The Walking Dead 8B
This week offers up an extended run time of 75 minutes. In this episode, a Heaps prisoner makes a discovery; Carol searches for someone in the nearby forest; Rick and Morgan find themselves in the company of strangers. After picking up the pieces… and burying the bodies, from the battle at Hilltop last week, Henry plus the renegade hostage Saviors are on the loose. Rick and Maggie are out for blood. Everyone wants to know what Jadis has in store for Negan… something involving a baseball bat?
AMC
The Walking Dead Episode 14 Viewing Details
Date: Sunday, April 1, 2018
Time: 9:00 P.M. EST
Episode Title: “Still Gotta Mean Something”
TV Channel: AMC
What A Drag
AMC
We open up to what’s left of the heap-sters, a lone Jadis hiding in plain sight next to remains of the slaughter, with Saviors checking in on what’s left of the once allied group. Little do the Saviors know, Jadis did some hunting of her own and hooked herself a big ol’ Negan (Lucille included)!
Negan goes off on a tangent about how this only could have happened by one of his guys not following the program, but ultimately takes responsibility. A sadist, he does still believe, “People are a resource”. While Jadis is rounding up a walker to make friends with Negan, he comes across some snapshots she took (ever the artist) of her people and threatens to burn them if she doesn’t talk.
Two people with possibly the most limited vocabulary to date on this show just opened up to one another about the depths of their loss. In five words, I was pulled in: “My wife’s name was Lucille.” Trinkets and symbols they have in this world now are the only things that remind them of the people they were and who got them through the real world in the first place.
Jadis has her photographs and Negan is sent away without any deals made, just two people parting ways, taking with them what little they have left holding them together. Oh, bonus points for Jadis having connections to an evac helicopter. I can see that coming into play in the future.
Murder Coat Don’t Play
AMC
All bets are off when the coat comes on! Rick has gone next level savage when he’s rocking this particular article of clothing. To top it off, he’s on a mission to find those runaway Hilltop hostage Saviors.
Rick hasn’t brought himself to read the farewell letter Carl wrote him. Walking in on a crying Michonne, her letter in hand, definitely doesn’t make him want to read his son’s last words knowing how poignant they must be… but he picks up the letter and put it in murder coat before taking off.
Joining Rick in the woods is a hallucinating Morgan. Those runaway Saviors they were looking for seem to have found them first and brought the duo to their hideout thinking that handing over Rick will bring them back into Negan’s good graces. Rick gives them his word that if they come back with him to Hilltop, he’ll have the wounded treated and they can join the community. Too bad Rick is no longer a man of his word. Enter a hoard of walkers who kindly take out several Saviors while Rick and Morgan wipe the remaining pawns off the board. Checkmate.
Upon returning from the murder mission, Rick hangs up his coat and takes out the letter. Before reading, he turns to Michonne for a long overdue, “I love you.” Naturally, she returns the affection and leaves him with the final words of his late son.
I See Dead People
AMC
Ezekiel is determined to get Carol on the search for Henry (little does he know her less than immaculate track record looking after kids) but she doesn’t budge. Once Carol sees Morgan emerge, rambling how he should have been the one to kill the Savior, not Henry, and how that guilt was leading him back down the road to crazy-town, only then does Carol stop chopping wood and pick up a gun to go after Henry. Admittedly, only to keep an eye on Morgan, not because she believes they’ll find the kid safe again.
Down the road they come across a walker with Henry’s impaling stick jabbed through his gut. Not a good sign for the little guy, especially if the walker fell face down on him. Morgan doesn’t want Carol to continue the road with the potential of what is waiting on the other side. He sends her back to Hilltop. He’s tired of losing people and waiting for things to go bad. He sets off to find Rick in the woods.
On the plus side, Carol does find Henry (the real kid, not a bloody hallucination) and scoops him up from a river dwelling that eerily resembled the hideout her young daughter Sophia was last seen hiding before she got bit and found weeks later as a full blown walker emerging from the Greene family barn. Carol and kids, man, not an easy combination.
Ezekiel sees Carol return to Hilltop with Henry calling out his name, arms wide ready for the embrace. It’s small victories like this that give our leaders hope just after putting so many of their own in the ground. In a sweet moment beside the fire with Carol and Ezekiel, she drops her own bombshell of truth, “I had a daughter…” This was a week for opening up and showing vulnerabilities as well as finding the strength to ground oneself again after being faced with so much tragedy.
Biting The Bullet
TWD
Tara got the doctor’s note that she’s A-OK and Dwight did in fact shoot her with a clean arrow. This throws a wrench in her whole plan to murder him, which is a nice change of character. Wondering why the Saviors are now using weapons in lieu of bullets, Rosita has a lightbulb moment that turncoat Eugene is probably manufacturing more bullets for them in the interim. Good thing she knows the place and just what he needs to salvage in order to keep production rolling!
A lot was said in few words tonight. This was a week for self evaluation as well as checking in on how everyone else was mentally and emotionally holding up under the weight of the world, partly attributed to the alliances both made and broken. It’s these times when The Walking Dead allows itself to show more heart than rotting corpse, is when it truly shines. After all, we’re all infected anyway.
