Review: The Walking Dead – “Crossed” S05,E07

“Crossed” isn’t the least effective season five episode of The Walking Dead (that honor still goes to “Slabtown“), but it’s kind of a letdown after last week’s amazing “Consumed“.

The problem with “Crossed” is that it lacks focus, trying too hard to catch us up with our fragmented band of heroes and, as a result, the episode feels too disjointed. There are four different stories going on, but the only one that really gives us any forward momentum features Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his small group executing their plan to rescue Beth (Emily Kinney) and Carol (Melissa McBride).

Rick wants to go in guns blazing, but Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman) suggests they take a few officers as hostages so that they can peacefully resolve the situation and trade the lives of the officers for their friends. To Rick’s dismay, everyone agrees with Tyreese. Unfortunately, the best laid plans go awry and a shootout ensues. The group manages to get the upper hand and take three officers hostage, one of which agrees to help them negotiate with Dawn (Christine Woods). But, like most people in the post-apocalyptic world, he’s apparently not as trustworthy as he seems.

Meanwhile, back at the fire truck, Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) is still kneeling and reeling after clocking Eugene (Josh McDermitt) in the face, trying to decide if he wants to keep on going. When he looks as if he’s about to lose it, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) puts things back in perspective when she introduces him to the barrel of her gun. Glenn (Steven Yeun), Tara (Alanna Masterson), and Rosita (Christian Serratos) forage for supplies and visit the local fishing hole for some food.

At the hospital, Beth tries to save Carol after Dawn agrees to terminate her life support. However, Dawn gives her an opportunity to save her friend by giving her the key to the drug cabinet and Beth injects some drugs into Carol’s IV. Can Dawn be trusted? Probably not but we’ll see next episode.

Finally, Carl (Chandler Riggs) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) barricade themselves in the church along with the baby and Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), the latter of which uses his new machete to pry up floorboards in the office and sneak away underneath the building.

It’s not that any of the stories are bad. It’s just that the episode bounces from one to another rather abruptly for any to be truly effective. The whole DC trip has resolved itself so instead of focusing on that specific group chatting, it would have been wise to get them moving again, doing anything instead of hanging out on the road. I’m not really certain as to why that story was shoehorned into this hour, but it really doesn’t work in terms of the scope of the episode.

The events at the hospital were necessary and might have seemed a little more interesting had that not been broken up by taking us away to the other two stories. The Gabriel story might also have worked but maybe that would have been better applied to the beginning of the mid-season finale.

Anyway, I hope that future episodes that try to work on several stories at once are a little more successful because “Crossed” missed the mark. However, I see this episode as doing little more than putting the necessary pieces into place for something larger next week so a minor misstep can be forgiven.

The Walking Dead – “Crossed” grade: B-

Review: The Walking Dead – “Consumed” S05,E06

“And at the prison I got to be who I always thought I should be, thought I should have been. And then she got burned away. Everything now just consumes you.”–Carol

“We ain’t ashes.”–Darryl

Who would have thought in its fifth season that The Walking Dead would arguably be the best show on television? At this point in most series’ runs, writers are more or less out of ideas, the fires of their imaginations fueled solely by embers. But with “Consumed”, The Walking Dead seems to be burning brighter than ever.

I use that analogy because “Consumed” was largely about fire and how it consumes and changes whatever it comes into contact with. It doesn’t have to be a literal fire (though flames are a recurring motif throughout); instead, in Carol’s (Melissa McBride) case, fire represents a cleansing of sorts, in ways both good and bad.

As she and Darryl (Norman Reedus) search for Beth, Carol reminisces about her life, first as a battered wife unwilling to change her lot in life in a more permanent manner, then as someone who struggled to adapt to ever changing situations. Every incarnation of her has been “burned away” thus far to the point where she isn’t even certain as to her identity any longer (another important theme in the fifth season which I’ll get back to later).

“Consumed”, like “Self-Help“, is peppered with brief flashbacks, this time centering on Carol. We see what happened to her after Rick (Andrew Lincoln) cast her out of the group, that she hadn’t gone far and was drawn back by the black smoke billowing up from the prison. That’s followed up with Carol burning the bodies of those she killed at the prison, Carol and Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman) burying the girls, and her approaching Terminus prior to freeing Rick and the rest of the group. All of these serve to illuminate how much Carol has changed since she was the timid wife of an abusive man, that she’s willing to do what needs to be done in order to survive.

The main plot of “Consumed” is a rather simple one: Carol and Darryl search for Beth (Emily Kinney), overcoming walkers, injuries, and assorted hurdles in their journey*. Their discussions revolve around how life in the post-apocalyptic world has irrevocably altered them and will continue to do so with every new threat they face while struggling to survive. Eventually, they are stalked by a mystery man that turns out to be Noah (Tyler James Williams), the man Beth aided in escaping the hospital back in “Slabtown“. He tells them about Beth shortly before Carol is struck by one of the hospital’s cars**.

*In a particularly well executed scene, Carol and Darryl are trapped inside a hospital van teetering over a bridge and besieged by walkers with only one way out. Though the crash stretched a little credibility (in that it most likely would have landed on its roof), the writers and director wisely chose to insert dark humor featuring walkers plopping down onto the roof one by one in a welcome moment of levity.

**Usually, running into a character who’s only appeared once on a series that ends up providing valuable information at an opportune moment would seem a little forced and hokey but since The Walking Dead has brilliantly crafted the episodes out of sequence yet following a strict timeline, it works beautifully.

The most intriguing aspect of both “Consumed” and season five in general is the search for identity both as an individual and in regard to how successfully one fits within the dynamic of “society” (or at least whatever version of it exists for these people). It’s very smart of showrunner Scott Gimple to introduce something like this thematically to rejuvenate the series because by allowing us to get to know the characters better (and even tying in to the history of the show), we’re now more invested as viewers. We’re coming to know the characters as people rather than stereotypes and that’s served the overall story well.

In an already strong season, “Consumed” might just have set the bar for the finest hour thus far, not only for the season, but also the series as a whole. Thanks to an Emmy worthy performance by Melissa McBride (and strong work from Reedus as well), a sparse, yet meaningful script by Matthew Negrete & Corey Reed and tight direction from Seith Mann, The Walking Dead has become nothing short of brilliant, engrossing television.

The Walking Dead – “Consumed” grade: A+

Review: The Babadook (2014)

Amelia (Essie Davis) is tired. She’s tired of raising her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a precocious six year old with behavioral issues. She’s tired of working to make ends meet after abandoning her writing career. Most of all, Amelia’s tired of Samuel being a constant reminder of her husband who died in a horrific car accident while they were en route to the hospital six years earlier.

She struggles to admit it, but Samuel is a handful. Sure, he has interests like performing magic tricks, but he’s also preoccupied with creating weapons and booby traps to fight monsters. One night, after he insists she read a rather odd children’s book entitled Mister Babadook to him, he increases his efforts to protect both himself and his mother–the latter of whom is displaying signs of descending into madness.

The Babadook is a horror film that’s generated a lot of good word of mouth over the past year and one that I’ve been dying to see.

So why is it that it left me unfulfilled and unimpressed?

The Babadook is an extremely well made horror film. Director Jennifer Kent creates a world in which colors are washed out, rendering the lives of Amelia and Samuel colorless and joyless. There’s almost no hope and things only get worse with the arrival of the titular monster. In the vein of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Kent deftly utilizes Amelia’s inability to sleep to keep the audience off kilter, never knowing whether we’re in a fever dream or a stark, waking nightmare. Is the Babadook a true otherworldly creature or just the invention of an increasingly demented and beleaguered woman’s imagination?

More often than not, The Babadook will send chills up your spine. By using images of the creature on the barrage of ever changing television shows Amelia watches, we never know if she’s just going insane or if the monster is starting to possess her. And does the book really exist? She seems to think so even after attempting to destroy it and it comes back in a much more malevolent form.

The performances by both Davis and Wiseman are phenomenal and you truly believe that they’re at the point of no return, that nothing can possibly save them from the creature invading their already strained lives. Even prior to the introduction of the Babadook, you know that they have a long road ahead of them if they don’t completely break down mentally in the near future.

That said, there was just something that didn’t click with me in regard to The Babadook. I found the Samuel character to be grating (through no fault of Wiseman who expertly morphs from innocence to terror when called upon to do so) and the constant reminder that he has behavioral problems throughout the first half hour was a little too much. We only need to see it once or twice to get the idea. Once you start beating a dead horse by repeating the same information, it disconnects the viewer from the slow burn the film tries hard to create.

For the most part, I don’t need explanations regarding the origins of anything, but it would have been nice to touch upon where the Babadook came from. Why did the Mister Babadook book just appear one day and why to this specific family? And the final fate of the creature makes little sense considering the thin information we’ve been given about it. Sure it remains more or less a supernatural entity, but the inclusion of Amelia’s visit to the basement where the Babadook remains (for a reason I won’t spoil) in the final scenes remove some of the terror surrounding it and instead appear hokey.

I wish I would have enjoyed The Babadook more because it’s a pretty original premise (again, considering some scenes were inspired by elements from A Nightmare on Elm Street and even The Descent in the opening of the film) but, at least for me, the film fell flat with the execution. The pacing and some of the minor plot holes were too much of a distraction from the wonderful performances and aesthetic choices for me to rave about the film as others have.

The Babadook grade: C+

Review: Afterlife With Archie Vol. 1 – Escape From Riverdale (2014)

Riverdale bad boy Reggie Mantle accidentally hits Jughead’s dog, Hot Dog, with his car, killing him. Distraught, Jughead seeks help in resurrecting him from Sabrina, who, against the wishes of her elders, casts a spell which brings Hot Dog back from the grave.

But he comes back wrong.

Hot Dog has a taste for flesh and the first one he bites is Jughead who eventually becomes a zombie and crashes a school dance looking for victims. One by one, local residents succumb to the zombie plague while Archie and several other characters (Veronica, Betty, Reggie, and a few others) barricade themselves inside the Lodge mansion and prepare to fend off the undead.

This is definitely not the Archie and the rest of the gang from Riverdale you might remember as a kid–and that’s not a bad thing! Comics have to change with the times and the Archie universe I fondly remember reading as a kid is now outdated, a remnant of a simpler time. In Afterlife with Archie, writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Francesco Francavilla create an alternative universe filled with terror and suspense, devoid of the hijinks we’ve come to expect from Archie and his pals.

I didn’t expect to enjoy Afterlife with Archie because, let’s face it, the whole zombie genre has been done to death. However, thanks to Aguirre-Sacasa’s tight plotting and the dark pencils by Francavilla that perfectly complement the story, the trade paperback (which collects the first five issues of the ongoing series) is well worth your time and money. In fact, get it just for the heartbreaking scene featuring Archie’s dog, Vegas. If it doesn’t move you, nothing will.

I’m looking forward to catching up with the rest of the series, if not in the trades, then in the ongoing monthly series because this is one comic that shows a lot of promise if the creative team sticks with it.

Afterlife with Archie grade: A-

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Review: The Walking Dead – “Self-Help” S05,E05

“You’re not the person people think you are…and you don’t want them to know who you are.– Maggie

Faithful readers of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic knew exactly who Dr. Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt) was–or at least claimed to be during the arc of the comic book that’s currently being reflected on the show.

As it turns out, he’s a complete fraud, nothing more than a mere human doing his best to survive by masquerading as a scientist and enlisting others to help him get to a destination that might be safer. When Eugene insists that he’s smarter than everyone else, you can take that at face value because he is (or at least was until his revelation). In the post apocalyptic landscape, you use what you have to in order to stay alive. In Eugene’s case, it was his wits as well as his ability to recognize that people need a reason to move forward.

One of those people is Abraham (Michael Cudlitz). In a smart juxtaposition, Abraham is the brawn to Eugene’s brain, willing to use muscle to complete the mission of getting Eugene safely to Washington, DC. Without admitting it, though, Abraham uses Eugene as much as Eugene used him.

Thanks to a series of brief flashbacks, it’s revealed that Abraham protected his family by beating to death those people that threatened his wife and two children. After waking one morning, Abraham finds a note telling him that they’ve left and that he shouldn’t attempt to follow them. Soon after, he finds their partially devoured corpses strewn across the lawn outside. Just as he’s about to kill himself, he comes across Eugene, begging to be saved from walkers and lying about a mission he has to complete.

“Self-Help” drops clues early on that Eugene is not what he appears to be. Shortly after the bus crashes, Eugene confides to Tara (Alanna Masterson) that he placed glass shards in the fuel line, intending to only stop the bus from getting very far instead of wrecking it. He felt that if he didn’t help save the world that he had no value. Again, he’s intelligent enough to understand the power dynamics of the new world order–if you can’t contribute, you’re nothing more than dead weight.

Later, in his discussion with Maggie (Lauren Cohan), she utters those lines above, even though she more or less chalks Eugene’s aloofness up to his intelligence and inability to use strength to survive rather than him having a terrible secret.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m really impressed with the way showrunner Scott Gimple is moving things along quickly. I half expected Eugene’s sham to last at least through the end of the first half of this season (if not longer) but, as in the Terminus storyline, it came to an abrupt end with a pretty satisfactory resolution.

“Self-Help” was a marked improvement over last week’s “Slabtown” because it once again focused on the group struggle rather than just one individual. “Slabtown” failed mainly because it took us away from the characters which we’ve come to care about (I never thought I’d write those words and probably wouldn’t have during the first few seasons) and focused on one (Beth) that had been away for a while as well as a crop of new ones that won’t be around much longer (hopefully, anyway).

“Self-Help” was also instrumental in displaying that neither an abundance of bullheaded might (Abraham) nor arrogant intelligence (Eugene) is solely responsible for survival. Yes, these attributes are helpful but you have to temper them with other things like common sense and empathy. That’s why surrounding yourself with others who have different strengths and weaknesses is essential for protection not only against the undead, but also horrible humans.

While there were a few missteps in the episode (no one gets more than a few scratches in a huge bus crash, for example), “Self-Help” more than redeems itself through its solid storytelling and sharp visuals. And even though I’m not a huge fan of flashbacks, they worked to the episode’s advantage, never telling us more than we need to know but offering vital information just the same.

Thanks to a lively script filled with action and humor (which this show needs on occasion) by Heather Bellson & Seth Hoffman and tight direction from Ernest Dickerson, “Self-Help” is another strong episode in what’s shaping up to be a fantastic comeback season for The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead – “Self-Help” grade: A-

Review: The Walking Dead – “Slabtown” S05,E04

Though we finally learned what happened to Beth (Emily Kinney), whatever momentum The Walking Dead had going for it through the first three episodes came to a grinding halt with “Slabtown”.

It turns out Beth was “rescued” by a group that’s taken over a major hospital in downtown Atlanta. Dawn (Christine Woods), a police officer, leads a small force that provides security in return for other favors. Some, like Noah (Tyler James Williams) take on custodial and other basic duties. Dr. Steven Edwards (Erik Jensen) is the only physician so he’s protected as long as he’s valuable. Beth is guilted into nursing tasks, though it’s alluded to that she may have to eventually perform other acts to keep the men happy.

Eventually, Beth realizes what psychos her protectors are. The ones in charge maintain force through regular punishments, something Dawn insists upon to keep everyone in line until they’re rescued. Beth lets her know that all her beliefs are wishful thinking, that no one is going to come for them. She plots an escape with Noah which ends up being partially successful. In the end, she realizes that even those who are kind (like the good doctor) do whatever they have to in order to survive. Just as she plans to kill him, she sees Carol (Melissa McBride) being brought in on a gurney, thwarting her idea to off the only medical professional they have.

It’s not that “Slabtown” was a terrible episode, but when an ensemble show decides to devote an entire hour to one character (and one that’s been missing for some time now), you expect it to be a little more exciting. Unfortunately, “Slabtown” has maybe a half hour’s worth of workable material that’s stretched out to a full episode.

The continual run-ins with Dawn and some of the other officers get repetitive after a while as if the writers needed to continually remind us that these are bad people who will stop at nothing to maintain the illusion of order. This theme has already been explored, most recently with the inhabitants of Terminus, so the hospital setting in “Slabtown” offers only a different location with a slight variation on the same idea.

To be honest, even with a few well done scenes, “Slabtown” was on the dull side. The Walking Dead doesn’t have to be wall to wall zombies to be a great show (as evident by the first three episodes of the season), but it does have to successfully create drama using the human characters and Sunday night’s episode just fell flat in that regard.

It looks as if we’ll have to wait a while to find out what happened to Carol. Judging by the previews for the next episode, it will focus on Abraham and his group as they make their way toward DC. I’m not certain if splitting up the group is going to work in the long run. Again, that’s another road we’ve been down already after the prison was destroyed. That worked out well and perhaps this will too.

But if “Slabtown” was indicative of where the rest of the season is going, this show’s going to have some issues.

The Walking Dead – “Slabtown” grade: C-