Davon

In a small town in Maine, Davon awakens with a head wound and temporary amnesia and shackled to the corpse of a woman named Amanda. After putting Amanda down, Davon hallucinates Amanda talking to him, accusing Davon of murder. In flashbacks, a wounded Davon arrives in town seven weeks earlier and he is taken in by Amanda and her sister Nora with whom he develops a romantic relationship. In the present, Davon finds a zombified boy in Amanda's basement and puts him down before being captured by the townspeople who accuse Davon of murdering their missing children and attempt to execute him. His memories slowly returning, Davon remembers finding Nora's son Garen who escaped while Davon fought off, shackled himself to and accidentally killed Amanda in self-defense when she tried to kill him. Escaping his execution, Davon finds Garen with Amanda's son Arnaud who has been kidnapping and murdering the town's children, convinced that he is sparing them from the horrors of the world while Amanda had been protecting her son. Finding the reanimated bodies of two of Arnaud's victims, Davon summons the townspeople and exposes Arnaud while Garen exonerates Davon. The enraged parents feed Arnaud to his own victims in revenge and the disgusted Davon leaves town.

The episode does its best to immerse us in Davon's jumbled point of view by careening constantly between flashbacks and the present day, but in the interest of clarity, let's lay all this out in chronological order: Seven weeks before the episode begins, an injured Davon is rescued and healed by the small, apparently peaceful community still residing in Madawaska. The group's leader, Amanda, is obviously bad news; this is the kind of person who says stuff like "Sometimes murder is mercy" while grimacing and staring directly into his eyes without blinking.

Davon is either too dumb to recognize the obvious danger here or too distracted by Nora, a Madawaska resident with whom he enjoys an instant and mutual attraction. The budding lovebirds have an adorable postapocalyptic courtship - flirting over strawberry picking and piano lessons - that sadly unravels when Nora becomes convinced Davon has murdered her preadolescent son, Garen.

Yes: As Agatha Christie might have titled one of her lesser novels, there's a murderer in Madawaska. But the episode doesn't have a lot of time to introduce and resolve this whole mystery, so you don't need to be a Poirot to figure out the likeliest suspects. Amanda is creepy but so obvious she's clearly a red herring. But she does have a weird teenage son, Arnaud, who keeps talking about how his mother is the only person who loved and understood him.

We hear about all this in the past tense because - in the episode's cleverest bit - it turns out Amanda is the zombie handcuffed to Davon all along. When Davon stumbled into the murder basement where Arnaud had been bringing his young victims, Amanda tried to stop him and died for her trouble, leaving Davon on the hook for the kidnappings and killings. And with no one left to vouch for his innocence, the entire town is ready for his execution.

That includes Nora, whose distrust of Davon belies the fragility of her own mantra: "We decide who we are." The town has decided Davon is a child murderer - and by deciding (inaccurately) who Davon is, they have decided they're the kind of community that will murder an innocent person based on flimsy and circumstantial evidence.

Madawaska's baroque method of execution involves putting Davon in an old car, crushing it with a bulldozer, then letting zombies feast on him. Like the board game Mouse Trap, it is a bizarrely elaborate way to do a relatively simple thing, and it gives Davon plenty of time to escape without too much hassle.

With his memories restored, Davon confronts Arnaud, who mounts his defense for why killing kids is actually a moral good. Growing up in the zombie apocalypse makes you twisted, he warns. By killing the kids, he says, he's saving them from a lifetime of awful things they'll need to do to survive. He finishes this weird little speech with a familiar line - say it with me: "Sometimes murder is mercy."

Davon is not convinced. Neither is the rest of the town, who finally figure out the truth. And in a stab at a poetic execution that is at least more practical than crushing by bulldozer in a car, Arnaud is tossed into a nearby pit where the children he killed have come back as zombies.

This is Davon's chance for a big speech, and he doesn't waste it. "We don't have to live like this! We don't have to be like this! We decide who we are" he shouts. It was probably fun for Usher to cap off his performance with this big, melodramatic monologue, but the audience have a hard time believing that anyone who paid even a little attention to the events of the episode needed its message spelled out so plainly.

What did I just watch? First 4 episodes were truly enjoyable. I'm not sure what kind of artsy fartsy mind trip the writer thought he was taking us down, but save that for some drama show. Like Friends, or Steel Magnolias or the like.

Someone went to some mind journey camp where the ganja was being passed hard, and thought to themselver... what if... what if instead of a show about Zombies.... let's let the main character go through a mind journey... having nothing to do with zombies.

This episode's script read more like a high school drama play.

Tales of the Walking Dead.... this is not. Hard pass.

I don't think this episode is outstanding. But it's something new and interesting. Missed opportunity to film somewhere other than America, and clear reuse of the lakeside set from the previous episode.

The main character is a great actor and some of the other side characters are quite poor in comparison but overall I enjoyed it. I'm glad the talking walker thing stopped quickly as I feel these episodes rely too much on mental issues.

The story wasn't really surprising, but it was still not very predictable. The episode was a bit short to make the end result convincing. So far it's one of the better episodes, but for me, Dee is still the top. Followed by the previous episode.

This is why the Walking Dead franchise needs to end. First, the parent show, since the ninth season has no guts anymore. Let Maggie, Rick and Michonne (in the stupidest way possible) walk. Then Fear, which has never been great. It's just jumped from utter trash with unlikable people making stupid decisions to mostly unlikable people (the likable ones getting killed off) making stupid decisions. The writers had ZERO clue about fallout and radiation and a SWAT vehicle won't be knocked about by a hurricane, but A NUCLEAR SUBMARINE WILL. Then we have The World Beyond. Terrible beyond belief. I mean ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. Now this. The Dee episode even though it messed with the timeline, was the best. The others were all either stupid, terrible or both. Were there even zombies in this somnambulistic episode? I couldn't tell you with all the yelling and bad French accents. I'm not even sure I'm watching the last episode. And I'm not sure I'm going to watch anymore of the spin-offs which have all been disappointing. I wonder, will they do a spin-off from a zombies point of view?

The first 4 of this series were overall pretty decent and original. I enjoyed them. But I don't know what happened here. It started out ok, but then it got very confusing. And, then MORE so it progressed. Then it got pretty stupid and inconsistent, and then the writers seemed to have handed over the last half hour of work on the script to some college kids fresh out of some New Age seminar on personal responsibility...and zombies. Anything this confusing is never boring, but it's EXTREMELY irritating when you finally realize it NOT you being slow, but rather the entire episode never stopped making that horrible sucking sound the entire time. It was a serious Fuster-Cluck from start to finish. Those flash-back thingys really have to be done with great care, continuity and intelligent writing. This had NONE of that. Sci-Fi type shows about the paranormal and whatnot often lose their edge and get cancelled BECAUSE they start trying to please TOO many people while losing their 'Edginess'(and originality). It becomes pure fluffy dramatic 'filler' and just more Prozac flavored bubble gum that eventually insults people's intelligence by playing everything TOO safe, while trying to put at least ONE tear in everyone's eye while also leaving them 'Tense' at the conclusion of an episode. It doesn't work that way! I don't want to feel good when I watch a zombie flick. I don't want a 'happy ending', I want a SATISFYING ending. I don't want to hear endless droning on and on and ON about someone's past tragedies and emotional hurt when I'm WAITING TO BE SCARED AND UNNERVED!! All that constant blabbering drama has just sunk so many great shows in the past, and THAT is why this series has SO much potential going for it. Bad writing, over-acting, and crappy directing is certainly more forgivable in this case than the constant blubber-blabber we see in the other Walking(and too much talking)Dead spin-offs. And yes, this was actually bad enough that I feel my cable company should send me a rebate of at least five bucks...Oh, and on another note...

...Could someone please, PLEASE give the very talented actress in this episode, Loan Chabanol, some roles actually worthy of her talents?!? It's truly tragic seeing so much amazing acting skills out there just going to waste in bit parts.

Cheers!~