There was certainly plenty of head scratching and hand waving throughout this episode, but there was also something strangely entertaining in the dynamics at play in this one. It's not great theater by any stretch, no, but when I'm watching one over the top villain court and bully his way into the inner sanctum of another over the top villain where I don't feel compelled to try to suss out who's less awful or whose side I should be on, I can just be fine with it either way if one happens to kill the other and enjoy the show.
We've been told over and over that Negan is a watcher, that's he's always watching and listening and seeing how he can use that and for the first time in maybe forever I got a very real sense of that. Yes, he's a gross psychopath, but like many of them, he also has a pretty good understanding of people. He knew full well he was irritating the shit out of Beta and the rest of the Whispering herd and he deliberately kept doing it to see how they would respond. At this point, he's persona non grata with the living communities and the Sanctuary is gone. What does he have to lose even if he gets it wrong? He sees the growing unease between Alpha and Beta and correctly surmises after all the groveling submissiveness she surrounds herself with, his big Negan swinging dick persona will at least peak her interest. I don't know exactly what the show is going for here, but the actors have a strange repellent chemistry that leads me to hope they'll be everything twisted that Rick and the garbage lady promised but never managed to deliver on because of Rick's lingering status as a "good guy." It's got to be more interesting than watching people chuck acorns into a can or Eugene take a turn playing ham radio Tinder.
Is no one left alive from the last time our gang faced an unknown epidemic? That's only the reason why I can think of that they don't seem to be taking any precautions in herding a large group of sick people into one place where they could die and turn with only a single medic or two paying any attention.
As always I love anything that has Daryl and Carol just hanging out. The actors have the easiest chemistry, probably from working together for so long. The whole let's just the two of us somehow find and destroy the megaherd was awfully short on specifics as plans on this show often are, but it gave us a few nice reminders that when the show lets the Whisperers be these creepy unknown things mumbling in the dark, they are kind of scary. I also enjoy any argument that's written well enough for me to see both sides of it and this was one. Daryl is right that whatever they do is likely to blow back on the surrounding communities and that needs to be taken into consideration, but Carol's not wrong either that they're already suffering living under the boot of these whackadoos and that isn't likely to get any better without taking some kind of action.
