I’m not sure one can write spoilers for an episode so utterly predictable, the only parts which surprised me were the few glistening moments where we saw some actual character development. Nevertheless, that’s why we’re here, to pick apart the show, find more tidbits to feed our need for decent entertainment. So many fans lay their hope for TWD’s future on the Negan storyline. This is it, the chance for the show to realign with the chaos within the comics. Producers have promised fans they’d get what they want from this whole thing. If a nap was their ultimate goal, they succeeded.
(Watch out! Spoilers lurk below!)
Maybe that’s not entirely fair. There are stellar moments in the fight at the end which made the skin on my neck tense. But, honestly, maybe five minutes of quality writing are buried deep in cliché dialog, phoned-in emotions, and Rick being Rick. Some of my favorite scenes are with Glenn and Heath.
The original survivor, Glenn, is not keen to kill again. Heath hyped himself up the moment he heard Rick’s plan at the town hall meeting—exactly the reaction their leader wanted from his little pep talk spouting how they need to “get them before they get us.” It became Glenn’s job to talk sense into the young man. A position Glenn found himself in a lot during season one. Remember the car with the alarm? Yeah, a great impulse idea, but the aftermath cost many lives and their camp. Heath may think it’s the right thing to go into the raid ready to kill, but how would he feel the day after? How about a week down the road when he remembers the way his knife wouldn’t quite go into the skull right? Killing haunts the survivors who’ve been in the wild for long. Glenn’s fault is he wants to spare Heath, retain the young man’s innocence. When it comes time for them to do some of the most intimate killing scenes on the show—attacking Saviors in their bed and dispatching them with a single knife thrust trough the eye socket—Glenn takes the kill guilt upon himself. Being no coward, Heath still gets a few kills to notch on his belt when he and Glenn hold the line to guard the enemy’s armory. But even though his kills weren’t up close and personal, Heath still flees in the morning, more than ready to go on the two-week trip with Tara for supplies.
Where Glenn grows as a character, Carol is undermined at every turn. On top of her unfounded refusal to trust Morgan—up until they created a reason with him holding the Wolf in the cell—they’re now making her the “bad boy” to ease fans into the reality of Negan’s notorious potty mouth, plus reintroducing tobacco products to the show since Daryl’s smoking has petered off. In stark contrast, she’s been acting like the town’s mother, something Tobin calls her out on during a random romantic encounter after sunset. During a day full of doubts, concerns, and knowing death is near again, Carol gathered friggen acorns to make cookies for everyone. Even Sam. It’s been a while since the show side-swiped me with emotions, but I teared up seeing the lone cookie on his grave. Then I got angry—Sam gets more care after his death than before.
Carol’s mom-ness spreads to Maggie’s welfare after the pregnant woman insists she go on the raid. Glenn gave up that fight before it started. Rick is told rather bluntly what Carol thinks, but she never spells out why Maggie shouldn’t be there. It’s more of the same when Carol and Maggie, who were left to guard the perimeter and RV, hear the alarm triggered by a Savior—Sasha kills him, but not in time—and rush to help. Carol stops in her tracks, refusing to let Maggie move. Her hesitation because Maggie will also become a mother is why the episode ended in such a convenient manner. Carol, of all the fighters they have, should understand why Maggie is at the raid. Maggie laid out the terms for Gregory. She dug this hole for Alexandria, now either she helps fill it in or it becomes their graves. In Maggie’s shoes, would Carol honestly sit at home baking? Not this Carol. Even weeks out from her last kill, this Carol wouldn’t let others take full responsibility for something she set in motion.
Short note: Abraham is an a-hole. Rosita should shoot him in the foot.
The raid itself is pretty straight-forward. The group sends Eddy to offer Gregory’s head to the Saviors. Don’t fret, it’s a walker they disguised to resemble the injured Hilltop leader. The guards take too long to examine the head, not in terms of creating tension, but it just felt like, “Oh, they’re going to be d-bags and make Eddy sweat.” After one guard fetches the kidnapped Hilltop member, the gang dispatches both guards without a sound. The Hilltop people retreat to a standby vehicle with Jesus, Tara, and Gabriel. Rick, Michonne, Abraham, Sasha, Glenn, Heath, Rosita, and Daryl enter the compound. They pair up, searching each room they pass. If the room is occupied, they kill the Savior inside. If the door is locked, they pry it open. Why the random searching? They know nothing about they layout, only a vague idea of where the armory is and the location for the pantry. The locked rooms turn up a supply closet, a marijuana growing operation, and the armory Glenn and Heath defended.
Things run smoothly until Sasha and Abraham are caught breaking into a room. After the alarm is pulled, the gang mows through the stragglers—who aren’t unarmed, but have aim like Stormtroopers. Jesus, Tara, and Gabriel join the fight. Jesus saves Glenn and Heath from the lone survivor outside the armory. The other Hilltop men take the car and head toward home. Gabriel shows his backbone, praying for a Savior before putting a bullet in his head.
At sunrise, everyone from Alexandria and Hilltop are still alive. Heath scouts the Saviors’ cars and picks one to take on the trip. He and Tara roll out without much fanfare. Michonne wants to know which dead guy is Negan. None of them, duh? Plus, not everyone died. One guy on a motorcycle makes a run for it. He’s shot down. Rick and company surround him, making demands. A woman’s voice over the radio makes her own demands. When they fail to comply, she informs them that her people have Maggie and Carol.
Of course they do. I knew the second Maggie and Carol were left on the outskirts alone that they’d become a bargaining chip. It’s easier to kidnap the women, despite Carol’s ferocity, than the men on the mission—except maybe Heath. This is how they’ll likely force the face-to-face with Negan. A kidnapping. It’s so uninspired.
So naked Rick and Michonne don’t turn Jesus into swiss cheese.
Matter of fact, once the cavalry arrives to restrain Jesus again, they somehow end up listening to what he has to say. They’re totally onboard with sending the town’s ruling council and the majority of their top-tier fighters with this stranger, as well, even after hearing he’d taken full stock of their supplies and people before essentially turning himself in to Rick. They were more suspicious of Morgan, the man who may be the sole reason Rick saw more than a week outside the hospital after his coma. Yes, Morgan snapped his Slim Jim after his son passed, but he is fully not crazy now and Carol still watches the man like he’s about the club them all to death and make sachets from their skin.
With no real concern whatsoever, Rick, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie, Daryl, Abe, and Jesus climb into an RV—there’s always one which just happens to be nearby—and take off toward an undisclosed location with only their vague threats to keep Jesus from driving them into a trap.
Which exactly what it looks like not long after we rejoin the gang on the road. A car, one Jesus swears belongs to his people, crashed on the roadside moments before they drove past. Now, not only are the fighters separated from the group, they’re being put directly in harm’s way for people who may still turn around and put bullets in their brain pans. There’s an urgent rescue. One of the guys, Dr. Carson, thanks Maggie and Glenn by being probably the only OB left alive in the state and offering to care for their baby. How’s that for luck?
During the entire episode, Jesus is essentially Google—feeding Rick and Maggie exactly what they need to manipulate Gregory, Hilltop’s chicken-livered and misogynistic leader. It’s all too easy, this plot. Somehow we end up at the right place at the right time for these unfortunate people to demonstrate the kind of antics keeping Negan top dog in the county. But with all the bad Negan has done—namely, his men murdering a sixteen year old boy upon The Saviors’ first meeting with Hilltop—Jesus seems not concerned at all about being in the room with two men confessing to blowing up quite a few of the boogeyman’s goons. If that were me, I’d wash my hands of Alexandria, not matter how badly we needed another trading post.
Hilltop itself is designed to resemble a walled medieval estate during wartime, with all the folk from the farms and homes under care of the lord encamped within the walls. It’s so blatant, Gregory turning out to be a world class jerk doesn’t surprise me in the least. It’s even less surprising that one of his own men would then stab him, hoping Gregory’s death would secure the release of a man Negan took captive. Why did he take this guy and kill another Hilltop citizen? Gregory sent his people to deliver their usual payoff knowing it wouldn’t be enough. It’s never enough. Negan will demand more and more. Though Gregory survives, this hasn’t done a thing to teach him to grow a pair and take on the man running their lives from afar.
In comes Rick and his band of killers.
Seriously? This is where the story goes? They veer from attempting to set up a functioning ecosystem in Alexandria to hired mercenaries who’ll just kill and take what they want. These are the people Rick wants to kill, usually. But when it suits them, murder is on the table. They wouldn’t need to kill Negan so soon if they’d stopped to do the boring things like clear fields. But they need food now. Hilltop has a functioning system in place which produces enough food to send half to Negan without forcing strict rationing in Hilltop. If Negan doesn’t need that food being dead and all, Alexandria will take it. Now. Half of whatever is on-hand is cheaper than the cumulative price to keep Negan at bay via bribes.
But again, this is all too easy to follow to the conclusions the writers want. They’re trying to make fans guess who’s going to die. Is it Glenn? Negan and Glenn’s comic book story is well known, spread by every reviewer trying to make the show into something it’ll never be—an accurate reflection of the comics. They drive more nails into Glenn’s coffin during this episode, finally giving us a glimpse at his and Maggie’s child in an ultrasound. Every happy character dies on this show. It’s no surprise. Abraham seems a tad happy himself after some soul searching and a near-death experience, but he’s mostly in the story now to fire large weapons and make us question Glenn’s fate going into the season’s end. Some say golden boy Dixon will bite the big one. It makes sense, seeing as he did blow up Negan’s people.
It’s all so boring, this weird dead pool going on in the fandom. I never watched the show to see who would die. I kept watching because the characters made rational decisions in an interesting setting and the story pace never lagged so much, I wanted to wander off for a snack ten minutes into an episode. They’ve killed the Negan story line before it begins.
If you aren’t an adult, this show isn’t for you; neither is this review. Also, show spoilers everywhere.
As far as plans go, it isn’t a bad one. Brujo tells Eligos to take a hike, they get back to sorting out Ash’s mental mojo, then the newly awakened El Jefe cruises to the cabin to bury the friggen book. Easy as Ash getting laid.
Except they still have the wrong person hog-tied and awaiting whatever exorcism ritual requires a knife and chicken carcass. Going out on a limb, here, but I assume the Catholic Church did not approve this method. Despite the gag in his mouth, Ash tells everyone exactly what he thinks of them, the plan, and Keligos’ taunts when Brujo and Pablo can’t see. They brush his anger off as the demon talking. Compiled with Keligos’ compelling performance as a helpless victim, Ash is about to learn first-hand what a blood ritual looks like.
Annoyed by the request, but still fulfilling it, Pablo fetches the ritual supplies and gets out of Brujo’s hair. For a guy who spent a good chuck of his life avoiding the dark and spooky family business, Pablo sure wants to be in the thick of the mess a lot. Keligos has other plans to kill time. Her original plan is to get drunk. Failing to locate the booze, they decide on plan b—Ash’s grass stash. They just need a pipe. Pablo is off to play gopher once again. At some point he has to grow more of a spine. It feels a tad imbalanced—Kelly loses her parents and is possessed, Pablo gets brains and blood splattered over his face and a hot girl practically begging to get him in bed, but she’s the emotionally stronger character. Why pick on Kelly?
If anything positive can be said about the possessed woman, she’s resourceful. Bored with waiting for Pablo and a pipe, she uses the boom stick’s barrel to smoke.
Things get super awkward when Keligos seduces Pablo. Really, she just wants him to quit paying attention so she can blow his head off. Not exactly the method Pablo has in mind, either. He hesitates. Kelios loses her patience for the second time and attacks Pablo. The creature design for the hybrid Kelly and Eligos creature is elegant almost. They didn’t take her so far from human, she looked like a deadite, but made sure to bring Eligos’ distinctive grin onto her face. The effect is startling when it first happens.
Things aren’t going right in the Brujo’s shack, either. Ash isn’t reacting the way he should when approached with blessed items. While Brujo prepares the blood sacrifice, Ash dismisses with the gag, telling Brujo the truth—Eligos is in Kelly and probably about to kill Pablo. Shots fired in the trailer.
Ash and Brujo rush to the trailer. Pablo has Keligos cornered, boom stick aimed at her head. He can’t pull the trigger. They all scuffle over the shotgun. There’s yet another hole in Ash’s trainer, but Brujo subdues Keligos without any human injuries.
Take two on the exorcism. Eligos doesn’t react to any mojo spell, totem, or blessed item. The only time it reacts to a ritual component, it’s to vomit leeches fat with Brujo’s blood near Ash’s feet. They’re getting nowhere fast. Eligos takes to beating Kelly to make the men react.
Pablo and Brujo chat outside. Pablo tells his uncle he’s sorry for leaving so long ago and hiding from the mystical side of their family. While they’re out of the way, Kelly begs Ash to put her out of her misery before Eligos kills her. She even asks him to make sure there’s a cross on her grave. Tisk, tisk, Eligos. Wrong religion.
Things heat up when Pablo struts into the shed and demands Eligos take possession of him instead. Not one to ignore such a ripe morsel, Eligos reaches through Kelly’s mouth to grab Pablo. Unlike other mouth-exiting gags, they didn’t feel the need to waste time making Kelly’s mouth do weird things. Most of the shot following Eligos as it emerges is straight-forward.
The demon claims one last victim—Brujo, startled by how quickly Eligos jumps to and fro, is impaled through the chest when he dodges an attack. His death is not unavenged. Ash uses the not-so-wise words he told himself in the vision quest to finally find the right timing to blow Eligos’ blue-goo filled head to smithereens.
Kelly wakes from the ordeal with another headache and a gap in her memory from the time they reached the ranch. Ash fills in some of the blanks after ensuring she has ice for her head. They burn Brujo’s body on a funeral pyre. Pablo makes a lot of promises to the dead guy. In return, Brujo’s spirit flings a red-hot necklace at Pablo’s feet.
For the first time in the history of history, Ash apologizes for his part in the whole raising the ultimate evil fiasco. Pablo tries to brush the apology under the rug. Kelly tells him not to, Ash owes humanity an apology, not just the people stuck in the fight with him. They can’t walk into the final stage of the battle—the trip to the cabin—without all hands on deck. The hand Pablo started for Ash magically finished itself at some point. Trying it on, the first thing Ash does is high-five his team, then flip them the bird.
Keep it classy, Ash. And keep your backside in gear. Ruby and Amanda haven’t given up the hunt. Their method to navigate just takes a little longer than Amanda likes or has the patience for. The slow-moving hand GPS isn’t her only problem. Ruby is actively dodging Amanda’s questions, and not even that well, to be honest. What isn’t the deadite slayer telling her new buddy?
We finally, finally get the time jump we’ve waited at least six episodes for and the events following are so dull, I bet half the audience couldn’t tell me how many vehicles Rick and Daryl drove throughout the episode—hint, it’s more than two. Two things of note happen in this episode. One is such a bone-headed move by the writing and production crew, I cannot believe they think it’s going to work. Or that fans want this thing to happen in the first place. The second is a ham-handed attempt to make this show feel like it was once a comic book.
And now, the spoiler-filled portion of the review. You’ve been warned.
Let’s just get it over with: They killed Jessie and her children to put Michonne in Rick’s bed. At last. They’ve been dancing around this doomed ‘ship for a while, usually pushing back the inevitable hookup with Rick making questionable decisions, irritating Michonne, and putting them back in their friendship box. We were happy with them in that box. At what point did fans honestly ask them to change Rick’s relationship status to, “Grieving, but banging my number one fighter,” because that makes sense? Yes, it’s been a few weeks their time, but it’s been one week for us. Fans are still reeling from losing Jessie, Sam, and Ron. Wait. Who am I kidding? The writers never gave those characters a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming three-dimensional, relatable characters. Seeing how easily they wrote them off, Jessie and Rick was a red herring for the possible relationship established at the end of this episode. Which sucks. Rick and Michonne had a nice, normal moment together. They’re laughing. Relaxed, despite their hectic days. The kids are safe. No one from town was injured, killed, or has the sniffles. It’s a side of these two we rarely see honestly portrayed on screen. Then the moment is ruined by an awkward make-out session and the producers making it perfectly clear they slept together. Like having two leads in bed together is a vital part of this show. There hasn’t been a serious romance-driven story line since Lori and Shane scrambled to figure out their future with Rick awake. We saw how well that story line ended. It was meant to end that way, though. Shane’s mental illness and inability to let Rick “win” carried the relationship drama with the plot. Michonne and Rick hooking up makes no sense, unless you look at it from the POV of a producer scrounging for viral gossip on social media. They wanted this moment to wag jaws online. Instead, people are rolling their eyes.
The second issue I had actually involves the episode plot—which is essentially just Rick and Daryl attempting to go on a supply run and failing spectacularly, but they have help failing from a new guy. What, another new guy? Yeah. He’s an odd duck, and has more than a few tricks up his sleeve. After Rick and Daryl follow Eugene’s advice and hit up a barn on a sorghum farm, they find a truck with supplies. Taking the truck, they move down the road, stopping at a gas station so Daryl can find a can of pop for Denise to give to Tara. The new guy—Paul, but friends call him Jesus—manages to steal the truck, blow a tire on it down the road, gets the truck taken back, and hitches a ride on top of said coveted vehicle. Rick brakes suddenly, flinging Jesus onto the ground. The guy still has enough left in his system to run around the truck, dodging Daryl’s attempts to snag him. The fight only ends after Jesus puts down a stray walker that’s sneaking up on Daryl and Daryl thanks him by tackling him in the truck’s cab. They hit the gear shift and the supplies, plus their new wheels, sink into a pond. The whole thing is downright cartoony. I half expected Jesus to pull a large carrot from his coat and call Daryl, “Doc.” While a “day in the life” episode can be fun, this took a comic character’s introduction and gave it no real thought in how to ground this guy in the reality they’ve established. Daryl and Rick aren’t this moronic. They wouldn’t have their keys pick-pocketed. They would be on-guard, still. Daryl knows there’s more guys like the bikers he blew up out there. Rick is too gung-ho to add a thieving stranger to their ranks—an action simply brushed off by Rick telling Daryl he was right to recruit after Pete killed Reg, back when Rick wanted to close ranks and keep out strangers. But there’s never a real reason given as to why Rick changes his mind after Jesus cost them easily a week’s worth of household odds and ends for Alexandria. It’s convenient for him to change his mind because the story needs Jesus down the road. Just to be safe, after Denise tends to the head wound which knocks Jesus out after the truck fight, they lock him in the prison room. Jesus escapes in time to catch Michonne and Rick nude in bed together.
Another tidbit they added which doesn’t make much sense is Deanna’s walker in the woods. Carl and Enid see her first in the episode. Though Deanna’s face is hidden until later, they give the game away by showing her bandaged leg wound. Later, Spencer and Michonne end up wandering aimlessly until Spencer finally opens up a little about feeling like an outsider with his family dead. Right on cue, Carl leads Deanna’s walker past the adults. Spencer finally tells Michonne that killing his mother again is why he keeps sneaking off. Luckily he found her that time, otherwise the scenes would’ve been completely useless. Oh, wait, they already are. The writers are trying to salvage a character they’ve repeatedly made too cowardly or too stupid to live. It’s too late for character development. Spencer has been on the show for too long to make us care now. It just means they plan to kill him horrifically down the road. If this show is anything, it’s predictable when it comes to secondary character deaths.
This episode could’ve been fun. It did have its moments, especially the friendly moments where Rick wasn’t the Rick they’ve written for the last three seasons. There were some cute jokes, and few laughs, but for the most part it’s a skippable episode. All the momentum they built with the townsfolk banding together for that epic fight scene is lost one episode later. They’re going to drag this plot down to snoozeville, then catch us off guard with Negan’s brutality. Only, it’s not a surprise if we see it coming episodes away.
This episode is not for the weak-hearted. Matter of fact, I highly regretted filling my coffee mug just one more time before settling in to watch. Twenty minutes into the episode, I paused and took a five-minute break to watch puppy videos. Otherwise my heart would’ve exploded.
Warning! Walking Dead Spoilers ahead, as well as graphic descriptions of violence.
Now, I’m not doing a complete 180* flip on my stance on the show using easy outs. There were simply too many deaths in this episode which in the end tied up a loose thread in the plot. Sure, they were somewhat spectacular deaths, but that then comes down to a simple A-B reasoning for offing the character. A, the character over complicates the plot—yet Father Gabriel, who has done nothing but get people killed, remains safe; heck, he’s mentally recovering from his sins far better than anyone left alive on the show. The B reason for these producer-targeted deaths then shifts to making them so astounding visually, fans will confuse a visceral reaction to the death with a genuine connection to the woefully two-dimensional character.
There’s no ride with these people. No thrills, lulls, love, empathy to make them matter. They’re cannon fodder tossed on the field to make the generals look like they have the numbers to win the battle. Sad thing is, they’re right. The producers gave us cannon fodder and we, the coveted item in the television ratings war, bought into their bluff. “We can change,” they promise. “It’ll be just like the comic books.”
Apparently that translates to adult language, mass slaughter of plot-hampering B-list characters, and the icky kind of tension. The tension a woman gets walking in the dark by herself and heavy boot steps follow half a breath behind her. It’s the wrong tone for where I think they want to take the show heading into the season finale. You can’t run head-first into the terror about to come. This was their toe-dip to warn us. Hopefully this unwanted tension tone shifts. I mean, the primary perpetrator was blown to about six-billion pieces. By Daryl, no less. With an assist from the time-wasting and convenient rocket launcher.
The walker footage for this episode is beautiful. If there’s one thing Nicotero does well in his episodes, you see the FX love up front and center. Good thing, too. Most of the Rick-centric scenes happened mid-herd. The few times there aren’t walkers in-frame, we’re lead to believe they somehow found a corner within the tiny community to hide where one of five thousand walkers couldn’t find them. These moments are when Rick passes Judith, his last tie to his deceased wife aside from his son, to Gabriel. The Father will shelter her in the church until Rick and the others draw the walkers away with the cars they left at the quarry. Jessie tells Sam to go with them. He refuses, stating he can make it.
You know where this is going, right? They’ve intentionally mishandled Sam’s PTSD, hauling us by the nose to the moment when his mental disorder takes the forefront, driving back rational thought and costing the boy his life. Jessie, frozen by grief, is swarmed and eaten, as well. Sorry, Rick. But, wait, why aren’t you moving, Rick? He hesitates just long enough for the walkers to almost get Carl, who can’t move because Jessie has him gripped tight in her death throes. There’s a weird fascination with cutting off hands in genre pieces. Jessie loses hers to save Carl. Father and son recover just in time for Ron to be a moron. Grief-numbed Ron rightly blames Rick for his family’s death. In the following struggle, Michonne impales Ron and Ron accidentally shoots Carl in the eye.
Well, heck. By this point we’ll assume literally everyone is on the chopping block this season. Which is exactly how we’re supposed to feel. They want us so concerned for everyone, it means they don’t have to rely on character growth to keep us on their emotional journey. The only two who knocked it out of the park growth wise this episode are Denise—kidnapped by the lone Wolf until he saves her as they attempt to escape Alexandria, taking a bite in the process—and Eugene, who finally joins the fight without reservations. Characters like Aaron and Heath are only on screen as proof of life and extra bodies in the epic fight montage at the episode’s climax
After Carl is shot, things move quickly. Denise jumps to action, having slipped the Wolf when Carol killed him, but not before Denise had promised to save his life. Michonne helps Denis stabilize Carl. Rick, without saying a word to anyone, grabs a machete and heads outside to, well, collect some heads. He becomes a zombie mowing machine. After some debate, others join him, even Michonne after ensuring Denise had things in hand.
While they fight, Glenn and Enid hatch a plan to save Maggie from the rickety guard platform. The plan is beyond dumb. Glenn will stand at ground level and shoot walkers. Enid climbs the platform. Maggie freaks out, refuses to climb down the wall with the improvised rope, and uses her last bullet. Right at the last second, Abraham and Sasha magically mount the wall and mow down the walkers, all without injuring Glenn. Daryl waits in the truck and Glenn joins him. What will they do? Daryl has a plan. This may be a first, to be honest.
Flaming zombie pond! That’s Daryl’s big plan. Honestly, it’s effective. The nearby walkers shamble into the flaming pond without reservation. When the herd shifts direction, Rick and company mow them down. Though I don’t one-hundred percent believe all the walkers would simply ignore yelling, grunting, sweating live bodies in favor of one big fireball. They win the battle, though. There’s no more casualties. Even Father Gabriel got in on the action before it ended. Okay, so three characters had some emotional growth.
The episode ends with what’s supposed to be a touching monologue with Rick at Carl’s bedside. The kid is alive, but unconscious and honestly doesn’t look too good with a third of his face bandaged. Where this scene went wrong is language choice. Rick doesn’t go into his feelings for his possibly dying son, oh no. Instead he crows over being able to unite the townsfolk for this oh-so important cause. He then goes on to talk about making the town bigger, badder. There’s the hint of emotion, but Rick never gives it a proper label, just that he hasn’t felt it since before he awoke from the coma. The scene has no punch until Rick begs Carl to let him show him the new world. Our hope for Carl is in a single moment, his fingers closing around Rick’s hand.
Obviously, we’re not done with Negan despite blowing up a chuck of his goon squad. How soon he’ll arrive at the gate is a variable no one in Alexandria can account for with any surety. They’re knocking on war’s door while licking their wounds again. Will this too-similar setup have similar endings to Woodbury and the prison? *shakes Magic 8 Ball* Most likely
I honestly thought we were past the time where everything associated with erotica was followed by a not-so witty reference to a novel/movie franchise I need not even mention because it’s right there in the title for this episode, though the erotic novel within this episode has no resemblance whatsoever to the referenced franchise. So why would they use the name? To boost ratings by using the promise of a nude lead actor—in this case, Liv—and further undermine her place as a productive member on Team Z.
Pumping Liv with “horny librarian brains” gives them a blanket pardon to sell their floundering product with cleavage and numerous make-out sessions. Jumping on the bandwagon with the episode title is like a rocket pack strapped onto the show’s pet shark. If Liv isn’t in bed with someone, they don’t know what to do with her emotionally. She’s either the postal child for bipolar, riding hard on each brain she eats, or she’s sex-obsessed and weeping. There’s few middle-ground moments where she remembers herself. They tried to establish control over the brain in this episode, but given the big picture, it isn’t effective. She still ends up in bed with a hot guy—Drake the newly undead zombie, who also happens to be a double agent for Blaine in Boss’ drug ring.
It’s all so predictable. As is the case’s conclusion.
If you follow this show regularly, you’ll notice a startling trend to their crime-solving tactics. Inevitably, the murderer is actually the first solid suspect in the case or the spouse—Often, they’re one in the same. Occasionally they’ll pull a Shyamalan, leaning hard on the plot-twist gimmick and convenient case solutions. Yes, this is a dramedy leaning harder on the comedy side at times, but there still has be natural tension resolution and variety in the cases they cover. Most episodes, we know who did it not long after they find the bodies just by following their simplistic pattern.
Long story short: All writers are petty and jealous, but not petty enough to kill. Meanwhile husbands are equally petty and jealous and they do indeed kill. The only way they managed to stretch Grace LeGare’s case to the episode’s end was to make Grace’s husband, Andy, physically handicapped and therefore not an obvious threat. His original questioning with Clive is glossed over by Liv’s incredibly raunchy day dream featuring Andy’s home care assistant, furthering the vain attempt to obscure the writer’s sole solution to any woman’s murder on the show. In the end, Andy went to a lot of work destroying his wife’s chance at a career writing erotica, then pinned the murder on Grace’s library co-worker, Muriel—who also happens to be a writer, but she pens crime thrillers. Why? So people wouldn’t think he is less of a man.
Blaine goes from having an awesome week to a not-so-awesome week overnight. Bozzio and Clive dig deep and discover his real name. No, not the one we’ve heard all the time, but his really real name. The pieces fall in Clive’s lap at last. They waste no time scooping up Blaine and hauling him to the police station for questioning. For a guy who’s had his junk metaphorically kicked twice in a row, he’s pretty smug. In comes his knight in shining armor—armor he’s seen up close and personal after drinking and sleeping with Peyton in her office the night before. Blaine is a key witness against Boss and therefore has immunity. Clive lays out what kind of guy he thinks Blaine is to Peyton. She still gets Blaine out of the handcuffs, but then turns to Liv for verification about who Blaine, John to her, really is. It breaks Peyton.
A lot of dead-ends for Bozzio and Clive in this episode. They finally get the GPS tracker in the missing guy’s dog turned on. Major overhears this plan and panics, downing a Max Rager and parkouring his way to the groomer where he left the dog. He lies to the groomer, telling her he rescued the dog from an angry cop and if the cop comes around to find him, she has to lie. Major panicked, and stupidly abandoned the dog on a city bus, for no reason. The GPS chip is in the dog’s tags, which Major ditched after he originally kidnapped it. Most heart-breaking, Major lies to Ravi about the dog’s whereabouts, saying he gave it back to the family who lost it.
It feels like they’re trying to tie up loose ends by continuing the age-old tradition of bone-headed moves by the lead characters. They want us to like Major, yet he continuously perpetuates animal neglect. Liv only has personality with a man in her bed. Peyton is set up to die soon given how deep she’s gotten in the Boss case. And Ravi? He’s keeping to himself, searching the field of woes and missing the dog which shouldn’t have been.
Ravi may be the only character fans connect with anymore.
We do get to see the crew walking—yes, they killed every last El Camino they stole—through sunny and thoroughly destroyed southern California. Anaheim, more precisely. Yes, they do indeed tromp through Disneyland’s ruins. No, there are no Mickey Mouse zombies. Yes, I’m slightly disappointed. Lest viewers think this episode accomplishes nothing for the plot, the crew does indeed finally arrive at the coordinates Citizen Z gave to them. It’s not quite what they were expecting, though—a ramshackle dive bar with an older tea-slinging woman behind the bar. While the team scout the bar, Citizen Z discovers a hacker’s fingerprints on his system. After some tracking, he discovers whoever broke into his laptop accessed files for Operation Bitemark. Is the op compromised?
And now, a peek at the crew as they were before the apocalypse changed them for better or worse.
First up, Citizen Z, a.k.a. Simon Cruller. Our favorite computer wizard wasn’t always on the NSA payroll, it seems. Nor does he look good in an orange jumpsuit. Simon’s hacking skills landed him in federal lockup with impending espionage charges. He won’t plead guilty. Which is good because NSA needs him to join them on their next greatest mission, one so secret, Simon can’t even tell his lawyer what it is—zombies. Obviously the intrigue offered by the NSA worked. Simon signed on with them, went to their north-most outpost, and has been a one-man tech team keeping Operation Bitemark alive.
We flashback to Roberta while she’s struggling to keep tabs on deployment orders for her unit and the other units at the same National Guard base. Her stress levels bounce off the ceiling several times, but her compatriots aren’t bothered by any of it as they catch a game on TV before moving out. Everything is pretty SOP, until there’s a crash outside. An ambulance rammed into the building. The driver is MIA. The patient strapped in the back is still very much present, and very much undead. Roberta tries to help the patient, under the impression he’s panicked and injured. Yeah, no. She heads inside to call for another ambulance. The phones are dead. Ditto for her unit, unfortunately. They attack her and she’s forced to put a bullet in their heads. Quick on the uptake, Roberta figures out they’re zombies without anyone spelling it out for her. Her fast-thinking may be why she’s the one leading the team. Or, you know, not being a martyr.
Turns out Doc wasn’t always high as a kite. His five-year sober streak ends with the apocalypse, though. It’s just another day in the office for the kindly therapist. His patient is likewise dealing with addiction and they have a pretty relaxed dialog—anything else in Doc’s presence is unheard of, to be honest. There’s another therapist in the office, who can’t quite handle her manic patient. Doc has to save the day, strong-arming the guy and talking sense to him. While the therapists work, the outside world devolves into chaos. That chaos finds its way indoors. Zombies eat the other therapist, her client, and Doc’s patient. Doc eats an OxyContin tablet to brace himself for what’s outside before escaping into the fray. Right after we came back from his flashback, Doc finds a Z-weed joint and lights up. Not much has changed since Doc saw his first zombie.
You guys ready for the surprise guest? Mack returns for Addy’s turn in the way-back machine. He’s on the ice, being ferocious during a hockey game. Addy is just as fierce in the stands cheering on Mack’s opponents. Just when the game gets good—Mack and the star player from the other team drop their gloves to duke it out—a zombie runs through the stands and smacks into the Plexiglas. From there it’s pure chaos. Mack and his sparring partner leave the ice together. The other guy doesn’t make it far. Addy manages to dodge the crowds, ducking around the worst of it until she runs into Mack, who can’t quite kill the zombie snapping at his throat. Addy lends a hand and the two team up. Mack has a chance to return the favor, braining a zombie pinning Addy against the wall. They make a pact to stick together. Which means Mack is tagging along when Addy realizes she has to get to her mother and brother at the house. Tagging along, in the end, is what lead to Mack’s demise. Was it Addy’s pretty eyes or an overly large sense of duty to help others? I’d say a dash of both, honestly. He stayed with her in the beginning because they both needed help. They remained together later because he just could not let her go and the mission became much more important after Murphy nuked half the USA.
We saw the most emotional part to 10k’s apocalypse beginning a while back. What we didn’t see was bright-eyed 10k, then simply Tommy, encountering his first zombie. He’s out on a camping trip with his dad, enjoying an afternoon fishing alone. A forest ranger, undead of course, shambles his way with three arrows in her chest. Quickly more zombies join them—hunters and rangers who were likely attempting to kill the zombies in the forest, only to die in the process. Tommy drops his fish and runs. He’s nearly z-lunch when his dad catches up, clearing the zombies with precision shooting. Now we know where 10k learned his skills from. Skills he puts to use daily. His dad must be proud.
Grab your tissues, Vasquez’s flashback hits a few emotional triggers. Guilt-ridden over the deaths of his family because of his job, Vasquez tortures himself mentally. He’s keeping watch over his wife and daughter’s caskets in an unlit funeral home. The funeral director doesn’t even know he’s in there until he accidentally walks in, then gives the mourning man time alone. Vasquez kneels to pray. Scratch, scratch. He calls to the funeral director to ask if they have rodents in the building. No answer. The scratching continues. Finally the director comes back . . . or at least his reanimated body does. There’s a fight. Vasquez empties his gun into the zombie’s chest. No good. He ends up bludgeoning the thing to death. Good timing, too. He’s just in time to watch his undead wife and child crawl from their caskets. His gun is empty. He has no backup. Vasquez realizes he will have to beat his family like the funeral director. We don’t see the kill. We just hear Vasquez’s anguished scream as he realizes what he has to do. Killing his family for the second time hardened the man beyond what was necessary to do his job. Wandering the apocalypse alone turned that into a ruthlessness and stubborn moral code no one can break. Not even Roberta.
Last stop on the flashback train—Murphy. As expected, he’s in jail.
Unexpectedly, Murphy doesn’t look a thing like himself because I am so used to seeing him blue and covered in scars. But when he opens his mouth, it’s pretty much the same smart aleck the crew has dragged from New York to California. He’s hosting a poker game in the prison yard—where he’s doing time for postal fraud. As sometimes happens, a prisoner is stabbed in the yard. Yeah, you guessed it, the guy turns zombie. Everyone panics when the guards start turning as well. Murphy saves his own hide, running through an open gate and closing it before his poker pals can join him. It’s always been Murphy First in his book. Then the vaccine made him actually care about the well-being of the zombies. Feelings are uncomfortable. I get it. Being The Guy to end the apocalypse? It’s too much to bear. Murphy tells himself, “I don’t want to be the savior of the human race. I don’t want to be the zombie messiah.” He doesn’t want to be accountable for his actions anymore. If he screws up, like he did to land in prison, that’s it for humanity. That’s an awful weight on his shoulders. When he breaks down, Roberta gives it to him straight, “There isn’t a happy ending for any of us, but you, you are the one person who can change that.” How long can she keep him together? At this point, it’s like fixing a shatter vase with bubble gum. It’s holding, but ain’t pretty.
There’s one episode left in season two, with a season three already ordered for later this year. How much chaos can they cram into this finale? It’s hard to top nuking the country.
Yo, where are you going? ID, please. The show we’re discussing uses profanity and contains adult situations.
Kelly still thinks she’s going to bat her eyes and get Ash to help. Man, she’s not paying attention. Ash is out to care for numero uno. In order to save his bacon, and by default everyone else’s, he’s gotta figure out what’s actually written in the Necronomicon. Thirty years schlepping the thing around and he didn’t think to do this before the end of the world is nigh? Man, and I thought I procrastinated hardcore. Kelly gives up simply asking for help and steals Pablo’s motorcycle so she can save her dad.
Oh and Pablo says she took the Necronomicon.
Cue a miraculous cleanup for Ash and Pablo, then we join them on the road. They’ve picked up a hitchhiker—Mr. Roper. Well, he’s DeadRoper now, and he still hates Ash with the fire of no less than ten-thousand suns. Most people do. He’s not unique. What is unique is the in-car fight between DeadRoper, Ash, and hapless Pablo. Pablo thinks he can learn to fight like Ash. He takes one hit, all Ash needs to get into Fight Mode. Pablo, “…but I just got hit; I don’t know what to do!” You’ll learn, Pablo, or you’ll die. He makes a valliant attempt to save Ash, smashing a bottle over DeadRoper’s head. Yeah, that’s not going to work. But it does give Ash something he can partially hack the Deadite’s head off with before pushing it out the window for an oncoming car to behead. Now they have to clean up again. Will someone test to see just how much blood a moist towelette can remove? For science.
Amanda Fisher is on Ash’s trail, following the weird breadcrumbs to what was once his doorstep. His neighbors have nothing nice to say. Nothing useful, either. Amanda finds the business card for the book store Ash is trying to get to, thanks to the severed arm he left behind. Not his own. Her chase for clues ends abruptly when the state police arrive, shooing her away because she’s still suspended. That’s okay. She’s got the card and saw the police sketch of Ash. It’s a no-brainer from here on out. Just like the Deadites Ash offed.
At Mr. Maxwell’s place all is . . . comfy and cozy? Well, crud. Ash and Pablo look like asylum escapees, covered in DeadRoper’s blood and wielding weapons. Surprise, Mrs. Maxwell wasn’t dead. (Liar) She had amnesia after the car accident. (Pants so on fire) But she’s slowly remembering everything again. Yeah. Right. Ash sees through her game. But is he just paranoid or is Mrs. Maxwell really DeadMom? They should stay for dinner and find out.
Ash oozes charm at dinner. No, wait, that’s the roast beef oozing. Never mind. Just when the schtick has hit the, “Maybe she’s not a Deadite,” point, Ash takes matters into his own fist. One shot to the jaw does the trick, bringing DeadMom to the surface. There’s a couple weird boomstick point-of-view shots, which I actually don’t hate despite the camera jiggling, during the fight. As usual, the physical action is astounding. The gore which comes as a result of the fighting is just as wonderful, done primarily with practical effects with a little digital to augment—which is how you do it, folks. DeadMom kills Mr. Maxwell. Then she and Kelly vanish.
Kelly runs upstairs to hide and figure out what’s going on with her family. DeadMom is there, pretending to be regular ol’ Mrs. Maxwell. Maybe they can find a way to help? Yeah, no. DeadMom attacks when Ash and Pablo join them in Kelly’s childhood room. Poor Pablo tries again to jump into the fray, stabbing DeadMom in the head. No good. It’s gotta be decapitation. And the only thing they have handy capable of severing heads ends up stuck in a wall at one point. Get control of your chainsaw, Ash. Sheesh. He does, of course, unleashing about five gallons of blood on Pablo and Kelly.
They bury Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell in the front yard. Kelly officially joins Team Badass. But, uh, what about the book? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Pablo had it the entire time. That’s okay. They’re back on the road again, on the way to the bookstore. They better hurry. Amanda is waiting.
Roberta saves Vasquez’s bacon big time. She stops Kurian from injecting the Zmurph serum into her newest crewmember and suggests Kurian take the inaugural dose. Trapped with no way to avoid outing the scheme, Kurian doses himself. He’s not quite dead yet. Matter of fact he’s feeling good enough to go for a walk. A short walk. To a box containing a severed zombie head, which La Reina orders him to stick his hand into as a test for the cure. Amazingly, Kurian doesn’t turn. It’s enough to convince La Reina to dose her entire crew—except Escorpion, a.k.a. Hector, who takes Vasquez off for another round of torture. He’s the lucky one. The serum works as intended, with a slight delay before Murphy is able to make them do a soft shoe to Brittney Spears songs—which he doesn’t do in this episode, but should. Taking control of Kurian, Murphy sets him to work making more serum.
Off in Hector’s torture chamber, Vasquez finally confesses to the attempted murder. As reward for his honesty, Hector has Vasquez strapped into what’s essentially an iron maiden, only with a zombie instead of sharpened spikes on the door, so a zombie maiden. There Vasquez is forced to listen to Hector’s woefully typical, “This bad stuff happened to me as a kid and that’s why I’m a murderer,” speech. I would have preferred to hear just about anything else from the character. He’s called away to a meeting. Thank goodness.
To say Roberta isn’t onboard with the Zmurph plan is a vast understatement. She washes her hands of Murphy’s plan for Kurian and the Zeroes the second she realizes it’s a thing which is really happening as they stand there trapped in what will probably become a nest of ravenous Zmurphs. Leaving Murphy to deal with Kurian, Roberta heads to warn the others that they need to get out ASAP. Before they fully formulate a plan, she’s called to the meeting with Hector and La Reina. Before she goes, the others are tasked with finding Vasquez.
At the meeting, Hector lies so much his pants spontaneously combust. Roberta calls him on the bull, admitting that Vasquez has no interest in killing La Reina, just the man who murdered the former DEA agent’s family. Murphy strolls into the meeting just in time to control La Reina, making the meeting go favorably for their group. Not so much for Hector. Murphy gets a little too eager to flex his power, ordering Roberta to kill Hector. They’re only saving grace is the meeting is amongst other Zmurphs.
Zmurphs Murphy loses control over moments after Roberta leaves with Hector leading the way to the torture room. The time to leave is, like, fifteen minutes ago. Kurian in hand—because he wants more serum even if the doctor is lusting for Murphy blood—Murphy runs to the lab. One can only assume he means to grab whatever supplies they’ll need to make a cure on the road. Roberta ends that plan by decapitating ravenous Kurian.
With Vasquez free and Hector locked in the zombie maiden, there’s nothing stopping them from walking out the same door they came in through. Right? Ha. Ha ha ha. La Reina and the other Zmurphs are on the hunt for their master. She recovers Kurian’s head before leading the Zmurphs through the power plant tunnels. Doc gets an idea to use the zombies trapped in the power plant to fight the Zmurphs, except the doors won’t open. That’s okay, Murphy here to save the day. He uses his powers to agitate the zombies, their weight breaking the doors.
Did anyone else kinda want this fight to suddenly stop and turn into a dance routine from Westside Story? Just me? Okay . . . .
The crew runs for it. Murphy lags behind. Guilt weighs heavy on the poor guy. He’s not okay with zombie on Zmurph violence, but what can they do? The mission is more important. Something he nearly forgot in the rush of having his own people to control. Despite misgivings, he leaves the underground power plant, joining the others on the now-deserted street.
Deserted except for Hector. It looks like the nutjob chewed his way through the zombie maiden. Hector and Vasquez have an honor fight. Roberta makes everyone stand down so the two can pummel each other. The fight ends with Vasquez tossing Hector to the zombies clambering to climb the ladder. That’s it for the Zeroes. Right? Maybe. We know Kurian’s head lives to see another day, but who is the one saving him at the episode’s end?
The gang borrows the Zeroes’ fleet of El Caminos and hits the road in style. They’re not far from the border. If they don’t muck things up, they could reach the lab in a day.
I’ll save you some time. Here’s the big whopping plot in one sentence: They prepare to leave town.
Duh? There’s no way to reclaim Alexandria until the herd calms down. The choices are limited; either they settle in for a long wait or they leave Alexandria and come back to clear the walkers with replenished resources. Why the writers needed forty minutes to make this happen boggles the mind. Viewers already knew what needed to happen for the characters to live to see the second half of the season. Why waste thirty-five minutes of screen time drawing out the inevitable?
Not only is this episode a gigantic waste of time, they also kill off someone vital to the show’s continuing plot. Deanna is yet another victim of the convenient death scheme. Something we all saw coming each time she got closer and closer to realizing Rick isn’t the man she should leave in charge of her people. Her people. Not his. Rick cannot and will not see the Alexandria natives as part of his crew. Something he’s called out on in the episode during a deathbed conversation with Deanna—who is only dying because she saved his life. Six seasons of them killing off Rick’s naysayers and I’m to the point where I’d rather see the man himself written off the show than someone who simply questioned why he’s such a poor leader. It’s boring. Predictable. A surefire way to turn fans completely against the character when we should still root for him, questionable morals and all. I wouldn’t loathe Rick as he’s written for the show nearly as much if the writers would just stop killing anyone who stands up to him for the sake of their own moral code.
Women get dealt poor hands on this show all the time. Carol is still plagued by this unreasonable story line pitting her against Morgan. Not only that, she also suffers a random concussion which makes her physically inferior to Morgan. If the writers hadn’t made her trip and fall for no other reason than to give her the concussion, the fight would’ve gone in Carol’s favor. They realized too late that pitting the two against each other was a mistake. Both are essential characters. If they didn’t cripple Carol, Morgan—who is now the conscious for the show since they’ve laden Glenn with Baby Daddy Syndrome—would be dead alongside Dale and Hershel, the other poor unfortunate souls to carry the title of Captain Moral Integrity. So instead of a fair fight, we get a one-sided, poorly motivated fight which ends with Carol cold-cocked by Morgan, Morgan knocked out by the prisoner, and poor Denise used as a meatshield so the prisoner can escape past Tara, Rosita, and Eugene.
Then there’s Michonne. Most of Deanna’s deathbed moments were spent highlighting the fact that the writer’s haven’t given Michonne a reason to fight for Alexandria, its people, or even Rick’s people. Aside from being present to wield a sword, Michonne has no motivation. No purpose outside killing. It shouldn’t take this long for them to realize they’ve forgotten to write essential human needs into a main character.
Everyone in Alexandria is hiding. Or so we assume. At no point are Deanna’s people accounted for. The only townsfolk we see outside of Rick’s main group are the one’s shoehorned into the plot. Denise is present to give the prisoner a way to freedom. Jessie is present because Rick wants to do bedroom things with her and she has his daughter in her house. She’s also the mother to two boys capable of screwing everything up with very little effort—because it’s easier for the show to place blame on the impulsive actions of children instead of writing feasibly flawed adults. Ron’s big moment comes when he locks Carl in the garage and tries to kill him, drawing attention from nearby walkers who then overrun the house. Sam’s part in everything is, well, not very well thought out.
One surefire way to grind my gears is to mishandle mental diseases in a show. Sam has PTSD. The entire Morgan episode was to essentially demonstrate how the show would depict PTSD in characters from here on out. Cool. We’re talking about an actual issue which plagues thousands of people. And then they mess up. Jessie says the words no PTSD influcted person should hear, “Just pretend . . . .” No. Don’t. Stop. All they did is hand a child’s character the exact opposite coping mechanism from what he should be using. Escapism isn’t the cure to PTSD. It’s a death sentence. If the writers really wanted to explore the nuances of PTSD and how it affects the survivors, they should have put more time into Sam’s scenes. Instead, like so much in this episode, they cram it in and use it as a catalyst for more things which don’t make sense. Why would a frightened child, even with PTSD, speak when surrounded by things he knows want to kill them? Sam is mentally ill, not a moron.
The big whopping plan to escape is a callback to season one’s “Guts,” where Glenn and Rick covered themselves in walker goo and went to fetch a truck in order to escape Atlanta. Yawn. We’ve seen this before. It’s not even amusing to watch Father Gabriel’s reaction. Gabriel is another character wedged into the plot, but I’m not even sure why at this point. Everything out of his mouth is something which should be shown on screen, not told via dialog.
We get a couple short scenes with Glenn and Enid. Neither of which are vital to the plot. Maggie is likewise a throwaway bit in the episode—she crawls up a ladder to escape the herd and that’s where she stays through the episode’s end.
Then there’s the big post-credit scene. Yet more wasted time and money. Fans know Negan is coming. Matter of fact, if the episode with Daryl’s abduction had been written better, they wouldn’t have needed the post-credit scene to properly introduce Negan’s good squad. Instead they create a reason to put Daryl on screen in the guise of bringing Negan’s crew onto the stage for the second half of the season.
I’m fed up with the current showrunner. He’s run what was once decent television into the ground by leading fans by the nose to the story conclusions he thinks are entertaining. It’s dull. Trite. Nothing exciting happens for eight episodes. Why is AMC wasting money to make this guy’s vision come to life? Their numbers are down, despite self-created hype. Sure, the mid-season finale did a little better, but the viewer numbers aren’t enough to make up for what they lost from episodes 602 through 607. When TWD comes back on February 14th, will we suffer through more of the same? I hope not.
There’s too much talent in this cast to continue with poor storytelling. Something’s gotta give, AMC. Give your fans and your actors the showrunner they deserve, not the one who tells you pretty lies but cannot deliver the quality episodes you want.
Where Glenn grows as a character, Carol is undermined at every turn. On top of her unfounded refusal to trust Morgan—up until they created a reason with him holding the Wolf in the cell—they’re now making her the “bad boy” to ease fans into the reality of Negan’s notorious potty mouth, plus reintroducing tobacco products to the show since Daryl’s smoking has petered off. In stark contrast, she’s been acting like the town’s mother, something Tobin calls her out on during a random romantic encounter after sunset. During a day full of doubts, concerns, and knowing death is near again, Carol gathered friggen acorns to make cookies for everyone. Even Sam. It’s been a while since the show side-swiped me with emotions, but I teared up seeing the lone cookie on his grave. Then I got angry—Sam gets more care after his death than before.
