The Boy Behind the Red Door by John Goode

The assault wasn't all that necessary to show us that the Alexandrians were too soft, since we knew that already. The gambit last season with the trailer trucks and the disco ball suggested the Wolves are organized, but they're also not too far removed from what most of humanity has turned into. Peril on this show usually comes shuffling along, and here was an attack that was as savage as any herd of zombies, but much quicker, and from people who aren't quite dead yet. Still, the way the show staged the attack was unnerving, starting with Shelly getting abruptly hacked with a machete while out for that smoke Carol had scolded her about. We knew something had gone wrong back home when the horn went off and distracted the walkers at the end of the season premiere, and the Wolves seemed a likely candidate to be involved, given their proximity by the end of last season. Or maybe the deletion of violence in the teaser was there to set us up for the Wolves' extremely violent assault on Alexandria in the main part of the episode. It was an interesting way to show that mantra in action: she's now so desensitized to the violence, or to anything that will prevent her from moving forward, that it barely even exists as she thinks back on it. So we don't see Enid's parents murdered, but come back to watch her having to watch from inside the car as they're consumed by zombies, and we skip right over her killing the turtle to her eating it and using its bones to spell out the initials of her Just Survive Somehow mantra(*). One of the notable choices made in that prologue was to cut away immediately before acts of violence, and to cut back almost immediately after.

“Breaking Bad” used to do this a lot: turn the teaser into a little short film that offered a glimpse into an unknown facet of a character who had been around a while.

Nothing fancy, but it still turned her into a more well-rounded individual than most of the show's newbies (which would make it a shame if this is the last we're going to see of her). “JSS” opened up with a prologue of the sort I'd like to see “Walking Dead” – a show with lots of characters, only some of whom have been properly defined – do more of: a quick, concise series of vignettes explaining how Enid's parents died and what her life was like in between their horrible deaths and her arrival in Alexandria. “How do you just live know that's the world?” -Spencer A review of tonight's “The Walking Dead” coming up just as soon as I learn from a cheesemaker…

The Boy Behind the Red Door by John Goode