Posted Sunday, March 4, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
These weren't heaps before... just trash as far as the eye can see. I used to come here to find things to paint on. Metal sheets, fabrics... and then after everything changed, I realized this whole place was a canvas. That we were the paint. We could create something new. We could become something new.... we did. This was our world, apart from everything else, anyway."— a suddenly gabby Jadis to Rick and Michonne
This whole Rick/Negan war has become a freakin' mess. The Kingdom has lost virtually all its fighters. Alexandria is in shreds. The Sanctuary is a mess. Aaron is planning something weird to get Oceanside on board but what is he going to do? And Simon decided to wipe out all of the Scavengers except for Jadis.
This was not a happy-go-lucky episode. And structurally, they opted to focus on various characters. From a pacing perspective, it was all over the place but did end with Rick and Negan yapping away, an unhinged Rick sounding far crazier than Negan.
I can't tell where this is all going. Negan told Rick to just give up, that he had failed as a leader and it cost him his son. You know that surrender isn't in Rick's DNA. He indeed couldn't let well enough alone.
Rick, as Negan said, made a lot of bad choices and poor decisions though it's hard to blame Rick for Carl's death. That was all Carl. In the end, Rick still wants to kill Negan against Carl's wishes. But to what end?
What was almost sweet was how Negan felt bad about Carl's death. He really liked that kid, said he was the "future." But not anymore.
Oddly, the most dramatic moment of the hour came when Simon defied Negan's orders to kill just one Scavenger. Instead, he kept asking Jadis for remorse. Not feeling it, he killed her top two lieutenants. After she punched him, he killed everyone else.
When Rick and Michonne showed up, they got trapped with Walking Scavengers everywhere. Jadis was the only one Simon kept alive to rue her poor decision making. She kept going back and forth between Rick and Negan and that flip flopping caught up with her. She thought she could out-smart them both. Instead, Simon decided to just destroy them all while Rick turned his back on her.
"I didn't want her dead," Rick said, "I wanted her gone."
We belatedly found out from Jadis why she chose the junkyard to plant her colony after the zombie apocalypse began. She was an artist who loved to use the space as a canvas. She also wanted to create her own society with its own weird language. It was almost strange to see her talk to Rick normally, with full sentences.
Later, she lured her now walker mates into a grinder that turned them into mush. I thought she would jump in herself but she instead chose to lay there. Will we ever see her again?
Also, when Negan finds out what Simon did, will he ever trust him? He considers people a resource. He creates indentured communities to "save" them in his mind. Yet as Simon said, they keep rebelling so whatever Negan is doing isn't working. Why not just kill them all and find new communities to exploit? Negan isn't hearing it. A Simon/Negan standoff is inevitable.
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Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Enid and Aaron go to Oceanside for help though for Enid, this sounds like a death wish.
She had killed their leader Natania during a previous trip over there. Why would they want to help her?
Enid tries to convince Cyndie, the now nominal leader, not to kill them, that all this killing will just beget more killing. "Your grandmother got herself killed so don't make the same mistake," she said. "Just let us go and I'll keep fighting them and you can keep hiding."
They still refuse to help out. "Don't come here again," Cyndie said. "We're helping you win by not killing you."
Aaron quixotically stays behind, hellbent on convincing them to join in the war. What the heck can he do?
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