The Walking Dead isn’t messing around this half-season – just after the threat of the Saviors was properly introduced, Rick’s group took the fight to their new enemy in this week’s episode.
‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ marks the beginning of Rick’s feud with the Saviors, and it feels, fittingly, like a real turning point for the season as a whole. It’s a slow build to the final fight, but the considerable set-up pays dividends in grounding the fight against the Saviors in a compelling thematic exploration of Rick’s group’s morality, ensuring that this is a particularly strong instalment.
Despite that overall strength, the first act of ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ is muddled and uneven. There’s plenty to enjoy, such as an inventive faux-cheery ‘day in the life’ montage of Carol baking cookies that starts off the episode and the continuation of Denise and Tara’s likeable romance, but there’s quite a few ideas and stories here that fail to really come to fruition.
There’s Carol’s brief romance with Tobin, a moment that comes completely out of left-field due to the small amount of interactions the two characters have actually had beforehand – it’s not a bad idea per se, but it’s not really supported by anything that’s happened before on the show, so it just comes across as random and jarring.
Also regarding relationships, there’s the odd scene where Abraham coldly breaks up with Rosita – this, at least, was teed up last episode, but the scene’s writing is erratic and strange, portraying Abraham as a quite frankly terrible human being with wafer-thin reasoning for the break-up. And moreover, this development is never referred to again, which exacerbates the unusual feeling of it all.
Thankfully, ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ picks up after that first act, becoming a very strong and cohesive episode. A lot of this success is down to the way the episode critiques and subverts Rick’s group’s tendency for brutality and their ‘us vs them’ mentality.
This critique is limited by the fact that the Saviors are quite clearly horrible people (take the lovely collage of photos of people with their heads completely beaten in that Gleen sees), but this is certainly one of the most morally murky and, arguably, unsympathetic acts Rick’s group has ever performed, and ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ doesn’t shy away from that, lending the episode an air of moral complexity that makes it more compelling.
This particular conflict plays out so well because it utilises character development and action in equal measure, balancing the two with a preciseness that The Walking Dead frequently fails to reach. Carol’s inner turmoil this episode appears to be laying the groundwork for a more focused exploration next episode, but the direction the show appears to be taking her in is a surprising and intriguing one, in that she’s now struggling to cope with her typically murderous ways.
Some might not like this, given that Carol is probably The Walking Dead’s most celebrated badass, but her development this episode is perfectly in line with what ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ appears to be communicating – that while the group’s violence may appear impressive and exciting, it’s ultimately an unhealthy and unsustainable habit that takes a considerable psychological toll.
Furthermore, Carol’s fan-favourite status actually works in her favour here – if ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ is trying to convince the viewer that violence and murder are damaging acts, then the character with a famously high body count having doubts about it all is a very effective way to convey that.
On the other side of the murder coin, there’s Glenn and Heath – conversely to Carol, they’re (or, more accurately, were) novices who have never taken a human life before. ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ really gets to cash in on the fact that Glenn has never killed anyone here, making his first kill a seminal moment for the character that’s clearly a traumatising and disturbing experience, so much so that he, in a terrific wordless moment, chooses to keep Heath from taking on that burden.
It’s notable how the camera sticks to Glenn’s, and later Heath’s reaction as they perform their first kills (Steven Yeun and Corey Hawkins are both excellent here), underlining the impact of these acts on the characters and asserting the personal cost of their killing despite the fact that it’s supposedly saving their lives. With Carol, Glenn and Heath, ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ gets to explore both sides of the killing situation, creating a well-rounded and complete exploration of the impact on murder on characters’ psyches
The final ingredient, of course, is the action – and ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ certainly delivers in that regard with a tense, taut final fight between Rick’s group and the Saviors. It’s a particularly strong action scene not just because of Greg Nicetero’s capable and frantic direction, conveying the brutality of it all through rapid, seamless transitions between characters as they take life after life, but it’s also contributing to the same critique of killing as the character arcs.
The fight is a massacre, and that’s palpable in the way Rick’s group mow down their opponents with very few injuries on their side – Rick’s group have reached their peak of military might, but it all feels just a little bit hollow; when Aaron is forced to stab a Savior to death, his ‘it was going to be us’ line reads more as a justification to himself than a valid reason for murder.
The Walking Dead will likely never commit to making Rick and co the actual villains, but this fight, and the way the group coldly and clinically kill the Saviors in their sleep with considerable efficiency, is admirably complex and murky.
After that final fight scene, ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ leaves us with a doozy of a cliffhanger as more Saviors reveal to Rick and co that they’ve captured Carol and Maggie – our first clue that the Saviors might just be a more powerful and expansive force than this easy, casualty-less massacre might hint…
Aired at 9pm on Monday 7 March 2016 on FOX.
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