Ugh. Well this is familiar territory isn’t it? After some immaculate television to open this sixth season of THE WALKING DEAD, things have taken a turn for the mediocre, a place we know all too well. ‘Always Accountable’ wasn’t awful television but it was pointless.
This week focused mostly on Darrell, with a little bit of Sasha and Abraham thrown in for… well, I don’t really know why. The gist of the episode revolved around the three of them being split up after managing to lure their giant subsection of walkers away from Alexandria. Shortly after, they ran into some unknown assailants which resulted in Darrell being chased away from the others. From there on crashing his bike into the woods.
In what is turning into a pattern this season, Darrell is then captured, bound and taken by a man and two women who seemingly mistake him for someone else. Darrell eventually spots an opportunity and escapes, but then returns to help them evade a group that had been pursuing them. There are of course more details here but none of them are important (seemingly) or remotely interesting. The long and short of it is they manage to escape this mystery group — we never see their faces — and things seem pretty swell given prior circumstances.
That is until the thing happens that always happens in THE WALKING DEAD, someone ends up getting bit, one of the women named Tina. She dies and it’s not very sad. Oh and while all this is happening, Sasha and Abraham decided to wait for Darrell in a nearby town. There’s not much to talk about here either, a result of the characters themselves having nothing to say despite opening their mouths a lot. There was some strange, half baked attempt at character work, something to do with Abraham being unhinged and liking Sasha. I think. Regardless, it wasn’t very good and easily the worst part of the episode.
Back with Darrell, and just as it looked like the episode was going to end as you expected, with him inviting his new friends back to Alexandria, they end up betraying him, taking his bike and crossbow (the bastards) — the only remotely meaningful thing to happen in the episode. It’s okay though as he instantly found a truck, going on to pick up Sasha and Abraham to end the show.
‘Always Accountable’ left me feeling pretty bummed — if you couldn’t tell. I’m disappointed more than anything else but we shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. It sucks because I started off praising this sixth season and the first wonderful four episodes it managed to produce, but in the past two weeks we have returned to the norm and now everything is just ‘okay’ again. We’ve gone back to TWD’s old formula, of waiting for the mid season break for something interesting to happen again.
Everything about this week just felt pointless and lacking in any and all meaning. Nothing new was learnt from this episode. None of this needed to happen. It only existed because of the many episodes that the show needs to fill. I like character episodes and I don’t need the plot to always move on leaps and bounds, but something has to move on, whether it’s mind or spirit, something has to develop, and this week nothing did. Perhaps in the weeks to come this episode will mean more. Maybe the group that Darrell encountered will return but this just felt like a filler to be totally honest, and not very good filler at that.
I want my enthusiasm back. It was fun while it lasted.
