Cons:
Carol and Ezekiel could not be less interesting to me. There's a moment early on where Ezekiel is in peril, and Carol, in her relief once he's safe, gives him a big kiss. But later in the episode, when Ezekiel proposes to Carol, she shuts him down. The two are a couple, but Carol's body language and behavior do not indicate real interest. It's awkward and forced. Obviously I have some ulterior motives because of how much I love Carol and Daryl, but their scene together had way more chemistry and a much stronger connection than anything we've seen with Carol and the King.
There was some random young guy from the Hilltop who died in this episode, and it was treated like a super big deal, with a funeral and a song and weeping and all that, which made me roll my eyes a little bit. I didn't even know this guy. Had we ever met him before? I don't think so!
At the end of last season, we saw Maggie, Daryl, and Jesus conspiring to take down Rick. I thought it was annoying and stupid, so on the one hand I'm glad we've pulled away from that nonsense in this premiere. But on the other hand, it's weird to move backwards like this. Now we've just got some low-level resentment instead of an actual plot to take anybody down.
The big conflict that's being set up is that everyone is scattered, the Saviors at the Sanctuary are struggling, and the other communities are resentful that they have to contribute to help them out, even though the Saviors lost the war. This is obviously a big problem, and could be an interesting plot thread to follow. But whenever there's a conflict, it always bothers me when I can come up with a few potential solutions that nobody seems to be suggesting. Daryl is sad that their core group is spread so far and wide... so why does it have to be? It seems like of all the communities, the Hilltop is the most well-established and well-supplied. Why don't Alexandria and Hilltop combine, and then the Saviors living in the un-farm-able land at the Sanctuary can go to Alexandria instead? Start growing their own food? After all of the casualties and chaos in the war with Negan, maybe it makes sense to consolidate their resources into a couple of core groups, instead of keeping everything spread so thin. Maybe there's a perfectly logical reason why this wouldn't work - maybe someone suggests it, but the Alexandrians refuse to budge. But the fact that we aren't exploring these options just doesn't make sense to me.
Pros:
This wasn't a bad start to the season, for all that I just spent a good amount of time complaining about it. As I mentioned, I like the potential of the setup we have going here. The war is over, but there's a lot of simmering resentment, and it makes sense that things would be difficult. One of my favorite elements of this conflict was expressed by Daryl - he has been running things at the Sanctuary, and he hates it. He wants to be back out on the field, so to speak, and more than that, he wants to be with Maggie at Hilltop. He wants to be with Rick, with Carol. With his family, whatever's left of it. He says that what they had before, when it was a small group, that made sense. That's what worked. On Rick's side of things, he knows that if they want to start thinking about a big-picture future, they need to establish real and permanent communities. But there's a sadness, a sharpness, to the separation that this entails. I think this actually gets at one of the reasons why the show has lost its appeal for me as well. I miss the migratory nature of the show. I miss the core group, that would grow and shrink on occasion, but always stick together.
Michonne and Rick are super cute, and I'm very happy for them. I know that Rick's time on this show is limited (and boy, they've really been advertising the hell out of that, strangely...), and it seems like death is really the only exit strategy on a show like this. But they can't kill Rick, can they? It would feel cheap and anticlimactic, after everything. The only thing I don't understand is, how does Rick exit this show without dying, if Michonne isn't leaving also? I'm not sure how it's all going to shake out, but I'm absolutely prepared to be devastated by it. Michonne is one of the few characters left on this show that I really give a damn about.
Daryl and Carol's conversation, as previously mentioned, was great. I miss these two spending time together so much, and Daryl is being pretty honest about the fact that he misses having her around. I can tell the show is not exactly gunning for a big Daryl/Carol romance like some of us want, and I think I can live with that, as long as these two stay close friends and remain a part of each other's lives. It's kind of breaking my heart how much Daryl misses his friends, and how vulnerable he is about that fact. Good for him, for opening up!
Unfortunately, Maggie is not a character I find myself caring about very much nowadays. Part of it is the actress's distracting accent. Part is that I found her compelling largely due to her relationships, both with her sister Beth, and her husband Glenn. Now that those two are dead, there's just not a lot with Maggie that interests me all that much. That said: holy shit. She killed Gregory. That was an actual shock, and those are all too rare lately in The Walking Dead. He arranged to have her killed, and Maggie, after surviving the attack, punished Gregory's actions by hanging him. It was dark, and it was fascinating to see how each of our core characters reacted to it. Daryl was with the program, helping Maggie, no questions asked. Rick seemed resigned, if concerned, and Michonne seemed horrified. Maggie won an election to become the leader of Hilltop. How are her people going to feel about her murdering her erstwhile opponent, no matter the reason? This should be actually pretty fascinating.
There are things going on with this show that you could not pay me to care about. Ezekiel and Carol, for one. But there are still some things that matter to me. As tired and old as this show is getting, I'm still probably going to get emotional when Rick leaves, and I'll still stick this out until the end.
Oh, one final note: Fuck Chris Hardwick. I saw him on a commercial break getting ready for Talking Dead and I literally flipped off my TV. It sickens me that this dude got his gig back. The end.
7.5/10
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