The Walking Dead isn’t messing around this season, following up last week’s strong, visually inventive premiere with a thoroughly violent siege thriller.
‘JSS’, unusually, began with a quiet first act that doesn’t seem to be building too much. There’s the sympathetic, if disposable prologue, which fleshes out Enid, an ancillary character at best, and a set of conversations that accomplish very little other than setting the scene in this newly fractured community.
It all seems a little aimless, and not particularly incisive character-wise, and, for a brief moment, it seems as if The Walking Dead has let the carefully built-up momentum from last week slip.
Then, the Wolves attacked, and things suddenly took a darker turn. The protracted Wolves attack was a far longer action sequence than The Walking Dead usually attempts, encompassing the entire mid-section of ‘JSS’ – yet it’s a testament to the talents of The Walking Dead’s writers and production crew that the tension barely slackens throughout. It’s taut, consistently engaging stuff that’s often elevated by how utterly brutal it is.
Make no mistake, this was close to the most violent The Walking Dead has ever gotten, and while the depiction of the brutal attacks on the Alexandrians is often a little too sadistic, the choice to not hold back with the violence pays off.
It’s visceral, bloody, and it ensures that the Wolves feel like a genuine, frequently terrifying threat to the Alexandrians. What’s interesting here is that the Wolves are a slightly nebulous presence – they stealthily appear as if by magic, and there are no revealing conversations that unearth a complex motive for their actions.
They’re a completely primal presence, attacking Alexandria seemingly just because they can – the idea of a group that’s almost abandoned self-control is pretty frightening, and it’s an idea that’s well explored here.
‘JSS’ is lighter on wistful character scenes than usual, but there’s still some meaty character material that unspools, smartly, in the midst of the violence.
In Rick’s absence, Morgan and Carol function as the co-leads here, and ‘JSS’ manages to say an awful lot about both characters simply through the way they handle the Wolves; Carol is a pragmatist who seeks to mow down the Wolves, while Morgan hopes to peacefully drive them off without killing. Melissa McBride and Lennie James give determined performances here, and, perhaps as an indication of the strengths of these characters and their actors, they fill the void left by Rick to the point where his absence is barely felt.
This is undoubtedly a strong episode, but it’s marred by the fact that is a particularly isolated instalment that feels weirdly disparate from Episode 1. Morgan pops up without an explanation as to why Rick, Michonne and co didn’t follow him, and there’s zero development on the walker herd despite the fact that a good portion of this episode takes place after episode one.
It’s an episode that seems to lack context, and there’s not much indication as to how the events of ‘JSS’ will be followed up, especially considering the slightly nondescript and ambiguous way the Wolves flee for the time being.
‘JSS’ had shock factor in spades, but the whole episode feels just a little too out-of-context for only the second instalment in the season, leaving the season as a whole in a slightly uneasy place.
On the bright side, it leaves this reviewer wondering: just what is next episode going to feature?
Aired at 9pm on Monday 19 October 2015 on FOX.
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