‘The Walking Dead’ recap: We are not monsters
Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for the The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 15, "Something They Need." To read our recap of Episode 14, clickhere.
Are we there yet?
Although the back half of The Walking Dead’s seventh season has been a marked improvement to the sluggish and depressing first half, it is still falling prey to one of the show’s worst traps: wasting time. Once Rick and co. made the decision to resist Negan, it just became a matter of time until the final confrontation. And the show has been spinning its wheels over a recent run of inconsequential episodes. “Something They Need” moved the plot forward a little bit, but it still felt like thumb-twiddling until next week’s finale, especially after last week’s exceedingly slow outing.
One thing’s for sure: Something will happen next week. The pieces are finally in place, the guns are acquired and the soldiers are ready. It’s up to the show to deliver on what it’s been promising for an entire season.
All hail the benevolent conquerors
The Walking Dead has given us seven years of moral quandaries, but despite the bad things our heroes have had to do for the right reasons, we have always been confident that they were the heroes. Even in the first assault on the Saviors, where our guys attacked first, we knew that the Saviors had to be evil, so Alexandria was in the right.
This episode presents yet another dilemma for the good guys. They need guns. Oceanside has guns. They don’t want to hurt the people of Oceanside, but they can neither convince the community to give up the guns nor do they have anything to trade for them. So brute force is the only solution. But the nice kind.
Rick and the rest make every attempt possible to pull off their heist without hurting anyone in the community, but all they’ve done is take protection away from a community that has already been ravaged by loss. They’ve effectively conquered these people, even if they don’t want to admit it.
The only person who seems accepting of this reality is Tara, who informed the Alexandrians of this potential gold mine and is morally responsible for what is happening. She flips the young Oceansider who almost killed her the bird, while walking out with an armful of guns.
The problem is, all of this is being done in the name of overthrowing a tyrant. What is this part of the world going to look like when Negan is gone? Is democracy and good will going to flourish now that Rick and Alexandria hold all the power? I’m guessing it’s not going to be as easy as they think, even with Maggie making inroads with her political popularity at the Hilltop (look at how mad Gregory is).
Behind enemy lines
The fact that the show decided to skip over Sasha’s self-sacrificing assault on the Savior’s compound is the most disappointing choice of the entire season. That she returns as a captive and is threatened with sexual assault is equally egregious. What, exactly, is the show trying to say in this scene? That Negan is kind of OK because he doesn’t tolerate rape? Nevermind that he leaves Sasha with the choice of suicide, being eaten alive or betraying her friends moments later. It was unendingly obvious what Sasha was going to do when presented with this choice. Imagine how much more exciting this episode could have been if we had gotten to see what Sasha did, and how she was captured? Instead we get a fake moral dilemma in a tiny prison cell.
Sasha’s double agent act puts her both at an advantage and disadvantage for whatever happens next week. She’s got a little admiration from Negan (although not trust) and she’s physically located within the compound. The sob story she put on for Eugene was all for nothing, although Chekhov’s suicide pill may play another role, you never know.
Regardless, my money is still on Sasha (don't’ forget about Star Trek) and Eugene to die in the finale. And maybe Tara, now that she seems so cool and powerful. The Walking Dead loves to hit your faves hard.
Scroll through more photos from the season below.
