Supernatural: The Future (12x19)

This episode was honestly such a gift? I'm very surprised by how much I liked it, honestly. Let's dive in!

Cons:

I won't go in to the plot that much, but one of the important elements here is that Cas steals the Colt from Dean. The Colt, since it returned this season, has been built up a lot, and so seeing Dagon just destroy it like it was nothing? Kind of a letdown on a major scale. I'm happy that Dagon was too bad ass to be taken down by a gun, but considering the fact that she got killed just a few moments later, it seems strange to have the Colt suddenly be gone. I wanted more out of it, after such buildup.

We get a semi-decent explanation of why Cas has been AWOL over the past few episodes, but it still feels a bit contrived. I understand the idea they're going for, but honestly? Cas could pick up the phone. He could send a text. He could make up some crap to keep the Winchesters off his back. His conflicting ideas about what to do, and how to get a win for him and his friends all make perfect sense. But would he really act that way in the face of these doubts?

Kelly has become a devout follower of the infant inside of her, which I think is a great concept and one I totally didn't see coming. However, I think this would work even better if we had some idea of who Kelly was as a person. If we had gotten to know her at all as a complex human being before the whole demon baby thing, all of the material with her would hit closer to home. As it is, I keep asking myself - what does POTUS think happened to his lover? The minute I remember Kelly was the President's girlfriend, it becomes a lot harder to take her seriously. Supernatural may have flown too close to the sun on that one.

Grey's Anatomy: Don't Stop Me Now (13x21)

Maggie is super annoying, actually. But... some things about this episode made me actually cry, so that must mean it had its redeemable qualities. Let's dive in.

Cons:

So, Maggie finds out about Riggs and Meredith, and she is super devastated and goes on and on about how she thought she could trust Meredith with the truth, and how she was the last person she had left since her mom died... I mean, Maggie. You and Riggs didn't have a thing. You told your sister that you had a crush. Obviously Meredith should have spoken up a lot sooner, but this whole plot thread feels like something out of a teen soap, not an adult one. Grow up, Maggie!

I actually liked a lot about the plot thread with Bailey and April trying to reunite Richard and Catherine, but there's a big thing standing in my way of getting totally on board. When Richard is talking about something ugly being inside the person you love, and how he's not sure he wants to forgive Catherine, I'm totally on his side. Like, Catherine did a really, really bad thing. She didn't make an honest mistake. She went behind her husband's back and he lost his job. That's not something I'd be able to brush off.

There was a super tragic plot thread about this pregnant woman with cancer who decided to forego treatment so her baby could reach full term, with the understanding that she'd only have a little bit of time with her child, and then she'd die. The man who is with her through all of this is a friend of hers, not the biological father of the baby. He's going to be the baby's father, though. They are just two good friends who really love each other - platonic love only - and are going to raise this baby toge - oh, no, wait, in the end it turns out she was secretly in love with him. Ugh. As an asexual-aromantic person I really wish that little detail could have been cut out. Honestly, the story is plenty tragic without the unrealized love angle coming in to it all. I feel like I've seen Grey's Anatomy pull this exact same shit more than once. Are they incapable of showing a platonic love story between a man and a woman? I know they're not, because they've been doing that with Meredith and Alex for years. But... c'mon!

The Big Bang Theory: The Cognition Regeneration (10x22)

How many more times am I going to have to write out the same complaints about this show? This wasn't a terrible episode, but I still have to gripe about a few elements!

Cons:

Penny and Leonard's plot thread was, for the first time in forever, really compelling and potentially something that could have developed and grown over time. Then, at the end of the episode, the whole thing was scrapped and we're back to square one. This is one of those things that I'm constantly pointing out with this show: wasted potential. Instead of seeing Penny take a job with her ex-boyfriend Zach, instead of seeing her grow into a job she might really like, we revert back into the same thing we've been doing for seasons and seasons now. No forward movement for the characters.

Sheldon's plot thread was basically about him having an early mid-life crisis, where he realizes he's not a young person anymore, and worries about how to optimize his vitality. He tries to learn new things to rewire pathways in his brain, or whatever, so we see him trying to juggle, use a unicycle, make croissants, and walk on stilts. Lots of physical comedy, and none of it really met its mark. I just wasn't all that amused, to be honest.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: All the Madame's Men (4x19)

Oh man, I love this plot arc so much. So, so, much. I don't even know what to say. I almost don't want them to escape from the Framework, because the stuff going on is so interesting!

Cons:

We get brief glances into the real world, where Aida and that random Russian dude whose name I can't remember discuss how they're going to be real people soon, instead of androids, and how this will allow them to kill humans. All very important groundwork, definitely. It's frightening to see so many of our leads so very vulnerable just lying there. All that being said, it was a little too exposition-y, and it wasn't enough to hold my attention very well. Not bad, but not great.

Pros:

So much. Soooo much. I don't have time to write a long review, dangit!

May and Daisy are bad-asses. The scene where they bust their way out of Hydra's HQ was amazing. The best part of course is when Daisy just Quakes Aida right out of the building through a window. Her spine is damaged, but she lives. Super intense. Daisy got one of my favorite lines in the episode, when she and May are on the run and they see this white woman give them a strange look. May thinks she's recognized them, but Daisy says: "maybe she's just racist." That cracked me up. In general, seeing May's turn-around in this episode was delightful. She's reserved and confused about what's going on, but she's working to make up for all the bad she did when she was with Hydra.

Once Upon a Time: Where Bluebirds Fly (6x18)

To the surprise of nobody, Zelena has never been my favorite character. That being said, I rather enjoyed several aspects of her character in this episode. Get ready for a lightning-fast review...

Cons:

Belle is kind of awful for not telling anybody she had the Blue Fairy locked up and eternally asleep. Like, I get that she's doing all of this for her son, but still. Yeesh. Also if Rumple and Belle become a couple again I will die of the horribleness.

Zelena's backstory was rather bland, and was also a little lazy in how it introduced the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. A little too on-the-nose for my taste. It was just more of the same, with Zelena feeling jealous and spiteful and never doing the right thing. I get that it was meant as a contrast for what happens in the present-day, but even so... meh.

Elementary: The Art of Sleights and Deception (5x20)

Well, damn... I really hope that what I think just happened didn't actually just happen. Let's dive in and take a look.

Cons:

The case this week was actually quite interesting, but I will admit the whole twist at the end where Nazis were the bad guys felt... a bit too simplistic. I'm not going to deny the existence of Neo-Nazis by any means, but here we had a story about a magician, and a mystery, and lots of twists and turns, and then in the end the bad guys are extra bad because they're profiting off of a Nazi. A great way to avoid moral ambiguity? Sure. An interesting twist? Maybe not.

The subplot with Marcus is troubling for a couple of reasons. Basically, Marcus is framed by Chantal's ex-husband, and IA is looking in to it. Bell makes a scathing comment about Internal Affairs, and of course he's innocent as can be, so IA comes across as the bad guy. In today's political climate, what exactly is this story-line trying to prove? The opposite is true in real life - cops are trigger-happy, and IA isn't nearly as interested as they should be. Maybe there's some good commentary here about Bell being used as a scapegoat to prove that IA is hunting out dirty cops. Bell is targeted because he's black. Something like that. But so far, that hasn't even been touched on at all. It made me pretty uncomfortable.

Doctor Who: Smile (10x02)

I really like Bill. She's not enough to save a fairly lackluster episode, but I do really like her.

Cons:

I have a couple of problems with the plot of this episode. The first is that it can't seem to decide what its message is. At first I thought we were going to look at the psychological and physiological realities of emotions. The fact that a person can smile and actually force themselves to be happier is quite interesting. There's a message here about the way robots would perceive human emotions, and how they would process and handle humanity in general. At the end, the Doctor pulls out a typical 11th-hour style fix-it, and the story is suddenly about the emergence of a new life form, and the need for cooperation between the indigenous population, and the new colonists. This ending really undercut the key themes being explored in the rest of the episode.

The other problem I have is that Bill and the Doctor were both kind of idiots in this one. There's a moment where Bill starts asking "what's in all of these pods?" and can't figure it out until the Doctor literally says that the human colonists are in cryogenic pods on the space ship. That was so obvious. It made me angry that it took her so long to get it, especially since she's made a point of talking about her love of sci-fi. Similarly, the Doctor doesn't figure out that the robots are trying to "help" humanity by "deleting" unhappy people, until close to the very end. I literally understood that in the teaser. Duh. The Doctor also does a lot of over-explaining, as he finally grasps on to the "plot twists" that any half-conscious viewer picked up on way earlier. It was way too exposition-heavy.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: No Regrets (4x18)

!!! This plot arc just keeps getting more and more intriguing.

Cons:

We get a big death in this episode. Jeffrey Mace. I'm going to miss him, and the way the death was portrayed was nice... but Mace wasn't a big enough character in our minds for the death to pack the proper punch. I'm bummed that he's gone, because I think there were still a lot of interesting things that could have been done with his character. But I wasn't devastated, the way I think I was meant to be. A few more episodes getting to know Mace inside the Framework would have helped this death mean a little bit more.

A repeat of a complaint from last week: Mack and Hope are a little too cheesy. He's always calling her Sparkplug and she's always giggling and smiling and she just adores her father so much. I think if we saw a genuine moment where the two of them weren't seeing eye to eye, that would help. As is, the whole thing is just a little too perfect, which goes against Aida's whole thing about fixing one regret and then letting the world spiral out from there. In Mack's case, it feels like his relationship with his daughter was not only restored by her being alive, but was given this unrealistic sheen of perfect bliss.

Elementary: High Heat (5x19)

As Elementary approaches what very well might be the end of its run, you would think they'd be focusing in on dangling plot threads, or honing in on an interesting end-game for the characters. Instead, we got an episode that for the most part, could have disappeared and nobody would notice. A lot of stuff was boring, a few things were annoying. That said, there were a few gems hidden here...

Cons:

So... other than Sherlock and Joan talking about it briefly, we're just... not going to deal with the Shinwell thing? Apparently Sherlock has been coping by having a lot of casual sex, while Joan has thrown herself deep into work. They have one discussion about how they let a murderer into their lives, and Joan says they need to move on... so they do. Kinda lame.

The case of the week involved paternity tests, terrible private detectives, a future career in professional baseball, a weird red herring about Chernobyl... it was just not very interesting. It didn't tell a bigger story or have an allegorical resonance. It wasn't cool or different or special. Meh.

The subplot had some redeeming things about it, but it also had its fair share of annoying bits as well. Apparently, Joan signed herself and Sherlock up for a private detective organization so that they can advertise their names on its website. Joan didn't tell Sherlock about this, which seems really inconsiderate, and of course Sherlock doesn't like the organization, because anybody can pay to get the seal of approval. Joan accuses Sherlock of being a snob, but I think he honestly had a legitimate point. What was Joan doing, signing Sherlock up for something without his knowledge or consent? It just felt really stupid.

Once Upon a Time: Awake (6x17)

Hmmmm. I'm not entirely sure about this episode. I mean sure, I loved a lot and a lot and a lot about it. But there were a few twists in here that seemed a little silly. Or, sillier than usual? I don't know. Let's just talk it through and see where I land.

Cons:

We learn that at one point during the curse, Mary Margaret found a magic flower and brought it to John Doe (David). This magic flower woke David up and caused him, and then a moment later Snow, to remember their identities. David "wakes up" Rumple by saying Emma's name, and he tells them that the magic flower can also take them to their daughter. But he also tells them that they can't be with her, because it's too soon. Emma needs to be the proper age to become the Savior and wake up the whole town. Snow and David make the heartbreaking decision to drink potions that will cause them to forget again, waiting for Emma to come find them later on.

It's not that this plot thread was bad on its own, but it sort of undercuts the original curse-breaking, doesn't it? Snow and David running across the street towards each other and all that jazz? Now that we know they woke up once before, the whole thing is a little anti-climactic. Also, I don't like the idea that Rumple needed to hear Emma's name to wake up. You'd think if he had that sort of control over the curse, he'd make it so he'd be awake from the beginning. Why not? That's how I've assumed it was this whole time, anyway...

Doctor Who: The Pilot (10x01)

Um. Okay. Cautious optimism? It's just that I've been burned so many times before, you know? I hate to fall for it and then the rest of the season is a crap-pile. But... I guess I liked this episode?

Cons:

I suppose the plot itself was a bit shrug-worthy. It had a decently creepy alien presence, but it felt a bit like a mix between the water monsters from Mars, and the repetition creature from "Midnight." Both very, very effective creepy creatures, and this felt like a light version of both. Still, there were a few genuinely startling moments with her.

Nardole feels a bit like a useless lump at the moment. I'm trying to reserve judgment. But do we really need him around, honestly?

This episode hinges on the connection between Bill, our new companion, and Heather, a girl who ends up being taken and... possessed? I guess? by the creepy water stuff. Setting aside the slightly problematic fact that the first potential love interest for Bill is immediately killed off, there's also the fact that their connection wasn't strong enough in the first half of the episode to justify the horror and pity we're supposed to feel at the end. They basically just stared at each other a bit, had a few strange conversations, and then we're supposed to feel this connection between them. Pearl Mackie does a good enough job of pulling this off, but the script really doesn't.

Supernatural: The Memory Remains (12x18)

An episode I could honestly take or leave. I didn't have a problem with it at all, but there was very little that I felt strongly about.

Cons:

The case was just sort of shrug-worthy. A creepy goat-head monster ends up just being a dude wearing a mask, but there is actually a monster involved - a god who needs human sacrifices. Sam and Dean come in and save the day, but are unable to save two of the god's latest victims. There were a few things in here that I enjoyed, but for the most part I felt like the episode was just phoning it in with this plot. It takes place in a small town, but there was none of that middle-of-nowhere-inescapable feeling to the place. Each location, from the manor house to the meat-packing plant to the restaurant felt like separate and disjointed locations. There was no real cohesion.

Dean hooks up with a random girl in this episode. We don't even learn her name. She's there, Dean hooks up with her, she's out. Never to be mentioned again. I don't have a problem with Dean hooking up with women, necessarily. But I'd like even just a hint of a reason for it. I was really pissed that the girl didn't have a name or a personality or any point whatsoever. At least let Dean's one-night-stands have a moment where they can... I dunno... say a line of dialogue?

The Big Bang Theory: The Separation Agitation (10x21)

I want this show to just be about the Wolowitz family now. I can't believe I'm saying that.

Cons:

Penny and Leonard have become useless lumps of characters. That is all.

One of the main plots this week focused on Bert. This is a character I normally find funny. He can come into any scene, make a couple of deadpan remarks, and then depart. But when the spotlight was focused on him for so long, the joke wore out pretty quickly. He gets a hot girlfriend by buying her things, then decides to respect himself and so dumps her, and then gets her back by buying more stuff. We don't really learn anything or develop his character much. A fairly useless plot thread.

Pros:

Amy and Sheldon's Fun with Flags Retrospective was pretty great. That's a recurring bit that I always find pretty funny.

Grey's Anatomy: In the Air Tonight (13x20)

Meredith Grey is freakin' cursed. What are the odds of a person getting in not one but two bad plane crash situations in her life? It's ridiculous, as so much of this show is. But honestly, this episode was pretty great.

Cons:

Obviously the scenario is contrived, which I'm actually okay with. I wish a few aspects of this had been a bit more realistic, though. The fact that Meredith and Riggs bother to learn the names of passengers on the plane before the incident seems a bit far fetched to me. Sure, afterwards, when they're administering care... but would they really have taken the time to learn the names Max, Ingrid, Candice... it just seems like everybody on that flight was a little too friendly. When I'm on a plane I generally don't make a lot of small-talk.

I also felt myself getting a little bit frustrated with Nathan Riggs. He knows that Meredith wants him, but is holding back for some reason. He keeps pushing her to find out why she's resisting him, and it starts to toe that line between genuinely trying to get to know her, and nagging her for sex. I'm not unhappy with the way it all shook out, but this was the first time I felt like Riggs was edging to the brink of inappropriateness.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Identity and Change (4x17)

Oh boy. I love this story line so much you have no idea. There were so many moments in this episode that made me so very happy. It was a bit of an information-heavy 45 minutes, but all of that information was interesting and pushed the plot forward beautifully. Let's take a look.

Cons:

Like I said, maybe this was a tiny bit information-heavy? A lot of stuff went down, and there was a lot to keep track of. I don't necessarily think the episode felt crowded, but perhaps there could have been more to explore if the contents of this episode had been spread out over two? I often find that to be true with this show. There's a great episode, and I can't help but think it might have been truly astonishing if it were given more time to breathe.

Another nitpick: We learn that in this world, Mack's daughter Hope is alive. The scenes between them establish their relationship, so that when Mack decides to help the subversives fight against Hydra, we understand why he's doing it, and what he's risking. That's all well and good, but maybe these scenes could have been a little bit less sickly-sweet? He's calling her "Spark-plug" as a cute little nickname, and there's just so much adorableness that it actually came off as a bit distracting. Not too bad, though. The little girl playing Hope did a great job.

Once Upon a Time: Mother's Little Helper (6x16)

Okay. Okay, I guess I can dig it. Things are happening, and we're potentially ramping up to a finale for the whole show? They're not renewed yet, in any case. Let's dive in.

Cons:

All of the delays with breaking the sleeping curse are starting to frustrate me. Regina talks about how she's fixed all the other problems caused by the Evil Queen, but she just can't quite manage to crack this one curse. The curse itself was kind of a brilliant way to give Josh Dallas and Ginnifer Goodwin both some time off, but now it's to the point where the plot has become a stalling tactic for extra-diegetic concerns about the availability of the actors.

I liked Hook's little story-line here, but something is sort of bothering me. I feel like the whole "Hook killed David's father" thing has become a complete non-issue. We see Snow briefly in this episode, and she talks about how she's going to help Emma to get Hook back. Is nobody even going to react properly to the shocking revelation of his past evils? All I can say is, I hope after the reunion between Hook and Emma, they still have some work to do on fixing the damage. Otherwise, what's the point?

Supernatural: The British Invasion (12x17)

Eileen! Yay! Mick! No! Mary and Ketch! Ew! Crowley! You're an idiot! This episode was a bit of a disjointed mess, all things considered.

Cons:

I think there was just too much going on with this one. You could make an entire episode about Eileen coming back to help find Kelly Kline, and dealing with her relationship with Sam. Instead, that's just a tiny sliver of the pie. You could do an entire episode learning about Mick's past with the BMOL and why he is the way he is, but instead we have to balance that with Mary and Mr. Ketch hooking up for some gross reason. Oh, and then we've also got Lucifer manipulating Crowley, or maybe Crowley manipulating Lucifer, I'm not sure. And Cas is apparently AWOL again. Why is all of this crammed into one episode? From what I gather from next week's promo, we've got another Monster-of-the-Week sort of thing going on. Why not scrap a C-plot episode and instead spend a little longer untangling all of these plot threads?

Crowley and Lucifer's thread is perhaps the most agonizing, but it could possibly still be redeemed. Lucifer submits to Crowley, crawling on the ground and playing dog. Crowley forces Lucifer to announce Crowley's dominion in front of a bunch of other demons, but Lucifer uses the moment to work the crowd, making it clear behind Crowley's back that he still expects to be in charge one day. He gets help from a demon in checking out the warding system in his vessel, and gets a promise that this system can be broken. My problem with this is that the whole thing makes Crowley seem very, very stupid. Sure, the vessel is warded. But Lucifer is able to talk in his mind to Dagon, and he's able to get alone time with other demons, which makes him so much more likely to escape than he would be if he were just in the cage. Maybe Crowley has something else going on that we don't know about. But if not, this is seriously disappointing.

The Big Bang Theory: The Recollection Dissipation (10x20)

At some point, I'm going to get really sick of saying the same things about this show over and over. It's not that funny. It feels lazy. It's occasionally extremely insulting. This wasn't a particularly bad episode or anything, but it definitely wasn't great.

Cons:

The main plot features Sheldon trying to be in two places at once, as he promised Amy he would work with her on their project, but also told Howard and Leonard he'd work with them on the navigation system. He runs back and forth, working effectively on both projects with great results. Unfortunately, this tanks his immune system and he gets sick. We then see that he loses a full day because he takes cold medicine and can't remember what happened. They track down his missing notebook, full of classified government information, to a Western-themed bar.

You would think this would be really funny, but it didn't really do much for me. A few funny lines here and there, but... not much. At least we got to see some of Sheldon's crazy missing day. Sometimes on this show they just tell, and don't show. In either case, there wasn't enough showing. I also have a problem whenever this show tries to do science talk, because it seems so inauthentic as to how actual scientists would talk to one another.

Grey's Anatomy: What's Inside (13x19)

I'm having a bit of a hard time pinning down my thoughts about this episode. I guess I'll just start typing, and see where it goes...

Cons:

I was angry at Maggie, and angry on Maggie's behalf, throughout a lot of this episode. I have a feeling I was only supposed to be feeling angry for her, but she was behaving poorly, so. There's that. She swoops in on her first day back after her mother's death, steals an important surgery, and then yells everybody's heads off for expressing concerns. But then on the flip side, everybody in the hospital has thrown themselves into their work after experiencing trauma, so isn't it a little hypocritical of them to treat Maggie differently, when they've all done it? But back to the original complaint, Maggie was super duper out of line when she blamed Jackson for her mother's death. I don't know. I'm torn.

Owen and Amelia still piss me off to the nth degree. The patient that Maggie steals from Riggs in this episode is a pregnant woman who, along with her husband, is good friends with Owen and Amelia. This causes further tensions between them, as Amelia refuses to go visit them before or after the surgery, as they're Owen's friends and she doesn't want to intrude. Okay, Amelia. If you're done with Owen, just be done with him. This is annoying.

Modern Family: Frank's Wedding (8x19)

A fairly successful episode, although it felt a little rushed in parts, and a bit too on the nose in others. Let's take a look.

Cons:

I must start by saying that I hated the episode tag on this one. Usually a lackluster tag wouldn't be something to comment on, but... come on. Joe has to say "Great, now I have a swamp monster," and the kid's line delivery is cringe-worthy. Not his fault, obviously. And it's one of those silly things where Jay ends up with a tarp covering him, and green paint, and leaves sticking to it, just so Joe can come in and think he's a monster. Way more slap-stick and contrived than I can take.

As I said in the first sentence, there was a bit of a pacing issue. All three stories are about family and making sacrifices for loved ones. In each, there's a moment where a character has to realize his or her mistake and come forward to support their loved ones. Since we're cramming three of these revelations into approximately twenty-three minutes of television, it's a bit rushed. This is especially true in the Dunphy plot, where Phil decides to be "normal" and his family realizes they've made a mistake all in the span of about thirty seconds. A better episode would have put the Dunphy plot thread in the center and had the other characters fall to the background. That way, we'd have more time to focus on what is in fact a perfectly decent plot thread.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: What If... (4x16)

Wow wow wow! I just got super pumped for the rest of this season, and I sincerely hope Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. gets renewed! Or should I say... Agents of Hydra?!?!?!

Cons:

I don't really have anything to complain about. I guess the one small thing is that there's that kid in Coulson's class who refuses to be brainwashed about Hydra, and so he tags Jemma's car that she stole, and then just lets her take his car? That felt odd to me? Not just the car part of it, but the entire existence of this glitch in the matrix, if you will. I'm sure we'll be told more, but for now it felt a little odd.

Pros:

Where to even start? There was so much going on and it was all amazing! We split the episode between Jemma and Daisy, who have both just woken up inside the framework and need to get back to each other to form a plan.

Once Upon a Time: A Wondrous Place (6x15)

Well, we're finally back to Jasmine and Aladdin! This was a satisfying episode, although I do have a few complaints as always.

Cons:

Emma spends this episode moping about Hook leaving her. A lot of people are pissed at Emma for believing Hook would leave, but I'm not, actually. I'll talk about that in a minute. What does sort of bother me is that nobody else chimes in and suggests that maybe there's more going on. At no point does Henry, Snow, Regina, or David think to question Hook's disappearance. I guess we can give David a pass as well, given what he's just found out. But Henry? C'mon. It's a small thing in the grand scheme, but it makes me feel strange about Hook marrying Emma. Her family very clearly doesn't respect him very much!

In the end, we learn Gideon's plan. He stole some of Emma's tears, and apparently the ears of the Savior are a potent magical force. With them, he can continue to block Hook's return to Storybrooke, until Emma agrees to help him with his mission: to kill the Black Fairy. I have so many problems with this. First of all, is Gideon no longer trying to kill Emma at all? What happened to his strange belief that he needed to be a Savior, and killing Emma was the only way to accomplish that? If all he wanted was the Black Fairy dead, why not ask for help in the first place? Also, this whole Savior tears business comes out of nowhere and connects to nothing. Why would her tears stop a portal back to Storybrooke? What sense does that make? And is this seriously the only leverage Gideon can think to use? Wouldn't it be easier to... I don't know... kidnap Emma's sleeping parental unit or Henry or something? He seems to be able to poof around with magic very easily. This whole thing seems unnecessarily convoluted.

The Walking Dead: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life (7x16)

In comparing this finale to last season's disaster, I must say I'm pretty pleased with the results. Was this episode still too long? Yes. Were there other annoying aspects to it? Yes. But it actually felt like something happened, and there were a lot of really satisfying elements to it. This has been a substandard season of The Walking Dead, and this is probably a substandard finale, if we're being honest. But it's miles ahead of what I feared we might get, so... a win in my book!

Cons:

Spoilers start here: Sasha dies. This isn't actually a "con" necessarily, as I liked most of the story with Sasha. It was pretty epic, and she got to go out on her own terms, and all that. But this episode weaves in a lot of flashbacks and hallucinations as Sasha slowly dies, and it's here that I have my issues. We see this stupid, overly sentimental scene with Sasha and Abraham, as they talk about sacrificing themselves for others. It takes place just before the group leaves to bring Maggie to Hilltop, meaning Abraham is fated to never return to Alexandria again. As I may have mentioned, I do not much care for Abraham. Like, at all. He's annoying. And Sasha, in her final moments, focuses on this memory of him. We don't get the slightest reference to her brother Tyreese, or her other boyfriend, Bob, who also died. It's all about stupid Abraham and his stupid gross face.

The other flaw is bigger, and it's with the stupid garbage people. Why are they so awkward and strange? We got an explanation as to why Ezekiel talks like he's performing in a play, but not so with Jadis. She sounds so stupid. I never understood why Rick wanted to align himself with her in the first place, and this episode has so many stupid stilted moments with her. There's this moment when she asks Michonne if Rick is "hers," and then says she's going to "lay with Rick" after the confrontation with the Saviors. As we learn later, Jadis and crew were planning on betraying them and turning to Negan's side, so... why did she even say that? It was super awkward. Who the heck were these people before the apocalypse? I keep using the word stupid, but that's what it is! It's stupid! Oh, and the betrayal was super obvious, too.