The Walking Dead season 7 episode 9: Rock In The Road
Warning: Contains spoilers for The Walking Dead season seven.
The Walking Dead’s return was filled with community meet-ups and inventive set-pieces – but was it the return to form expected following last year’s mid-season finale?
After half a season of largely disbanded groups embarking on their individually-driven episodes, the ending of Hearts Still Beating promised a return to Rick’s (mostly) reunited community coming together again to rally forces against Negan’s increasingly barbaric Saviors.
For the first half, that’s exactly what Rock In The Road delivered. After their attempts to persuade Gregory at Hilltop proved unsuccessful, a bunch of Rick’s forces finally met King Ezekiel and his tiger pet, Shiva, at his idyllic Kingdom to convince them of striking a mutiny against Negan. While long overdue, the meeting scenes themselves felt like a drab plot-turning exercise over the interesting clash of leadership styles it should have been.
Our original meeting with Ezekiel’s ludicrous and flamboyant medieval-style reign was nicely punctured by Carol’s straight-talking attitude – but here neither Rick, Michonne or even Daryl seemed even remotely bewildered by Ezekiel’s cries of ‘delivering decrees in the morn,’ to raise the snide comment you’d expect. It made the scene feel a little stagnant and silly, and disappointing considering how long it’s taken to reach this confrontation.
This meeting too was unsuccessful, but offered Daryl a place to hide while Negan’s forces hunt for him after escaping their base and killing Fat Joe. From here however, the episode ramped up several notches to deliver some engaging thrills noticeably lacking from the opening half.
Driving to a roadblock dressed with dynamite on a steel wire, Rick’s gang tensely disassembled the traps to claim the explosives for themselves as a massive Walker herd approached. While the tension felt a little forced, it was nevertheless effective – culminating in an awesome visual piece of Rick and Michonne popping zombie heads by driving the steel wire across the horde via the connecting cars.
It was a much-needed change of pace and alluded to the promises of this half season being ‘very different’ from the last. The episode ended on a teasing high note too, with Father Gabriel’s apparent escape from Alexandria leading the group to a new bunch of threatening survivors – closing with Rick giving a rare glimpse at his cheesy grin knowing he might have found the army he needs to take down Negan.
Rock In The Road therefore was an episode of two halves. While the show is struggling to find the enjoyment in the plot cog-turning, there was enough to fuel our hopes for the remaining season. The question still lurks whether The Walking Dead can turnaround its recent divisive choices, but for now, we’ll happily take an explosive zombie-decapitating joyride. For now.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays on AMC in the US, and Mondays on Fox at 9pm.
Source: http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/13/the-walking-dead-season-7-episode-9-rock-in-the-road-was-a-turbulent-return-6443468/#mv-b
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