Father Gabriel and Aaron take on the Terminator and his twin.
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Online Editor
The Walking Dead: “One More”
Season 10, Episode 19
Airdate: 3/14/2021
When I envisioned what the 150th episode of The Walking Dead would look like, I did not envision it being a Father Gabriel/Aaron bottle episode. 2015 me would have laughed you off the internet.
As it stands, “One More” is actually quite good and it features a guest appearance by ROBERT PATRICK. I typed that in all capital letters because I love ROBERT PATRICK, and I sincerely hope my editors allow me to keep typing ROBERT PATRICK as ROBERT PATRICK.
Anyhow, ROBERT PATRICK is great. I don’t think I’ve hated anything ROBERT PATRICK has ever been in. He even made that “Marine” movie with John Cena back in 2006 watchable. Anyone who has actually seen that movie knows how hard of a task that must have been.
ROBERT PATRICK also had a criminally underappreciated role in The X-Files in its final two seasons. I sometimes feel like I am the only X-Files fan that actually loved his John Doggett character, and I think not bringing him back for that show’s revival was a real missed opportunity.
He was also one of the Terminators in a movie once. Apparently that’s where a lot of people know him from. I’m not really familiar with that role, but I’m sure ROBERT PATRICK made it work.
In “One More,” ROBERT PATRICK’s role isn’t as innovative as some of his other ones, but he still puts on a great performance, in two different roles nonetheless. He plays a crazed survivalist named Mays, who makes Gabriel and Aaron play a game of Russian Roulette because, well, reasons. He’s crazy, he doesn’t really need a reason.
This game ends just as Aaron is about to fire the final bullet into his own head. Mays stops them, and all appears to be smoothed over until Father Gabriel, who had been trying to make peace with Mays the entire episode, takes Aaron’s metal mace arm and kills Mays with one blow. The fact that Father Gabriel did this was somewhat surprising, but it didn’t have the same effect on me that it apparently did other critics. I just assumed he picked up some pointers from Rick Grimes before he flew away on that helicopter.
Then they find May’s living quarters, where they also find his identical twin and the long-decomposed bodies of his family. His brother is chained to the wall, and when he grabs a gun, he takes his own life.
Overall, this was a fun bottle episode with some absolutely beautiful cinematography. But it’s nothing that moved anything forward.
SCATTERED OBSERVATIONS:
– I can’t say it enough: Father Gabriel has come a long way since me actively rooting for him to die for practically all of Season 5.
– Very funny how the show continues to ignore the fact that Aaron’s “daughter” Gracie was abducted from the Saviors in Season 8. Where are this girl’s actual parents? I think Rick might have killed her dad before abducting her, but I don’t remember. This show has a lot of stories that I have forgotten about.
– I appreciate how the walkers are socially distanced from one another after they get taken out.
