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?!"

Yes. She was referring both to Corl and Andre (she also said "my daughter" when referring to Judith). Two episodes ago they were complaining of a food shortage, yet they waste good grub on Negan (and he ends up wasting it....argh!!). The bread on that sandwich looked like mechanically sliced store-bought stuff, not like anything they concocted by hand with their home-grown wheat. And I can't keep track of so many characters anymore....how and why did they end up with a tent city? Who are those renegade Saviors? Who was the tween girl on the walkie-talkie? Who was Nora, the crow lady? Have we met her before? They're going have to give these characters numbered jerseys so that I can keep track of who's who and from which camp they hail.

It seems like since 18 months have passed, Anne and Father G would've known more about each other by now (i.e. that he was Episcopalian, not Catholic). Sometimes the dialog between characters sounds like it's picking up right where Season 8 left off, rather than a year-and-a-half later. (In a similar vein, Grace is older than Baby Hershel, who is now a toddler. Would Aaron really be "picking her up after her nap", like an infant? At that age, don't kids usually hop out of bed from their nap on their own and are usually busy getting into mischief before Mama or Papa finds them?)

I had a friend who worked for this particular magazine at the time, and I remember how upset he was over the Neil Twitter kerfuffle over (basically) a non-event. From my understanding (keep in mind I'm the one who always fell asleep in the planetarium), they were trying to make some sort of supernova halo effect in order to emphasize Tyson's whole astrophysicist legendary-ness. But the art director or whomever was responsible for the cover apparently didn't make that intent clear enough. The one Laugh Out Loud moment I had during this episode was when Sheldon was correcting the tour director and then, when Amy was upset over it, replied "But how else will they know that I'm the smartest boy here?" (or something like that). Mr. Ouisch rolled his eyes and announced "That would SO be you!! Except for the 'boy' part..." Apparently I've had similar Sheldon-esque moments in public (which I still think my husband misinterprets....I'm just trying to be helpful, not a show-off....)

Is there a glazier somewhere at the Hilltop? Where did Tara and Company get all those replacement panes of glass they took to the Sanctuary? (Lucky thing they appeared to be the exact size to fit those factory windows!)

Adult Sheldon has slight traces of an accent at times (Jim Parsons is from Texas, though) so I find it a bit unusual that the Young version has no twang whatsoever. My husband spotted Michael Cudlitz immediately....I would have never recognized him without his fire engine red hair and mustache! Speaking of looking different, Annie Potts did not look like anyone's Meemaw when she wore her hair down!

I went back and re-watched that scene....somehow Eugene made footprints through and leading away from the pile of ashes, and then apparently doubled back somehow and hid. Daryl points to the footprints that are heading toward the fence and says "He couldn't have gotten very far..."

Reminds me of an episode of The Flintstones (the original series, back when I was a kid....) - Fred won a contest and was acting in a Stony Curtis movie as his stand-in. Every time there was a dangerous scene coming up, the director would yell "Cut!" and replace Stony with Fred. Then he'd cue the action - for example, an avalanche of boulders. "You did get the fake boulders, right?" the director would ask his assistant. "Are you kidding? Do you know how much fake boulders cost?" "OK," director would shrug, "we'll use real ones." Went on like this for many scenes in all sorts of treacherous situations. I truly feel for Emily and Chandler....I've worked at a few companies where I was frequently reassured of my job security, how we were all "family" (especially when I worked unpaid overtime), etc etc, and then when the economy slumped or whatever, there was no hesitation in laying me off (a polite term of canning someone; at least they can still collect Unemployment). Not only the sudden endless supply of ammo and gasoline is eye-rollingly unbelievable, but a distillery would still be stocked with booze? Let's face it, if such a small disaster as a hurricane causes folks to make booze one of their top priorities while looting (if we're gonna die, might as well die happy!), it seems like in the ZA any liquor stashes would have long ago been cleaned out. Especially ones with huge directional signs on the road.

Back In The Day most movie theaters had "cry rooms" for parents with babies. I agree with previous posters - Halley is one year old; how much is she going to remember of "Daddy and Me" playgroup time, much less an elaborate birthday party. And they did do a great make-up job on sickly Amy and Sheldon....I could feel their pain just by the way they looked! I'm glad Sheldon rushed across the hall to vom in Leonard's toilet....it truly grossed me out when Amy did so in their kitchen sink.

....and apparently part of Rick's plan was to save the "workers" in the Sanctuary, those folks who are only there because they fear Negan. Now, if Negan is killed and they are "freed", they could join with Rick and the Alexandrians and/or Hilltoppers and they'd have the numbers again. However....just like with the prisoners they've already brought back to the Hilltop, there is only so much food to go around, there are only so many places to sleep out of the weather, etc. Alexandria, Hilltop, even the Prison (back in the day) are/were finite in the number of people they can accommodate and sustain. Too many people in cramped quarters with not enough water to bathe as well as drink or an overworked sanitary system means disease can quickly spread. And they're already running short of food at the Sanctuary, where they've been hoarding halfsies from other communities...imagine how much worse it will get at the Hilltop once they run out of turnips. In the long run, even though Rick's "plan" (if I'm understanding it) is more humane at first glance, eventually a lot of those people are going to starve to death or worse anyway.

I was trying to figure out why Rick, stripped down to his boxer shorts, was perspiring as if he was locked in a sweat lodge. Every one else at the Dump was dressed like it's December in Anchorage. (Those looked like the same baggy shorts he was wearing the the pilot episode, when he first awoke from his coma. Must be using Woolite Extra Gentle or something that they're not threadbare by now.)