So right off the bat we got to see how Carol and Maggie were caught flat-footed. I always liked how Carol immediately enters this feigned weak state around strangers. You have to admire how she knows how to play people and something that her character is constantly getting better and better at. A far-cry from the first time we saw Carol way back in season 1, isn’t it? Either way, it was interesting to see both Maggie and Carol in such a precarious spot during the start of this episode of The Walking Dead, The Same Boat.
The downward camera angel was a great way to convey a sense of disorientation and the military chatter by the Savior group really started to set an ominous tone as they moved Maggie and Carol to the Savior’s safehouse. A safehouse during the zombie apocalypse? Perhaps these Savior guys are a bit more organized then Rick anticipated. I was kinda hoping that the Savior-lady would have tired Maggie and Carol together on chairs and then we could have had a recreation of that scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but oh well! Carol and that panic attack…with the rosary for an added effect. She really knows how to play people, doesn’t she? Also, probably never a good idea to threaten Carol…
I guess at some point we were due for a ‘slower’ episode of The Walking Dead if you really could call this episode that. A half an hour in and we’ve spent most of our time in a cell with a pressure cooker like social-effect. Perhaps Tarantino was on stand by on this episode? Either way, it is nice to see that Maggie and Carol are all sorts of resilient. It was interesting to see the postulation that perhaps Maggie and friends aren’t the ‘good guys’. That girl that was interrogating Maggie? Pretty bad at it if I have to say…but that’s not the episode’s fault. They probably should have sent somebody better…somebody with less emotional baggage.
‘We are all Negan’. That’s probably the first time we’ve seen Carol caught off guard. It’s funny how the zombie apocalypse makes everybody into maniacs, right? This lady who has been calling the shots, Paula, was a secretary in the ‘old world’ and then launched into that whole coffee bean analogy. I liked that bit personally…I always like to see enemies humanized in a sense and I think Carol saw a lot of herself in that woman when she was describing how she has killed so many people. When Paula asked Carol if she was going to be the one to kill her and she responded ‘I hope not’ I truly felt like she meant that.
And just like that, Carol freed herself and started making her way through the compound. I’m kind of surprised that she went to rescue Maggie right away without killing the older woman or Paula. Perhaps Carol really has changed a bit…that she isn’t as bloodthirsty as she used to be. Good ol zombie mouse-traps, ammaright? I also see that Maggie apparently has a lot of built up tension which is good because she can now cover for Carol! This introduction-by-proxy for Negan is also a nice device. We keep seeing it popping up like when Daryl RPG’d those guys or the guards from the last episode. We are learning about him through his minions and there definitely seems to be an emphasis on survival of the fittest.
Scratch what I said about Carol not having the bloodlust. Nobody messes with Maggie! I feel like Carol is getting a little sloppy in her tenure as zombie apocalypse…she should have just shot Paula instead of impaling her and letting a zombie eat her. That’s pretty brutal even for Carol…and then we got to see Carol and Maggie slow-roast some Saviors! I think Negan is going to be pretty miffed by the time he finally gets to run into Rick’s group. Our intrepid group has whole-sale slaughtered the Saviors without suffering much in return. All in all, it was a pretty cool episode that was kind of slow-burn for The Walking Dead but it is to be expected after the insane run we’ve had. ‘The Same Boat’ was a heavily Carol and Maggie-centric but it is nice to see them both shine.
