Yolapukka

I took it the opposite way. Carol brought the cookies in and was seen by all, so when Rick spoke up he was running interference as to not call attention to her absence. It's not as though he pointed her out, rather he told the kid he would take care of it for him. It might have worked if poor little greedy-guts had not spotted her and taken it upon himself to follow. How sheltered is this kid that he thought that was a remotely good idea? Why would he follow her through a window and then start going chatty Cathy on her? I think Carol handled it expediently, I don't think she handled it well however, if she'd chosen her words more carefully in the first place and not tried to get him to keep a secret, she might not have had to resort to terrorizing him with threats. I think this will get followed up on eventually. There will be a crisis and the kid will endanger himself because he's terrified of Carol.

Rick's attitude is making me uncomfortable. However, touching his gun creepily after encountering Pete walking with Jessie is not even in the same ballpark as trying to kill him. At most it gives me suspicion of thought-crime not an actual aggressive act. As for the kiss, in and of itself it wouldn't bother me. It was an unguarded moment when he'd had a fair bit of alcohol and Jessie didn't seem offended and had got in his personal space herself. I don't believe he was making an intentional pass, it was an impulse that fell on the wrong side of appropriate, mostly because of his own reaction afterwards. The stalkerish staring is far more concerning and intrusive to me than a peck on the cheek, especially considering that though Jessie has been friendly, it's been welcoming, not flirtatious.

I don't mind Olivia wanting a boar leg for prosciutto, even if did sound a bit precious, at least with her preserving skills she's contributing to the sustainability of the community, more so than those who are coming up with baked goods that substitute eggs with applesauce.

I'm going to defend Deanna a little on the watch tower thing, in that she didn't want Sasha, the newcomer going up there at that particular time, it's not that she rejects it outright but she doesn't want someone she doesn't know enough to trust in a vantage point with a high-powered fire-arm and a clear shot at her community. After getting a good look at Sasha's present twitchiness, she may be more concerned about her issues. What is indefensible though, is she sees no urgency to acting on Rick's concerns about the overall security of the community. Even if you don't see the need for a sniper up there full-time, it's still wise to have someone scanning the approach to the community, if only to give anyone leaving a heads-up about the location of walkers. I think some of this is on Rick and his people, because from what we've seen of the interviews, CDB have withheld the full extent of their bad experiences from her. She really doesn't seem to get it as to how quickly things can go sideways. I'm starting to wonder about the possibility that Aaron had his own agenda in bringing Rick inside. Deanna seems like a highly capable peacetime leader, but seems more concerned with maintaining her civil society than preparing to defend it. Alexandria should be dealing with the possibility of conflict like present day Switzerland, not some combination of Tombstone, Arizona of the 1880's and a sleepy college town. I can understand that there are tensions in the community and some citizens who shouldn't have access to fire-arms, Dr. Drunky-Pete springs to mind, but it seems like a lot of them don't even know how to defend themselves from a walker in front of them beyond yelling for help and flapping their hands.

My thought was she took the chocolate as a cover story, in case someone saw her. She should have covered by changing the number on the board though, I don't think she did. It might have worked if little Sam hadn't been jonesing for cookies so bad that he bee-lined after her in the dark and through the window, then decided to yap about how he tells mommy everything. On that note, it was probably a really bad idea to use a red flag word like secrets to a kid his age in the first place.

I'd have to guess they'd all need to be in on the ruse somewhat because all of them, with the possible exception of Father PP know what she's capable of and would have given nearly as much praise to her in their interviews as they apparently showered on Rick unless they were pointedly keeping it to themselves.. I can only assume that they've also kept mum as to the depth of the experiences on the outside because they are playing their cards close to their vest until they understand the place. Partially because a lot of those events, like seeing a beloved patriarch beheaded is intensely personal painful stuff you wouldn't share with a stranger. Mainly, I think they don't want to let on to what they been through because they don't want to alarm Deanna and her people, both by giving them a heads-up as to what they are fully capable of and giving information that would colour their perceptions of them as people. However it means they also aren't telling Deanna about the real extent of the dangers out there and that's making it difficult to understand their paranoia. I'm not sure she'd get it by being told about the Termites, that story even might make her inclined to discount their concerns because that situation was so out there, so extreme that she could think it was a one-off that has made it impossible for them to perceive the dangers of the world rationally. I think it's more the stuff about the Marauders, Randall's group and the governor that would make her see sense. Especially Randall's group, because it shows her the kind of savagery that was already going on in the early days, when many people were still helping strangers and resources were fairly plentiful.

I wish Jessie wasn't such a flat bland character. Everything she said was so forgettable that I really had trouble recalling her last sentence while she was completing a current one. There is still something really off about Pete, even when he's not heavy-handedly referring to Jessie as My wife. I am instantly, irrationally shipping Sasha and Spencer, the anti-Aiden. Damn. So which one of the boys would mom love best? I felt for Sasha when she had what seemed to be an anxiety attack. The complacency of these people is more disturbing than the idea that they are up to something nefarious. I think Deanna needs to find a place for people because it makes them manageable and she believes, with some justification when it comes to her own people, that she knows best about what is good for them and much of that means being led by her. They need better security and I am shocked that they don't seem to have any sort of full-time watch-tower schedule, given how organized everything else is. Maybe organized isn't the best word, perhaps controlled is a better word. Rick is creeping me out. Noodle night with the boys was a much better call for Daryl than the cocktail party. I never need to see Daryl drunk again. Colour me shocked that he seems to have committed to settling in so quickly. The cocktail party was hugely disturbing to me, this is a community that still sees themselves as safe enough to all gather in one place, and have multiple drinks after dark. I could go on a long time about all the grounds that make that foolish. Leaving their armoury unguarded, well honestly, it's not guarded, merely managed, seems like a terribly foolish thing to do when everyone is occupied. They have kids that feel safe enough to slip away and follow people they don't know. I understand why Carol did it, but for a character that has done a lot of ruthless, polarizing, disturbing things, threatening to kidnap that kid and leave him to the walkers was one of the most unsetting and upsetting things I've ever seen her do. In essence though, If CDB doesn't impose their vision on this Utopia, she would, in effect be leaving the boy to walkers or something nearly as bad. I still didn't like it.

I can't find that map anymore either. I found it easier to use than paging about the street photos with the arrows. I wonder if there was a reason for removing it or if it's just a temporary glitch? I'm trying not to read something into every random item I see in those photos, but the gas can in front of the burnt-out house with what appears to be another on the porch kind of leapt out at me.

I doubt they used solely manual construction to put up that wall. It's more likely they used the heavy machinery that would have been at the mall construction site along with the materials they used. It's probably theoretically possible with the limited manpower they had, but I don't believe it would have been a necessary option as long as the machines had fuel. Maybe that figured into the decision-making though, to design a wall that could be expediently completed with manual labour if necessary. Rather than weighing the likelihood of an attempt to tear down the wall against an attempt to push it down by force I think they wanted to create a barrier with the minimal use of materials and time so putting the braces on the outside meant they could make a smaller wall with less of it's structure encroaching on the interior. It may be scalable on the inside at the point where the panels are joined, but it's also scalable to a lesser extent from the outside where the braces are located. The joins would not need to face out to accommodate bracing on the inside, proper framing would have been on the inside if those panels had been used for an enclosed building. It's primary purpose was against the occasional walker and much later it served to keep undesirable people out. It was not constructed with thought to serving as a stronghold. Even if we assume that they built the wall using everything they had available to scavenge, they could have supplemented it at a distance with a rubble wall, with earthworks like trenching, a berm with a steep outer side or a ha-ha. There are any number of additional defences they could contrive by using sharpened stakes from felled trees. They haven't because they've seen no need to do so. I think script is really the operative word, at some point the script will call for at least a portion of those walls or gates to fail due to the pressure of a herd or well-equipped force of enemies. ETA Even if they were only thinking in terms of "wanderers" as they call them, something as simple as constructing a gate opening outwards from porches or exterior steps would go a long way towards preventing them from entering the homes. They are very proud of their wall and haven't considered the possibilities of it failing. I don't think they've even considered internal threats sufficiently, what if someone simply drops dead of a heart-attack while out for an evening stroll?

I took the empty frames to indicate that the house had been previously occupied and those residents were gone, they had been either evacuated and had enough time to take the photos out of the frames or the photos had been left and the Alexandrites had removed them as part of prepping the house for newcomers. I don't know if it's a calculated bit of manipulation but regardless of that I don't like those comments in combination. She also made a comment about along the lines of "looks like the communists were right after all" in regards to how things get done in their community. It was an odd remark, maybe just a wry joke, perhaps a bitter observation. She could potentially be a person who still gives weight to the markers of class differences that mattered in the pre-apocalypse world, which is an unfortunate bit of baggage.

I'm wondering about Deanna's husband the professor of architecture, the one who brilliantly designed that awesome wall with the braces on the outside. is it possible he was big old con-artist with fake-ass qualifications a secret Ponzi scheme and maybe even a second now undead family? Maybe the jig was up when Deanna saw that dummass wall and she dropkicked him out of there and told him to go join his damn undead second family if he couldn't figure out which side to brace on a wall made out of unused shopping centre parts. Or maybe he really was a professor of architecture and he despised the aesthetics of bracing on the inside but liked the lines they made on the outside, sort of the same thinking that results in gorgeous buildings that win design prizes but have leaky roofs. There's got to be some explanation as to why that wall looks so arse-backwards. It bugs me. A lot.

I'm skeptical of the notion that jobs will be so time-consuming that they will add up to all of them being separated the bulk of the time. especially in a community where the residents can support the elderly and spend time making sculptures with their kids. Nor has it been stated at any point that Rick and Michonne will be expected to stay separate while on patrol, so it's kind of a leap that it would involve splitting them up. Just as the Dr is always the Dr, so too would they always be on duty. I'm sure both would make patrols at random times, separately or together, and I'm also sure that Alexandria already has watch duty assignments for most of the able-bodied adults. They are constables, their function is to deal with disputes, transgressions and wrongdoing, not punch the clock and show up for set shifts to wander the streets or stare into the distance. I didn't feel it was risk free either, which is why I said it was good, if not risk-free. Perhaps my wording could have been clearer, I was saying that as a test it was a good idea but the execution was not free of risk. If it really was all a staged act, then there were more than likely snipers ready to take out Rick's people if it went badly wrong. Whatever was or wasn't supposed to happen on the supply run, Aidan was well inside the gates in an open area near a wall when he threw the punch at Glenn. That aside, if there was an elaborate plan to take out Rick and the stronger members of his group, that would have been a good time to do so When isn't Rick capable of saying no? He'll listen to the consul of others but he still makes a decision in connection to that. The care of a baby is a non-negotiable, if CDB says they are the only ones to act as caregivers to Judith then, that's what happens. I missed the part where they were told they had no choice. They were told they had jobs and accepted their assignments, if they'd had reasonable objections, including an unwillingness to be isolated from one another, they would have made them. Glenn Tara and Noah were together, armed and the three of them were with two Alexandrites. Most of CDB have jobs, but not all of them do, to the best of my knowledge. What is Daryl's job? Head fly-catcher? I think this is your interpretation of the dialogue, but it was not said in such clear, explicit terms and it isn't how I would interpret what was said. The part about the armoury is not a specific theory I have about how CDB are going to take over, the point I'm making is about the glaring flaws in the overall security of Alexandria and how it easy it would be to have the inclusion of CBD blow up in Deanna's face. If they were planning to take the armoury, someone could show up wanting a weapon to do some early-morning hunting while people have not yet left for work. There are a lot of ways they could make a play for power and I don't think any of them would be scuttled due to where people have been assigned work in that small compound including whether Abraham is working construction within or outside of those walls. Since all the houses appear to be in excellent condition, let's hope he's demolishing some of the derelict buildings just beyond the fence, putting up additional barriers or sealing off the taller buildings that overlook the community.I think that would address the problems which they are most likely to face, which to me do not include the probability that Deanna is playing some sort of game of psycho-politics. I think the part that is too good to be true is the notion that this place will remain safe just because they have a wall. I thought it was kind of telling that their word for the walkers was wanderers. Also, nitpick; I don't think it's Sasha working at the doctors office, I think that was Maggie.

My point was about the Governor massacring many of Woodbury's able bodied fighters before he disappeared as a criticism of whether his stye of leadership was effective in the longterm. It's irrelevant as to where Rick would be positioned in Deannas' firmament . as you said yourself; Rick, regardless of whether Deanna intends that he play a part in her supposed psycho-politics which ends with him pushing up daisies, could still cause a lot of damage. It doesn't seem worthwhile. I've no doubt another shoe will drop, but it seems likelier to me that it will come from the outside unless Alexandria's under-secured premises are part of a larger elaborate ruse to get CDB to let their guard down. There would be a perfectly sound reason not to give Rick or Michonne positions as constables. Rick is the obvious leader, Michonne is his second. They will be armed and will have regular access to the armoury. It would be rational decision making to openly acknowledge that until his group settles in he will not be in a position of leadership in the larger community. That would be true no matter whether she had some villainous"because reasons" plot to increase her citizens loyalty to her by offering up Rick as an eventual scapegoat or if she was just demonstrating simple pragmatism in dealing with newcomers joining her community. At the very least, if she had plans to break up the team, she'd be enacting plans to break up the team by either dividing them or going around them. If she was looking for someone to be a lightning rod for conflict, Abraham and Daryl would be good choices, with Daryl being out of the running as constable because it is obviously ridiculous. If so, good for her. It seems like a good, if not risk-free way of testing how newcomers deal with conflict. If Carl is going to school, other children are going to school, in one location from which they could be rounded up and forcibly expelled, If they are with their families, they can be removed and expelled. if they are being forced to sleep in some guarded dormitory away from the rest they are still a potential point of attack . Forcible, strategic expulsion is irrelevant as to whether they are allowed to venture outside the walls on their own. If Enid is there as a hostage to prevent against an attack by her expelled (in theory only) family members, I'd have to say that it's not really working. If the neighbour offers to sit for Judith, Rick is capable of saying no, and his people are capable of saying no to jobs that leave them all unavailable to look after her. It would infinitely more suspicious if the community were insisting the Grimes children be entrusted to their care than it would that Rick be employed to kick rocks and never carry even a big stick. I do tend to think the kids are important, not so much as hostages, potential or actual but because they represent a huge leap of trust, to allow yourself to dwell within the same walls as potentially dangerous strangers and their mere existence is proof of of some semblance of a normal sense of community. Camp Dinner Bell are all together. They aren't looking for a hypothetical secret meet-up point. They are still sleeping in the same room and will eventually divide between two adjacent houses. Any separation is at their own discretion and they've already been given access to the armoury. I'm still side-eying the problem Rick had with that gun, but I'm also side-eying Rick for not ensuring himself that it was loaded. All it takes is one person to be scope out the armoury, enter it, and give a signal for things to go in their favour. I don't think anything has happened too fast. One, they knew they were coming, Two, they either need people or they don't. If they don't need people but are just using them for some nefarious reasons, I doubt they would be allowing groups as large as Rick's inside. I believe Deanna has taken a calculated risk in letting them in because they need people to stay sustainable. it doesn't matter if they enough electricity to run the refrigerators if there is nothing beyond apples and stale-dated canned food to put inside, or your little society is too small and insular to deal with petty problems and exterior threats effectively.

Things did not end well for the Governor and he became irrelevant once he slaughtered most of his best fighters for questioning his BSC leadership, the same would have happened eventually if he'd succeeded in taking the prison. His inability to tolerate anything other than obedience was his eventual downfall, regardless of whether it had kept him in power as long as it had. Eventually you run out of people to run if you keep sacrificing them to the greater good of your leadership. I'd find it suspicious on several levels if she was doing an end run around Rick's leadership and appointing someone like Abraham as constable. He's a hothead and easily lead. I would raise an eyebrow if she were keeping him and Michonne out of the loop as much as possible while finding places for the rest of the group. She's getting some side-eye for Rick being handed a useless weapon when he went for a walkabout but I still find it more telling that Rick and Michonne were assigned as constables after a dispute where they de-escalated a confrontation without playing favourites between their people and hers. If there was a crisis it would be easy for the newcomers to take hostages or expel the weak, and really, once your child has a gun at their head or is outside the gates, with only a frail, elderly neighbour between them and a walker, how many would stand their ground and continue to fight inside the walls? The arms are seemingly kept in a central location. Take that, and you're likely done. Even if there are more elsewhere, (not improbable) that still gives CDB a significant cache of weapons. Even assuming that most of the buildings have people we haven't seen yet, for example, that block Deanna lives in could contain an awful lot of people, the newcomers still would represent a significant portion of the population and are a fairly cohesive group of experienced fighters and survivors. It doesn't seem like reasonable odds of success if her end game is to use them as fodder to maintain order. I don't really understand the spoiler, is it a reference to events in the comics?

I tend to think Deanna's strategy is to make sure nobody (especially Aidan) winds up trussed-up and hanging upside down in the town square, so I'm inclined find the idea that she'd bring in newcomers to manufacture a crisis dubious, especially when her own people include many who aren't likely to be effective fighters and could easily be taken hostage or expelled. I think it's more likely she needs human capitol and is willing to take the risk that they'd change the community profoundly.

The one consistent attitude I get from Deanna is that she thinks about the long term. I tend to think it's already safe to say they don't plan to eat, enslave or use CDB for sport. What would her strategy be in putting two of the group in a position of power and trust where they will presumably have access to the arms they've just surrendered? Regardless of whether they need constables, (are there goings-on among some that are out of her ability to control?) I think she's taking a calculated risk that she could lose the place, the risk in her mind would not be so much the loss but whether the change is a net positive. She might even be seriously worried about what would happen in the resulting power vacuum if she were ill, dead or faced a challenge that was out of her scope, given that she has an over-confident, entitled son who acts like he's still in middle school instead of being a grown-ass man surviving a zombie apocalypse. She probably knows he's an idiot.

It would be funny if Jessie started doing feathered, teased-out hair on people. Well, funny to me anyway.

From what I remember of interviews, Norman was openly disgusted by the idea of a pairing while Emily played into it somewhat. Anyone else seemed to give non-answers. I don't want to be spoiled so I'd rather the possibility of an empty tease over them shutting something down entirely. Talking Dead is problematic since it's tied to the show and Hardwick does tend get wound up over whatever ship might be tied to a particular show or guest and it's annoying. Some of his theories on how a particular non-romantic storyline might play out tend to be a bit crack-pot too, so I tend to see his frantic yapping as indicative of nothing the show is actually trying to promote other than itself. I think he's supposed to be more the voice of fans than the show itself, which may be why he gets so wound up about shipping potential. I wish he'd stop.

I enjoy Rick and Michonne as characters, I'd be happy to see them paired, but my enjoyment of the show would not be diminished if the show went elsewhere, unless it happened to be with other characters I didn't care for, however I'd get over it. There is much to base shipping on with them and a lot of reasons the show might not go there or not go there soon. I don't feel teased if we get moments where they actually acknowledge each other as physically attractive sexual beings. We never saw anything along those lines between Daryl and Beth that I could discern no matter what cockeyed pretzel logic I applied to their interactions and yet their was a camp of fans that went bat-shit over the possibility of a pairing. I really don't care if an arguably flirtatious moment will evoke a bad response from some fans pro or con. It adds to the richness of their characterizations for me and I'd rather not lose moments like that because it turns out to be misleading as per indicating any particular story. Some fans are going to be baited no matter what.

I worked with in a hotel kitchen with a guy who not only did not bathe often enough, but also drenched himself with some horribly scented product that was worse than his phenomenal BO. You could see people trying to hold their breath near him and you could actually make people start gagging by merely mentioning his bad stench on his days off. I kept imagining Deanna pulling out a high heat steam cleaner every time an interview was done. Also, there appear to be a lot of scented candles in her living room, just saying.

Clicking on the map, I saw 12 houses, one building that could be either a smaller house or outbuilding and a large block of stacked townhouses. The number of gates (4!) is disturbing, especially since they have roads leading straight to them, seemingly unobstructed, which makes it possible to breach them by ramming with a heavy vehicle. The bracing on the outside (WTF) looks insufficient to keep them up if enough force is brought to bear on them.

Maybe Enid's parents were fans of The Barenaked Ladies or Noddy.

I am of the opinion that Glenn should have decked Aidan as soon as he failed to hand over the promised baked goods. Even though "sweet ass biscuits" sounds like it could be an odd treat, that was still a mean trick. Clearly Aidan is not well-suited for being in charge of anything as important as delivering muffin baskets to newcomers.

I'm inclined to think Alexandria is safe, at least in terms of the community culture they've developed but their long term viability is in jeopardy because they are stagnant. They are not secure and I suspect we will see that come into play by the end of the season. They've been very lucky because their community's location in an evacuated area and self-sustaining nature has minimized their need to venture far afield and encounter large populations of walkers or dangerous humans. I think they have only a very abstract idea of how badly things could go if the trajectory of a dense walker herd or predatory humans intersects with them, if they even understand how significant those threats are. Aidan was proud that they have ventured as much as 50 miles distant but if they've picked over much of what was located within that perimeter that's more of an admission of a problem than of an accomplishment. If they have had only scant contact with others living or undead, he's only slightly more prepared than the more dependent individuals who have not ventured outside the wall. If they've been losing people on supply runs, then they are not as good at this as they should be and further, those they are losing are the young, fit ones who are the most necessary to keep the community going. I think there has been a little alarm ringing in the back of Deanna's head for some time now that danger is going to find them and it got a lot louder when they took Enid in 8 months ago. If the girl was so wary that it took her three weeks before she started talking to to others, she has likely been through some rough experiences and Deanna is one of the few people she would likely have told even the sketchiest version. They stopped taking in newcomers after that point, even though they had room for more people and needed more hands. Given that a tool like Aidan is in any kind of a leadership position, they're screwed if they don't top-up the quality and skills of their population. I think she may have assigned Aaron and Erick to get very selective about new recruits and find a group that had a sense of cohesion, were experienced survivors and included women and children who were part of the group rather than the property of the group. I think she was pleased that they handled their first night by sticking together rather than racing around trying to claim the comfiest bed and best rooms. I'm skeptical that Enid is contacting an outside group. 8 months seems an unlikely length of time for them to stay their hand, if enemies or to request to come in from the cold, if friendly and trustworthy. I think it's more likely that she is establishing survival caches in case she needs to escape a dangerous situation. I agree with those that think she is the most likely person to have removed the blender gun. I don't think Carol has Deanna entirely fooled but even so, she got exactly what she wanted out of the encounter. I'm sure Deanna looked past the helpless act and sees that Carol is a highly competent person, but I doubt even her canniest analysis would reveal that Carol would be the sort to take down Terminus, or that she has the sort of ruthless pragmatism that would enable her to end the lives of sick people with a highly communicable disease or someone like Lizzie. I think there is nothing off about the slight number of encounters they've had with other residents, IIRC Aaron mentioned that the rest of them would respect their privacy and keep their distance while they settle in. They need a second tier of walls, better gate(s), perhaps a discreet barricade on the road before the wall is in sight and additional barriers like a line of junked cars between the wall and the treeline.

I enjoyed Hugh Dillon, the cast seems fine overall and I like the concept of the show but the writing was weak. The attempts to ratchet up the tension just felt hollow, contrived and manipulative. For instance that little girl was adorable but I doubt I'd be willing to endanger a bombing operation just because she was on the bridge filled with Nazi's on their way to slaughter an entire town. Also, the idea of her rushing up to confront the officer seemed unlikely to say the least. Mind you if their sabateour had shown a little less.... um... flair when attempting to set off the explosion and not pulled the wires out of the detonator it would not have been a problem. There were just too many ridiculous things that happened due to people who were supposed to be functioning at a certain level of expertise doing stupid things instead. I'm not sure whether I'll give it a second chance.