Ouisch

Um, Carol told everyone she was claustrophobic back when they were at the CDC. Guess she and Daryl (and the writers) forgot about that little exchange.

LOL I remember Gabriel actually removing his collar and burning it, back in the season when Sasha shot some feral dogs for food. I happened to chat with him at a ComicCon after that season and asked him why he was still wearing a white collar, since he'd thrown it into the campfire....? He told me that there was a deleted scene that showed him (after they'd arrived at Alexandria) fashioning a collar out of a paper plate.

I agree that Combat Medics are working under the very worst and most stressful of conditions, but that still does not compare to actually going to medical school for four years (after four years of undergrad schooling). My point is that Dante is posturing himself as a "doctor", when he has no medical degree. Sure, he worked in the trenches under unfathomable conditions and worked on gunshot victims and burn victims, etc, but does he have an microbiology training? When it comes to whatever this "stomach bug" is, he has no training as an internist, nor as as a diagnostician. My point is, hie is not a medical doctor, yet he wears a white coat (which is traditionally given to med school students at orientation). I think he's a poser, which may or may not come into play in later episodes.

We're, what, 10 years into the Outbreak? And Dante still has a pristine white doctor's coat? No fraying, no showing signs of wear and tear after being washed and bleached for a decade? Besides, he's not an MD, he was an Army Combat Medic. That requires a high school diploma and 10 weeks of specialized training. Why is everyone kowtowing to him like he's Ben Casey or Marcus Welby (geez, am I showing my age or what?)?

I believe Negan told Brandon "I don't kill kids." Remember when he had our trusty group of Alexandrians lined up on their knees prior to killing Abraham and Glenn, he instructed his minions to "take out the kid's other eye and feed it to his father" if anyone balked or tried to interfere. Then there was the whole having Rick cut off Carl's hand threat. But hey, that's just maiming, not killing. Potato, potahto.

I saw an episode of Judge Judy once where a kid's parents were suing his classmate for injuring his testicles when they played "the sack tap game" at school. I was all WTF?! then; never thought I'd hear about that past time on TWD. Who is the cousin that that one girl (Yumika's girlfriend) was talking about? "He killed my cousin." And who was the "he" - Negan? There are too many characters for me to keep track of!

Maybe she found T-Dog's old stash. Or Father Gabe's.

That was my main distraction while watching this episode..... so you had some plumbing malfunctions and you're short on food.... You are still living inside a solid walled community! Why abandon that for a hazardous trek through a snowstorm with limited food supplies? (You'd be just as cold and hungry at home in the Kingdom, but you wouldn't have to worry about Whisperers and Walkers.) Certainly eventually someone could have rigged up some of that Rube Goldberg-type plumbing Rick and Company had back at the prison. And while our intrepid main characters were fighting against gale-force winds, snow and freezing weather, we see the Whisperers in some place that is snow-free and where the trees are still flush with green leaves. OK, perhaps they migrated South, but they are doing so on foot, and with a hundred or so people in tow (unless they left those interspersed members of the herd shown to Daryl left behind). Just how far South could this group have made it in the short time jomp indicated?

Why did Alpha have a perfectly clean face when she was all dressed up and wearing the blondie scalp at the fair? Then when she captured Daryl et al she had that dark schmutz around her mouth and eyes again. Does she rub burnt cork on her face when she's officially "Alpha" or something?

I remember when, for maybe all of Season 5, comic book fans could not wait for the introduction of Negan to the TV show. Then when he final.ly appeared, the ratings started to decline, and many comic book fans said that the TV Negan wasn't the same as the graphic novel version, etc etc. In any case, my point is that SO many fans eagerly anticipated the arrival of Negan and now most of those fans agree that Negan ain't all that and a bag o' chips and JDM's posturing just drags the plot to a standstill. With that said, comic book fans have been likewise cheering for the arrival of the Whisperers since just after Negan arrived on the scene....I wonder if the insertion of this new threat will be likewise anticlimactic?

Mr. Ouisch pointed out the same thing - that the actress who plays Enid doesn't look a bit different than she did in Season 8, other than her hair is a bit shorter. But according to the time jump, her character should be about 21 years old now. Surely with all the amazing makeup tricks/effects the crew has at their disposal they could "age" Enid a little bit in some subtle ways.

I was hoping Maggie would do a Hans Gruber a la Die Hard - when Takagi said "I don't know the code, you'll just have to kill me" and Hans simply said "OK" and BANG! But no, Maggie had to wimp out.... although I was thinking that once she let him out of his cell he'd overpower her and escape.

I'd hate to be the overweight kid who couldn't climb the rope in his gym class. That was supposed to be a six year time jump at the end? Carol's hair grew longer than it ever has in the first eight seasons and turns completely white, while Daryl looked exactly the same.

I'm still trying to reconcile the show's timeline....Season 8 began allegedly two years after the outbreak, and Season 9 started with an 18 month time jump.... So Judith (who was born in Season 3) should be maybe almost three years old by now. But the toddler portraying her is at least six years old. Yet Gracie (who is approximately 23 months old now) is described by Aaron as an infant with explosive, um, diaper-soiling bodily functions as he cradles her in his arms.

It didn't occur to me until long after the episode that that the climbing-out-of-the-hole scene was a callback to "Chupacabra", when Merle was taunting Daryl after he'd been thrown from a horse (and suffered a puncture through his flank!) "why don't you ask your friend Rick to help you up?!"