Warning Spoilers Ahead. If you haven’t already watched the season 6 premiere of ‘The Walking Dead’, you might want to turn back until you have a chance to visit with your DVR.
It was a horde of unbelievable magnitude. A quarry just miles from the Alexandria Township filled to the brim with walkers. Some group long past did their best to trap them there, and the sound of the walkers that continued to wander in and get trapped was just attracting more of them faster. Rick who has become the defacto leader again, isn’t exactly winning over the townspeople, but he is right something has to be done before they manage to break loose and storm the gates. So when in the middle of preparations for their elaborate plan, the walkers over turn a truck and start to escape, Rick orders the premature activation of a complex, multi-stage Walker cattle drive. This is the most straight forward the episode gets.
Lets start with the format. Shot half in black and white, and half in color, the episode is stuck between flashbacks of the recent past and the complex plan being executed. Morgan is back, and obviously extremely disturbed by the changes that have come about in his friend Rick. He is placed in lock down while Rick does his best to figure out what Morgan’s intentions might be. Rick explains that he “doesn’t take chances anymore”, and yet it is obvious to everyone including his “family” that he still does, but no one seems willing to question him about it.
Rick is boarding on the edge of villain for a change. Refusing to bury the body of the Pete in the tiny graveyard inside the township because he is a “murderer”. Morgan, who seems to be playing the roll of Rick’s seemingly dead conscience is quick to point out that Rick and he himself are murderers too. But that doesn’t sway Rick and the grieving Dianna is all too quick to agree to anything that Rick has to say, alienating herself from her own people. So on a drive to dump the body a few miles from the town, and after Rick refuses to help Morgan even give the body a decent burial, they follow a horrible noise to discover the largest walker aquarium ever created. They also have to rescue Pete and Jessie’s son Ron who has unwisely run out to the wilderness to find out where they were burying his fathers body.
For those of you hoping for a Rick and Jessie hookup, don’t chill the wine anytime soon. Jessie wants nothing to do with Rick and wants him around her kids even less. She isn’t afraid to tell him to back off of all of them, which he seems to accept for the moment.
Finally Nick Papageorgio from Vegas Vacation, who now inexplicably is called Carter, seems to be the only “villager” ready to both openly and covertly defy Ricks new authority over the group, and unsuccessfully whines his way through almost the entire episode. Being the only other wall builder in the community, he wants to explore other options to reinforce the quarry walls, but is quickly shot down by “do it Rick’s way” Dianna, and then while trying to orchestrate a rebellion is discovered by both Eugene (who seems to have become the Forest Gump of the group), and Rick who spares Carters life only because it seems the only way to silence the rising discontent.
Rick and his select seem to be executing the plan, and the horde seems to be heading to it’s proper doom, until two things happen:
- Carter (who has finally come around to believe in the plan) gets sloppy, gets a large chunk of his face bit off by a walker, and when he cant stop screaming and attracting the walkers off the path is killed by Rick (in front of an obviously disapproving Michonne and Morgan)
- A horn suddenly starts blaring and drawing the entire horde directly towards the township.
And thats where we leave it. Who is sounding the horn and dooming the town? The Wolves? Ron? Perhaps Dianna was only pretending to be on board with Rick and actually has decided the town must die? Big questions for a season opening episode. I honestly hope the new season finds it’s footing soon. This opening while visually stunning seems to be meandering a bit, and I cannot say I am ever a fan of “My way or you’ll be dead way” Rick. Making me wonder what Hershel would counsel Rick on his seemingly determined jog to the “dark side”. Stay Tuned.
