‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 6.7 “Heads Up” (8.5 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Steven Yeun, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Lennie James, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.
Gearing up for next week’s mid-season finale, tonight’s episode set up a plethora of potential conflicts that are looking to get resolved next week. We also got a closer look into Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) perspective on the Alexandrians, and one particularly aggravating controversy has been officially wrapped up. Big ol’ spoilers are comin’.
That One Thing from That One Episode
As we see Glenn (Steven Yeun) wriggling himself free from the bloody mess of Nicholas’s (Michael Traynor) rapidly disappearing innards, a collective sigh of relief was exhaled across the Twitterverse. For weeks now, we’ve been plagued with an ambiguous scene that left Glenn’s fate uncertain to TWD viewers. It’s great that he didn’t die because of stupid Nicholas, but frankly I’m just glad to have that controversy cleared up. After all of this season’s flaws are tallied up—the teen angst, the rampant stupidity of Alexandrians, Carl’s weird hair—the uncertainty surrounding Glenn’s near-death experience is going to be right at the top of the list. Yes, it’s great that he’s alive, and yes it’s great that he wants to help Enid (Katelyn Nacon) come back to Alexandria with him, but keeping the audience in the dark for weeks felt a bit too Thursday-night-prime-time for TWD.
Now’s also a pretty good time to talk about Enid, and, by extension, the direction that the show has taken with its younger cast members. Apparently, teen angst is amplified by the direct number of undead persons within a fifty-mile radius. Perhaps it’s my background as a high school teacher, but the sheer amount of attitude that ricocheted among Carl (Chandler Riggs), Ron (Austin Abrams) and Enid made me cringe. Enid, if you want to run away from safety just so you can mope around abandoned diners writing ‘JSS’ all over shit, then live your dream, girl. Rick, as Carl’s dad and also the murderer of Ron’s dad, could you please tell Carl to just be cool when you’re teaching his potential rival how to use a gun?
In one of the episode’s final scenes, we see Ron sneak into the arsenal for some bullets only to follow close behind Carl with a look on his face that can only be interpreted as, “ LOLZ, I’m totes gonna shoot you.” There’s a good chance that Carl will be able to hold his own against Ron, but I’m hoping that the two of them sit down, talk about their respective father issues and enjoy a masculine embrace with one another. Also, can we find someone who is more competent than what’s her face with the glasses to guard the effing armory? If a pissy teenage boy can sneak past her, then she’s not doing her job.
One of Them
While bulking up Alexandria’s infrastructure, Rick’s annoyance with his hosts explodes into full on disdain. As Spencer (Austin Nichols) tries to shimmy his way over the zombie horde in the hopes of finding a car and creating a distraction, he screws up and people have to save him. It works, mostly thanks to Tara (Alanna Masterson) who picks off several walkers while getting dangerously close to the action. After Rick chews out Spencer for acting like a horse’s ass, he proceeds to yell at Tara for sticking her neck out for “one of them.” It should be noted that Tara reacts by giving Rick the finger—which is what one does when confronted with a dickhead.
It hasn’t been a secret that Rick considers his Alexandrian hosts to be inferior specimens of zombie wasteland survivors. And he might be right. They’re not as quick thinking and not as ruthless as Rick—but Spencer makes a good point when he calls Rick out on not taking any of their ideas seriously. At this moment, Rick has become that dude that you really want to be friends with, but he won’t give you the time of day unless you impress him somehow. In fact, no matter what you do to impress the guy, he’s too dead set on his own awesomeness to acknowledge it. I like this character arc for Rick, but the whole “one of them” thing was a bit on the nose.
Verdict
There’s something to be said about all of that time that Rick and some Alexandrian dude spend reinforcing a specific area of the wall when they can’t see the impending doom of a slowly collapsing building. Throughout the episode, we see parts of this church tower crumbling to the ground until it eventually topples like a rotten tree and smashes through all of their well-laid plans. Obviously, this means that the mid-season finale will pit our heroes against that zombie horde outside, but I think we’re looking at a bigger problem with shortsightedness. Both the Alexandrians and Team Grimes haven’t been able to see this big ol’ rotten church tower that is threatening to destroy all of them because they’re so hung up on whether or not one group can trust the other. I have a feeling that they’ll be able to figure this flaw out while beset by the undead next week—but who will survive and what will be left of them?