With its massive zombie horde and artsy black-and-white flashback, “First Time Again” initially feels like an uncharacteristically bombastic season premiere of The Walking Dead. Part of this is because the sixth season of the show begins in a place unfamiliar to those preceding it: for the first time in awhile, Rick and company are just fighting off zombies. Trouble may linger in the background with The Wolves and Alexandria’s fragile existence, but for the most part, “First Time Again” is about the massive zombie horde building up in a ravine close to the safe zone, and not a whole lot else – except for a few really, really well-acted scenes reiterating familiar themes from previous seasons.
When The Walking Dead left for summer vacation earlier this year, Rick had just murdered a violent wife-beater who had just murdered the husband of Deanna, Alexandria’s mayor. When “First Time Again” isn’t depicting the present in full color, it’s revisiting the days after that incident in flashy black-and-white – a visual device that works fairly well, even though the material within it doesn’t really add much. Outside of introducing Carter and Heath (the guy who Eugene says has “serious hair game” in a flashback), the flashbacks are really just place markers, refreshing audiences on where characters were when last season ended (Carol’s pretending to be a housewife, Tara’s recovering from her head injury, Sasha’s still cuckoo, etc.). These moments allow the show’s primary actors to chew up some scenery, but outside of Rick and Morgan’s conversation on the porch, there isn’t a whole lot to pull out of the flashbacks as “First Time Again” jumps back and forth in time.
The conversations between Rick and Morgan throughout the episode are the most important, however: as a person who hasn’t been present for Rick’s transformation into The Ricktator, Rick’s crumbling humanity is new to Morgan, and forms the philosophic under bone for the season – which initially, just feels like a slightly modified version of each previous season, where reminders of Rick’s past are the only thing keeping him clinging to the small shreds of humanity he has left. With each day, Rick’s primal instincts are continuing to erode away at his soul, and Morgan’s attempts to restore it pose the familiar question: how far will Rick go to both maintain his humanity, or protect the people he cares about? At the very least, Morgan’s presence – and own approach to maintaining humanity, which just sounds to me like a warning, considering he met “The Wolves” and didn’t kill them – provides an interesting counterpoint to Rick’s behavior, a visual litmus test of sorts to see how much of a monster he’s becoming; only problem is, all it takes is a pair of eyes and common sense to understand Rick’s eroding humanity, and descent into someone who kills a pre-walker (aka a recently-bitten human) without a second thought.
Every other scene in “First Time Again” is concerned with the zombie horde, which made for an odd balance between scenes of The Walking Dead flaunting its CGI budget (“LOOK HOW MANY ZOMBIES!” the camera screens with each lengthy, slow pan) and other scenes of TWD keeping the money real tight (like Daryl’s presence in the episode as leader of the horde, which is mostly relegated to motorcycle sounds). These scenes are inter cut with the flashback sequences, which as a whole, makes for a fairly disjointed episode: while I appreciate TWD not spending precious minutes detailing each and every step of their plan (how the episode kicks it into gear during a practice run was an awesome move), it’s a little hard to get excited without any time establishing the details of the plan. Without that knowledge, it’s really just a matter of ‘when’ things are going to go sideways, especially with every single character referencing how zombies react to sound throughout the hour (seriously: ‘subtle’ is not really The Walking Dead‘s greatest strength).
Opening the season with such a large spectacle certainly allows The Walking Dead to achieve a level of tension the show only experiences in short bursts – however, the delivery of that spectacle comes at the cost of the actual storytelling around it, which in turns hinders the human segments of the episode, both in the past and present. Which may seem odd, because the episode puts equal importance on the emotional and physical paths its characters are currently on, and “First Time Again” acts more as a checklist for what’s going on, rather than a meaty 90-minute episode with a purpose.
Other thoughts/observations:
- The longer the episode runs, the shorter and shorter the scenes get, which I think adds a little to the disconcerting nature of the time jumping, not to mention trying to keep the progression of the zombie horde coherent.
- Some great humor in this episode, be it drunk Abraham trying to balance a ring on his bottle of alcohol, or Eugene talking about “serious hair game.” Regardless, there’s a lightness to it all I really enjoy.
- “Thank God… nothing happened to your hair.”
- It’s really odd how easily everyone falls in line after Rick murders a dude – it really seems Jessie is the only one not feeling The Ricktator’s style.
- Rick shutting down Gabriel’s attempt to “help out” is the single greatest moment of this episode.
- I really don’t like how they write Sasha’s “unstable” nature. She’s either staring oddly at things, or grinning a lot, and it’s not really that engaging.
- I didn’t talk much about Carter’s story, because it follows the same terrible format as most “high stakes” The Walking Dead episodes: a random ancillary character gets introduced, and then immediately gets fired.
- Who’s behind the car horn? And speaking of cars, where are all those nice Hyundais from Season 3 when they need ’em?
- Before we get all cute with Carl and his girlfriend, remember: she was the one doing weird crap beyond the wall last season.
- Morgan had a friend with bo staff skills – if the season has one more flashback, I hope it shows this.
- “I’m supposed to be deliverin’ pizzas, man.” Nailed it, Glenn.
- Welcome back to The Walking Dead reviews – I can’t believe this is my fifth season covering the show!
[Photo via AMC]
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