The Walking Dead’s impressive hot streak of episodes continued this week with a taut, compelling bottle episode with a pared-down cast and an impressive thematic focus.
‘The Same Boat’ very much feels like the second half of a thematic exploration begun by ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ – in the way it flips the perspective to the Saviors, ‘The Same Boat’ more or less explores ideas proposed last episode from the enemy’s point of view, with relatively minimal appearances from our heroes.
The same fascinating themes are still in play here, but ‘The Same Boat’ offers a notably different take on them that fleshes out and enriches the thought-provoking concepts posed by ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’.
‘The Same Boat’ gives us the most amount of face-time yet with the Saviors, and it’s a surprisingly nuanced and complex take on foes who have previously been presented as identikit cannon fodder. Henchmen and subordinates usually get a rough job on this show in terms of development, but the handful of Saviors we all meet here benefit because ‘The Same Boat’ takes time to carefully humanise them.
That doesn’t mean they’re wholly sympathetic – they remain unrepentant killers for the most part – but it does mean they’re successfully fleshed out as distinctive characters who each have substantial backstories and past traumas informing their current actions, which feed into a uniformly nihilistic and cold view on the world.
Again, ‘The Same Boat’ doesn’t undercut their villainous status, and they remain imposing adversaries throughout the episode, but there’s a real sense that these characters have lives extending well beyond what we see due to the efficient morsels of character insights (Maggie’s conversation with the young brown-haired Savior, the smoking Savior with a hacking cough) that it peppers throughout the episode.
It means not only that the Saviors now feel more sharply defined and therefore compelling as a distinctive enemy group, but in the shorter term, the brutal deaths of each character elicited a genuine reaction from this reviewer – not exactly sadness, but their deaths certainly felt more resonant and impactful than the average henchman death, which strengthens TWD’s ongoing scrutinising of its own violence.
It’s with lead Savior Paula that ‘The Same Boat’ really excels in its exploration of the psychological state that might lead someone to become part of this murderous group.
The parallels between Paula and Carol are obvious, and while I’d prefer if they remained a little subtler than being outright stated towards the end, it’s certainly an effective and intriguing contrast because ‘The Same Boat’ takes time to sketch out Paula’s unrewarding past life in which she was subordinate to a patriarchal male figure, and it’s hard not to feel the same kind of empathy that we felt for Carol all the way back in the first season. A lot of Paula’s strength as an immediately compelling character is down to Alicia Witt’s excellent performance, imbuing Paula with acerbic spikiness on the surface while conveying the deadened, unemotional interior of a woman whose conscience has ebbed away with every murder.
Just like last episode, ‘The Same Boat’ is a major episode for Carol as she continues to progress through her crisis of conscience – and, though it did seem a little random last episode, ‘The Same Boat’ makes a very good case as to why Carol should be experiencing this crisis at this particular moment in time.
‘The Same Boat’ plays an interesting game with Carol, whose motivations are opaque for a lot of the episode – at first, it plays into our typical expectations that her crying and panic attacks are part of an elaborate act as she’s done plenty of times before; but what becomes clear across the episode is that the tears are genuine, but it’s not because she’s scared of her situation, it’s because she’s scared of having to kill.
Melissa McBride nails this changeable, volatile guessing game of Carol’s motivations by keeping her just ambiguous enough where it’s hard to tell whether she’s faking or not, and by the end, she also does an excellent job of conveying the crushing weight of murder on Carol’s shoulders.
It’s the clever idea that Carol can easily kill, but feels almost frightened of her own ability that goes a long way towards justifying this particular creative decision as it means The Walking Dead can present Carol’s typically badass actions with a vastly different meaning and context, and it’ll be intriguing to see where this particular journey will take us in the next few weeks.
Just like last episode, but perhaps to an even greater extent, ‘The Same Boat’ presents its violence as sickening and senseless, showing everything in stark detail while never trying to revel in it – and this senselessness is only compounded by the fact that we’ve been learning about these characters for the previous 45 minutes, making their horrified screams feel all the more impactful.
One moment towards the end is a particularly pertinent reminder of how The Walking Dead has adopted a more sophisticated and compelling attitude towards its violence. It’s easy to imagine the TWD of season 3 portraying Maggie and Carol’s incineration of a bunch of Saviors as a cool, impressive accomplishment, whereas here it’s preceded by weary, beaten-down resignation at this painful and uncomfortable act, and followed by the protracted, stifling screams of the Saviors, highlighting the pain and destruction the team are now causing, and how they’re taking less and less pleasure in it as the body count rises.
The Walking Dead evidently returned from its mid-season break galvanised and refreshed, because it’s been a very impressive spring run thus far – and ‘The Same Boat’ is another top-notch instalment, mixing nail-biting action sequences with compelling character studies for an episode that continues to craft a murky and morally complex conflict out of the seemingly simple skirmish with the Saviors.
Aired at 9pm on Monday 14 March 2016 on FOX.
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