Opinion

REVIEW: The Walking Dead: ‘Always Accountable’

   DailyWire.com

Daryl makes the same mistake twice and even Abraham can’t remember all of the minor characters on the show at this point. Those were the major plot elements from episode six of season six of AMC’s The Walking Dead, “Always Accountable.”

If television seasons had names, season 6 would be called ‘the longest day in human history.’ So far, every episode in the season, with the exception of the Morgan-centered flashback episode, “Here’s Not Here,” has taken place on the day of the dress rehearsal for Rick’s plan to dispatch the horde in the pit outside of Alexandria. This conceit worked very well for the first three episodes of the season, but has really started to wear thin six episodes in – a situation not helped any by the now-insulting way the producers are deliberately avoiding the question of Glenn’s fate from episode three.

This time, we pick up the story from Daryl, Abraham and Sasha’s points-of-view as they finally end their mission to lead the pit horde twenty miles away from the safe-zone at Alexandria.

The episode opens with a truly surprising moment as the trio is ambushed driving through what we all have assumed was an abandoned area around the safe-zone. Who is behind the ambush? We don’t know, and the episode does very little to give us an answer – never even showing the faces of most of the attackers. What we do know is that they are much better armed than the still mysterious Wolves, and they like “willing ass,” an ominous reference, it would seem, to their view of women, and a promising setup for future episodes that examine as-yet-unexplored horrors from the end of civilization.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the end of the excitement.

Most of “Always Accountable” revolves around the unlikely.

It’s unlikely that Daryl and Sasha’s perfectly good walkie-talkies WOULD JUST NEVER WORK, I MEAN EVER, NOT EVEN ONCE, NOT EVER, NO MATTER WHAT, SERIOUSLY, EVEN THOUGH THEY CAN’T BE MORE THAN A MILE APART.

It’s unlikely that the highly-skilled and deadly Daryl would let an emotional man who has never taken a single human life get the drop on him – twice.

It’s unlikely that anyone who has survived up until this point in the zombie apocalypse would kneel down between two “dead” bodies to adorn them with wild flowers.

It’s unlikely that Abraham, even drunk on his blood-lust, would wrestle face-to-face with an immobilized walker in a compromised and precarious position for no discernable reason instead of just stabbing it in the head like he does everyday.

And it’s even more unlikely that Abraham would forget that he has a girlfriend back in the besieged Alexandria and confess his sudden worth-living-for attraction to Sasha, even though the writers and producers have certainly forgotten her since I can’t recall having seen her for more than two seconds all season.

“Always Accountable” asks the audience to suspend their disbelief a few too many times for pretty much no payoff at all – other than the hope that we will one day get to see that RPG Abraham swipes put to some exciting use…

The fundamental challenge of TWD is that it must interrupt the action of the zombie apocalypse from time to time in order to build a world and characters for us to care about when the apocalypse resumes. That it does this at all is a testament to the writing and producing of the show, but it rarely does it well, and “Always Accountable” is a very clunky effort. The episode certainly sets up future conflict, but since the existing conflict of the season has not only not been concluded – it’s hardly been addressed in three episodes, this outing just feels once again like a mislead. It’s always fun to spend an episode with Daryl, but here he feels like half the soldier he used to be for no real reason. The only moment that captures the dangerous man we have come to love is when he growls “You will be [sorry]” at the couple who has just stolen his bike and crossbow after he has saved their hides for no reason at all other than basic human kindness. But who are they, and who did he save them from? Those are questions for another episode.

The problem is that with only two episodes left before the mid-season hiatus, it’s time for the show to get back to the questions it has already asked, not to burden us with new ones.

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