Lockdown

Daryl and Maggie are hiding from Hornby and his men, when they stumble upon Gabriel, Aaron, Negan and Annie. They are in doubt whether they should return to Commonwealth to protect the children and their friends, or fight Hornsby and his soldiers. Daryl proposes that Daryl, who is unknown in Commonwealth, goes alone and meet Carol to protect their people. Negan flees to Commonwealth to meet Mercer. The residents are protesting Pamela and Sebastian Milton demanding justice. Carol is taking care of the children, when she sees Shira and Calhoun coming towards her apartment. They hide and the Hornsby agents do not see them. Meanwhile, Mercer summons Rosita to help him and a few soldiers to fight a herd of walker that are coming to Commonwealth.

"Lockdown" is an episode full of action of "The Walking Dead". However, politics seems to prevail in this season where an organized society is formed with the same model of USA before the zombie apocalypse. The class struggle, Hornsby and Pamela Milton seem to be the greatest problem of Commonwealth. But it is bad with them and maybe worst without them, since they built the town in the middle of the chaos. The next episodes will say. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Lockdown"

The premise of episode 11.17 titled "Lockdown": Daryl and Negan rush to the commonwealth to stop Hornsby from going after their families. Pamela deals with protesters demanding justice for Sebastian's crimes. Mercer needs Rosita's help to fight a swarm. This episode contains some brilliant editing, transitions and pacing. Julia Ruchman penned the script for 11.17 and I have only good things about her work in this episode, the overall writing was brilliant and the dialogue felt right. Overseen by Angela Kang, the writing for this episode is consistent of the previous episodes in Part 1 and 2 if not better. The episode uses the big budget wisely, making it brilliant both technically and the acting and so on, the camera work are brilliant and visually a great episode, an overall impressive production. This is also the first episode of Part 3 and honestly, everything just looks better like they got a much bigger budget to work with and I loved the extended intro sequence.

Greg Nicotero directed "Lockdown" and honestly I don't think he have directed one single bad episode in the entire series run, 11.17 is no different as there are superb drama full with suspension and tension. There are so many great scenes in this episode and there's not one single bad performance throughout the entire episode. Scenes that are beautifully shot, scenes that are acted with such brilliance, and every other department and people working on the episode, terrific work. The close ups used, the attention to detail and all the shots in the nature, they nailed it on the camera side of things. The cinematography is once again breathtaking and incredible, just right for the show, the way it was shot and so on, simply brilliant. The sets were detailed and perfect, and so are the art and production design. I also found the effects to be fantastic in this episode, practical effects always makes it so more real, and The Walking Dead is known for their practical effects and they didn't let us down for this episode. Superb sound design and a musical score both gripping and dramatic. It's one of many things on the technical side of things that the show succeeds perfectly with.

"Lockdown" has lots of things that fans of The Walking Dead will like. It's the mid-season premiere of S11C and I anticipated it to be big and it was, building upon the events of the previous episode and thus giving us a memorable and brilliant episode, an action packed one. There were lots of things happening in this episode and no performances truly stood out but I found Josh Hamilton as Lance Hornsby and Michael James Shaw as Mercer to be among the best. But honestly, it was so great to see almost everyone of the cast in the episode, though they didn't get much screen time they were not ignored and I like that. But the action in this episode, the gore and violence, Greg Nicotero directed the hell out of this episode. Simply brilliant.

I hope S11C will be great, it sure started off strong, but I have one criticism in this episode and it's how the Commonwealth soldiers are dumbed down pretty immensely which I didn't feel on quite the same level before. I also got a feeling this story arc will be rushed, but I hope not. "Lockdown" was a great episode of TWD.

We are in the final stretch now. The last batch of episodes for The Walking Dead. The beginning of the end... and honestly, this was pretty damn great.

This feels like a final season finally. The new intro adds a lot, and so does the general scope and tone. The pace is thankfully different from Season 11B.

We get some amazing action here. Daryl and co. Fighting troops was super exciting, and so was Mercer and Rosita battling the horde. We also got a lot of really badass kills with some awesome teamwork from Negan and Daryl.

It's so satisfying to see that no matter how well-armed the troops are, they're no match for our much more experienced group.

Finally having the riots back at the Commonwealth advances the plot and adds a lot of necessary tension to make this feel like a big final storyline. We get so much more of Pamela, and seeing her try to defend the Milton name is compelling.

Another great addition to this episode is Negan meeting Commonwealth characters. His sly nature and Mercer's stonecoldness are a great contrast. I hope we get more of them together. I love that Mercer is learning that bending the rules is what's gonna keep the Commonwealth standing. Negan meeting Sebastian was arguably even cooler. Having these two interact is long overdue.

Carol and Jerry hiding the kids from Lance's people adds even more thrill. I was genuinely frightened for them throughout. Part of what makes Commonwealth so interesting is seeing out group handle these sticky situations without just killing.

The troops tear-gassing the citizens builds up this divisions between the people and the government. S*** is finally hitting the fan within the Commonwealth, not just outside its walls!

It's fantastic to see Negan and Carol reunite. Both their chemistry and Daryl and Maggie's is making it sink in how much I'll mist seeing them all together. Fantastic premiere, and one of the best episodes of the season.

This episode was decent enough I guess, not great but not bad either, it's on par with the rest of the later seasons we've seen before in terms of quality and storytelling.

And my problems with it are the same I've had with the later seasons for a long time.

First of all, what annoyed me the most during this episode was how it was shot. The show definitely and obviously has a color grading but I don't think that's enough. I don't know when they started to go with digital cameras, but I think that was a bad idea. I liked it at first and how crisp and good quality it looked, but now it's just too clean for its own good. It's too clean and crisp and borders on home video quality. They should've just added fake film grain to make it look more "filmy" and not some tiktok video. There's a reason why b movies and indie or bad movies look weirder and are in total contrast to usual high-production movies we see. There's a reason why you immediately recognize when a movie is low production when you see 5 seconds of its trailer, it's mostly because of the color grading and no film grain. There's a reason why movies aren't in high frames and they've been doing 24fps for this long. Movies and shows just shouldn't look this clean and crisp, that makes them look like I'm watching a home video or a youtube clip instead of a high production tv show.

Another thing that still bothers me about the episodes, which is not that big of a deal, but something that I notice in pretty much every episode, is the editing and the pacing of the show. The way they cut to another scene and the order of these scenes just feel weird to me and I don't know why. Sometimes it feels like there's something missing in between and they've cut something out or the transition just needs an establishing scene maybe. But like I said, it's not that big of a deal at the end of the day, but is felt anyway.

Hornsby's last cliffhanger scene from the previous episode is weirdly mentioned on the recap here but isn't alluded to in any way for some reason, which I guess they'll probably address that in the next episode maybe, but why show it on the recap if none of the scenes of this episode is about that?

Another thing that I'm sure most people are gonna complain about is the incompetency of these stormtroopers. I realize that things like these are needed so the plot happens, suspension of disbelief and all that, but when it happens this much and all of these "trained" and professional soldiers act like this, I can't really look away. It is kinda common for the show's new writing to be this way, at least they're trying to create new situations with unique zombie kills and zombies eating human stuff, but the way they go about it feels so forced that it's really noticeable. Like we have a soldier that has crashed his car and is calling for backup, but then just stands there for the zombies to get to him when he has a mile of free space behind him. Again, I get that the plot and scenes like what happens after wouldn't happen if everyone was Einstein, but they've had all this time to think the script through, surely they could've come up with situations where are these things happening don't feel as forced and artificial as they are right?

The show's writing from season 9 till now has been a masterpiece compared to the trash writing of 7 and 8, but it's not perfect and my big complaint is this feeling of forced and artificiality. The writing is competent enough, I just want a more natural writing than what we're getting, that's all.

Not to mention how Daryl and the gang had like 5 chances by now and from previous episodes too to easily kill Hornsby but they've missed. Thankfully, at least he does get shot a couple of times to make him seem less plot armor-y, but they keep showing these situations where Daryl can easily take him out and doesn't and that makes him getting shot matter less, not to mention he goes on by his day like nothing happened to him either. I'm not saying they should kill him because that would mean the plot is gonna end or we miss a better plot from the future episodes, I'm just saying they shouldn't keep making these situations and find a better way.

I was also hoping before the last part of the season ended, that this Commonwealth plot was gonna end there and we were gonna be done with it and this third part was gonna be about whatever Michonne and Rick were doing, but I guess I was too hopeful and they're probably gonna end this season and the show as a whole with the Commonwealth plot and maybe have Rick and Michonne back for the last episode. And not that the Commonwealth plot is boring or not that good, I just think having Rick and Michonne back with their own plot and group would've been more interesting. Not to mention we had that cannibal group in season 5 and they were done with that plot line so quickly but they're focusing a whole season on this Commonwealth which I think everyone agrees aren't as half as interesting as the cannibals from season 5.

This review sounded really negative and I only talked about my complaints about the show and the episode, but that's because nothing big has happened yet and it's on par with the previous ones and the plot just slightly has gone forward. I otherwise enjoyed the episode and it's good to be back in this universe and finally see how they're gonna end it. I liked most of the cinematography and some shots of these episodes, though I don't really like when they do close-ups when characters are talking to each other. The music is great as always and Bear McCreary has been killing it for years and the music of this show has only become more noticeable these past few seasons when the showrunner changed.

All in all decent enough episode if you're binging the season, but I think it should've been better since it's practically a season opener when it's coming out after a long hiatus, good enough nonetheless.

Like most fans i was hoping we'd see a return to form like the early seasons, but there's very little sense of drama or fear or tension. Each scene just seems to slope along one after another without anything to really grab you. Whatever magic this show had in the first 5-6 seasons went byebye some time ago. We can only hope that the directors/producers rediscover some form before the end and wow us with a decent ending, but i'm not that hopeful on current form. It will be a strange feeling when this show ends. On the one hand it'll be a shrug of the shoulders, on the other hand it'll leave a big void (the show that it WAS back in the early days). I wonder what the TV gods have in store for us.