‘Still Gotta Mean Something’ Plot Summary:
Carol (Melissa McBride) and Morgan (Lennie James) search for Henry. Rick (Andrew Lincoln) hunts the escaped Savior prisoners — so he can kill them all. Morgan soon joins him. Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) must find a way out of Jadis’ (Pollyanna McIntosh) clutches.
‘Still Gotta Mean Something’ might never have been a more appropriate title for a Walking Dead episode.
The entire episode desperately tried to get us to feel about the characters. Whether through heavy-handed exposition or obtuse symbolism, the writers seemed to be screaming “feel something!” at the audience.
Sadly, this once awesome half season of the AMC series, has veered back into a land of mediocrity, and apathy. Only scenes of mass walker execution, and nameless humans being devoured, spark any sort of ’emotional’ interest in this episode. There’s way too many scenes of people staring into the middle distance, or proclaiming their mission statement in shouts or whispers.
In short, it’s like every other episodes we’ve seen in the “Alexandria” arc of the series.
Was there anything good in the episode? Sure.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan was able to channel the human side of Negan, and it worked tremendously. While the whole conflict with Jadis was pretty ridiculous, his monologue about the origins of Lucille’s name was pretty great. When he’s not hamming it up, Morgan really is able to deliver one of the best performances of any actor in series history.
The Rick/Morgan team-up was fun if you like a lot of bloody death on your TV screen. It was obvious that this was going to show the divide between the two. Rick would chose the path Carl set for him, while Morgan would continue down his stairway to hell.
The helicopter showed up again. That was interesting, but it really seemed like it was thrown in there just to be interesting.
The rest of the episode was pretty whatever. Henry is officially the new Carl — the annoying kid who we want to get eaten by walkers. The “let’s take out Eugene” plot went nowhere. Carol finding her courage was a retread of a storyline we’ve seen too many times.
‘Still Gotta Mean Something’ was your typical ‘middle of the mid-season’ episode. Big noises, attempts at drama, but in the end a hollow, forgettable episode.
Rating: 5 out of 10
