secondly, leaving the prison comes out of absolutely nowhere. This isn’t a show consistent with its characters, but it’s not going to drop a major plot change for the entirety of its major players without establishing it a little (at least, I hope not). 

So we’re waiting for the inevitable and it saps all the tension from the experience. May be the conflict doesn't happen right there and then, but we know it's going to happen at some point. And for a time it actually appears the Governor is searching an empty prison and that the show is weirdly lingering on the search. On top of this, the actual execution of the eventual action is really cluttered and even at times hard to follow. And, not only that, it’s the only action sequence. 

Well, there’s that whole business with Andrea but the show stretches what should have happened really quickly over a period of time that it just doesn’t warrant. 

The other action-filled scene barely qualifies as action. The Governor has gone into full-on crazy mode. It’s not the form of villain that creates dynamic conflicts but it does get some absurd, stupid, occasionally memorable twists, and at least the show finally settled upon just how awful and evil and crazy this character is. In awful, evil, weird form the Governor mows down all the survivors from the prison attack, and it’s really upsetting and frustrating. It’s the pointless death of people; yea, granted it’s people we don’t know at all, but where the fuck does this character decision come from. I can understand it a little bit I suppose. I can finagle my way towards some half-assed understanding that the Governor has gone fully over the cuckoo’s nest. But there’s no point A to point B of character transition. And how the hell can this character still be alive? Does the show really want a wildcard like that wandering around on its fringes? Well, I’m guessing they’re going to figure some way to get him back into the picture like they did with Merle. 

In terms of using the medium of television to its advantage that’s an interesting choice that could payoff well down the line (the decision to keep Merle still alive was a good idea in theory at least). In terms of making this season feel like a cohesive whole though, it fails to take this season’s conflict to a logical and interesting conclusion. 

There’s more to unpack in this episode, but what’s the point really? Some people died. We didn’t really care about them so the deaths had no impact. The one that on paper should have been meaningful, Andrea’s, is all well-staged. Everyone shows up too late to save her, and she and Michonne share one final farewell before the camera pulls back to outside the room and we hear the gun go off. And I’m not a heartless bastard, but it just doesn’t have the impact a major death ought to. It’s not even that I don’t like Andrea as a character; I disliked Lori and her death was surprisingly moving. It just feels as if the show thinks that because it’s the finale some major character has to die and so the monkeys in TWD’s writer office threw a dart and it landed on Andrea, and the writers said, “That sounds good to me!”

Besides the poorly handled, obligatory deaths and the poorly handled, obligatory action, what else is there here to unpack? The poorly handled, obligatory exposition? We could discuss Carl’s sudden descent into psychopathy and how it comes out of nowhere and how it isn’t done well. But, hey, do you really care? No? Neither do I. I want to. I really want to. But the more I analyze this show, the more cynical I become about it. It’s a show that’s scared of its own shadow. It’s a show that gets just shy of being something really good, and then runs wildly far away from it the moment it gets even remotely close.  And in spite of its improvements (which I'm underselling, and have been a leap forward from last season), it still remains mostly frustrating to watch.

I mean, if you’re into unintentional anticlimax than may be you’ll love the hell out of this episode. But otherwise this episode fails at all the things the show does remotely well. 

Stray Observations:

-The intro scene: Milton inexplicably is now getting the shit kicked out of him by the Governor. The show doesn’t really understand the idea of shorthand.

-Admittedly Milton’s impossible choice given to him to kill Andrea was legitimately exciting.
-Milton's death succeeded far better than Andrea's. Partly due to how much more interesting the circumstances of his death were and partly due to Dallas Roberts' performance.

-The Governor gives the bizarre, cheesy life lessons no one was asking for: “In this life you die or you kill. Or you die and you kill”

-Michonne thanks Rick for bringing her into the group. A scene that should have worked if it weren’t for the damn fact the show was trying to pull that terrible twist on us.

-Yea, leave them a Bible passage. Make the religious themes more overt!

-And by psychopathy I mean Carl killed a random guy in cold blood. So, yea, that happened.

-Tyrese and a bunch of random survivors from Woodbury join our merry band at the prison. So that also happened.

Grade: C+