The Walking Dead: Ghosts (10x03)

A lot of stuff happened in this episode, technically speaking, but so much of it was annoying to me, and so little progress was made, that it feels a bit like treading water. Can we please pick up the pace?

Cons:

In theory, the idea of Carol having these hallucinations could have been interesting or frightening. But most of them fell flat. I thought the moment where she was hanging up-side-down and fighting off the Walkers was bound to be a hallucination, but that turned out to be real? I guess it's effective in that it subverted my expectations, but what a truly bizarre action scene. The thing is, Carol is clearly in a bad way here, and it makes no real sense that Daryl and Michonne would let her come to meet the Whisperers, or let her stay up on watch by herself. They seriously dropped the ball, and I wish we could have an explanation for that.

I'll talk in a minute about the Aaron and Negan stuff, and what I liked about it, but I did think it was kind of stupid that Aaron went temporarily blind. That felt like an extra contrived circumstance, basically only there so that Negan could save Aaron and prove himself to be trustworthy.

I'm glad that Eugene realizes that his pursuit of Rosita is creepy and wrong, but I hate that this plot thread is still centering on the experience of Eugene. He realizes that Rosita is never going to change her mind and fall in love with him - something she's been telling him over and over again - and he is crushed by the realization that their entire relationship is based on a false premise. Like... sorry, dude, but Rosita is the one who deserves to feel hurt, here. You've just confessed that you don't value her friendship in and of itself, and only wanted to be with her romantically. She is the one who should feel betrayed, here.

Oh, and this is maybe a nitpick, but it's really unbelievable that Alpha would be aware of every time that her borders were crossed. How does she have unlimited resources like that? Just because they've found a way to blend in with the Walkers doesn't mean the Whisperers have enough people to be patrolling constantly. Alpha isn't an all-knowing being. She's just a human with a cult following.

Pros:

There was one moment with Carol's hallucinations that worked really well. Daryl tells Carol a whole story about his dad being a truck driver, and is using it as a cautionary tale to tell Carol to stop popping pills and get some sleep. Later, when Carol references this conversation to Daryl, he's confused - his dad wasn't a truck driver. That was great, because I didn't know which time Carol was really talking to Daryl, and which time was a hallucination. If they could have played around with that a bit more, instead of trying to make everything spooky-scary, I might have been more inclined to enjoy this plot thread.

I always get a little zing of energy whenever a character actually decides to take decisive action, so despite how dangerous and stupid it would have been for Carol to shoot Alpha in the face, and how stupid Michonne was for letting Carol come along, I was still super exhilarated by that moment. I was glad that the situation didn't escalate into violence, because I obviously don't want my faves to be killed off... but also I was kind of cheering Carol on in that moment.

Siddiq is still struggling with his PTSD. I wasn't super inclined to be interested in this plot thread when it was first hinted at, but here, in an episode with so much I did not enjoy, I actually found it quite compelling. Dante recognizes that Siddiq is going through a hard time, and actually does something about it. I loved their conversation, and hope we can see more of this dynamic moving forward. Of course Siddiq is having a hard time. Of course there would be people who are dealing with their trauma and having a hard time adjusting. We see that with Carol of course, but Siddiq has every right to be fucked up by what's happened, too.

While the Negan and Aaron plot thread maybe didn't totally stick the landing for me, I liked it in essence. Aaron calling Eric "the love of my life" was a nice slap in the face, and I liked that these two men had a confrontation like this, where we get to the root of Aaron's obvious mistrust of Negan. As I've mentioned before, I've somewhat reluctantly come to terms with Negan sticking around, and plot threads like this are a good reason why. It's interesting to see that this man is still snarky and weird and maybe not the most compassionate, but he does seem to be dedicated to Alexandria. Is this solely a self-preservation thing? Is he doing it because he really did respect Rick and Carl? The answers aren't clear, but I think that's okay for right now.

So... I think that's where I'll stop. Last week's episode was all about the Whisperers, including flashbacks. It slowed down the pace from the premiere, so I was really hoping to get invigorated this week. Instead, we got a jumble of potential with very little follow-through. Let's get going on this stuff! I don't want the Whisperers to overstay their welcome!

7/10