Dodginblue

Yes, it's probably something dull like that. I was hoping for something more. Like Eugene recognized him as the little brother he thought was an early ZA casualty and didn't know was still alive. Seriously, though, what I thought watching it was that Eugene was thinking about ratting him out, a way to show dedication to his new group.

I don't think JDM is committing career suicide. He's delivering an okay performance given what he has to work with. And I think Andrew Lincoln will be just fine. He can go back to the UK and I think he'll find plenty of roles, kind of like Idris Elba, the actor who played Stringer Bell in The Wire.

I wonder what was up with that long haired kid who picked something up off the table and caught Eugene's attention. That was about the only thing that interested me in this episode. I don't care about Dwight, feel no connection to him or his wife --and how pathetic is it that the writers try to create empathy for them by having Dwight read some letter she wrote. Dwight killed Denise and acted fairly happy doing it. Now he's a troubled soul on some kind of redemption arc? I don't know, I don't care. Eugene did what Eugene does. That isn't shocking. I get that there's probably some big reason coming up where him being inside the Saviors compound will matter so the show had to get him there but, again, pathetic that they couldn't come up with some kind of story line that didn't just repeat what they've already done with this character. The actor who plays Eugene is fun to watch and I think he did his best to create a bit of nuance in how he presented the character in this episode. I don't know if those girls were trying to set Eugene up or not. I suspect not because we're supposed to believe that there's all this quiet resistance to Negan. Because he's such a evil monster. I don't exactly know how the show could have done this all differently but it just doesn't sell, Negan as the devil incarnate. Is it the actor? Maybe. I think it's more the writing. I am Negan. We are Negan. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. It just sounds stupid to me.

I think the season could have opened with Negan getting killed. Maybe in some weirdly unexpected way, like he suddenly chokes on his own tongue and falls over dead. At least then we'd be spared this tedious story line of the saviors and their chatty cathy leader.

Tetanus shots are good for 10 years so if he'd had one not long before the ZA started he should be okay for now. Or maybe he got a shot after he was shot all the way back when he was in the coma in episode 1. That scene was so ridiculous, it really was. It reminded me of Tropic Thunder when Ben Stiller is sitting alone in the jungle watching Kirk fight the big lizard creature on his ipod and then he hears something approaching and goes wild and kills what turns out to be a Panda (Amanda? dude that's probably not even her real name!). I mean, because it was so farcical. The convenient tunnel through the piles of trash so Michonne can watch and shout helpful ideas to Rick. Who's stumbling around like it's day one of the ZA and he's never killed a walker before. He was stunned, disoriented, what should he do?? how will he survive?? At least it didn't go on for very long.

Similarity in a superficial way and I agree it was distracting. Partly because Milla is so beautiful,, the comparison isn't favorable to this actress playing Jadis, and while Milla's lines in the RE movies aren't high poetry or anything she has mostly coherent dialogue.

So in last week's episode Rick easily moved through a horde of walkers to get to the waiting vehicle but in this week's episode he's forced to fight one tricked out walker and barely makes it out alive. And after surviving that horrific ordeal, Rick quickly agrees to supply weapons to this group of dump dwellers he's just met because the leader says they will fight Negan in return. She's Neo in The Matrix. Guns, lots of guns. Although she doesn't seem to really know who Negan is and there's no reason to believe she's credible or trust-worthy. Or how well the group can fight. Or if that's really what she was even agreeing to given the cryptic way she talks. But hey, details, details. Rick is smiling, Rick is happy. And he's got a new best friend, Father Gabriel (someone should tell the good Father that Rick's men friends don't fare all that well on this show). Richard at The Kingdom is a bit of dick. And maybe not all that bright. Tara seems to be the new Glenn. A very, very poor substitute but we work with what we have. Rosita's side of that conversation made no sense to me. We win! What? We win, who wins, what do they win. It made no sense. I think Melissa McBride must have asked for a little kick back time or something. I can't come up with a rationale to explain why she's sitting in that incredibly well preserved cottage reading a paperback and serving up stew to drop in Daryl. Maybe it's Tobin's fault. She had some domesticity with a man again and something snapped inside her. Poor Morgan. He lost his stick. This seems to be the main reason we should hate the Saviors, they're such mouthy, irritating punks.

This is kind of harsh but mostly true. Except I wouldn't accuse Rick of not being loyal. His relationship with Jessie was really brief and she's dead and gone now so him being with Michonne isn't really a betrayal. He and Michonne have a much deeper connection and for a lot longer. The problem with Rick's pitch to these other communities is that he doesn't offer any plans, any idea of how it could be done. He just says join us, we have to fight. And the only form of war he offers is a war of attrition. A high body count and no way to be sure there's enough bodies to make it worthwhile. That's what I think Morgan is trying to offer, the thought that maybe there's another way, let's think this through. I get that the good guys don't have technology, there are no predator drones, no smart bombs, no Seal Team Six. But all Rick can come up with instead is trying to get a bunch of bodies to throw at the fight. Most of whom have no training.

Maybe it's because it's written in comic book style. Some of the lines, I feel it would be appropriate to have them appear in a bubble over the character's head. The characters are one dimensional and the plot jerks along, frame to frame. A lot of talking it forward and then walking to the next spot, talk some more, walk again. With one big scene, the zombie herd kill. Which was impressive, I guess, how they were able to find cars you can still hot wire, but I didn't really understand why they did that. They talked about moving the cars back so Negan wouldn't know they'd been through there but wouldn't he notice the sliced up walkers lying in the median and wonder about that?

Not only did they slaughter a bunch of sleeping people, which okay that's fine, doesn't have to be a fair fight, Carol and Maggie were also kidnapped as part of that shindig, more or less a direct result of Rick's typical piss poor planning and lack of any meaningful recon before he started blowing people away.

Seeing as how Rosita put her life on the line for Eugene for weeks / months? to keep him alive when they were doing the whole get Eugene to DC so he can save the world routine, I get where she might not feel terribly respectful towards his lying ass. And I think Rosita can stand around feeling guilty when every other character's who gotten people killed, starting with Rick, show how remorseful they are. I don't know if Rosita is feeling hurt, I think she just didn't want to play nice with Sasha. And why should she? It's not like they were besties before the whole Abe thing. I don't remember any real interaction between the two of them before. So she blew her off. Just keeping it real. Sasha's a big girl, she can handle it.

I like Rosita. I like that "bitter but still someone who can get shit done" attitude. Which seems totally realistic to me. It's a sign, to me, of how far this show has fallen, that it's reduced to building a mystery around the actions and motives of a loser character like Father Gabriel. Daryl glowers, Carol wanders aimlessly in the woods, Tara gawps, Morgan gives us some more peace, love and understanding and Rick is intent on building another coalition of the willing. I stopped watching after the first two episodes last Fall and I'm satisfied after last night that I basically missed pretty much nothing.

This episode was incoherent psychobabble when it wasn't being derivative of either other shows/movies or even itself. That thing about solving problems to save someone, they did that in Season 1. I wonder why it wasn't possible to figure out a way to continue to make this series fun and suspenseful and intriguing and instead the show's writers could only go with making everyone (outside the minor characters like Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and Molly Hooper) creepy and mentally disturbed. I mean, I hope it's because they just couldn't figure out a way to write the kind of episodes we saw in seasons one and two and had to come up with something, I hate to think they actually could have done it better and just chose not to.

Given the drop in ratings I think that loss of interest is already happening. Or maybe it's just that the show's appeal is becoming more selective.

I don't think Aaron ever he said was the great tracker. And it seems like he was looking for stragglers, people kind of out there on their own, which the Kingdom people have their own thing, same with Hilltop, so I don't think they'd want to leave that to go to ASZ even if he did run into any of them, And maybe he and Eric did spot the saviors but stayed away from them. They would observe before approaching anyone so it probably didn't take too much to figure out the saviors were bad news.

I could see the taking off if Carol is trying to get back to ASZ except then I remembered that she'd left there to begin with, it's how she ended up out there. So she's not trying to get back to anyone. And then she moves into a house right on the road and starts a fire, so anyone passing by can't miss it. Which I guess it's okay because it's only Ezekiel at the door. And not some random psycho. How cozy! Hopefully she's had time to whip up a casserole, they can have dinner together by the fireplace.

I thought at first that this episode was strange, then decided maybe it wasn't really happening, that it was Carol's hallucination, kind of a cruel continuation of the imaginary scenes in last week's episode, how things aren't going to be, no sitting around having dinner together, bouncing baby on the knee and so on. With the pigs and the saviors I figured no, it's happening, and then the Kingdom scenes seemed corny. Until Ezekiel and Carol were talking near the end, that helped to save the episode. He seems real, someone who's fully cognizant of who is he and who he needs to be to keep the people together, he faked it until he made it. That maybe, unlike Rick until last week's episode, Ezekiel doesn't actually believe his own sh*t.

Carol's got the Free Bird jones, she must be traveling on, there's too many places she's got to see...

And I was thinking more Eddie Murphy in Coming to America. But Shakespeare, sure I can go with that.

I was thinking the same thing, which I guess is so there's zero chance we have any feeling for any of them no matter what. Can't be too subtle, we might miss the point.

Carol's simple act worked better at ASZ, here her phoniness seems really obvious.

I think it's called the "I was just following orders" mentality, that's how brutal leaders get people to go along with doing stuff, because the followers aren't making the decisions, they're following and that means doing what you're told. Someone who's just keeping his head down and not participating is a bystander, which I don't imagine Negan tolerates that. It's part of how the control is maintained, getting your followers to do the bad things, it makes them complicit, it's the cost of following. And the follower tells him or herself, I'm just doing what I'm told, I'm not actually deciding anything, I'm not the responsible one. I also think that the Negan group probably sees the Rick group as predators (which they kind of are) so it's not like they've come across a group of innocent schoolchildren and followed Negan's orders to wipe them all out or something.

So you're not into the whole "no man left behind" thing I take it?

I think most people are followers, comfortable with being lead even if the leadership is sometimes brutal. And we don't know how these people connect to each other, if they are all just random strangers or if there are pre-existing relationships for some of them and they're trying to stay together. I also don't think it's that easy just to go off on your own. This is the 21st century, I don't think the skill set for most people involves knowing how to survive with various dangers around every corner and having to figure out to get food and drinkable water and some kind of durable shelter.

I think we're supposed to find him charismatic and that's supposed to make him interesting or something. The smiling killer, quick with a quip then a bash up side the head. Using violence to keep people in line isn't something unique to the ZA. That's part of what makes this story line so dull. It's pre -ZA behavior carried over into the ZA. There's a breakdown in civil society, there's no rule of law, the people willing to kill pretty much on a whim oppress and brutalize the weak and powerless. You don't need an extinction event to see that happen.