Note: Major spoilers for the midseason premiere of The Walking Dead, you have been warned.
The episode picks up right where the midseason finale left off a couple of months ago. We see the group of men on motorcycles stop Daryl, Abraham, and Sasha, and then try to take all of their belongings, and also say that they are going to follow them back to wherever they call home. However, Daryl has other ideas, as he uses a rocket launcher to kill the entire group, and they instead head back to Alexandria on their own. For those of us that know about the comics, and the upcoming appearance of Negan, whom is mentioned in the scene, we know that this is only a temporary reprieve, but we will cross that bridge in a later episode, as there is no other mention of Negan for the duration of the episode.
Back in Alexandria, there are several things going on. Rick and his group are still trying to make their way through the streets covered in the guts of the walkers. The wolf and Denise are trying to make their escape amid the chaos. Carol and her group are trying to look for an opening as well, while not really dealing with what went down between Carol and Morgan. Glenn and Enid are also plotting out a way to save Maggie. Each of these different storylines play out to different outcomes, some of which I believe was entirely unnecessary considering the outcome, but I understand the need to tie up all of the loose ends that were left hanging during the midseason finale.
First, for Rick and his group. Considering how long they had built up this strange relationship between Rick and Jessie, I was a little surprised that it all came to a head the way it did. First, Sam (the youngest of Jessie's kids) started to freak out because of something Carol had told him a ways back, and so the walkers got him. This caused Jessie to start screaming, so of course she was next on the list to get killed by the walkers. During the commotion, someone dropped one of their guns, and Ron (the older of Jessie's kids) picked it up and pointed it at Carl. Apparently they hadn't quite hashed out their differences from the previous episode, and so Michonne kills Ron, but not before he pulls the trigger and shoots out Carl's eye. Having read the comics, I knew this was coming eventually, so it was no real surprise and really took out the suspense of the moment for me. I also felt like this scene was rushed, and the three deaths by this entire family felt just like a plot device and really took away from the impact that it should have had on Rick. Maybe they will address this later, but we will see. I have a feeling they will just move on and probably not really mention it again.
The wolf and Denise have some rather boring and out of place conversations, in which each one is trying to say they will change the other one. I really could have done without this whole storyline, so I will just get to the end. The wolf saves Denise instead of letting her die and getting away on his own, then he gets bit, she tries to save him, but Carol shoots him and he gets turned, causing Morgan to run into him after he has turned, and apologizes and kills the walker version of him. After writing out the above sentence, the whole thing seems even more ridiculous, and so I will just leave it at that.
As far as Carol and Morgan go, there was no resolution. They had a brief scene in which Carol says she should have killed Morgan, and he says, "You can't." Don't really know if he was alluding to the fact that she physically couldn't, because he wouldn't let her, or if he means that he didn't think she had it in her. I assume this will get further elaborated on in the future, so I won't dwell much on it. The only other interesting thing here is that they tried to show that Eugene was actually thinking about stepping up and being a man for once, which he eventually does before the end of the episode.
Not a whole lot going on with the conversations between Glenn and Enid, he is just trying to tell her that she has something to live for. It was fine, but it felt pretty unnecessary. Enid is a minor character that I don't feel like they even know what they want to do with her on the show, so I imagine all of this will be for nothing in the end, as she will likely die unspectacularly, or just fall into the background. Either way, they do end up saving Maggie, and Daryl and the others get back just in time to save Glenn before he gets overrun by the walkers.
Now that all of that was out of the way, the second half of the episode finally took off. After Rick gets Carl to the infirmary, he leaves and goes out to face the walkers on his own. He starts really laying into them, and slowly the rest of the town joins in. This is something I think should have been done a long time ago, everybody actually banded together and took the fight to the walkers, instead of just sitting back and waiting to get eaten. I'm not really sure what has been taking them so long in this show, but the walkers are slow and easily manipulated, the group knows exactly how to deal with them, so why haven't they been doing more of this all along? I know they were greatly outnumbered, but they just proved in this episode that none of that matters. They didn't really even do much out of the ordinary, other than Daryl lighting the pond on fire and letting the walkers just wander right into it. Why they all just turned their attention to the fire and away from the group of food right in front of them is a different question, but sometimes logic has to be thrown out on this show, and considering how well the scene was pulled off, I was okay with it.
At the end of the episode, Rick is talking to Carl and telling them that he was wrong, and that the people of Alexandra have learned, and they did fight for their survival, and now he thinks they can turn the town into what Deanna was trying to turn it into. Carl then squeezes his hand, showing the audience that he is okay, and strangely for this show, everything looks to have worked out for the group and everybody is optimistic. I think we all know this won't last more than five minutes into the next episode, but hey, we should probably take it. Lord knows this group could use it, even if it is only a five minute reprieve.
So, some of my thoughts on the episode as a whole. I thought the episode was pretty good, I just wish they would have focused less on the more boring storylines that were just going to end abruptly and not matter in the end anyway, and put more time into the bigger picture storylines. I think overall they did a good job, but I think they would have just felt like bigger moments if they would have gotten more time. I'm mainly referring to the deaths of the Anderson family, and the wolf/Denise storyline. On the whole though, I like what they have done with The Walking Dead this season, and I'm anxiously awaiting to see what happens next. I just hope they don't drag out the Negan storyline all the way to the end of this season, and then just show him for like two seconds, but I'm not holding my breath on that.
My rating for this episode is 7/10
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