Still Gotta Mean Something

This whole season has been a waste of time. Poor writing, bad acting. Such a shame.

The walking dead season 8 had a dreadful first half. It had a large percentage of bad episodes. It did get way better in the second half. They need to end this war, and wrap the show up, as it should have an ending. This is a very dark episode. The morgan and rick scene in the bar was great. The rest of the episode is very forgettable.

For everything that this season hasn't been, I thought this episode made up for a whole lot of mistakes that the show has made, even if there was still some frustrating Rick moments in last night's arc.

The thing I loved about this episode was how well it broke down each focused character in a way we haven't seen in quite some time (or in some cases, ever). In Rick's case, it was him deciding to once again go against Carl's non-violent wishes, before finally sitting down and reading the letter he wrote his father. I'm not sure the last time I was as stunned as I was when Rick turned on the Saviors in the warehouse. The fact that he killed some of them in cold blood after they kept him alive was almost as bad as some of the things that Negan has done to the Alexandrians. It sure seems like they are bringing Rick and Negan's likability to around to the same level, almost as if to throw a wrench into everything we thought we knew about the last few years.

On that note, we finally heard why Negan calls his bat Lucille, which somewhat expectedly, is named after his dead wife. But it's not just that revelation, but the way he said it and the other worse he expressed to Jadis pleading for his life. I'm not saying Negan will ever be a character I can root for on this show, but there's no doubt that they are positioning him as a fully real human being with flaws, rather than a caricature as he sometimes was last year.

Carol and Morgan were also at the center of this episode as Morgan continued to go off the rails and Carol finally opened up a bit about Sophia, something we haven't heard her reference in long time. Both of which were well acted by Lennie James and Carol McBride respectively.

Overall, it wasn't an overly action-packed episode, but it may have been this season's most emotionally draining episode, save for maybe Carl's death episode. But these are the episodes I tend to gravitate towards more so than the tense action filled weeks.

8.6/10

It seems that no one goes into a walking dead episode with a neutral mindset anymore. All of the reviews that I read that rated this episode low, seem to have already made the conclusion about the episode before they've even watched it. True, there were some poor quality episodes in the first half of the season, but this epsiode had a lot of strong points. In the first half of the season people criticised the show for mindless action or really slow-pacing. In this episode there was a nice balance between action and story-telling and it really captured the inner struggle of carol, Rick and Morgan and the difficulty of finding a reason to retain their humanity after so much has been lost. 9/10

Last night I watched another episode of The Walking Dead. That's all that is worth mentioning: unambiguously there are unexpected plot twists (for those who have not read comics), which capture, despite all the intricacies; comparable to the previous thirteen episodes, it is exactly the most saturated in terms of the plot and the characters involved; there are new intrigues, thanks to which you will eagerly wait for the long-awaited finale of the war with the Savior! To my surprise, this is one of the best episodes of the season! All in impatience, Rick the Prick! 9.2 out of 10