Our Heroes Explore The Commonwealth In ‘New Haunts’

I really enjoyed last week’s episode of The Walking Dead.

Episode 9 in this super-sized final season was one of the best in years, with a truly great Maggie revenge scene and a fun cliffhanger.

This past Sunday’s episode was okay at best, a glimpse into The Commonwealth that left me irritated more than impressed.

For instance, the show is trying almost too hard to establish its resident Joffrey Baratheon, aka Sebastian (Teo Rapp-Olsson), the son of the community’s leader, Pamela (Laila Robins). Like the CRM, this brutal post-apocalyptic authoritarian society is run by a female dictator, which is interesting.

Anyways, Sebastian:

We’ve seen him before. He’s the guy that got mad at Eugene (Josh McDermitt) for saving him and his date from zombies. Fun guy.

Mercer (Michael James Shaw) takes Daryl (Norman Reedus), Rosita (Christian Serratos) and Sebastian out to the woods for some combat training, and Sebastian mocks each of the weapons and then screws up trying to kill a zombie. When Daryl intervenes, he gets mad. He’s a sniveling, annoying, worthless rich mama’s boy and it’s almost too much.

I guess he’ll instigate some good conflict but part of me feels like the show is trying too hard, and that Sebastian comes off as a caricature of this kind of character rather than the real thing. On the other hand, there really are people like this out there.

The Commonwealth in general feels over the top and ridiculous. The Stormtrooper armor is absurd, and seeing Daryl and Rosita in it just heightens that absurdity. Then you have things like the costume contest where the fascistic judges give the top prize to a girl dressed as Mercer. Boy oh boy is this kid excited to win some lottery tickets:

I mean, wow.

Of course, lottery tickets were not the only thing kids were getting this episode. Judith (Cailey Fleming) meets a new friend named Mei (Chiara Misawa) who buys her a vinyl record of the band Motorhead, mostly to show us that there is money in The Commonwealth, and also things like electricity to make record players work. But also so they can play the song ‘Eat The Rich’ at the end, when the episode gets into class warfare territory.

But the real winner is this kid. Ezekiel (Khary Payton) gives him his tiger’s old leash. Seems like a weird thing for a kid to get excited about, and an even weirder thing for an adult to give a kid, but hey it’s The Walking Dead. Why not?

Basically this whole episode was all about getting to know The Commonwealth better. Daryl and Rosita train and eventually become soldiers working for Mercer. Mercer takes Princess (Paola Lazaro) to a fancy ball. And Carol (Melissa McBride) tries to enlist the aid of Lance Hornsby (Josh Hamilton) to get Ezekiel into the doctor.

That last bit was confusing. Hasn’t he already been to the doctor? Why does he have to wait behind 146 other people when he’s friends with the doctor’s sister, Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura—whose IRL name is actually more perfect for her character if you ask me). The doctor, Tomi (Ian Anthony Dale) seems to have plenty of free time. Is the wait-list for surgeries?

Whatever the case, Carol sees Hornsby bring something to Pamela’s assistant, Max (Margot Bingham) who chastises him about its poor quality, saying they need something truly special for such a special occasion (the ball, it turns out). He throws whatever it is in the trash and Carol goes over to investigate. Inside she finds a bottle of wine, broken and dripping. Who does this? Who throws away wine—even crappy wine—in the middle of the zombie apocalypse?

She goes and finds good wine and brings it to Hornsby in exchange for a favor: Bumping Ezekiel up in line. He says it’s a tough ask but seems amenable to the idea. Hornsby, we discover, seems pretty desperate to get into Pamela’s good graces, though she seems unmoved by his efforts.

Viva La Revolution

Things take an abrupt turn at the ball when the trooper that Princess beat up during the bridge episodes shows up and interrupts Pamela’s speech. Pamela, we learn from Connie (Lauren Ridloff) who was a reporter in the before times and is a reporter once again here, was the daughter of a famous politician. The apple, it seems, doesn’t fall far from the tree.

In any case, she’s waxing poetic about the Commonwealth and bringing back civilization to the world, when the soldier, Tyler (Cameron Roberts) interrupts her and says it’s all a lie. His slip up with Princess has cost him everything—his job, his income, etc. and while Pamela and the upper crust of the Commonwealth live large and throw fancy parties, he can barely make ends meet.

He takes Max hostage, pressing a knife to her neck, as Pamela pleads with him. “I just want to talk to you,” he says and she assures him that she will talk with him, though she’s clearly lying to pacify him.

Tyler, who is clearly not a murderer, let’s Max go and races from the building. Mercer and his men rush after, but it’s Daryl who finds him, capturing him and preventing him from killing himself. Tyler has a sister and kids he can’t help now, but Daryl reminds him that very few people these days are lucky enough to have family still.

Daryl hands the man over to Sebastian and tells him to take credit for the capture. I guess it’s one way to get the toad off your back, though I don’t see Daryl as the ingratiating type. When he’s handed over, Mercer gives Daryl a questioning look and Daryl nods slightly. It’s clear to anyone with any knowledge whatsoever of Sebastian that he couldn’t catch a trained soldier.

As they drag him off, he shouts  “resist the Commonwealth, visibility for workers, equality for all!” Later, in a slight time jump, we see Rosita all decked out in Stormtrooper armor, raid an apartment building with a group of other soldiers. She finds a secret room filled with resistance flyers and other anti-Commonwealth material. Trouble in paradise, and all that.

We also see where Daryl and Judith are living—an apartment that’s quite a bit lower rent than Ezekiel’s. Loud music blares through the walls. Daryl and Rosita talk about how paper-thin the walls are and how they’re looking forward to getting new digs once they get through the initiation program. It’s unclear if some people live here permanently—the poorest of the poor—or if it’s just housing for newcomers.

Whatever the case, there is clearly a major economic divide and a resistance has cropped up, sick of the authoritarianism and tired of the garish display of wealth on display. Pamela and her cronies flaunt their power and money and crush anyone who steps out of line, and clearly not everyone loves her for it. By the look on Rosita’s face at the end of the episode, she’s starting to wonder if they’re on the right side.

Verdict

I guess I just feel like everything about the Commonwealth is too on the nose and too predictable. I mean, have we ever really come across a group of survivors that was just a decent group of people doing the right thing? Okay, just once in Alexandria. Everyone else has been terrible (Governor, Saviors, etc.) or run by someone terrible (Hilltop, Woodbury). And Alexandria’s biggest mistake was letting Rick and company into their town—almost every single one of its inhabitants is now dead and gone. (Is Aaron the only remaining Alexandrian?)

Maybe it’s just because this has been done before so many times. Utopian community that’s bright and shiny on the outside has a dark underbelly. How shocking! None of us saw that coming.

There are ways to do it that would work. If they’d really played up how great the Commonwealth was for a few episodes, not showing us any of the bad stuff until later, then the ‘twist’ might have hit a little harder. But we already knew these people were bad guys and it seems pretty clear that our heroes will ultimately side with the revolution and, if we’re sticking with tradition, bring the Commonwealth down in fire and blood and ruin. The only question is whether the show will reckon with that in any meaningful way.

What did you think of ‘New Haunts’? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

Also, Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) is really rocking the Solomon Kane look these days. I used to be annoyed that he wore his priest outfit all the time, but with the eye, the new ruthlessness, the whole persona makeover, I think it works. Total badass right here.

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