Tag Archives: Oceanside

The Walking Dead spends a great deal of time ruminating on what it means to take a life. That sort of thing is practically inevitable in zombie stories. You may have to kill the zombies; you may have to kill dangerous rival survivors; and you may have to allow good people to die in order to ensure your own survival. Weighing these sorts of choices is the bread and butter of the zombie genre and post-apocalyptic fiction of all kinds.

But most of the time, at least on The Walking Dead, it’s framed as an ethical choice, or processed through the lens of what taking a life does to the human soul. For all the hand-wringing about the supposed bad messages the series sends, TWD is and always has been a show firmly centered on moral questions. People don’t always like the answers it provides, but it’s been consistently interested in the ethics of killing, the impact the act has, and what sort of morality and mortality remains after the fall of civilization.

So once more, The Walking Dead offers an episode centered around people deciding whether or not to kill. But in “Something They Need,” the show treats it as a question of prudence, of planning, of strategy, rather than of morals. Whether it’s Sasha, Gregory, or Natania, the major characters in this episode contemplate if they should kill, but they don’t seem to be affected by moral considerations so much as practical ones. Will it help them accomplish their goals? Will it advance their cause? Will it hurt, help, or save their people, or their own skins? That’s not a typical tack for this show, but it’s an interesting one, even as the slow table-setting for the finale soon feels a bit rote.

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