#i think 7x09 put me in a coma

[buck-up-buck]

If anyone needs me i’ll be laying in the middle of the road in the rain for next seven days until 7x10 airs because respectfully ABC, wtaf.

[piracytheorist]

Season 7 flashbacks timeline

Note: The tilde (~) is used between episodes where I’m not 100% sure which goes first. For example, I guessed that Tiana met Facilier (7x05) before the time we saw Belle with Rumpelstiltskin (7x04). But I could be wrong. This was mostly my insomniac mind begging me to think things. Also please ignore the very succinct summaries.

7x09: Rapunzel is imprisoned and escapes the tower six years later. She poisons Cecelia's heart, the latter runs away. Anastasia is put into a magical coma and Gothel is imprisoned in the tower.

7x07: Alice is born and Gothel escapes the tower. ~ 7x17: Zelena meets Ivo and his children, Hansel and Gretel.

7x13: Wish Hook's heart is poisoned.

7x14 (a): Alice escapes the tower.

7x01 (a): Henry leaves Storybrooke.

7x05: Tiana meets Facilier. ~ 7x04: Belle grows old with Rumpelstiltskin. After she dies he leaves to find the Guardian and meets Alice. They see Henry roll with his motorcycle toward the ball.

7x01 (b): Henry meets Cinderella.

7x02: Enter Wish Hook. He and Regina join Henry in his quest.

7x03: Tiana meets Cinderella and together they build the Resistance. The above trio meet with them some time later. Ella assumes her former name.

7x06: Regina meets Drizella at the ruins of Alice's tower. Things don't end well.

7x08: Alice and Wish Hook have a painful reunion. Ella confesses her tragic past to Henry. Drizella tries to poison Henry's heart, but fails. At the end, Henry and Ella get together. Enter Jack/Hansel. ~ 7x15: Drizella joins Gothel's coven after killing Gretel.

7x16: Fake and then real sea adventure with Henry and Wish Hook. Henry proposes to Ella.

7x10 (a): Lucy is born. Lady Tremaine has allied with the heroes and Drizella is trapped.

7x12: We see Lucy as a baby. Tiana meets Naveen. She's later crowned Queen. 7x11: We see Lucy as a baby. Enter Zelena and Robin. Gothel tries to sacrifice Robin in order to resurrect Madame Leota. Zelena saves her and Gothel poofs away. Robin gives Zelena her magic.

7x14 (b): Alice meets Robin. Her tower is destroyed all over.

7x10 (b): Eight years later, Drizella escapes and the curse is cast.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

7x09: General Analysis

Woot, woot! Who liked last night’s episode? I loved it! Smiled through the whole thing. So let’s dive right in! I’m going to do analysis of general events for today. I’ll leave details (colors, background details, etc.) for tomorrow.

***Major spoilers for episode 7x09 in this post. don't read until you've watched! You've been warned!!!***

Starts off with Gabriel. This who sequence was SUPER suspicious to me. While Father Gabriel hasn’t always been an obvious proxy for Beth (more often he’s used to retell her stories) he has been one sometimes. The biggest thing, and I’ve said this before, is how quickly he went from weak to strong. He became something of a leader at Alexander, and someone that Rick trusted with Judith’s safety, all of which have parallels to Beth.

Now, we have no idea what’s going on with him here. Why he decided to take all the food and take off in the middle of the night, but I thought it was interesting. (My sister made a funny comment about him. She said, “he tends to just wander off for no reason.” Everyone laughed when she said that, but she was kinda right. Remember in 5x16 when he took a stroll outside the walls of Alexandria, told a walker to kill him, killed it instead, then laid down in the road and cried? Yeah, he does random shit like that. But there was also him and the three grave in 5a which they haven’t entirely explained yet.

But the thing that caught my attention most from a TD perspective was the bible. 

He dropped it on the floor and we got a very obvious shot of the “Holy Bible” imprinted on the cover. Now granted, FG usually carries a bible, but we don’t always see the cover so clearly like that. The two other times that first come to mind when we did was 1) in Coda, when he found that bible on the ground at the school. FG picked it up and flipped it open, much like Rick did in this episode. 

And in Coda, the passage FG looked at had Beth’s name next to a 7. Just saying. 

2 Chronicles 11:7 reads, “And Beth-zur, and Shoco, and Adullam…”

2) in Them, just before Maggie opens the door and sees the Beth walker, we get a clear shot of the “Holy Bible” as well.

If FG is a proxy for Beth here, look at the sequence in this light: first we see the Holy Bible, just like in Coda, and then he suddenly disappears without a trace, just like Beth.  He sees the drawing of Lucille in the book, which suggests Beth + Saviors. And where does FG put all his contraband? In the *coughs* trunk of the car. Then he drives off into the night. Just saying.

(P.S. He’s even wearing a sweater here. .It’s not exactly like Beth’s—I think his zips up—but it’s greyish and comes down over his hands in a similar way. And when have we ever seen FG wear a sweater?) 

One last thought on Gabriel: my other sister asked another interesting question. Hers was nearer to the end of the episode when the Alexandrians were explaining to Rick about Gabriel. Rick unequivocally said he didn’t believe Gabriel had betrayed them. My sister asked why Rick puts so much faith in Gabriel. Again, I don’t know, other than trusting him and just not believing this of him. But again, it felt like a symbolic parallel to me. Having faith that Gabriel hasn’t done what it looks like. And Tara said, “He found his courage. I want to believe he held onto it.” Just lines that jumped out at me.

Next, at the Hilltop. Yeah, I totally want to punch Gregory in his face, but I suppose that’s the point. Rick and Daryl do too (all of TF really) so I guess I’m in good company. In this episode, Tara really becomes the Beth proxy insofar as she is positive and optimistic. (Remember that she’s been one before, especially in 5b when she sustained a serious head wound, was in a coma for a time and then woke up.) There’s what she said about FG above, but it was even more obvious at the Hilltop. She talked about how good people generally step up, in direct contrast to Gregory’s negativity and Daryl’s pessimism.

But what REALLY made me smile? As soon as she started to say her positive lines, Gregory says, “Let me stop you before you break into song.” Okay, I get that he was being a douche, but SONG? Yeah, Tara = Beth. Just saying.

One other thing about Tara that caught my eye was that at the Kingdom, she hugs Morgan. Now, Morgan was at Alexandria for a time, but I don’t remember any specific interaction she and Morgan had. Am I forgetting something? Granted, he hugged Sasha too, but for some reason that seemed less weird to me. Maybe I’m just thinking about it wrong, but it doesn’t seem to me like Tara and Morgan ever spent much time together. Yet, she seemed really happy to see him and hugged him first. Given her “song” bird proxy, her hugging Morgan is just interesting. But I’ll have to think on it more.

Other things at the Kingdom. There was a running motif there. Two or three different times we saw groups of people jogging, and I don’t think we’ve seen that before. It may not be a TD thing at all, but I couldn’t help but think of the flash of Beth running in the opening credits.

Poor Daryl. Carol is always leaving him. He looked so sad when Morgan said she’d gone. 

But notice the very interesting dialogue parallel here. Morgan didn’t say she’d left. He didn’t say she took off or simply wasn’t there anymore. He said she was hurt, she got help, and now she’s GONE. So once again, being gone doesn’t = death. Just absence. We’ve seen them do this many times in the show. Carol isn’t dead. She’s just absent from Daryl’s life. (This wasn’t said to any other character. It was aimed at Daryl.) And if Carol being gone doesn’t = death, then neither does “You’re gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone.”

Can we have a Jerry appreciation moment? 

Obviously not TD but I SO look forward to Jerry. And what’s so great about it is how he and Ezekiel play off one another. Jerry is hilarious on his own, but when Ezekiel gets annoyed with him, it’s a million times better. I look forward to every scene the two of them are in. (Don’t you dare kill Jerry, Gimple! He’s such delightful comic relief!)

Okay, moving on. The “rock in the road” story, which is where the episode’s title came from, and that’s super significant. Tell me I don’t have to explain this one to everyone. It was so freaking obvious!

The girl–yes girl. I just can’t help but think if Rick was told this story as a child, it would have been about a boy. An adult telling a story to a kid usually tries to make that story as relatable as possible to the child. So unless it’s a well-known story where the gender can’t possibly change (like Cinderella or Jack and the Beanstalk) I just find it curious that Rick said the story was about a girl. …Unnnless it’s supposed to be symbolic, yeah?

So the rock in the road was a nuisance. He mentioned how horses broke legs and wagons lost wheels. (Lost shoe theory anyone?) Then the girl’s cask of beer broke. (Moonshine? “Did you have to break the glass?”) The girl’s family was sad and hungry. Every part of this story can be related to arcs around Beth. In 5x10 (where the music box woke up) TF was starving on the road, and at their lowest point. The girl sat and cried (“All I wanted to do today is sit down and cry, but we don’t get to do that.”) But ultimately, the girl was spurred to action. (“We might as well do something.”) 

She bloodied her hands getting rid of that rock, and was richly rewarded for it. Yeah, lines up EXACTLY with what we’ve all theorized, based on other evidence, will be Beth’s role when she returns. ANNDDD the episode title was taken from this story.

This makes me just plain giddy. ;D

Umm…again, staying away from details, but since I mentioned the broken legs above, we had a “lost limb” motif in this episode. First the horse legs in the story, then Ezekiel mentions that many of his people lost limbs, and we saw some of them practicing archery. Then later, Simon alludes to the fact that Rick almost had to cut Carl’s arm off and says next time it won’t go so well. I’m with @thegloriouscollectorlady on this. It may not be Rick, but they keep alluding to someone losing a limb, so chances are it’s gonna happen to someone at some point. I also think this is a reiteration of the disembodied shoe theory. Still not sure how it will all come together, but it’s there.

The herd on the highway and all the cars were an interesting callback to S2. Not even sure they’re going for a TD thing there, but let’s just remember that when that happened last time, Sophia went missing, and Daryl searching for her was still one of the most memorable arcs on the show. Just saying.

The bomb was red and green, and the wire colors when they hot-wired the cars were interesting. I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

(I’m gonna skip the Benjamin/Carol scene and do a whole post about it on Wednesday. I’m seeing some interesting setups there but I want to give it its own post.)

When they finally make it back into the car, Michonne tells Rick to smile because they’re okay and they made it. She says, “We’re here. We can make it. We can. We’re the ones that’ll live.” That’s in direct opposition to what Edwards said to Beth on the rooftop of Grady. He said, “we’re not the ones who make it.” Not an accident my friends. Definite dialogue parallel there. And just as with all things in this season, it’s equal, but opposite. So we’re heading toward the opposite of what we saw then. In s5, we saw Beth “not make it.” But now, “we’re the ones that live.”

Another of my favorite things from this episode was Simon’s line after they turned Alexandria upside down looking for Daryl. (I have to credit @thegloriouscollectorlady for this one too. I totally didn’t pick it up the first time and busted out laughing when she pointed it out. Such a great TD hint!) 

Simon said that if Daryl returned in 2 days, 2 months or 2 years, Rick still had to turn him over. I’m sorry, did they just allude to a character turning up after being gone for 2 years? He said there was no statute of limitations on Daryl’s return. If there’s not one for Daryl, there sure as hell isn’t one for Beth, my friends. And the 2s are very reassuring because 2 still points to her return in s7.

Gabriel left the one word note, “Boat.” Now, we didn’t get to what’s up with Gabriel in this episode, but I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that we had Oceanside AND a houseboat on the water in 7a. Again, don’t know exactly where it’s headed, but it’s just more of nautical theme, which has been heavily entwined with Beth symbolism, so I was glad to see it. Just feels to me like we’re getting closer and closer to how/when she’ll appear, and the nautical theme is definitely a part of it.

Overall thoughts: I noticed that we had three major events in this episode. First, going to the Kingdom, then the Saviors searched Alexandria, then going to look for Gabriel which resulted in finding the junk yard. So, on the one hand, this season is already moving MUCH faster than the first half (this would have been three separate episodes in 7a ;D) but there’s also rule of threes. So they met new, potential allies, then faced some enemies, then discovered a new community that could be either. Just kind of interesting structurally.

I do have to complain about one thing, though. I was afraid it might happen. The whole “biggest twist ever” thing? Yeah, there was really no twist. Yes, the cutting-the-walkers-in-half thing was all kinds of awesome. 

Total Ghost Ship status. (Old horror film, if you aren’t familiar. Very gnarly.) Finding the junk yard ended in a cliff hanger, but again, not a twist by itself. Just an episode ending cliff hanger. Maybe they meant Gabriel leaving, but if that’s the case, we don’t really know why or what that will lead to, so the “twist” wouldn’t have come in this episode anyway. I hate it when stuff like that gets us all excited and then doesn’t pan out. Grrh.

But, overall, I really loved this episode. (Remember how I said I hoped it was as cool as 6x09 when Daryl blew up the Saviors with a rocket launcher? Okay, well that didn’t happen but I did notice that they took some RPGs from the highway along with the dynamite, so that might have been a parallel. And walker annihilation on the highway came pretty close to the epicness of 6x09.)

Final thought: the more I watch the more it seems to me that Beth will show up at the Kingdom first. I’ve been reluctant to say that before, because even though there are LOTS of Beth symbols at the Kingdom, we see them other places too. I’ll get more into this throughout the week, but it also helps that Daryl is there now. Her showing up there would be positively sublime. (Granted, that’s head cannon as much as theory, but I do have some evidence to back it up. Stay tuned.)

So what do you all think? Anything I missed?

(Again, as a preview for the rest of the week, I’ll do details tomomrrow, Benjamin/Carol stuff on Wednesday, and then I have some things from @wdway and @bluesandbeth later in the week. So glad the show is back! ;D)