What I Watched Today
(rambling, random thoughts & annoyingly detailed recaps from real time TV watching)
The Walking Dead
A zombie toddles around making zombie noises. Maggie drops down and shoots it in the head. She shoots a few more, but she and her bullets are outnumbered.
Gabriel drops into the subway car, followed by the others. Gabriel beats the crap out of a zombie, and they walk toward the next car. Negan looks tired, and Alden asks where Maggie is. Negan says she was right behind him. She wanted them to keep moving forward. Gabriel gets the door open, and says, they’ll go from car to car, hop off, and keep going.
Daryl busts through a wall to find Dog. He and Dog travel quietly. They come to a room where there’s all kinds of random stuff. He sees, It comes for us all, written on the wall. Next to it, a dead person sits on the floor, handcuffed to a briefcase of cash. Apparently, it didn’t do them much good. Daryl looks at a weird mural on the wall, a royal family overseeing what looks like a bizarre party. I have no clue what this is about, but later on Talking Dead, they explained it was people fighting each other, but not the zombies surrounding them. Okay, well, it looked like a strange party to me. And who were those people with crowns on? I want answers.
Yumiko tells Princess that the Commonwealth has structure and laws. There has to be someone in charge. She’s going to speak to them and demand results. Princess says, that’s her plan? Is she sure she can be cold as ice? Yumiko says she was a lawyer; it comes naturally. She loves her brother, and hasn’t seen him in a long time. She’ll be fine as long as she can speak to them. A trooper comes by, and Princess says, that was the woman from last night. She knows. Eugene comes back, and says he’s looked everywhere for Ezekiel, and he’s freaking out. It’s probably because Ezekiel told off the big guy. They should come clean about who they are, and where they’re from. Yumiko tells him to stick to the story. She gets up and strides over to the trooper. She says she demands to know where her friend was taken, but the trooper tells her, calm down. She doesn’t know where Yumiko’s friend is. Yumiko says she’d like to speak to someone who can give her answers, and the trooper says, Yumiko wants to speak to her supervisor? Princess says, yeah. They want to talk to the manager.
Daryl sees a plastic bag that has, among other things, a couple of candy bars in it. He takes them out, and pulls out a hundred dollar bill. He reads a message on it that says, Dear Dad, you always said if you don’t come back in a week to move on. Mom didn’t listen and went looking. It’s been 3 weeks, so we’re going next. I’ll watch Jesse and turn on the radio every day at 10. See you both soon. Love, Tom and Jesse. It’s accompanied by a photo of two kids. Dog senses something, and Daryl follows him. Dog leads him to a zombie lying by the wall, and Daryl shoots it with a crossbow. He sees a map on the wall, but he and Dog are distracted by a loud yell. Dog takes off and goes into a pipeline. Here we go again. Daryl calls to him, but Dog doesn’t come back, so he follows. Must we really have a heart attack about Dog tonight? Although this is the thing I like the most about Daryl now. He takes responsibility as a pet parent.
Yumiko sits in an office with the assessors, and the woman says she’s not sure why Yumiko is there; she’s already been assessed. Yumiko says, they think they’ve been assessing her? She’s been assessing them. The woman almost smiles, and says, Yumiko doesn’t know anything about them. Yumiko says it’s a large community; organization and bureaucracy are part of that. Probably the woman’s job before this was forensic psychologist. The guy was perhaps academic; a researcher. He assesses the lab rats in his community. Someone above them based their jobs on who it was thought they were. The assessor’s poke around in the dust of their brains, and push the boundaries about their toilet habits. They raked one of her friends over the coals for a two dollar bill. They use money as a powerful psychological tactic, because it’s familiar, and they know how desperately people miss the old world. They decide whether someone will enhance their community or just drain their resources, but the truth is, they need to justify their existence, because at the end of the day, they could rely on their gut instinct. She was a lawyer. She likes rules. They bring order to the chaos. She believes her brother, a thoracic surgeon, is at the Commonwealth. She’d like her groups’ processing expedited. The woman asks again where Yumiko went to school, and Yumiko says, Oxford and Harvard, but she knows that. Would she like Yumiko’s credentials again? Mercer comes in, and gives Yumiko a cup of coffee. Yumiko comes thisclose to smiling.
Eugene and Princess wait out in the hall, and Princess says she has to pee. She shouldn’t have mentioned it, since now she really does. Eugene doesn’t want her to go, but she says, the big guy just walked in with coffee; it must be going good. She goes up to two trooper, and speaks to one of them in another language – Italian? Spanish? I can’t find this out. She goes into another room, and the trooper follows her, leaving the other to guard the hallway.
Daryl follows Dog’s bark, and goes through another pipeline.
Gabriel manages to get the door open, and the group goes into the next car. They can hear zombies, along with a banging sound from underneath. Alden says, it’s Morse Code. SOS. It gets louder, and they open a trap door, Maggie popping through. She stares at Negan for a hot minute, then whacks him in the head with her gun. She says, she slipped. He saw her, and left her to die. Negan says, okay. So what? Gabriel says, he’s just going to admit it? Alden says, he tried to kill her? Negan says, she was in trouble, and he didn’t help; there’s a big difference. Duncan slams him up against the wall, and Negan says, Maggie was just talking about killing him sooner than later, and now somehow he’s a big a-hole because he didn’t risk his nuts for her? He’s been an asset. He killed Alpha – nice of him, he knows. If he hadn’t, every person they know, their skull would be on a spike. He did what needed to be done. He’s trying. Duncan says he’s not buying word of it, and Agatha says, they can get through the city without Negan. They hear someone yelling for help, and they run to the other end of car. Gage is in between cars, and he says he’s locked in. They were in the tunnels, and there were walkers everywhere. Maggie asks if he locked the other car door, but he didn’t, and she tells him, if they open the doors, they’ll all get in. Zombies are coming toward Gage, and he says he’s sorry; he won’t do it again. Gabriel says they have the time, but Maggie says they don’t have the ammo. She tells Gage that she’s sorry; they can’t. He says, liar, and pulls out two knives. He stabs himself, as the zombies reach him. Negan should point out the irony here, but maybe it’s too easy. Or he doesn’t want to die. They watch as Gage is torn apart. Now I’m wondering, why didn’t they just tell him to go underneath like Maggie did? It’s a wonder these people have survived eleven years.
Eugene shakes and twitches, and gets up. He wanders down the hall, and tells the trooper that he’s been waiting for his friend Yumiko. She was being questioned in that room, and he was wondering if they had an ETA for when she’d be done. The trooper says, there’s no one in there, and Eugene says, but he saw her and them. The trooper repeats, there’s no one in there, and Eugene says, his other friend went in to use the ladies room. The trooper says, what friend? He needs Eugene to leave.
Duncan messes with the door, and Negan paces a little. He sits, and Gabriel asks, what is it? The flashlight goes out, and Maggie lights a flare. They see Gage heading the zombie crowd. Alden does too, and he says, they don’t want to look, but he wants them to look. Gabriel says, all it is, is the shell of a man who died a coward, which is pretty harsh, if you ask me. Alden says, he didn’t deserve to die in the worst way imaginable. Maggie says, there are worse ways. She and Hershel were alone for a long time, and they came across an old man kneeling by a grocery cart full of scavenged clothes. He said they were for his daughter, and asked if they’d help him haul the cart back home. He’d give them some food for their trouble. She knew he was a liar, but she was starving. They followed him back, and she held a knife to his throat. She reached in his pocket, pulled out the chloroformed rag he was going to use on her, and stuffed it in his mouth. They went inside, and she locked her boy in a room, then went through the house. She came across three deformed… she woudn’t call them men. They came after her, and she handled them. The house was quiet, but she could hear a thudding sound from the attic. She thought there might be people tied up trying to get free. She opened up a door, seeing a set of stairs, and saw a shadow at the top. It was rocking back and forth, and she thought it was some kind of animal. It fell down the stairs, and came at her face. It was a walker. It used to be a woman. Her arms and legs were cut off and stitched up; her eyes had been gouged out; and she had no tongue. There was a cauterized gash in her throat where her vocal cords had been ripped out. Whatever was in there, was trying to get out. There were three more just like her. Their hearts were still beating. The first thing she thought was, if they’re alive, there must be food. She took care of it, and found the food; lots of it. She and Hershel filled the cart, and left. She tells Alden that she doesn’t feel anything when she tells him that, because that’s what’s out there. That makes it clear what they have in Alexandria; what they had in Hilltop and Meridien. It’s rare compared to everything out there. If it isn’t… Negan says, it means nobody has it figured out. Nobody ever di,d and nobody ever will.
Daryl keeps going through the pipe, and a zombie grabs his leg. He shoots it, and falls out the opening back to where the tracks are. He whacks a few zombies, cracking their heads with a pipe, gets his bag and light, and keeps going. He sees blood near the tracks, and hears Dog in the distance. He calls to Dog, and Roy comes out of the darkness, stumbling toward him. He falls, and Dog attacks a zombie. I won’t watch just in case, but Daryl shoots the zombie and Dog is okay. Seriously, they could kill off the whole cast, and I’d be fine as long as Dog made it. And I don’t trust them after Ezekiel’s tiger. More zombies pop out, and Daryl dispatches them. This is starting to get old. He goes to Roy, lying by the tracks, and Roy asks, how bad is it? Daryl says, it ain’t good, and Roy says he lost Cole. Daryl asks where the ammo bag is, and Roy says he lost that too. Daryl tries to tend to Roy’s head wound, but Roy says, don’t waste it on him. He gives Daryl some bullets and a grenade from his pockets, and says, it’s all he’s got. Tell the kids he didn’t die a coward.
Duncan pries open the next door, but the one going into the next car is locked. Zombies are coming, Gage leading the pack. Duncan uses an ax on the door, and Gabriel and Maggie get ready to shoot at the zombies. The door starts to give way, then falls. The zombies swarm in, Gage at the head.
Daryl and Dog run.
Gabriel shoots the oncoming zombies with a machine gun, and the rest use bows and arrows, getting the dead one by one as they straggle in. Duncan sees zombies coming from the other side, and Maggie hands a gun to Negan. He shoots, but the zombies just keep coming, and I think, either they have to run out of dead people or ammo at some point.
Daryl is inside the subway car, on the other side, and shoots his way through as the theme music plays. He gets to the door, and Negan opens it from the other side. Everyone runs into the car where Daryl is, and he tells them, get down. They duck under the seats, and Daryl shoves the grenade into a zombie’s mouth. He kicks it into the other car, and shuts the door. The grenade explodes, and it’s quiet. Blood cascades down the window.
Eugene sits at the table, and researcher dude opens a pouch that looks ominous, but really just contains office supplies. He takes out a pen, and Eugene asks what they’ve done with his traveling companions. Mercer says, they’re being processed, and Eugene says, as in administratively, or as in bologna and other meat stuffs? He’d like to see them. Mercer says, only one thing gets his heart pumping. Battling the dead gets it pumping every time; not in a bad way. He hands Eugene a box of tissues, and tells him, mop up. Eugene blots his face, and Mercer says Eugene can’t lie for sh*t, so don’t lie. Eugene says he wasn’t going to, and Mercer says, that makes him like Eugene. Keep doing that, and it will help him. But if he doesn’t… Does Eugene get him? Eugene nods, and Mercer says he knows Eugene is holding back. He has two questions, which require two answers. Truthful ones. Do that, and he’ll get to go, and see his friends again. Everything will be okay. It’s that simple. Ready? Where is their settlement, and why were they at the train station? If Eugene lies, he’ll know. Eugene says, okey-dokey. He has been holding something back. He was afraid of what his friends would think. In the course of their travels, he found a radio. Night after night, he would speak into the void, holding on to what if, as fools are wont to do, and he’s nothing if not a fool. He starts to cry, and says, then one night, a voice came back, a woman, a beautiful voice. They got to talking, and she was not repulsed by his musings. They spoke of train museums and ice cream cones, laughed, and sang Iron Maiden. They wanted to meet, so he got his friends to go the train yard, under the guise of asking for help. He knew they wouldn’t go otherwise, but he was thinking about Stephanie. He was lying the whole time, afraid he’d lose the three friends he has. He lied to Stephanie, saying he was from a large settlement, because he thought she might be a femme fatale, laying a trap for a lonely heart. He’s not one to whom relationships come easy, particularly those with the fairer sex. He is in fact a virgin, even though he’d observed the act more times than he cares to admit. He was hoping, after a suitable period of courtship, Stephanie might be the one to change his unenviable status. He’s afraid if Stephanie finds out he wasn’t honest with her either, she’ll have nothing to do with him. He cries, and says, here it is, and he’s very relieved to get it off his chest, because everything he’s said up until that has been the goddam truth.
Troopers bring a hooded Eugene in a wagon to a trailer. They bring him up the stairs, and take the hood off. He sees Yumiko, Princess, and Ezekiel. He hugs them, and laughs. He asks where they took Ezekiel, and Ezekiel says, the infirmary. A medic steamed his face, and gave him some nasty herbal cough syrup, and then he slept. Eugene asks if the tea was spiked, but Ezekiel says, no. They took the light from his room so he could sleep. They checked on him periodically, then brought Yumiko to visit him. They were brought to a holding room with Princess, then brought there. Mercer reads a bunch of legalese from the Commonwealth’s constitution, and says they’ve been granted asylum and citizenship. When they walk out, they’ll be escorted to orientation. He looks at Ezekiel, and says, by a beat cop. Welcome to the Commonwealth. He tells Ezekiel, I went to West Point, a-hole.
Princess asks what Yumiko found out, when a woman comes in. She asks which one of them is Eugene, and Eugene raises his hand. She says, she’s Stephanie, and he smile. Little hearts pop out of his eyes.
The group finally gets to the outside Negan gives Maggie back the gun, but hangs on to it for an extra beat or two. Maggie asks Daryl what he’s looking at, and he says, it’s a letter from the kid to his parents. Maggie tells everyone that they’ll be heading out, but they need to take a detour first. Arbor Hills. It’s a supply depot Georgie set up. They’d been set up all over, with ammo, food, and weapons. They’ll rest up there, and restock. A radio tower marks the neighborhood. Does Negan know where that is? Negan says, yeah, and they head out.
They see some dead men hanging upside down, and Negan says, this place sure has gone to s*h*t since I was here last. Let’s double back. They barely start to turn, when Roy, who is somehow still alive, gets an arrow to the forehead, and a sickle comes winging through the air, hitting Cole in the leg. Dragging Cole, they quickly find cover. We see a group of masked people marching toward them, looking like something out of the old Warriors movie. It’s the Reapers.
Next time, a fight in the woods, Maggie says the plan doesn’t change, Carol says they’re going to starve to death, and Gabriel says God isn’t here anymore.
📉 Dead Dive…
I’m kind of surprised. Geez, we’ve made it this far, why not finish it out?
https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/the-walking-dead-amc-season-11-ratings-1235050635/
⚰️ First Dead…
Who cares? As long as Dog is okay. And face it, dude was a pretty minor character
💍 Sorry Ladies…
Daryl is officially taken.
https://ew.com/celebrity/norman-reedus-diane-kruger-engaged/
🥱 Nighty-Night…
After Netflix and work this weekend, it’s back to the old Bravo grind. Until we meet on Deck, stay safe, stay following through, and stay out of that space between subway cars. No good can come of it.
What I Watched - TV With Theresa 