#oceanside twd

[dustbunniess]

DARYL’S OCEANSIDE GIRL PT2

[denisesoatmeal]

I don't think Denise would be too proud of Tara giving up Oceanside, but she would be happy she got home safe. I am happy she got home safe.

[incorrectwalkingdeadquotes]

Oceanside: You can’t just take our guns.

Alexandria: We have a permit.

*shows paper*

Oceanside: This just says “We can do what we want.”

[feministwalkingdead]

Feminist Walking Dead, Season 7, Episode 6, “Swear”

It only took six months, but we finally saw Tara learn of Denise’s death -- for about a minute. She took it pretty well, all things considering -- but that’s how it goes in the ZA -- everybody else picks themselves up and moves on. In Tara’s case, though, it feels like a cheat. Her relationship with Denise got so little screen time and had so little heat/romance that her response seems indifferent. Couldn’t Alanna Masterson have had a minute to react on-screen rather than us seeing more of Eugene’s emotions than hers? It’s official -- the Tara/Denise relationship was an unmitigated, embarrassing failure from start to finish, and a textbook example of how television mishandles lesbian relationships. (If Vanity Fair is calling you out, you know you’ve messed up.) So on to this community of women, Oceanside, Tara encounters. They exist because Negan killed all the men. (Considering Negan’s complete blindness in this area, I really, really want a woman to be the architect of his demise.) The remaining community members fled and found a geographically isolated location to live/stay beneath the radar. On the bloodthirsty/messed up scale, Oceanside actually ranks right in the middle -- below the Wolves, the Governor and Negan, but above the Kingdom, Hilltop and Alexandria. To be honest, I didn’t find them that interesting, although I did like Cindy, the teen who helped Tara to escape. I hope we see her again.

So what was good about this episode? Well, lots of Alanna Masterson, for one. She’s a really likable, engaging actress, and she makes the most of every line she gets as Tara. Also, it’s nice to see that Tara still has a moral code, even if she has to work harder to make sense of it.

Finally, it was too bad to see Heath go missing, but frankly, I was worried that he was showing signs of “too decent to live in this immoral world” syndrome that Tyreese suffered from. TWD has a big problem with creating black male characters who aren’t strong enough to face grim necessities of this world -- Tyreese didn’t even want to kill walkers, Noah was literally hobbled, Father Gabriel lives in La La Land, and Morgan was reluctant to kill even the most cartoonishly evil humans. With his objections about killing the Saviors, Heath appeared to be heading in that direction.