#crowing commandos

Walking Dead “Not Tomorrow Yet” Opened with yet another jaunty tune, and a fun little montage of Carol combining both her current life as a badass, and past life as a home maker. As a story telling mechanic I have rally grown to enjoy these little peeks into the characters’ lives, this one did a great job of showing us who carol had been, coupled with who she has become. This leads us to an interesting question of who exactly is carol, and where does she fit into the Alexandrian way of life? Could she be a housewife, staying at home baking and helping take care of the community, a skill she has shown that regardless of past events she still has in spades. Or should she be Rick’s soldier, his secret weapon that can be deployed to destroy an entire base of the enemy both dead and living. Before this half of the season premiered I stated to friends that I felt like Carol has outlived her character arch, and that it is time for her to die as there is not much else the character can do in order to make her interesting again, that she had lost the humanity she had. I was wrong, Melissa Mcbride has demonstrated to me that Carol still has places to go, and just perhaps that humanity is not lost as evidenced by the fact her human kill count of 18 causes her sleeping problems. This actually worked really well as one of the b-plots in this episode was Glen would be forced to take a human life.

         Making Glen a killer I think was a poor choice by the writers and producers, Glen is the character who can always find the best in people our connection to a pre-apocalypse era. I felt like the scene with him and Heath was needless, Sasha and Abraham could have easily flip flopped the roles making Glen’s first human kill more accidental and justified rather than stabbing two men in their sleep like a stone cold killer. Having him kill the man then not forcing Heath to do it at least saved the scene a bit in my view, as this is Glen wanting to help another survivor from having to take the plunge into darkness. I really like the look the two men shared after gunning down the Savior crowd on the way to the armory, especially that they hesitated to shot the downed Savior showing that while they may have killed, they have yet to lose themselves in the act like I feel Rick has.  I think that if you wanted to make Glen a killer, then do it after Maggie has been captured. Put her life on the line as well as his unborn child and make him need to kill a person in that situation. Would have been a better choice I think but we will see how the story develops over the next few episodes.

The Assault on the Saviors base seems like it went off without a hitch, everyone played their part and the day (or should I say night) was won. About halfway through the raid I started wondering what was going on as Rick and crew were just mowing through the Saviors, I was wondering how this could possibly be Negans base of operations when the answer suddenly occurred to me. In The comics Negan mentions that his men have out posts, an important point for the all-out war story arc as different characters need to attack these outposts in order to weaken the Saviors. The base that was attacked last night was simply a satellite (Sorry I couldn’t resist) of the main Savior camp, close to the hill top and a place they can use as a staging ground or fall back point should things go sideways. This was simply the first volley in the war between Rick and Negan, a conflict that is going to get very interesting very quickly and may just cost us the head of one of our heroes.