"Mother" Episode Discussion

InGen_Nate_Kenny

Okay so last week's episode was pretty good, I hope this one is too. Is Madison coming back? I dunno, probably not but the rumors won't die.

As always, comment before, while, or after you watch.

InGen_Nate_Kenny

I thought it was a pretty good episode - one of the best of the season. John Glover is a captivating actor, and Teddy the character has a charm - he's almost likeable (if he weren't well, showing the "skills" he learned on death row). I also really liked the beginning of the episode, Alycia Debnam-Carey's acting was great, and the conflict with the stadium people was also interesting. But the way it was resolved was nonsense, and honestly Dakota sucks.

I am very excited for the next episode. This is the best the show has been since Season 3 (which, admittedly, is a low bar).

IronWoodLover

Some thoughts on this season:

Got back into this show a while back because of all the buzz with this new season and overall being bored with the main show's 10C which I have dropped. I skipped seasons 4 and 5 from Fear entirely and didn't really feel like I missed much.

It is a solid TWD season I got to say, if taken in as an entirely different show under the FTWD name! S6A in particular was a really strong half season, whereas S6B has hit a couple blunders...

The highlight from 6A has to be Virginia, who was a surprisingly good antagonist. She felt like a more realistic, less theatrical and less dramatic version of Negan. It made sense to me that people followed her because she was actually providing her people a relatively comfortable life without crazy wife rules and face burning and whatever. And maybe that makes the whole Lawton setting less interesting than the Sanctuary, but I found it way easier to suspend my disbelief with this when compared to the main show/comics where I always kinda felt someone would've put a bullet through Negan's skull a long long time ago.

I'd also consider her not being dragged out to shit a plus, though I do think they got rid of her a little too quickly and that her death really felt like it had little consequence in the long run (we're basically pretending Lawton doesn't exist now).

The highlight from 6B is Dakota, who I love to hate. I just thought the evil sociopathic demon child twist was neat, especially when paired with John's death. I really liked John this season, which made his death really sad and tragic, especially considering where he was headed, and it really fit this season thematically. It was sort of horrifying listening to Dakota tell Morgan that the only reason he was kept alive was so he could kill someone and keep a civil war going when Morgan had previously believed what he "had left to do" was to save the world and all those Morgan-y things. In that scene you could physically hear Morgan's hopes and dreams crack.

It was a creative way of grabbing Morgan's... pacifist kumbaya stuff and doing something interesting and new with it. He has since gone a few steps back with it though when he decides not to kill Ginny. Instead of justifying it by saying he does not want to give John's killer the satisfaction of getting what she wanted, he instead tries to sell to the communities some grandiose speech about soil being soaked in blood and... more Morgan whatever.

But taking aside my problems with Morgan's character the season has been good! This episode was good! We got some weird messed up Dakota coupled with some weird messed up nuke beard guy and Alicia in the middle of their crazy. I've seen some people bothered that they killed those returning extras from S4 so soon and honestly... eh? I thought it was fine, the deaths themselves were stupid but I didn't care that they killed these silly extras. They served to make Teddy's point which gave those characters more purpose than I ever thought they'd get.

Side note, this season's marketing team are assholes. They've now seemed to realize teasing some magical Madison return is the way to go forward, and that really dickish of them, don't play with your fans like that. Kim Dickens has said she's not in this season, and honestly, I highly doubt she'll want to come back in the next one or at all after how dirty they did her a few years ago.