The Same Boat

"The Same Boat"
The Walking Dead episode

Maggie and Carol listen to the death throes of five men they trap in a room with burning gasoline.
Episode no. Season 6
Episode 13
Directed by Billy Gierhart
Written by Angela Kang
Original air date March 13, 2016 (2016-03-13)
Running time 43 minutes
Guest actors

"The Same Boat" is the thirteenth episode of the sixth season and the 80th episode overall of the post-apocalyptic horror television series The Walking Dead, which originally aired on AMC on March 13, 2016. It was written by Angela Kang and directed by Billy Gierhart.

This episode focuses on the characters of Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) and Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohan) who are captured by members of Negan's group known as the Saviors. It marks a turning point in an ongoing plot arc for Carol, one of the most cutthroat members of Rick's group, who is forced to re-examine herself as confronted by remorseless killer Paula.

Background

Carol Peletier and Maggie Greene are survivors in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies, colloquially referred to as "walkers," "growlers" or "coldbloods." Other members of their group, including Carol's close friend Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and Maggie's devoted husband Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun), were recently led by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) to make a pre-emptive sneak-attack against another community of survivors known as The Saviors.[1] Daryl had previously been threatened by a group of Saviors he was able to kill,[2] and Maggie negotiated a mercenary deal to eliminate the Saviors and their leader, Negan.[3] Using ruthless tactics such as killing people in their sleep and gunning-down those attempting to escape, the group slaughter two dozen Saviors. Although one of Rick's most stalwart allies, Carol refused her assignment on the main attack and insisted on staying with a pregnant Maggie on the sidelines.[1]

Before the apocalypse, Carol was a meek and battered housewife and she continued to place her fate in the hands of others and in religious faith until the missing daughter she'd been praying to be safely returned was revealed to have been turned into a zombie.[4] Carol gradually became more self-confident and capable as a survivor to the point where she began making life-or-death decisions for the group.[5] She displayed a cunningness when dealing with others who might threaten her group, disguising herself as a zombie,[6] a suburban housewife,[7] and a member of an invading force,[8] and has been coldly pragmatic in allowing allies to die to protect the interests of her core group.[5][9][8] Carol was particularly merciless in dealing with a murderous group of feral survivors called the Wolves,[8] but became shaken when she contributed to the death of the Wolves' leader only to realize they shared the same goal: to protect her community's doctor.[2] Carol has refused to discuss the incident while dwelling on the many lives she has taken.[1]

Plot

Carol stops Maggie from joining the gun battle against the Saviors, and as they confront each other they are approached in the night. Carol shoots a man named Donnie before she and Maggie are surrounded and surrender to Paula (Alicia Witt), Michelle and Molly. As day breaks they observe Daryl capture a Savior named Primo, and to stop the savage beating inflicted on him Paula tells Rick over a walkie-talkie that they have Maggie and Carol. Rick tries to negotiate for a prisoner exchange, and while Donnie needs the medical attention Primo could provide, Paula feels they are at a disadvantage against Rick's group and decides to withdraw.

While awaiting reinforcements and deciding her next move, Paula and her group bring Carol and Maggie to a former slaughterhouse where the Saviors have cached supplies guarded by trapped zombies. Carol puts on an act of being frightened and weak-willed, while revealing that Maggie is pregnant in an effort to protect her. Donnie suffers excruciating nerve damage from a tourniquet and tries to physically take out his frustrations on Carol but is pistol-whipped by Paula. Paula says she doesn't blame him and casually accepts the violence, and through some direct discussions she and her companions each show a determination to fight regardless of Carol and Maggie urging them to deal with Rick.

Paula directs Rick to a location for a prisoner exchange but believes he is being duplicitous and tracking them. Paula, Michelle and Molly prepare to flee the moment their reinforcements arrive, or to ambush Rick's group should he get to the slaughterhouse first. Left unguarded, Carol is able to free herself and Maggie, who insists on killing their captors. They use a zombified Donnie to ambush Molly, taking her handgun and beating her to death. Paula catches them as they negotiate a gauntlet of zombies and Carol gets the upper hand but only wounds Paula as the zombies get loose. Maggie fights Michelle who slices at her stomach with a knife and is shot dead by Carol. They catch up to a wounded Paula who fights Carol but is impaled on a spike and attacked by a zombie. Carol takes Paula's radio and tells the Savior reinforcements to meet them on the kill floor, where she traps the five men with burning gasoline.

Killing the zombies on their way out, Maggie and Carol get to the entrance just as their own group arrive, and are embraced by Glenn and Daryl. Carol admits to Daryl that she's not OK, and Maggie tells Glenn, "I can't anymore." Primo tells Rick that he's Negan and proposes they chat but Rick brusquely apologizes and shoots the bound prisoner in the head as Carol looks on in shock.

Production and writing

The slaughterhouse set which was custom-built for filming[10] was noted on the Walking Dead Twitter feed to match the room featured in the seminal 2004 horror film, Saw.

Themes

Feminism

"The Same Boat" which originally aired the Sunday following International Women's Day has been called the series' most overtly feminist episode (thus far). It subverts the trope of the damsel in distress that the previous episode's cliffhanger might have suggested when it revealed that Maggie and Carol had been taken prisoner. But the two kidnapped women weren't merely instruments or pawns in some larger plot machine. Carol and Maggie don't require anyone to rescue them, not only saving themselves but saving their men by preventing them from walking into an ambush.

Female characters are given the vast majority of screen time, and over the course of the episode discuss issues of particular concern including childbirth, domestic violence, and sexism pre- and post-apocalypse. These tough, smart women might have been friends in another lifetime, though here they were destined, in one way or another, to kill each other. Thus Carol and Maggie's triumph is presented as tragedy, and when the men of the group do arrive at the very end, the women allow themselves to be vulnerable and honestly express their exhaustion and desperation.[11]

Morality

A question The Walking Dead asks over and over again is: can morality survive in a world without laws? When told by Carol that Negan is a maniac, Molly professes, "We are all Negan." She means that everyone has to be a murderous maniac in order to survive. If they've made it this far, they've compromised so many things.[12] Carol's moral quandary has been playing out since she butted heads with Morgan's pacifist practises while taking out the invading Wolves. Since then she's been torn between the gentle person she presents herself as in public and her inner ruthlessness, and seems to be yearning for the former. When faced with Paula, she met the inverse scenario: someone who presents as a remorseless killer but might still be holding onto a shred of humanity. The scariest moment of the episode wasn't any point at which Carol or Maggie's lives seemed to hang in the balance, when they were tied up with guns pointed at their heads. It was after the tables had turned, when Carol was pointing a gun at Paula but unable to pull the trigger.[11]

Laura Prudom of Variety notes that The Same Boat offers a surprisingly deep examination of moral relativism. Carol and Maggie argue the merits of their choices against an equally tight-knit posse of survivors, one that was arguably justified in their defensiveness. We've been told that the Saviors and Negan are bad news, but when you take a look at the damage inflicted so far, Rick's people have a much higher on-screen body count, and far less justification to attack the Saviors than the Saviors have to harm them.[13] Rick had led others to murder a bunch of strangers in their beds without warning, and by the end of this episode Carol and Maggie have committed acts nearly as vicious. The protagonists are just as villainous as the people they're fighting against, and the assumption that brutality is the only appropriate response robs them of the right to see themselves as heroes.[14] We know Rick and Carol aren't bad people, they just do bad things. What The Same Boat really brings home is the fact that if it's true for them, it must be true for everyone else — even the people who appear to have no good in them whatsoever.[15]

Reception

Critical reception

Melissa McBride (left) and Alicia Witt (right) both received critical acclaim for their performances.

The episode received critical acclaim with the performances of McBride and Witt being singled out for praise. It holds a 100% positive rating with an average score of 8.2 out of 10 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. The critics' consensus reads: "'The Same Boat' takes a strong female focus by continuing Carol's arc while deepening viewer anticipation for Negan's ominous arrival."[16]

Matt Fowler from IGN gave it 9.3 out of 10 and praised McBride and Witt's performances and the episode's tension.[17] Jeremy Egner of The New York Times commented positively on the complexity of Carol's division between ruse and real emotion, saying "Like always, Carol did whatever necessary to survive and protect her cohorts, and did so in particularly brutal fashion [...] but she seems increasingly unable to avoid reckoning with the toll. “Are you O.K.?” Daryl asked when he arrived. “No,” she responded, and that was before Rick executed the remaining Savior right in front of her. It’s going to take more than a few Hail Marys to make that image, among many others, go away."[18]

TVLine named Alicia Witt their "Performer of the Week", praising her performance in the episode,[19] while McBride was named "Performer of the Week" by Collider.com.[20]

Ratings

The episode averaged a 6.0 rating in adults 18-49, with 12.53 million viewers overall.[21]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Nicotero, Greg; Hoffman, Seth (March 6, 2016). "Not Tomorrow Yet". The Walking Dead. Season 6. Episode 77. AMC.
  2. 1 2 Nicotero, Greg; Hoffman, Seth (February 14, 2016). "No Way Out". The Walking Dead. Season 6. Episode 76. AMC.
  3. ↑ Satrazemis, Michael E.; Negrete, Matthew; Powell, Channing (February 28, 2016). "Knots Untie". The Walking Dead. Season 6. Episode 78. AMC.
  4. ↑ MacLaren, Michelle; Gimple, Scott M. (November 27, 2011). "Pretty Much Dead Already". The Walking Dead. Season 2. Episode 13. AMC.
  5. 1 2 Ferland, Guy; Kang, Angela (October 20, 2013). "Infected". The Walking Dead. Season 4. Episode 37. AMC.
  6. ↑ Nicotero, Greg; Gimple, Scott M. (October 12, 2014). "No Sanctuary". The Walking Dead. Season 5. Episode 52. AMC.
  7. ↑ Nicotero, Greg; Powell, Channing (March 1, 2015). "Remember". The Walking Dead. Season 5. Episode 63. AMC.
  8. 1 2 3 Lynch, Jennifer; Hoffman, Seth (October 18, 2015). "JSS". The Walking Dead. Season 6. Episode 69. AMC.
  9. ↑ Nicotero, Greg; Gimple, Scott M.; Hoffman, Seth (March 29, 2015). "Conquer". The Walking Dead. Season 5. Episode 67. AMC.
  10. ↑ Hardwick, Chris (host) (March 13, 2016). Talking Dead. Season 5. Episode 513. AMC.
  11. 1 2 Cruz, Lenika; Sims, David (March 13, 2016). "The Walking Dead: Live from the Kill Floor". The Atlantic. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
  12. ↑ Moylan, Brian (March 14, 2016). "The Walking Dead season six, episode 13: The Same Boat - recap". The Guardian. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
  13. ↑ Prudom, Laura (March 13, 2016). "'The Walking Dead' Recap: 'The Same Boat' Asks Whether There Are Any Good Guys Left". Variety. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
  14. ↑ Handlen, Zack (March 13, 2016). "Carol and Maggie fight off Stockholm Sydrome on The Walking Dead". The A.V. Club. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
  15. ↑ Campion, Freddie (March 14, 2016). "The Walking Dead Season 6, Episode 13: The Same Boat". GQ. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
  16. ↑ "The Same Boat". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 17, 2016.
  17. ↑ Fowler, Matt (March 13, 2016). "The Walking Dead: "The Same Boat" Review". IGN. Retrieved March 17, 2016.
  18. ↑ Egner, Jeremy (March 13, 2016). "‘The Walking Dead’ Season 6, Episode 13: Carol the Killer". The New York Times. Retrieved March 19, 2016.
  19. ↑ "Performer of the Week: Alicia Witt". TVLine. March 19, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
  20. ↑ "Performer of the Week: Melissa McBride". Collider.com. March 18, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
  21. ↑ Porter, Rick (March 15, 2016). "Sunday cable ratings: ‘The Walking Dead’ off slightly, ‘Shameless’ ticks up". TV by the Numbers. Retrieved March 15, 2016.

External links

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