The Walking Dead S7E06: Swear

It has been nine episodes since last we knew of the whereabouts of Heath and Tara. Last they knew, the Saviors had been destroyed and peaceful cooperation between Alexandria and Hilltop moved forward. To say they’ve missed a lot is quite the understatement. Spoilers ahead.

There’s an old saying that goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” The point is to emphasize ingenuity and creativity in accomplishing a task. When it comes to The Walking Dead, that phrase might be updated to say, “There’s more than one way to demonize the Saviors.” Only it seems the quality of the ways to do that is taking a backseat to the quantity. So far we’ve seen Dwight and Sherry running for their lives, a biker gang stopping three of our stronger characters on the road, a manipulative road blocking scenario to treat our group as cattle, an attempted assassination of Gregory by one of his own community members, and the ever memorable eeny-meeny-miney-moe game… do you get it yet? The Saviors are bad, Mmmkay?

The point has been made over and over again that the Saviors are terrible people that do terrible things. So when this episode turned into little more than another way to describe that fact, I was feeling a little worn out by it. Tara and Heath are nearing the end of their supply run when they get separated after a massive sand-walker attack. Tara ends up getting washed up on a beach where she is discovered by two female members of a community we come to learn is called Oceanside. Tara regains consciousness and follows one of them back to the community where she discovers that not only are they extremely secluded, but they are an entirely female community. On the surface this draws curiosity, but for my part I was immediately worried that the show was ripping off a subplot of the SyFy show “Z Nation”. Thank goodness that didn’t happen. What did happen does eventually manage to become somewhat interesting. Tara is caught sneaking through the compound and eventually sits down to dinner with the leader and three of her closest companions; Kathy, Cyndie (to Tara’s right in the picture), and Beatrice (to Tara’s left). Tara reveals information about the community she is from and it appears that we have the start of a hesitant cooperation when it is agreed to have Tara lead Beatrice and Kathy back to Alexandria. This turns into and attempt to kill Tara, and in a standoff we learn the truth behind this group’s seclusion and the strange looks at the dinner table when Tara mentioned the Saviors. This community is entirely female not by choice, but by force. They had run-ins with the Saviors before and it resulted in the death of every man and every boy above 10 years old in this community. They tried to fight back and experienced a catastrophic loss. They were not going to risk Tara revealing their location and bringing the Saviors back to them. But again, this is another way to explain to the audience how dangerous and cruel and brutal that Negan in the Saviors can be.

Now let me be honest; I struggle a bit with this critique. Not because it isn’t true. This is about the 9th time we’ve been told how dangerous The Saviors are. This is being nailed into our minds to make any future decision to fight them all the more heightened, and, I think, to overshadow Rick’s decision to go on the offense against them on behalf of Hilltop. And frankly, it’s getting pretty redundant. BUT, I also think this particular instance makes sense from a character and narrative perspective. Tara and Heath aren’t aware of everything that has happened, so the story of how they learn of the death of their friends and that they did not kill all the Saviors is one that needs to be told. It’s just unfortunate that so many side stories are making the same ultimate point that when we finally catch up with Tara and Heath it has a very watered-down the impact.

The moments in this episode that I found of greatest interest are two-fold; One, when Heath describes his apparent disdain and regret for what they did at the satellite complex to the Saviors, and two, the interactions that Tara had with Beatrice and Cyndie as she was trying to escape.

Heath draws some very interesting conclusions from what they did at the satellite compound after he has had some time to think about it. The viewer will recall that he and Glenn had never killed a person before (not a walker), and they both ended that streak there. He is convinced that what they did reveals a truly “kill or be killed” attitude, even among individuals in their group. “Nobody’s in this together, not anymore”, he says. What is happening, and what this show has only done a little bit of to this point, is he is describing the emotional trauma of taking a human life. So often on this show when a person kills another person it is done in the heat of the moment and with little time to reflect. This was not the case with the attack on the satellite compound. This was methodical and purposeful, and Heath is feeling the guilt of it. That is something which many of our characters have avoided; feeling the guilt of murder. Heath is describing his feelings to Tara and she is resistant to them. She feels that what they did was justified and necessary. This carries forward to something that Cyndie from Oceanside told her as she was escaping…

Cyndie: “Why did you kill all those at that satellite outpost? Because you thought you had to. But none of you HAD to. You just did. Nobody’s evil. They just decide to forget who they are.”

Tara: “Some people are evil, Cyndie. I’ve seen it.”

Here we have the major philosophical division as presented by the show; what is man? Is man basically good, and some just forget who they are and do terrible things? Or are there truly evil people that embrace their sinful desires for power to the point of murder? These are questions that philosophers and theologians have been arguing over for centuries, and we get to watch a zombie apocalypse show examine them in detail. Where you fall on your answer to this question, and the source material you use to backup that answer, has far-reaching implications for not just your outlook on humanity, but how you treat other people specifically.

My Rating: C+

I would consider this episode about as average as they come. Tara has some interesting backstory so it’s not that she isn’t a likable character, but she’s one of about three dozen characters so she easily falls down the line. The story of this episode has some interesting details, as I described, but so much of it is rehashing the same major point we have already heard. Long story short; the Saviors are bad and they did bad things to other people. Has it been made clear enough yet that the Saviors are brutal and ruthless and bad people and that we should paint them? Because that’s essentially the entire purpose of this episode. Sure the all-female compound is an interesting way to get that point across, but it’s a point that has been nailed in our heads for seven episodes now in various. I think we get it, and it’s beginning to feel like the show is stretching itself thin with this repeated message shown in slightly different ways.