After an impressive run of episodes that did a great deal to expand the show’s scope while allowing The Walking Dead to subvert its own formula, this week’s antepenultimate episode proved to be a disappointingly rote step down for the show.
Perhaps the core issue with ‘Twice as Far’ is that it’s come after a set of episodes that have challenged this show’s slightly off-putting tendency to revert to a nihilistic view of the world.
While this is by no means a poor episode of television, it still feels like a regression for the show into some of its worst habits – in a half-season that’s felt notably fresh and innovative, this episode felt familiar and uninspiring in the way it clung to ideas and storylines that have played out time after time throughout the six seasons
The main focus of the episode is the dual stories of Eugene and Denise, two sheltered characters who haven’t adapted to the brutality of the post-apocalyptic world yet.
It’s a perfectly well-drawn parallel that’s not overstated in clunky fashion, and there’s no sense that The Walking Dead is trying to awkwardly contrast two entirely different characters; instead, it feels like the show is taking good advantage of an opportunity to take two characters already developing in a similar direction, and simply making that parallel more explicit in order to heighten the episode’s thematic depth.
The problems begin to arise, however, when the two character arcs are looked at separately. Of the two, it’s Denise’s story which and more engaging for the majority of the run-time. Merritt Wever’s performance is quietly great, bringing an endearing awkwardness and nervy disposition to Denise, and it’s thanks to Wever that Denise’s scenes, which feature a copious amount of maddeningly dumb behaviour to hit the audience over the head about Denise’ lack of preparedness, are laden with enough pathos to be relatively enjoyable for the most part, even if the pacing of her arc meanders until a sudden jolt.
Denise has been a genuinely great addition to the ensemble this season – in a show rife with brooding anti-heroes and near-psychopaths, Denise has been one of the most purely likeable figures around.
So, of course, she dies here.
It’s with Denise’s death that her arc more or less self-destructs, as it’s all revealed to be in service of a frustrating and repetitive message that we’ve heard before. The Walking Dead has made it pretty clear with its culling of characters like Denise that innocence and a lack of pragmatism gets you killed in the past, and that message has been delivered to the point where it’s become stale and rote.
It’s notable that the show has found success this season by opening itself up to sympathetic characters with alternative viewpoints, and even allowing a major character to change with Carol, which makes it all the more frustrating that ‘Twice as Far’ regresses back to the same old, well-trodden idea that now just feels emptily nihilistic and depressing with little substance.
Denise’s death just feels cheap and cynical – the arrow through the eye is a shocking moment executed effectively, but that’s all it is; a moment to make the audience gasp at an unexpected change of pace, with not a whole lot of substance behind that shock. And that’s not even considering the problematic fact that The Walking Dead has just killed off one of its very few gay characters (the killing of LGBT characters has become a bit of a flashpoint in recent weeks, and this’ll no doubt fan the flames of that debate).
Denise’s death made me gasp, but it just doesn’t work as a meaningful and exciting development, as it simply plunges the show back into the singular, grim view on the world that it was doing a great job of confronting and scrutinising in recent weeks.
On the other hand, there’s Eugene, whose arc doesn’t really work at all. His spat with Abraham over Eugene’s desire to cut ties with Abraham as his protector simply plays like a petulant child telling their parents that they don’t need them anymore, and it’s not helped by the fact that the parent figure also storms off without trying to have an adult conversation about it.
It’s forced drama, coming from just about nowhere rather than acting as the culmination of simmering tension from recent weeks, and just plays as a contrived way to have Eugene and Abraham split up outside Alexandria for the final confrontation; piece-moving that’s mechanical and very transparent.
The final confrontation is a decent enough action scene, pumping a few thrills into an episode that meandered for three-quarters of its run-time. Dwight’s re-introduction is well done, although it doesn’t quite have the shock factor presumed here as Dwight hasn’t been seen for a good eight episodes now, and I’m liking the way that his comic-book portrayal has been tweaked in order to shape him as the natural arch-enemy of Daryl, even wielding the guy’s crossbow in order to take down Denise.
Dwight was an odd character in the comics, intermittently interesting but frequently acting as an erratic plot device, so I’m pleased that he’s found a more concrete role now as the adversary of a character who wasn’t even in the comics in the first place, as this should give him a considerably meatier role going forward.
‘Twice as Far’ leaves us on the surprising development that Carol is upping sticks and leaving Alexandria in order to avoid killing any more people, and it’s a development that would undoubtedly have worked a lot better at the end of last week’s Carol-centric episode.
Here, with Carol only popping up in book-end appearances in the cold open and final minutes, this sudden surge in her character arc comes across as tacked-on and rushed – it’s a decent extension of her character development, but the lack of focus placed upon Carol here simply doesn’t give enough basis for this development as a logical twist within the episode itself.
‘Twice as Far’, unfortunately, trips up badly as The Walking Dead heads into the season’s final straight. It’s a poor episode, slowly building up to a cheap twist with troubling implications and ending with a cliffhanger that seems copy and pasted from last week.
Sure, there are redeeming factors here and there, such as the effective reintroduction of Dwight, some good character work for Denise and a thrilling set-piece, but this brought the show’s recent impressive hot streak to a screeching halt, at the point where The Walking Dead should be motoring forward to the final confrontation with Negan in the finale.
Let’s just hope that this back-sliding into bad habits doesn’t continue…
Aired at 9pm on Monday 21 March 2016 on FOX.
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