The Walking Dead - Not Tomorrow Yet and The Same Boat - Review: "Bite Size Snacks"

I missed the review for last week’s episode, and although I didn’t plan it this way, I’m glad I now have the chance to combine the two episodes, Not Tomorrow Yet and The Same Boat. This is because the two come together perfectly, with the first setting up the second.

Last week’s episode marked a turning point for the group, where after years of slow buildup, they finally became the group that raids and kills in the dark. It was a strong action-packed episode, with the group infiltrating the Saviors’ compound like commandos, with a primary goal of killing every last person. We see the effects of the violence on a number of characters, but this show is often at its best when it focuses more on a singular character, as it did with The Same Boat. This was Carol’s turn.

Carol is the group’s mother figure, as Tobin pointed out last week. She can do the hard stuff like killing Karen and David because she’s a mother. Even with her daughter gone, she’s still a mother and baking cookies for the group. It’s a touching moment when we see that she’s left one of those cookies at the grave of Sam Anderson.

The mother theme was seen throughout The Same Boat, which had an almost exclusively female cast. Most of those female characters with a heavy episode focus were once mothers who had lost their children. Their emotional reactions to the loss are directed at pregnant Maggie, in various ways. Carol, who still embraces her role as mother, puts Maggie’s life above all else. But others, like Paula and Michelle, have turned against motherhood and are disdainful of Maggie’s choice to have a baby. Michelle at one point makes a knife slash toward Maggie’s womb.

The focus on Carol, and the weight she’s suffering under from having killed so many people, starts at the beginning of Not Tomorrow Yet, with a scene of her baking and handing out cookies, her conversation with Tobin about her being a mother, and her visit to Sam’s grave. We see that she’s counting the number of people she’s killed (18 at the start of the episode). And she becomes defensive with Morgan, who sees how much killing bothers her.

In The Same Boat, Paula’s character acts as a foil to Carol’s, with Paula having come from similar beginnings (a victim with low self-esteem), but she’s different in that she has completely hardened to the point where killing doesn’t bother her anymore. In a rare moment, we see Carol crack under the weight of the knowledge that she’s in a situation where she knows she’ll have to kill again. She begins hyperventilate and clutches to rosary beads, a symbol of the faith she once had before she lost her daughter.

Melissa McBride, as usual, does a wonderful Emmy-worthy job with conveying the many layers to Carol. Alicia Witt, who guests as Paula, also delivers a standout performance, as does the Lauren Cohan as Maggie. While both episodes were strong, The Same Boat especially is one that I suspect will stand up over time and rank among the top of the series.

Through Paula, we also hear a story that acts as a metaphor for a lot of the character paths we’re seeing on the show. Paula tells Carol a story where a carrot, an egg, and coffee beans are all put into boiling water. The carrots turn soft (like those who have broke), the egg turns hard (like Paula), and the coffee beans change the water itself. Carol’s at a tipping point where she could go any way. I tend to think of the group as a whole, with their decision to build Alexandria into something greater, as the coffee beans. They’re not weak, and they’re not hard. They’re making change.

Other Standout Moments

I wanted to call out the great scene of Father Gabriel saying a prayer before executing a man. That character has also had a huge transformation over the past couple of seasons, although it’s played out more in the background.

Also, the sentiment from Molly, and then echoed later by Primo, that they were all Negan was chilling, as was one the warning by one of the saviors that "blood’s coming."