*Spoilers*

After a rocky start, the first half of this season of The Walking Dead is starting to shape up a bit. Since the slow and uninteresting face-off between all the communities verses the Saviors, the episodes have gotten better and better. While it has not been perfect, and a lot of people are just moaning about it for the sake of it (as the producers are damned whatever they try and do it would seem), it has still been entertaining and kept me interested. While I do wonder how long they can keep the show going for, given how most people appear to be annoyed at it and there has been no word of a season renewal, I, for one, am just going to hope that they are going to maybe go out with a bang, and it seems as if this might be the case.


This week continued on moments after the conclusion of last time; when the Kingdom learned just where the Saviors were keeping those 50cal guns. The episode begun Ezekiel giving a speech at the Kingdom, obviously taking place before they ventured out to lay waste to the Savior’s outposts from the last episode. They love a rally speech in this program, they really do. I think in nearly every episode this season, and the last few ones of the last season, Rick, Maggie, Ezekiel, Negan, or someone else has been encouraging their soldiers with a good old fashion uplifting speech.
While Ezekiel’s speech itself was not enjoyable and not something we haven’t a million times before, I loved the way it zoomed out from above of Ezekiel and his followers surrounding around him, only for it to cut back to the present time when all of his followers have been slaughtered with high calibre machine-gun fire, and bits of body parts were all lying around. In the middle of the pile of bodies was King Ezekiel himself. I really liked the way that these people were willing to give their lives to protect their King, as they threw themselves in front of the gunfire with total disregard of their own safety, which shows us how fanatical the Kingdom is when it comes to serving their royal highness.

The intro was a complete reality check for Ezekiel as he scrabbled around the dead bodies of his people who had died serving him and following his orders. Especially given that 15 minutes ago (so last episode) he was telling them that they would all survive and make it home. It seems as if every single one of them has been shot down.
I, like everyone else who was watching it, was just thinking how these bodies are going to turn at any moment. The thing I like about The Walking Dead is that currently the show is about man vs man as multiple human factions fight one another in a full-scale war, the dead are still a threat. If you kill a bunch of soldiers, without shooting them in the head or destroying the brain, then they will get back up and attack whoever is near. I love the way that people can utilise this to their advantage, and we will go more into that later on.

I really enjoyed this scene as when the dead started to rise, and more came shambling in having been attracted by the gunfire, it became a bit of an intense horror-esc moment. Ezekiel, suffering from a bullet wound in his leg, desperately tried to get away or fend them off, but everything seemed to go wrong. There was no bullets, he couldn’t stand, he kept falling over, all the while the horde of Walkers were descending upon him.
Zombies were originally horror film creatures. It is only since they became massive in mainstream media that they became centre more around action films and lost the aspects of what makes them scary. Gore and guts does not make a horror film. It is intense suspense that builds us up the feeling of dread inside of us, some times paying off with a jump scare, but I find it better when they don’t.
Anyway, I felt that this scene really did a good job of building up this suspense as the audience wondered if Ezekiel was actually going to make it out of this.
That was until some random Kingdom guy showed up and saved him, at which point we all thought/knew that this guy was 100% going to be killed. As soon as there is a guy you have never seen before, who shows up to help out, then they are as good as dead.


Naturally we were all right on the money, but I wasn’t expecting this guy to die almost instantly to some craved glasses wearing Savior, who was hell-bent on delivering Ezekiel to Negan. I instantly thought that if it was me, I would have just cut his head off and job done. Negan would be pleased enough with that. But it seemed as if it took the Savior a painfully long journey to the fence to come to the same conclusion.
The two characters had a good exchange as we are still hearing the “I am Negan” phrase being uttered by the Saviors, showing that they too are just as fanatical about their leader as the Kingdom are. Ezekiel seems to realise this as the façade of his King persona begins to slip off. We have already seen this side of Ezekiel last season when him and Carol were talking and he said that he puts it on to inspire his people and to help lead them, but here, all alone and held at gun point, we are reminded that this is not who he truly is.

This section here is a MASSIVE SPOILER for the show, so only read if you are up to date with the comics (you will need to highlight the text to read it, or skim down to the next black text paragraph to carry on the review):
****
One thing I clocked was that the Savior says about taking off Ezekiel’s head and that it would “look good on a spike”, which is proper foreshadowing Ezekiel’s fate later down the line, when Alpha of the Whisperers cuts his, and about 12 other named characters’ heads off (including Rosita) and puts them on spikes marking their land. While I am not sure the show will do this (or even last that long), it would be great to see it and I loved this little nod to Ezekiel’s fate.
****

Maybe it is because I read the comics so I instantly knew, or maybe they mentioned it earlier as well, but we are given a flashback scene of Carol and Ezekiel talking where he reveals that he was once a Zoo-Keeper and had to help an injured Shiva, giving them this great bond.
It would have been a great episode to give us a nice flashback of Ezekiel’s life before the outbreak, but unfortunately it was not the case. I think that maybe the creators spent their CGI budget on Shiva in earlier episodes.


Back to the present day, as the Savior is about to kill Ezekiel and hack off his head… the King’s main man; Jerry, shows up with his battle axe and gruesomely (yet awesome) hacks the man into two.
As I said last week, Jerry is a character I am incredibly worried about. He is funny and likeable, yet he does not get a lot of screen time, making him not an overly important character, so I feel he could die at any given moment.
The who men are now stuck at a locked gate as the dead slowly approach them. Ezekiel tells Jerry, to leave him, but Jerry, willing to do anything to protect his King, holds them back as well as desperately trying to break the lock, busting his amazing battle axe in the process. Jerry says that he is his King, which Ezekiel replies that he is no one’s King. Jerry tells him that he is just a cool dude, and it is clear that even though Ezekiel puts on this royal LARPing persona, he is still their leader and has greatly inspired and helped his people. Ezekiel might not see feel he is worthy of being their leader, but for what he has done for the people of the Kingdom, he is truly their King.
Although it seems as if it doesn’t matter as the two of them are about to be dead at any moment. But we all knew this was never going to be the case.

Elsewhere, Carol (aka Commando-Carol) is doing her own Call of Duty-esc mission of infiltrating the Savior controlled compound, and disabling a couple of 50cal machine guns.
I really liked the way she laid waste to the four guys chatting and holding the weapon crates, but she should have stayed in the ceiling and killed the others when they came to inspect, as she instantly became out numbered and had to flee, allowing the enemy get guns downstairs and in the car park.
When she finally got down there, she found herself not only once again out numbered, but also pinned behind a car under heavy gunfire. However, this is Carol, so she had a plan.
This was what I was saying earlier about how, giving their current situation, the survivors can utilise the dead to their advantage. Carol has previously covered a poncho in blood and moved amongst them when she infiltrated Terminus, and so she is no stranger to this kind of tactical thinking. Here the gunfight has drawn in walkers, who are now clawing at locked gate. Carol was able to distract the Saviors long enough to hit the convenient nearby button which opens the gate (and still amazingly has power given the amount of time it has been left unused, but lets not worry about that).
The horde of undead swarm inside and devour most of the Saviors, but Carol and the remaining become locked in a stalemate. Unfortunately (or not depending how you look at it) the open gate has revealed Jerry and Ezekiel trapped. Carol now must make a choice whether she continues on with her objective and seize the weapons, or rescue Ezekiel, whom she has become quite close to last season.
Carol ultimately decides to help her fellow man, allowing the Saviors to get away with the weapons. Ezekiel seems disappointed that she chose them, but Carol notices something, smiles and tells them that the guns are not going anywhere.


We suddenly see that Daryl (on his bike) and Rick (in his Jeep) are in hot pursuit! “Ah you fuck now boys!” you feel yourself saying as you watch the chasing after the truck. The scene is well over the top, as the back of the truck opens up to reveal one of the Saviors on the 50cal. The gun unloads into the pursuers, yet doesn’t managed to actually hit them. I am sure that the damage to Rick’s Jeep would have been astronomical, but it is a bit of fun mindless action, so even though it can’t hold water due to the amount of holes, let’s just enjoy it for the sake of it.
Rick pulls up alongside the Jeep and jumps in, taking out the Savior and leaping out, as the truck crashes off the side of the road.
Afterwards Daryl informs Rick that he “looks like shit”, and together they rejoice at the fact that the guns are now theirs.

Meanwhile, Ezekiel, Jerry and Carol are desperately trying to get away from the undead, who are swarming around them and closing in, due to the fact that Ezekiel is in fact holding them back and slowing them down. They eventually reach a polluted creek bed, where more walkers are roaming. They manage to push through, but Ezekiel turns back, fighting off the approaching walkers and yelling for the others to leave him. Jerry refuses to leave, feeling it is his duty to protect his king, but Ezekiel rejects his title, iterating that he is just “some guy”, which is also the name of the episode. I did feel that maybe they did have ample time to climb up the bed and escape, rather than standing here chatting for a bit.
As it looks like Ezekiel is going to be left, Shiva leaps out of nowhere and takes down a few walkers, but more importantly, distracts them long enough to give Ezekiel and the rest time to escape. Ezekiel is screaming at them to let him go so he can save Shiva, but at this point the dead has surrounded her and sadly began to rip her apart. Thankfully we do not see this as I don’t know if I could have handled that.
Although the CGI was not 100% amazing, it was still a greatly executed moment and one that happens frame for frame with the comics. However, in both cases, I did feel that it was a little bit of a waste of the Tiger. I think they could have gotten an even more emotional kick out of the audience if Shiva and Ezekiel had been travelling together the entire time before she heroically sacrifices herself to save him.
Needless to say I was still left a little gutted by her death, which meant that my own kitty-cat needed a big squeezing cuddle when I saw him later that night.


The three make it back to the Kingdom, battered, bruised and broken. The townspeople gather to find that Ezekiel, Carol and Jerry are the only survivors of the fight. Broken-spirited, Ezekiel is at a loss for words and, unable to address the mourning crowd, limps off to his quarters and the episode ends, leaving us wondering “Will we see what the fuck has happened with Negan and Father Gabriel?!”


RIP Shiva

 

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