Rick and Daryl find Jesus on this week's The Walking Dead! My thoughts on the new chapter of the show are after the jump.
I guess I chose the perfect time to start my coverage of The Walking Dead because we sort of got a soft reboot this week! Surprise time jump! I have always been a little baffled with how showrunner Scott M. Gimple has been pacing and organizing the last few seasons of the show. His mid-season and season finales have always been right in the middle of the action with an episode to tie everything up comings months later before continuing with a new arc. He has done that again with season 6. The mid-season finale ended right in the middle of an action sequence for God knows what reason. When we came back last week, he simply wrapped it up with what should have been a season finale episode and then this week gave us an episode that has a completely new tone and feels like it should be a season finale, not the second episode of the second half of a season. I am really hoping he straightens up the show's pacing soon because it is getting a little unwieldy.
Regardless of all of this, I actually really enjoyed this episode and the changes it brings to the show. The lighter tone and the humor is especially welcome after the brutality of last week's episode. Normally on The Walking Dead we get some sort of tragedy and then we get several episodes of everyone wandering around aimlessly while trying to make sense of it. The routine was getting a bit stale so this episode comes as an exciting breath of fresh air. It feels a lot more human and realistic to me, which is a big plus.
The stakes may not have been that high, but I really enjoyed Rick and Daryls' little buddy road trip. Their chase after the man that calls himself Jesus was a lot of a fun. As for Jesus himself, I am completely fascinated by him. Why is his nickname Jesus? Does he work for Negan? Where did he learn his fighting style? How is he able to get out of everything so fast? Does he like to spy on sleeping naked couples? Time will tell.
Speaking of sleeping naked couples, we now have Rick and Michonne as a legitimate romance! I like it. It was very sweet and surprisingly made a lot of sense for their characters and where they both were emotionally. Them sitting on the couch together after having "a day" was quite lovely. It is the kind of quiet reflection and legitimate human feeling that the show has been missing for a while. I hope the show keeps this tone up while still delivering the doomsday thrills that we all know are coming.
As for the rest of the episode with (one-eyed) Carl, his girlfriend, and the wandering Deanna zombie, it felt like a largely unnecessary story line. It was somewhat moving to see Michonne and Deanna's son preparing her grave, but it did not amount to much. It felt out of place when put alongside the main story line of the episode. It was not a deal breaker though. This was a very entertaining and refreshing episode of The Walking Dead and I hope it continues on this path.
Grade: A-.
The Walking Dead airs every Sunday night on AMC.
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