S08.E09: Sanctuary

[Mr. Sparkle]

Dwight and Sherry confront the demons of their past to secure a better future for themselves.

Airs Sunday, November 5 on AMC and AMC+. 

[Brown44]

Dwight is headed into Morgan territory were he's either very optimistic or having mental breakdowns. 

[Iguessnot]

The premise was awful. I have absolutely no patience for this fake story line of June not being able to perform medical procedures because she is in her feelings. I don't feel sympathetic. I just wanted to slap the crap out of her.

[Starchild]

Have we just wasted one of the last few hours coming back around to where we were just before the end of 8a?

[Iguessnot]

The new 8 year actress doesn't seemed very skilled. Her reaction to Victor saying his name was out of left field.

What state is Padre? Dwight walked back to Virgina, and June and Sherry showed up later, driving.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Iguessnot
Virginia (filmed in Georgia)

[Starchild]

1 hour ago, Iguessnot said:

The new 8 year actress doesn't seemed very skilled. Her reaction to Victor saying his name was out of left field.

I presumed Daddy Troy has told her boogeyman stories about Madison, Victor, Daniel, etc.

[Mr. Sparkle]

I almost didn't watch this because I'm not a big Dwight fan, but I thought it was a decent episode, watchibility-wise. The throwback to Negan stuff was cool. That said, with 3 episodes left, it was fairly unnecessary.  The whole point was to bring Dwight back for the inevitable war with Troy, which will likely result in Troy dying and maybe Madison too. The big reveal about Troy's daughter won't be that interesting. Anyway, we're almost done here. 

Unrelated: I'm a structural engineer, and this show is always - "unlikely" - particularly when it comes to roofs. 

[nodorothyparker]

I love that now that we're down to the last handful of episodes the show is just basically "Geography? We don't need no stinking geography." Morgan can walk to and radio from Georgia and now Dwight can walk all the way back to northern Virginia and the rest of the crew had no problems packing up and following along. And having trekked all the way back there now they're going to turn around and head back to wherever we're supposed to be pretending we think Padre is this week.

I want to at least give the show points for trying to honestly deal with the carnage that was original recipe Negan through Dwight and Sherry even if I don't think they ever actually said his name. Dead City seems to be trying but they're also hamstrung by the reality that he's the leading man there now and so at some point inevitably has to circle back to gee, he likes kids and puppies so he can't be all bad. Right? Right? Whatever else I may think of Dwight and Sherry at this point, I appreciate that the franchise is letting someone acknowledge that after all the messed up shit we've seen over a dozen years stretched across multiple shows some of these people are very much not okay without going all crazy eyes "You know what it is" Morgan.

Beyond that, whatever. June was only ever really palatable as half of the John/June pairing and this episode she felt very much like that annoying person who vaguebooks that something is wrong but keeps saying "nothing" when you ask so you'll keep asking. I guess Strand has Troy's daughter now, who will probably inevitably turn out to be Madison's granddaughter by way of Alicia or there's really no point to any of this. Sigh. We're almost to the end.

[Mr. Sparkle]

53 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

there's really no point to any of this.

Can't add much to this. 

[iMonrey]

2 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

I love that now that we're down to the last handful of episodes the show is just basically "Geography? We don't need no stinking geography." Morgan can walk to and radio from Georgia and now Dwight can walk all the way back to northern Virginia and the rest of the crew had no problems packing up and following along. And having trekked all the way back there now they're going to turn around and head back to wherever we're supposed to be pretending we think Padre is this week.

That's it, in a nutshell. Furthermore, if they're back where Sanctuary is, then why didn't they take Dove to Alexandria or Hilltop? Why did it have to be Sanctuary? The've got a truck, they're in driving distance of either. 

I also didn't get how many goons there were supposed to be at Sanctuary and why Dwight & Co. seemed only concerned about the three that came after them, like those were the only three that mattered. There's plenty more goons stationed back at Sanctuary but no matter, we can take them all out, we just have to do this surgery before Those Three come back! WTF.

Does anyone give a damn whether Dove lives or dies? She's barely a character. Talk about low stakes. I didn't get what she meant either when she told June she left Padre to get away from June. Huh? You're with June.

Those little "behind the scenes" segments they air after the show are where the actors do their best acting. They really twist themselves into pretzels trying to sell this crap. But they belie the fact that the show is so busy patting itself on the back over re-creating Sanctuary and Dwight's old room and other set pieces they really aren't concerned about the writing.

Somewhere in this mess a decent story was buried, but boy was it sloppy as hell.

[Mr. Sparkle]

27 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Does anyone give a damn whether Dove lives or dies? She's barely a character. Talk about low stakes. I didn't get what she meant either when she told June she left Padre to get away from June. Huh? You're with June.

Not me. She was in one episode previously that I recall, and I couldn't care less about this petulant teen. Bad writing, her persona was very uneven. 

[nodorothyparker]

It's hilarious though that when she mentioned that her real name was Odessa, Dwight had no idea what she was talking about. The show devoted an entire episode in the first half of the season to the character and her backstory called, curiously enough, Odessa.

[Crashcourse]

The best part of this episode for me was Dwight throwing that guy in the oven.

[heisenberg]

16 hours ago, Superclam said:

Unrelated: I'm a structural engineer, and this show is always - "unlikely" - particularly when it comes to roofs. 

Well, on that matter...  Do you remember in season one when they hide under the hull of a boat in the water while baddies shoot at them? 

The problem was that the hull was full of bullet holes (You could see the sky thru them) but the ship was staying afloat...  Yep!...🤷‍♂️

Edited November 7, 2023 by heisenberg

[BasilSeal]

On 11/6/2023 at 12:14 PM, Superclam said:

I almost didn't watch this because I'm not a big Dwight fan, but I thought it was a decent episode, watchibility-wise. The throwback to Negan stuff was cool. That said, with 3 episodes left, it was fairly unnecessary. 

I terms of being a stand alone episode it was one of the better ones of this series, (low bar, but, you know...) decent production values, a bit of action, some of the more able actors leading, but as you say what is it actually for at this point in the story?

I think it boils down to the somewhat leaden theme of something good coming from something bad, the morality of survival has always been one of the key themes for FTWD, how this world forces people to do terrible things and make impossible choices, and how this in turn causes some to embrace to bad stuff and either go mad, become evil, or to seek redemption as a coping strategy. Quite a lot of this show has been about the characters' abortive attempts to help people in order to atone for what they've been forced to do in the past.

this is partly why we have characters like Daniel and Strand who had already made the choice to do bad things in our world before the apocalypse, the writers present us with these flawed characters and make them the 'good guys', or at least the people we're rooting for. which is actually quite a clever and nuanced way to explore this idea.

I thought in the early seasons this made for an interesting show, but when it didn't generate the kind of viewing figures they thought it should they started to mess with it in a a sort of 'throw as much shit at the wall as you can in the hope some will stick' manner and we've ended up with the mess the show currently is. Daniel appears to have recovered spontaneously from dementia, Strand spent a year cosplaying as Idi Amin and murdering people by throwing them from the top of a tall building but now it appears that someone has pushed his factory reset button and he's back to being normal Victor again.

This is just indicative of the poor writing which just flails about; trying different ideas and not paying too much heed to continuity or previous story lines. Here many of the supporting characters have been hand waived away, even ones who were previously quite important like Sarah and Wendel, (or skidmark).

The purpose of this episode is to illustrate this theme of coming to terms with what one has done to survive. Dwight and Sherry defy geography to go back to where they made difficult choices in the past, confront those choices, and conclude that their lives do mean something and they can go forward and try to build a better future.

This superficially makes sense but it's all rather contrived, June can't perform surgery, for some reason, Dwight spent years looking for Sherry but just walks away from her for. er. reasons, and look here's a guy who's an insulin dependent diabetic 12 years into the apocalypse because, erm because....., I know! there was a magic guy who made insulin, that's it. no you can't meet him, he went to a different school. and he's dead.

All of those things are possible but it's the writers' job to make them believable and they fail, instead we get inconsistent characterisation, contrived plotting and flexible geography.

The showrunners and writers have destroyed what started as a very promising show, the whole thing is just a mess, so many poorly realised, inconsistent characters, dead end story lines, unresolved plot points and disappearing characters. Even PADRE is simply a massive Deus ex machina, a post apocalyptic survival community that's set up by the govt for them to find when the series grinds to a halt.

I'm going to watch to the finish because i'm, a completist and it's likely there'll be some stuff relevant to the other on going shows in there at the end, but this show has turned, it turned about three seasons ago and it's been chained up in the barn ever since being fed the occasional live chicken to keep it going while the writing team ring their hands over what to do about it. 

There is no cure, just shoot it already.

[iMonrey]

On 11/9/2023 at 2:30 AM, BasilSeal said:

I'm going to watch to the finish because i'm, a completist and it's likely there'll be some stuff relevant to the other on going shows in there at the end, but this show has turned, it turned about three seasons ago and it's been chained up in the barn ever since being fed the occasional live chicken to keep it going while the writing team ring their hands over what to do about it. 

Agree with your thoughtful post, except I don't think the writers are wringing their hands over anything. They actually seem to think they're doing a great job, if you watch the interview bits after the episode. They're just so dang proud of themselves it's cringe-worthy. 

[BasilSeal]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

Agree with your thoughtful post, except I don't think the writers are wringing their hands over anything. They actually seem to think they're doing a great job, if you watch the interview bits after the episode. They're just so dang proud of themselves it's cringe-worthy. 

Yeah, i know what you mean. i tend to tune out for that bit, it has all the charm of a toddler  proudly displaying the contents of its potty to their parents' dinner party guests.

[Starchild]

You guys watch that aftershow stuff?

[BasilSeal]

Nah,  watching the actual show is masochistic enough for me.

[Daltrey]

I nominate this for dumbest episode of the entire WD universe.

[Mr. Sparkle]

Please make sure you're posting about the correct episode. Thank you. 

[TV Anonymous]

This episode confused the hell out of me. Dwight went back to the Sanctuary? Which was somewhere in Virginia, and he was from Texas? Was that not a very, very challenging journey according to Morgan? Morgan took cars, walked and met and fought various people on his journey, albeit the other way around. Now Dwight just went there with June and Sherry and Odessa just conveniently followed suit.