S11.E05: Out of the Ashes

[raven]

Quote

Alexandrians encounter Hilltop squatters; Eugene’s group undergoes orientation at the Commonwealth.

NOTE:  AMC+ will stream each episode a week before airing on AMC.  Enter this topic at your own risk if you haven't watched yet.

AMC+ airdate: 2021.09.12    AMC airdate: 2021.09.19

Be mindful if you participate in the Live Posting Topic - that topic will follow the show as it airs on AMC, so AMC+ viewers will be one episode ahead.  DO NOT SPOIL those who are watching on AMC.

[OoohMaggie]

At least the clip for E6 looks as though something’s going to happen soon. Another part of a slow build up but at least you could see what was happening.

Ten years of surviving a Zombie apocalypse, only to discover you Americans are still tipping 😱 uuuuhhhh, shoot me now 🤑

Aaron getting down with the torturing, what ever would Eric say?

[Iguessnot]

Judith can be annoying but she really put on a good performance. Commonwealth is way too Duggarish.

[GustavMahler]

Hey writers, a  belated piece of advice... when considering a name for a community, for goodness sake, avoid pilfering from the Fallout video game series... why bring attention to the fact that the Fallout storyline is superior to anything you have come up with.... 

[Mr. Sparkle]

22 hours ago, Iguessnot said:

Judith can be annoying but she really put on a good performance.

When I was watching, I thought "this girl is actually a decent actor." 

[heisenberg]

The Commonwealth village seems pretty small (5000 people?),  I thought that we would finally see the helicopters, have some news about Rick or Michonne and other stuff...  But I guess we are heading toward some village governor rince and repeat story...  I hope I am wrong.

[raven]

On 9/13/2021 at 10:02 PM, Superclam said:

When I was watching, I thought "this girl is actually a decent actor." 

Yeah she did well in this one. I felt for her when the kids were taunting her.  Teens are still assholes, I see.

I don't know why the whisperer guy waited until after he needed amputation before telling our group about Connie.  Could have saved himself some torture and trouble.

I kind of liked this one - even though I forgot most of what happened, seeing the aftermath did emphasize how much trouble the group is in.

[OoohMaggie]

Tried to edit the post but mucked it up, not sure if it could be a spoiler or not

Edited September 18, 2021 by OoohMaggie

[xaxat]

On 9/12/2021 at 1:04 PM, OoohMaggie said:

Ten years of surviving a Zombie apocalypse, only to discover you Americans are still tipping 😱 uuuuhhhh, shoot me now 🤑

But it looks like The Commonwealth might be the type of society that has universal health care, so baby steps?

The Commonwealth freaks me out. If it were in a current socialist democracy like Norway, I would be freaked out by that kind of atmosphere. But in a world with zombies? I would seriously be looking at the ears of people to see if a mind control parasite was controlling these people.

 

 

[heisenberg]

45 minutes ago, OoohMaggie said:

Spoiler

The choppers we’ve seen so far belong to the CRM

 

Thanks for the info.

Spoiler

 

I have read the comics and I have seen all the episodes of TWD and FTWD...  But I have never heard about the CRM before you mentioned it.

I have seen them over some episodes with no explaining what so ever but It seems it was in World Beyond, witch I found so bad that I was never able to finish the first episode. 

If I got lost in the story with all that I have watched, I can't even imagin how the fuck the people would follow normaly.

 

 

Edited September 18, 2021 by heisenberg

[OoohMaggie]

11 minutes ago, heisenberg said:

If I got lost in the story with all that I have watched, I can't even imagin how the fuck the people would follow normaly.

They counted on people watching all three shows to get the full effect, they didn’t take into account that the CRM specific third would turn out to be virtually unwatchable 🙄

[heisenberg]

48 minutes ago, OoohMaggie said:

Tried to edit the post but mucked it up, not sure if it could be a spoiler or not

Well with the AMC + and wath happened in the spinoffs it becomes harder to follow the rules. I have put spoilers...

[heisenberg]

2 minutes ago, OoohMaggie said:

They counted on people watching all three shows to get the full effect, they didn’t take into account that the CRM specific third would turn out to be virtually unwatchable 🙄

Good luck for the movies planned to tie the knots...🤔  They should have stick to the original comics at least for the ending.

[BasilSeal]

8 hours ago, OoohMaggie said:

The choppers we’ve seen so far belong to the CRM, I’m not aware that in the TV show the CRM and Commonwealth have had any interaction with each other, you would think that they must be aware of one another at least.

The CRM are mainly a plot device to facilitate rick leaving the series without being killed off, TWD original now seems to be concentrating on interaction with the commonwealth because this is in line with what happens in the comic to bring this story to a close. They're using the CRM as a hook to hang the Fear story lines together, which are still 7 years or so behind the main show. 

Presumably the putative movies are the end point of it all, with the possibilities of cross over between the main show and the big characters from Fear. I did wonder if the group we see Michonne tagging along with in her final appearance was a later version of Victor's post apocalypse cowboys. 

I can't see there being any final season cross over with Fear and TWD original because of the time jump, and i can't see Rick making an appearance for the big finish because it's hard to see how this would be reconciled with him subsequently appearing in movies. either rick leaves his family again for some reason to go back to the CRM and have subsequent adventures in the movie, ans why would he do that? or the events of the movie take place before his appearance in the finale of TWD in which case there is zero jeopardy for rick in the movies as we know he's alive in a later time line.

Though TBH i can't see the movies happening at all, if they had a realistic chance of being made someone would have stumped up the money to make them and they'd be in production by now. The series finale of TWD has to be the high water mark for the chances of doing it, after the main show has finished, AMC will keep churning out new content but it's never going to achieve the sort of returns and viewing figures of the early seasons. If no one wants to finance the production costs of a big budget rick movie now, i can't see it being any more likely once TWD original has ended, Fear has been shitcanned and it's just Tales of the Walking Dead, and a show about Carol and Daryl eating raw squirrels in Mexico, for some reason pulling in sub 1m viewing figures

[heisenberg]

1 hour ago, BasilSeal said:

I can't see there being any final season cross over with Fear and TWD original because of the time jump

There was a time jump at the beginning but since Morgan, Dwight and the wife all met by accident I wonder how it is now.  Maybe the showrunners did not even care about it, I would not be surprised.

[Smad]

6 hours ago, BasilSeal said:

The CRM are mainly a plot device to facilitate rick leaving the series without being killed off, TWD original now seems to be concentrating on interaction with the commonwealth because this is in line with what happens in the comic to bring this story to a close. They're using the CRM as a hook to hang the Fear story lines together, which are still 7 years or so behind the main show. 

I honestly think Gimple was going for some kind of version of the MCU, just in reverse. Instead of movies first and then tv shows, TWDU would be shows first and then movies or possibly like MCU is now with movies+shows. The CRM was introduced (just not given a name) before there were any rumblings about AL leaving so who knows what Gimple's original plan was.

The problem is that he is years too late to set that plan into motion. He lost whatever talent he had (as writer, never had talent for showrunning)  for reasons I still don't get and pretty much destroyed the flag ship show with Seasons 7-8. The show was never able to get those millions of viewers back once he left and Kang replaced him. FTWD never had that big of a fan base to begin with and he destroyed that too once AMC removed him from the main show and put him there. A big reason why TWD:WB sucked so much was that he was moved there after he was removed from Fear.

I seriously doubt the movies are ever going to happen, they still don't even have a script for the first one. Not to mention that those movies were supposed to be big screen releases which, with the whole COVID situation, might not happen. Hell considering that the franchise is pretty much dead (largely thanks to him and probably Kirkman and his Negan boner), interest for the movies only comes from hardcore fans. On top of that Gimple is supposed to be the main writer on these movies which isn't well received by anyone. Right now I see them using the movies as an excuse to churn out whatever TWD content they can and hope that people keep chasing that carrot. But those movies will never see the light of day.

[BasilSeal]

11 hours ago, heisenberg said:

There was a time jump at the beginning but since Morgan, Dwight and the wife all met by accident I wonder how it is now.  Maybe the showrunners did not even care about it, I would not be surprised.

The fear timeline hasn't jumped forward like the TWD original one did after the war with the saviours, i think they're about three years in or even less and  hence they still have functioning vehicles, ammunition,  and the residual trappings of civilisation. I'd guess this was a deliberate plan show they can show two different post apocalyptic landscapes

 

6 hours ago, Smad said:

I honestly think Gimple was going for some kind of version of the MCU, just in reverse. Instead of movies first and then tv shows, TWDU would be shows first and then movies or possibly like MCU is now with movies+shows. The CRM was introduced (just not given a name) before there were any rumblings about AL leaving so who knows what Gimple's original plan was.

Agree with what you've said. i guess one reason for waiting until the story lines in fear and TWD have played out is so the movies are a continuation of the events in these shows, they can't do the movies without revealing what's going to happen in the storyline that hasn't aired yet. by the time they get to this point, there won't be enough people who care left to watch a big budget movie though.

Edited September 19, 2021 by BasilSeal

[Smad]

6 hours ago, BasilSeal said:

Agree with what you've said. i guess one reason for waiting until the story lines in fear and TWD have played out is so the movies are a continuation of the events in these shows, they can't do the movies without revealing what's going to happen in the storyline that hasn't aired yet. by the time they get to this point, there won't be enough people who care left to watch a big budget movie though.

The problem is TWD wasn't supposed to end anytime soon. Daryl & Carol were supposed to start their spin-off after S10. And it probably would have been similar to TWD:WB where it's only a 2 Season event. They were then supposed to come back into TWD main show. But AMC pulled the plug on TWD main show so whatever plan Gimple had, was destroyed right there.

My guess is that since Carol&Daryl were supposed to cross county trip into the south of the US, at the end of their show they would have gotten to where the Fear cast is. And on Fear there would have been some major time jump eventually to bring them to the current timeline of the main show. C&D would have come across survivors in between and send them off to the Commonwealth. The culmination of all this would probably have been the third movie where it's everyone vs CRM. Or possibly the last two 'Rick' movies would have been an Infinity War / Endgame kind of a deal, where the second movie spend most of it's time getting all the groups together (Fear, TWD main, Michonne's group etc.) and at the end the battle begins. It would leave off with a cliffhanger and then we get into the third movie.

But my guess is Gimple probably would have started to do all this in the shows because it would be better budget wise for AMC. But due to AMC cancelling the main show, he would only be left with the movies now. And I really don't see AMC giving out money for such a big production (the money they would need to spend on paying actors alone would be astronomical) when this franchise is essentially dead. This is something that should have happened at the height of the popularity, I could have seen AMC being willing then.

[xaxat]

I don't care what kind of plans they have. I dropped the show a couple of years ago and only returned because it was the final season of something I once really enjoyed watching.

Once it's done, I'm done.

[diebartdie]

I thought this was a really good episode, I was particularly moved by the conversation Judith and Rosita had (my mom passed away in June so that convo really hit me hard). The only problem I had was about the Commonwealth. Not so much the Commonwealth per se but.....how the hell do they have SO MANY COWS they can just make LOADS of all different types and flavors or ice cream? How the HELL to they have so much sugar they can make all that ice cream PLUS all those baked goods? PLUS where the eff are they even getting CHOCOLATE from? PLUS they really want to waste wheat, butter and eggs on...cakes, donuts, ice cream cones? Lord help me but I can put up with a lot of nonsense on the fricken zombie show but all the confectionery was just too much.

[madmax]

I think they tried to cram too much into this one episode.  Four different storylines. 

Aaron is pretty bad when Carol has to talk him down.  That was pretty brutal to torture that Whisperer with a zombie bite.

Nice talk between Rosita and Judith.  Cailey Fleming did some real good work there.  

Negan and Maggie, just get it over with.  one of you kill the other.  I'm pretty bored with her already, so I'd be fine if Negan does the killing.

The Commonwealth was pretty weird.  Way too much "happiness."  So you know it's evil underneath.  If Eugene was the one that did the "crimes against humanity," why was Ezekiel and Princess cuffed too?  No proof that they did anything.

[nodorothyparker]

Annnnyway ... I know we all complain when they focus entire episodes on one setting or one set of characters and make us wait weeks to see what's happening over there, but this one had the opposite problem. It was trying to cover everybody in four different locations with the end result that while there were things happening in each story, they felt sort of rushed and undeveloped. I mean, we've seen the story beat of kids raised behind walls teasing zombies before to sometimes mixed results and I love when Judith gets her back up in reminding that she's Lori and Shane's (Do as I say, just do it already.) bio daughter as well as publicly the daughter of Alexandria's former self appointed leaders, but the whole bullying thing felt very Afterschool Special. Rosita made a good try at talking Judith through it, I guess as the only adult around who has any idea of who the original crew even were, but Rosita, that kid has been passed around so much in her lifetime that it's really not the same thing.

I'm so tired of Negan and Maggie having the same are you going to kill me, I probably should conversation. Maggie for all her hardass posturing has whiffed on that already every chance she's gotten and we know she's not going to do it now. It doesn't help that there was a horrifying moment in one of their scenes where I could actually see the show testing their chemistry with each other and thought oh dear gods, they really might go there before this is all over with. Thankfully thus far it was just a moment though. Again, show, putting all the reasonable answers in Negan's mouth doesn't make me like him more. The obviousness of it irritates me and it forces characters we have rooted for to look like assholes in shooting him down to obstinately power forward.

Nobody was asking for another round of the Whisperers, even if they were the C team. Nobody.

The show has done little to make me care about Yumiko up to this point, so her weird reunion with her brother that was clearly supposed to evoke big feelings fell mostly flat for me. Pondering all the resources it would require to have flavors of ice cream and all those baked goods sitting around aside, he seemed to be dropping hints beneath all the happy fun time stuff that something isn't right with the Commonwealth, but I don't know that I have the interest or energy to care what it might be. The wild overreaction to briefly using the ham radio certainly suggests something.

[Iguessnot]

Wasn't their ruse that they didn't come from an established settlement? So why in the acceptance room are they all talking loudly about not wanting to stay because they have to get help for their community?

The guy said Stephanie would be in trouble as a citizen, but she was milling around later rather freely.

Commonwealth is obviously shady. I noted when the lady was picking up the ice cream order for Ms. Milton and Eugene inquired about Rocky Road, the woman wouldn't answer but only side eyed the ice cream lady.

Tomi is really worried about losing his bakers' job and scared that his surgeon skills be known.

[Crashcourse]

I don't know why yet but I think there's a reason the Commonwealth people are being served so many sweets, and it makes me wonder if the leaders and the soldiers are eating the stuff.

[OoohMaggie]

5 hours ago, madmax said:

The Commonwealth was pretty weird.  Way too much "happiness."  So you know it's evil underneath. 

Have we seen any oldies?  Maybe there’s a touch of Logan’s Run going on, also keep a look out for anyone flipping ‘Burgers’ 😲

[OoohMaggie]

23 hours ago, xaxat said:

Once it's done, I'm done.

I’ve told myself the same…………… yet I know my weakness will have me grasping any hint of a straw, as long as it has even the remotest connection to the show I once loved  😒
 

Edited September 20, 2021 by OoohMaggie

[Smad]

7 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

It doesn't help that there was a horrifying moment in one of their scenes where I could actually see the show testing their chemistry with each other and thought oh dear gods, they really might go there before this is all over with.

So many people mention this all the time whenever Maggie and Negan are in an episode yet I'm still waiting for someone to bust out a picture or gif of Lauren Cohan on Supernatural when her character said to Dean Winchester 'you know when this is all over, we should really have angry sex'. Sometimes fandom can be a real letdown.

[KeithJ]

A few random thoughts from this episode:

Aaron has gone to a very, very dark place.  I can see the threat of getting bit but actually letting him get bit?  Aaron is now no better than the other groups they have faced.

Lydia is still on this show?  I completely forgot about her.

OMG.  Rosita had more than a throwaway line and three seconds of screen time.

Edited September 21, 2021 by KeithJ

[Captain Asshat]

16 hours ago, OoohMaggie said:

Have we seen any oldies?  Maybe there’s a touch of Logan’s Run going on, also keep a look out for anyone flipping ‘Burgers’ 😲

Ha! I just figured those considered too old just weren't granted admission. The Commonwealth is kind of interesting, in a Stepford kind of way. It's like the original Alexandria in that way, but there's also a culty, "Pleasantville" vibe around it...with happiness enforced by Stormtroopers. I wonder if THEY have pasta makers (RIP Shelly). So continuing  your point...I get the feeling that expulsion from The Commonwealth is more execution than "we'll take you far away, and you can never come back." Or, you know..."Soylent Donuts are PEOPLE!"

[TVMovieBuff]

I am officially interested in the storyline of Eugene, Yumiko, Ezekiel and Princess. Last episode was such a slog but this one really perked up, because of them. 

Come on writers! You have Maggie & Negan together, surely you can show us some substance! We are in the final season, let 'er rip! It's now or never!

Yet this episode managed to include cogent scenes of Aaron, and Judith. 

[theredhead77]

I personally don't see chemistry between Negan and Maggie but I do see chemistry between JDM and a brick wall, so I just figure his chemistry ooze seeps into his Negan interactions with Maggie.

Dark!Aaron is fine when it involves The Whisperers but I really don't want to see more of them, unless they are infiltrating the Reapers. 

You can add me to the "invested in the Commonwealth storyline" crowd. That place is creepy AF and I do not, for one second, think that "Stephanie" isn't in on some bigger, nefarious plan.

There are far too many stories going on for the final season. I don't expect a happy ending for anyone but I would like some closure on this show without having to be up to speed on any other shows in the franchise.

[iMonrey]

Quote

But I guess we are heading toward some village governor rinse and repeat story...  I hope I am wrong.

Yeah, I thought maybe the Commonwealth was going to tie into the larger communities introduced in World Beyond, but now it seems like it's just another weird Big Bad. Geez, haven't we had enough of those already? Is this the best they can do for the final season?

Also, Judith: your mother did abandon you. For reasons this show will never make me understand. 

[tennisgurl]

This episode was at least a bit better than last week, although it sort of had the opposite problem of the last episode. While last week was slow as molasses and claustrophobically stuck in one lame location with our new batch of weirdo villains, this week was all over the place, way too many characters and plot to really give any of them as much screen time as they needed. Ideally we could focus on just a few subplots per episode, even with its cast of two thousand, half of which have names I can never remember. 

The Commonwealth is obviously sketchy, but like I said last week, I am still engaged in it because its something different. The bad guys are a new kind of threat who have a really different vibe then the last few villains, I am actually interested in seeing where things are going there. 

On the other hand, Negan and Maggie are just doing the exact same scene over and over again, its just so tedious. Then we get more of the boring Whispers lurking around the edges of the community, we have dumb kids who act like bullies in an 80s movie who play stupid zombie games, we get more lame villains lurking around covered in their own shit. At least the actors got more to do this week, with Rosita having some nice material at last and the stuff with carol and Aaron being decently interesting, even if it also comes across as more of the usual "have we become the monsters?" moral quandaries we've been doing for years.

Negan and Maggie especially are just so boring, we could literally copy and paste any of their scenes at all this season without changing anything. "I hate you." "Fine, then kill me." "No." Over and over. 

Better than last week, but that really isn't saying much. I just cant believe how much this show is going out with a whimper.

[gutbuster]

On 9/20/2021 at 12:31 PM, Iguessnot said:

Tomi is really worried about losing his bakers' job and scared that his surgeon skills be known.

When Yumiko asked to speak to the manager a couple episodes ago, didn't she loudly proclaimed that she suspected her "thoracic surgeon" brother was living there? I thought I saw it in the previouslies.

Tommy clearly had managed to keep that a secret he doesn't want revealed. As an early settler, maybe he didn't have to go through the bowel-movement-what's-your-degree-in interrogation. So I think Yumiko may have already gotten him in trouble.

[BasilSeal]

20 hours ago, gutbuster said:

Tommy clearly had managed to keep that a secret he doesn't want revealed. As an early settler, maybe he didn't have to go through the bowel-movement-what's-your-degree-in interrogation. So I think Yumiko may have already gotten him in trouble.

Yeah, he clearly doesn't want to be a surgeon so told them he was a baker instead, for some reason. Ezekiel will need a surgeon to operate on his thyroid cancer, so there's clearly going to be some hard choices there, save your sister's friend or carry on with the cup cake production.

 

On 9/22/2021 at 7:51 PM, icemiser69 said:

I don't think Eugene's "babble buddy" (Stephanie) is a good person.  At some point she has to turn on Eugene.  If anything, she might be the leader of the community.

I don't think that's the real Stephanie.

On 9/20/2021 at 3:58 PM, diebartdie said:

.how the hell do they have SO MANY COWS they can just make LOADS of all different types and flavors or ice cream? How the HELL to they have so much sugar they can make all that ice cream PLUS all those baked goods? PLUS where the eff are they even getting CHOCOLATE from? PLUS they really want to waste wheat, butter and eggs on...cakes, donuts, ice cream cones?

The cakes and ice cream is just a signifier to show that the commonwealth is so prosperous and well organised that it has sufficient surplus resources to waste on frivolous stuff like cakes and ice cream. It's a bit of a lazy signifier though because if you spend a nano second thinking about it you realise just how dumb it is.

The population is supposedly 50K, it's hard to come up with a hard figure because there are so many variables, but we're talking around 1500 to 2000 cows to produce sufficient milk for a population that size and have enough left over from everyday use to produce luxury stuff like ice cream, not to mention all the eggs you'd need as well. then of course there's the sugar they'd need for the cakes, where does that come from? are they growing 100s of acres of sugar beet? and have a refinery tucked away somewhere?

If you were producing food for a community like this in a post apocalyptic society, you'd be concentrating on growing food for people directly, not feeding animals to produce luxury commodities. Livestock would still be important but they'd need to be secondary to food cropping.

[BasilSeal]

7 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

That never occurred to me.  You are probably right.

I've seen a theory elsewhere re Stephanie that i'll spoiler, it may or may not be correct i've not checked further

Spoiler

last year the showrunners released some casting news for this season which included some casting details for new characters including Stephanie, the actress they said was playing Stephanie is not the actress that we have seen so farm, so assuming they haven't simply recast the part since the original press release, some people on the internet think that this is a fake Stephanie being used as a sort of honey trap to find out the location of Eugene's community.

 

[SharonH58]

I was wondering why Aaron and crew didn't keep the Whisperers to move the herd near Alexandria.  But then remembered that would be smart.