The Walking Dead Review: Episode 805 – The Big Scary U

TV Description: A close look at Negan and the lives of the Saviors during the conflict through a familiar set of eyes.

[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]

PREVIOUSLY ON THE WALKING DEAD

After the ambush, King Ezekiel is discovers he is the only one of his Kingdom left alive and flees from the reanimated corpses of his former soldiers. He is soon captured by a lone Savior trying to make his escape back to Negan. Before he killed off by this Savior, Ezekiel is rescued by his bodyguard, Jerry, and the two fight off the herd of walkers descending upon them. Meanwhile Carol, who went ahead to scout out the building ahead, takes out some Saviors to prevent them from taking the machine guns back to the sanctuary. Upon seeing the danger that the king and Jerry are in she goes to their rescue, allowing Daryl and Rick to come up and stop the fleeing Saviors. In their final escape from the compound they are given a last chance of escape from Shiva the tiger, who sacrifices herself to save the three. Having lost almost all his soldiers and his closest companion, Ezekiel returns to the Kingdom and heads back to his room, speechless and broken by the loss of so many friends.

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This is an episode I really can’t put my opinion on. I don’t know if I like it or dislike it. Something just feels wrong about this season and this episodes doesn’t fully convince me that maybe we’ll be getting better episodes for the rest of this first half of the season. There were scenes that I feel would be better in other episodes, there was some questionable character development, and it felt a bit underwhelming. This episode was a few minutes over the usual hour long episode we had and I really thought they could have cut some scenes out and improve upon more needed scenes to fit the one-hour timeslot. This episode has successes and problems about it, so let’s dive in.

So where do I begin with the problems? Let’s start with the scene that felt most unneeded in the episode: Rick and Daryl after getting the machine guns from the Saviors. That last Savior that Rick stabbed was still alive and blubbered through blood that Rick’s group were the bad guys since so many people died at that compound, which is understandable why that was said, but still felt unneeded. Then comes the part that made me hit my head against a table over: Rick and Daryl’s pointless fight. As I predicted Daryl is still in a killing-all attitude and wanted to use the dynamite they found in the truck to finish off the Saviors. Rick says no because there are innocent workers, Daryl says he is still going to do it, then the two have a fight which ends with the dynamite thrown into the gas-leaking truck, causing it to blow up. All that work for nothing! These two were supposed to be the closest of friends, ever since their reunion at the end of season 4, so them having these fights is just out of place. I know Rick that you’re trying to plan for the future as well, but let us start with the getting through the first step with as few problems as possible.

The main focus of the episode though is also the one I feel most conflicted about. Gabriel and Negan, trapped in an empty RV with no way out, surely we could get some great character development out of them with such a great setup? Well I can’t really say. We still don’t fully understand why Gabriel rescued Gregory even though he is a bad person and we get a more of a confession out of Gabriel than Negan. Watching Gabriel continue to get Negan to confess his sins was a middle ground for me, but Negan just keeps batting these away as he proclaims himself a savior to his people (pun intended). He gives excuses for all the horrible things he has done and what he does confess is questionable to me and some other viewers. After hearing a guy tell about how he used to help kids be morally upstanding people and say his greatest sin is not killing off his reanimated wife after he cheated, would you really believe him or think he’s got some redemption? Probably not, but Gabriel still forgives him for his sin. One thing I can get out of their scenes though is that maybe Negan is too concern about not showing any weakness that he will do whatever he can hide it, especially since his people almost view him like a god. That would make their interactions seem more believable and more appealing, which is what I currently believe is what Negan is doing.

This leads me to some scenes that were pretty enjoyable in this episodes, the ones involving Negan’s lieutenants. The first one we have of them is pretty bad with Gregory and Simon have a really pointless and unneeded scene. To make it short, Simon makes Gregory pancakes and they both have a talk on Gregory doing a good job at coming to him. After that though comes a bit of good story, with Negan, Greg, and his lieutenants talk about Rick’s rebellion. Here we do get a rare moment where Negan loses his temper and roars how the Savior’s main resource is people. He further explains how they have to kill as little as possible, saying Rick, Maggie, and Ezekiel are only ones who needed to die and once those three are dead the rest will give up and go back to serving him and his men. That was a great scene, especially when I got to think that maybe Negan does care for the people he rules, but in a different way from leaders such as Rick and Ezekiel. We even are given the idea that maybe Simon was the one previously in charge before Negan came about, which makes sense as to why Negan took over. But then we get Rick’s arrival, bringing us into the start of the war.

Also at the sanctuary, but in the present time, we see the lieutenants discuss the walkers breaking in. Two of them, Gavin and Regina, propose using the workers to as bait to distract the walkers while the soldiers get past and lure the rest away, but Eugene and Dwight call the plan foolish and that the workers would be more likely to rebel if that plan was done. Simon eventually sides with Dwight after the latter proclaims he will lead the Saviors out if necessary. That was good story there and one of the better parts of the episode. Later on all of them have to deal with the workers coming up to complain about the power going off and the heat from no air conditioning. Tension grows without Negan about and things almost seem to break when we he returns with a whistle and Gabriel. The two managed to get out with walker guts over them and barely escaped the herd, but both are still alive and everyone there takes a knee for Negan, the big scary u (Gregory calls him that early in the episode). To wrap this particular scene up we hear a worker thank god for Negan, which hurt to hear. Like seriously, hearing that really hurt!

Then we have the last scenes of the episode, where Eugene first discovers Dwight’s treachery towards Negan and finds out Gabriel is sick in his cell, either from a walker bite or from lack of cooling in the lower parts of the building. Now that was an scary moment there for me, as Gabriel is one of my favorite characters of the show and one I really don’t want to see die! He’s gone through so much and he’s changed and become a great survivor while still following his religious beliefs. Whether though that belief will bring about his death is up for debate. Whatever happens, Eugene has some big decisions to make about his loyalties in the upcoming episodes.

Overall Analysis

I don’t know how I feel on this episode. The start of this season has given us problems that just feel wrong in telling a good story. We got scenes not needed or could be put in another episode for better use, dialogue that seems really unrealistic and annoying, and too much action and plot overshadowing good character development. It took four episodes to see Negan back on screen and with the tagline of this season being “All Out War” we’d expect Negan to make more appearances throughout the season. I think a better tagline for this first half should have been something like, “The Battle Begins,” because not only is this half mostly the first step in defeating the Saviors but Negan hardly has had anything this season. A war should have both sides going all out against each other, including the leaders. But here we don’t have that.

However, it looks like we might be recovering a bit from that bad start by giving us less action and more character development. There were some thing that even I, a fully devoted fan of the franchise, makes me question if the show still be worth watching, but there were also some scenes that I was very happy with. The scene with Rick and Daryl was pointless and devolved the characters, but Negan and Gabriel scenes were interesting enough and did give us a first glimpse of Negan’s past and his strength as a leader. There were plenty of bad lines in between there was some underwhelming stuff, but some of the scenes, especially those with the lieutenants, were fun to watch. It’s definitely not a bad episode, but it’s not fully showing to me that we’re getting going to get better episodes the rest of this first half of the season. The only other thing I can say that is really making me excited for future episodes is when Rick sees that helicopter fly over him. Where did that come from? Who does it belong to? And will it tie into the story well? We’ll have to find out next episode or hopefully before the end of this first half.