S10.E20: Splinter

[nodorothyparker]

Airdate 2021.03.21

Quote

Eugene, Ezekiel, Yumiko, and Princess are captured and separated by the mysterious troopers that surrounded them at the rail yard.

 

[OoohMaggie]

I can’t wait to read the comments tomorrow morning, it’s going to be interesting.

[AngelaHunter]

Oh, fuck this shit.

[Mr. Sparkle]

6 minutes ago, AngelaHunter said:

Oh, fuck this shit.

C'mon, tell us how you really feel. 

[MrsRafaelBarba]

Trash. 

[gutbuster]

50 minutes ago, AngelaHunter said:

Oh, fuck this shit.

Yup.

3 minutes ago, MrsRafaelBarba said:

Trash. 

Yup.

[nodorothyparker]

It's not often I'm rendered speechless by anything, as in I seriously have no comment beyond the occasional "what?" This was one of those times.

[gutbuster]

Princess's state of mind makes it so hard to believe she's managed to not get herself killed in all this time. If her panic attacks / episodes are triggered like this and are this severe, elaborate, and real to her, it's a wonder one of her super awesome Walker Buddies hasn't chewed her face off in a moment when she maybe thought she was interacting with a real person.

I feel bad trashing this episode because they clearly seem to think they're exploring mental illness in some kind of profound way, but man this was really, really, horribly, terribly bad.

I wish we had gotten a DROP of story. Are these the people Eugene's girlfriend are with? What the F is their deal? Are they just super cautious or are they just a bunch of dicks in RPG gear? 

So much of this episode felt like a retread of other things we've seen a billion times. Rick hallucinating Lori, and what the gang went through in Terminus, etc. All of it felt conspicuously recycled.

The only part I liked was Princess's Walker Buddies. I had forgotten about them. The actors were totally giving them swagger. Going forward whenever they show things from Princess's point of view they should swag out all of the Walkers in her field of vision to look like her Buddies. That would be epic.

[diebartdie]

Remember last week I said it was nice not having Rick screaming and clearly in need of an anti-psychotic pill? ☠️ I really, seriously did not like this episode, there may not be enough anti-psychotic medications in the world for this show. No way in hell she could survive that long with that amount of psychosis. That wasn't "active imagination". I wish I had just skipped this episode.

[AngelaHunter]

47 minutes ago, diebartdie said:

I wish I had just skipped this episode.

After watching for less than 10 minutes and now reading comments, I am very glad I skipped this. Just the bit I saw made me think so fondly of "Durryl's Romance" last week, which I actually kind of liked anyway.

1 hour ago, gutbuster said:

they clearly seem to think they're exploring exploiting mental illness in some kind of profound way,

Fixed.

[Starchild]

I figured early on at least some of this was going to turn out to be in her imagination, which probably caused my attention to wander a bit, because I missed whatever it was that Fake-zekiel said to her at the dramatic reveal (that it was actually her punching the guard). Anyone catch it?

[Dodginblue]

I'm assuming that the dissociative nature of the character's thoughts and actions resulted from getting conked on the head when she was thrown into the train car or possibly just before that when she was wrestled to the ground and it wasn't meant to be an indication of some longer term illness.  But what do I know?  Only this.  This was a crappy episode.  Possibly the worst ever.  I don't care about this character Princess at all.   I don't find her interesting or enjoyable to watch and this episode was tedious, pointless and annoying.  So it had that going for it.

[maxmama]

5 hours ago, AngelaHunter said:

Oh, fuck this shit.

Exactly.

[OoohMaggie]

Yup, pretty much as I thought 😂

[TV Anonymous]

So this is a character we barely knew from what, two episodes from almost a year ago and now she gets her own episode? WTF?

[raven]

I once fired someone named Princess.  True story.

[Mr. Sparkle]

3 minutes ago, icemiser69 said:

Eugene's voice over at the beginning of the episode was brutal to listen to.   The jackass needs to talk normal.  His quirkiness has gone from quirky to annoying.

I really hate Eugene's pseudo-intellectual way of talking. No one actually talks like that. No one who doesn't get shoved into his own locker during gym, anyway. 

[Lamima]

13 hours ago, AngelaHunter said:

After watching for less than 10 minutes and now reading comments, I am very glad I skipped this. Just the bit I saw made me think so fondly of "Durryl's Romance" last week, which I actually kind of liked anyway.

Fixed.

See I actually liked this one better than that absurd Darryl romance.

Edited March 22, 2021 by Lamima

[Lamima]

7 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

and

She is claustrophobic, we haven't seen her in a confined space like that before.  I am claustrophobic as well, that does weird shit to people, especially when they are locked in with no way out.   When I was in the hospital with internal bleeding, in a room with another patient, a room that was meant for one patient, not two, my elderly roommate was losing his shit in the overnight hours, not helped by his refusal to remove his hearing aid, not to mention how disgusting he left the bathroom.  My anxiety level went through the roof, I couldn't wait to get out of there.  I wasn't helped by the fact that the iv partially dislodged from my arm, which resulted in my arm swelling up like a balloon with all of the liquid filling up under my skin.  I just felt a tremendous amount of burning from the area that I thought was normal.  When the nurse found out what had happened, she freaked.  Not a pleasant experience.  So yeah, being stressed in a confined space can really affect people.

Getting conked on the head didn't help, she is also a character that has lived alone by herself for a very long time.  All of sudden she isn't living life on her terms, she is existing under the terms of those tin cans that have taken them all hostage.  That adds to her stress.

Princess Plum needs to ditch that purple jacket.  Even if she did escape, she would stick out like a sore thumb, or should I say, sore finger.

It wasn't a small space. Was a BIG empty train car. And she wasn't confined as she found an exit yet kept going back in. 

 

I wonder if the stormtroopers are all part of her imagination and she has her 'friends' captured.

[iMonrey]

I see now that these "bonus" episodes are really nothing more than pointless filler. Apparently nobody needs to watch going into Season 11. This episode in particular, I thought we would finally get some intel on these stormtroopers and move the story forward a little. Nope! Nothing, nada. And that's annoying.

Quote

Princess's state of mind makes it so hard to believe she's managed to not get herself killed in all this time. If her panic attacks / episodes are triggered like this and are this severe, elaborate, and real to her, it's a wonder one of her super awesome Walker Buddies hasn't chewed her face off in a moment when she maybe thought she was interacting with a real person.

Exactly. This attempt at a deep dive characters study severely was flawed because it showed how badly someone like Princess would actually fare in a zombie apocalypse. It's also hard to know what was real and what wasn't, which minimizes the potential investment in what's happening. For all we know this is just some fever dream Princess is having and she never actually went with Eugene, Yumiko and Ezekial.

Quote

Eugene's voice over at the beginning of the episode was brutal to listen to.   The jackass needs to talk normal.  His quirkiness has gone from quirky to annoying.

Amen to that. When we first met the character he was pretending to be some kind of military attache, so this pseudo-military speak sort of made sense. It doesn't anymore. Why has no one smacked him upside the head and told him to talk normal?

BTW - Princess was slipping in and out of that box car and the stormtrooper guards passing by never once noticed the big gaping hole. 

[Meraji]

41 minutes ago, Lamima said:

And she wasn't confined as she found an exit yet kept going back in.

 

36 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

BTW - Princess was slipping in and out of that box car and the stormtrooper guards passing by never once noticed the big gaping hole. 

I thought that, too, before the big reveal. Both that it was so big it didn't feel that claustrophobic and amazing that the guards didn't see the hole. However, neither the hole she was picking away or the huge hole covered by the plywood was actually there. When she comes to her senses after beating the guard she looks both ways and there aren't any holes. So there you go. Even less happened in the episode than you thought. 

[AngelaHunter]

1 hour ago, Lamima said:

See I actually liked this one better than that absurd Darryl romance.

At least we know Daryl. If that episode had been two random, new characters that were shoe-horned in last season, I would have hated it just as much as I did the 10 minutes I watched of this episode.

[iMonrey]

Quote

Even less happened in the episode than you thought.

It hardly seems possible!

[rmontro]

They noted on Talking Dead that this was the first ever episode where no one was killed, not even a walker.  Thought that was interesting.

With that out of the way, what a lousy episode.  As iMonrey said, the storyline was not advanced at all.  I know Princess from the comics, I like the character.  But this was terrible.  Oh look, another person with a dark past, who has had bad things happen to her.  Wow, I've never seen anything like that before.  So much television these days follows this same garbage formula.  Then it turns out she imagined a good deal of the episode - another overused trope.

I guess the railroad car was supposed to be some sort of "callback" to the cannibals.  Meh, I don't care.  I just think this series is really scraping bottom right now. 

[AngelaHunter]

15 minutes ago, rmontro said:

I know Princess from the comics, I like the character. 

For viewers like me, who don't read comic books, many doings/events on this show have appeared to be illogical and random unless we cared to listen to Hardwicke explain what we just watched. As I also never did that, quite a few things in this show were confusing when first aired and have remained a mystery to me. Viewers should not need an after-show or comics to let us in on what they just watched.

All I know of this Princess is what I saw at the end of last season. I disliked her then, and cannot watch her now. I guess I could admire the way she's kept that pink poodle sweater in such good shape.

 

[OoohMaggie]

I’m going to place my neck firmly on the chopping block and say that we have finally reached the lowest point in The Walking Dead world, somebody turned the special key which took this episode down to the previously unexplored, ultra sub basement level in the Zombie elevator.

In times of stress I find music very cathartic, only one song springs to mind, because surely..............................

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by OoohMaggie

[maxmama]

Many thanks to all of you who watched the episode and are relating it here.   I got ten minutes in and switched off.  The show is at a standstill, nothing advances and goes anywhere, just characters going nowhere either.  I don’t need high drama every week, but would like to understand what is going on.  Don’t care about the Princess, Yumiko, not really even Eugene anymore.  I had hoped to see how humanity could rebuild itself, but it’s not about survival in an apocalypse, it’s just fighting and bad guys.

[Madding crowd]

I don’t read the comic books and know nothing about the princess besides what we were shown. Finding out a little about her past is fine but I don’t think an entire episode where we don’t know what is real or not is ridiculous. The part with Ezekiel and the walkers was funny but we still know nothing. I hope we will at least find out the identity of Eugene’s mystery woman.

Once again I am oddly bothered by Princess wearing four layers of clothing ( or stormtrooper outfits) in the heat.

[Mr. Sparkle]

3 hours ago, rmontro said:

As iMonrey said, the storyline was not advanced at all

I think it was slightly advanced, at the very end and with the interview between Princess & head stormtrooper. 

3 hours ago, rmontro said:

I know Princess from the comics, I like the character. 

I read the comics and I can take or leave Princess. I always thought it was a straight male comic book guy's attempt at "let's get girls to read this!" 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Superclam
Clarification

[madmax]

 

53 minutes ago, Superclam said:

I think it was slightly advanced, at the very end and with the interview. 

I read the comics and I can take or leave Princess. I always thought it was a straight male comic book guy's attempt at "let's get girls to read this!" 

If you have to watch Talking Dead to make sense of the show, then the show wasn't done right.  

I always thought Princess worked as a comic book character, but I wasn't happy to see her brought to the show because I don't think the character's quirks translate well.

I pretty much tuned out this episode.  I get what they were trying to do, but to do it with a character that we've only seen once before and that not that many people like anyway was not the right move.  Had they done it with any of the other three, it would have been better.

Like I said previously, they're doing what they can within the COVID world, but this was not a good shot at all.

The only thing I liked was Princess's reciting of the state capitals as a soothing mechanism.

[rmontro]

2 hours ago, AngelaHunter said:

For viewers like me, who don't read comic books, many doings/events on this show have appeared to be illogical and random unless we cared to listen to Hardwicke explain what we just watched.

I read all the comics, but I still had to hear Hardwick explain many things to know what was going on.  As you say, maybe that does something to bolster Talking Dead's ratings, but it's not good writing.  The show only loosely follows the comics.

 

2 hours ago, maxmama said:

The show is at a standstill, nothing advances and goes anywhere, just characters going nowhere either. 

Looks like next week we're back to Daryl searching for Rick some more.  Is there really any interest in that as a storyline, considering what we know about what they have planned for the character?

[Jel]

Every week I think, “this is going to start getting good now.”

Every week I am proven wrong.

[One4Sorrow2TooBad]

5 hours ago, rmontro said:

They noted on Talking Dead that this was the first ever episode where no one was killed, not even a walker.  Thought that was interesting.

With that out of the way, what a lousy episode.  As iMonrey said, the storyline was not advanced at all.  I know Princess from the comics, I like the character.  But this was terrible.  Oh look, another person with a dark past, who has had bad things happen to her.  Wow, I've never seen anything like that before.  So much television these days follows this same garbage formula.  Then it turns out she imagined a good deal of the episode - another overused trope.

I guess the railroad car was supposed to be some sort of "callback" to the cannibals.  Meh, I don't care.  I just think this series is really scraping bottom right now. 

It's scraping the bottom of the port-o-can they have on set.  The writing stinks like shit too.  You keep hoping, somehow , that this series is going to get good again, but that hasn't happened yet.

[Iguessnot]

I did not like this one. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers stance combined with the Storm Troopers puts this episode in sideshow territory. If Princess was claustrophobic, I didn't know. All I get from her is quirkiness dialed up to 100. Some have said a concussion might have caused her hallucinations, but the perspective was "foggy" before her first head hit. She counts steps to measure the width of  the railroad car. She recites cities in alphabetical order. She has a weird reaction to mail bags on the floor. She makes faces as though she's constipated and the creepy music plays in the background. She keeps having flashbacks to the initial storm trooper altercation but I don't know why. Nothing about it was so nightmarish that you have to keep reliving it.

When she talks to Figment Ezekiel she says she didn't do them any favors, saying she might have gotten upset and punched somebody. We didn't see any such thing.

When the storm trooper enters, she starts apologizing but when did she interact with him? And as I'm re-watching are we to believe she gave that kind of beat down to a larger, armed man with protective gear?

I don't care for Princess and her backstory did not make me care one bit more. I think the actress is not capable of delivering  a nuanced performance. But the writing was subpar. There was no purpose. What was her game plan at the end? The dude said the Boss would determine if she sees her friends if she answers the questions, so it was annoying that she acted like a 3 year old and asked him again when can she see her friends. Was that the best way they could write his complicity in this setup?

I noticed she didn't mention Eugene's love pursuit, which I gather is crucial. Otherwise this episode was a hot mess.

 

[tennisgurl]

That...was sure a thing. 

I have actually been alright with these character focused bottle episodes, they have been nice ways to catch up with the characters after the big Whispers story and I've cut them a lot of slack because of filming restrictions, but I was not feeling this. I am actually kind of alright with Princess, but not as the main character as a bottle episode where its all Princess, all the time. I just want to get back to camp and see what is going on but we just keep following every other person ever on their random adventures. I feel like this will end up becoming plot relevant, mostly with who these Stormtroopers actually are, but why did we have to do it this way? This season is moving slower than the most ambling Walker. Its like a Walker with no legs that is still trying to drag itself around despite clearly going nowhere. What do I have to do to get back to the somewhat interesting stuff?

I know they're doing what they can, and like I said I liked last week and thought the one before that had some good things going on, but all bottle episodes all the time, especially about a character we don't even know well, its getting to be way too much. 

Edited March 23, 2021 by tennisgurl

[OoohMaggie]

39 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Its like a Walker with no legs that is still trying to drag itself around despite clearly going nowhere. What do I have to do to get back to the somewhat interesting stuff?

Are you any good with a soldering iron? 😋

 

 

[Nashville]

On 3/22/2021 at 6:58 AM, raven said:

I once fired someone named Princess.  True story.

My wife’s first dog was named Princess.  She’s dead now.

Uhhh... the dog, not the wife.

True story.

[Iguessnot]

9 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

I watched the first ten minutes again, I don't know if I will watch the rest of the episode for a second time  My memory is horrible, but I did want to know where I got the idea that she was claustrophobic, which after I watched again confirms to me that she is.

When she was thrown into the boxcar her head hit the boxcar wall.

When she started pacing out the size of the room, that was the first thing that led me to believe that she is claustrophobic.  She started spouting off state capitals in an effort to calm her nerves so she wouldn't have an anxiety attack.  Her coping mechanism is naming state capitals.  I don't know if anyone noticed or not, but she was concentrating her mind on naming those state capitals in alphabetical order.

She walks over to talk to Yumiko who is in a neighboring boxcar and tells her that it is dark in here and really small.  So yeah, she pretty much confirmed in her own words that she is claustrophobic and doesn't like being confined in a dark place.  She also tells Yumiko that when she was fourteen she was in a similar spot.

I also wonder if she has night vision issues, possible night blindness.  At a minimum I think it is evident that she has an anxiety disorder.

I agree, she states that it is dark and small. She goes through a bunch of antics that are obviously done to deal with something, however I get nothing from her performance. She reminds me of Huck? Puck? Hack? on the Walking Dead the World Beyond, who literally swaggers through her entire performance. 

[Parker]

One of least favorite eps.  I should have known it was going to be bad when they start it off with a trope no one ever mentions, but happens a lot in TV and movies.  

When they are captured by maybe 16 stormtroopers, Princess is struggling and trying to grab a gun.  What is she hoping to gain?  She is going outshoot 16 well armed people?  And then she starts the ...don't hurt her friend, leave her alone...because that always works.

When one is captured by an overwhelming force, unless you have superpowers or your name is Buffy, better to follow directions.  I'm disappointed that a well written show would use this one.

I like Princess, but the ep was a waste of time.  The show opened with them being apprehended and ended the same way with no furthering of the story, other than Princess has severe mental problems, but I already knew that.

 

 

 

 

[iMonrey]

21 hours ago, maxmama said:

The show is at a standstill, nothing advances and goes anywhere, just characters going nowhere either.

I wonder why they bothered even making these "bonus" episodes. If they feel stymied by the pandemic they should just wait until they can resume the show properly. This is #4 of 6 and so far I could have skipped them entirely without missing a thing. 

[Iguessnot]

1 hour ago, Parker said:

One of least favorite eps.  I should have known it was going to be bad when they start it off with a trope no one ever mentions, but happens a lot in TV and movies.  

When they are captured by maybe 16 stormtroopers, Princess is struggling and trying to grab a gun.  What is she hoping to gain?  She is going outshoot 16 well armed people?  And then she starts the ...don't hurt her friend, leave her alone...because that always works.

When one is captured by an overwhelming force, unless you have superpowers or your name is Buffy, better to follow directions.  I'm disappointed that a well written show would use this one.

I like Princess, but the ep was a waste of time.  The show opened with them being apprehended and ended the same way with no furthering of the story, other than Princess has severe mental problems, but I already knew that.

 

 

 

 

Thanks you've reminded of what else was wrong with the episode. Along with the idiotic attempt to grab his weapon, she acts like a Karen in training. If she had yelled "the customer is always right" it would have matched her silly behavior. I was also annoyed when she told Ezekiel to let her do the talking. Granted she was trying to restraint Ezekiel, but usually the person brings something better to the table by taking over the conversation. Honesty I can't remember what she said because it was the same bluster she was spouting previously.

[OoohMaggie]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

I wonder why they bothered even making these "bonus" episodes. If they feel stymied by the pandemic they should just wait until they can resume the show properly. This is #4 of 6 and so far I could have skipped them entirely without missing a thing. 

The ‘Maggie’ episode was by far the best of these fillers, they could have concentrated their efforts on that and made it far more sensible and enjoyable all round. They could have spent the wasted Princess episode on making the Daryl and Leah story more interesting, at least give a character we’ve known for years a chance to take the story where it’s never gone before, yet do it justice by not giving beginning middle and end in forty minutes. 

[Mr. Sparkle]

3 minutes ago, OoohMaggie said:

The ‘Maggie’ episode was by far the best of these fillers, they could have concentrated their efforts on that and made it far more sensible and enjoyable all round. They could have spent the wasted Princess episode on making the Daryl and Leah story more interesting, at least give a character we’ve known for years a chance to take the story where it’s never gone before, yet do it justice by not giving beginning middle and end in forty minutes. 

The Maggie one was my least favorite, mostly because it was boring. I thought last week's was the best, just because of the acting. 

I'm dreading next week's because I find Carol & Daryl so boring together, and I don't think either of them are particularly good actors. I doubt I'll stick with their spinoff show. 

Overall, yeah, they are mediocre filler episodes. 

[GustavMahler]

Ah....thank goodness for the almighty fast forward button....I knocked out this shit storm in 15 minutes....when you watch so much terrible television and movies  as I have,  you develop a true talent in knowing when to cut down the drek to bare minimum displeasure.. 

[rmontro]

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I wonder why they bothered even making these "bonus" episodes. If they feel stymied by the pandemic they should just wait until they can resume the show properly. 

Agreed, I'm not inclined to cut them any slack over the pandemic.  There are plenty of other shows filming with full casts, I don't see how we need any one man or one woman shows.

[AngelaHunter]

2 hours ago, OoohMaggie said:

The ‘Maggie’ episode was by far the best of these fillers,

Well, of course, you would say that. Not a criticism! We all have our "thing" and I'm not commenting on this episode since I have no memory of it. 😄

1 hour ago, rmontro said:

Agreed, I'm not inclined to cut them any slack over the pandemic.  There are plenty of other shows filming with full casts, I don't see how we need any one man or one woman shows.

I recall how much I was bored by the Beth and Tara episodes. I now look back on them with fond nostalgia. Everything is comparative.

[Crashcourse]

Oooohh...Tara the fist bumper.  Good times. 🙄

[OoohMaggie]

14 hours ago, AngelaHunter said:

Well, of course, you would say that.

I may be as shallow as a dried puddle, but I did say at the time even putting the beloved to one side it was a good episode, yet they still managed to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory with their damn silly writing 🙄

[heisenberg]

On 3/22/2021 at 1:20 PM, Lamima said:

See I actually liked this one better than that absurd Darryl romance.

Me too. 

On 3/22/2021 at 4:51 PM, icemiser69 said:

Daryl and Carol are like my left shoe with the broken spring, all worn out, and in at least the case of Daryl and my shoe, they both smell bad. 

I liked this weeks episode more than the other one, but I did get too easily lost in terms of what was real and what was fake in the episode.   That has happened to me in other television series as well.  I suppose I am going to have to watch the next episode with those characters to find out what really happened.

At least they tried something different even if it was not perfect.

[heisenberg]

On 3/22/2021 at 5:32 PM, AngelaHunter said:

For viewers like me, who don't read comic books, many doings/events on this show have appeared to be illogical and random unless we cared to listen to Hardwicke explain what we just watched. As I also never did that, quite a few things in this show were confusing when first aired and have remained a mystery to me. Viewers should not need an after-show or comics to let us in on what they just watched.

All I know of this Princess is what I saw at the end of last season. I disliked her then, and cannot watch her now. I guess I could admire the way she's kept that pink poodle sweater in such good shape.

 

I liked the episode (For once in a long time)  but I get what you mean.  When she was interrogated she dropped the googles and the silly coat for a while and seemed to be less cartoonish even in her acting.  If they could keep her like that it will be ok,  but I guess they won't.