Perhaps the most surprising thing about this episode is how a strong beginning quickly gives way to something a bit more pedestrian.  Well, pedestrian from the perspective of a horde of Walkers banging on every door.  With the previous installment feeling very much like setup for the main event, this could (and should) have been a knockout blow.  The series just doesn’t need to rely on cliffhangers and unresolved tension to bring back the audience, so why continue going down that road?  

For fans of the source material, the episode ends literally seconds too soon, as the anticipated fallout of Sam calling out for his mother would take very little time to erupt.  Clearly there are some characters in that lineup that are Walker Chow, and it’s probably easy enough to figure out which characters will survive.  Note that I say “survive”, not “survive intact”, because they are surrounded.  Bad things are about to happen.


Which is the problem, since those bad things should have happened in this episode.  After all, for all the thematic hints that Alexandria is a lost cause, that’s a huge assumption.  The characters are invested in Alexandria now, both as an actual place and as an ideal.  I don’t see them running just yet, so much as regrouping.  

The episode was also full of some odd plotting choices.  I get that Ron was going to take his shot at Carl, and I was sure that it would end badly.  Instead, it was a bit of a mess, perhaps because Ron’s choice are so self-destructive when there was little hint previously of a desire to die along with his intended victim.  Ron is so off the wall that one could easily read the scenes as a blatant attempt to show how far Carl has come in handling these situations.  Giving Carl a better adversary or heroic scenario would have worked wonders.


Normally, I would be on Carol’s side when it comes to pragmatism.  Certainly there was no reason to believe that this surviving member of the Wolves would engage in the kind of philosophical turnaround that Morgan experienced, so her logic was sound.  But in the middle of the onslaught of this Walker horde?  Grab the nurse and leave!  Not only do you not need to fight that battle in that exact moment, but Morgan won’t hesitate to kill Walkers, so use that to increase the chances of survival!  





With the first half of the season being quite strong out of the gate, it’s unfortunate to see it falter a bit in the stretch, especially when so much is known about the endgame for the season.  It’s all leading to the introduction of what may turn out to be the series’ endgame villain, and that means that the second half of the season is going to have to move past this current crisis relatively quickly to set the stage for the threat that Negan represents.  And given how the whole Schrodinger’s Glenn plot element played out, giving the audience another reason to feel manipulated.