The Walking Dead: Guardians (9x12)

This episode was mostly just boring, with a few startling moments tossed in to keep me somewhat on my toes.

Cons:

Let's just start with something that I can say is unambiguously annoying: Rosita and her three love interests. Well, actually, no... Eugene is in love with her but she definitely doesn't reciprocate. So that makes two love interests - Siddiq, the father of her unborn child... and Gabriel, who Rosita seems to actually want to be with for some reason. I'm not trying to be rude here, but Gabriel is boring as sin and I don't get why we're spending all this time focusing on a romance between him and Rosita. It came out of nowhere, is based on nothing, and they have no chemistry to speak of. In the very brief moments that we've seen Rosita and Siddiq interact, they seemed to have much more natural chemistry going on.

A more general problem is just the sluggish pacing over all. We still don't know what's up with the scars on Michonne and Daryl's backs. We still haven't reached the darn fair that the Kingdom is so invested in. We're still just crawling along through the story, instead of getting to the good stuff. This happens every season of this show. I wish they could tighten up the pacing somehow. A good example of bad pacing but good writing comes in the depiction of the Whisperers. I liked a lot of the stuff with Alpha and Beta and Lydia, and I'll discuss that in a moment. But did we learn anything new about this enemy? I guess now we know that there are way more of them than we previously thought. But other than that, this story just reinforced things we already knew. They're ruthless, and Alpha is a terrible abusive mom. We already covered that!

Pros:

But like I said, the writing in the scenes with the Whisperers was really good. Alpha's story about nearly letting Lydia suffocate was chilling. The decapitation scene was obviously horrifying to watch. I also like that Lydia's loyalty is confusing to her, and to the audience as well. We can tell that she's truly terrified of her mom, and she clearly doesn't want to kill Henry there at the end. But how quickly is her indoctrination really likely to wear off? Does she still feel loyalty to the Whisperers? How much? I like not knowing, and I'm excited to find out more.

Judith has always been a bit much for me, as we've discussed. But the scene between her and Michonne was actually great. It was the first time that Judith seemed like a genuine child to me - she saw things as very black and white. Negan's not a monster, he's a human. He can change, because Michonne changed. She's doing that thing that kids on TV do, where they spout wisdom greater than their years... but it felt like the kind of simplistic argument that a kid would make. Judith might be right, but she's also a child. I felt that energy in the scene with Michonne. I also liked how Michonne was clearly angry, but kept a level head, and sent Judith away so that her daughter wouldn't see her explode. (Side note - where's Michonne's son? Why do we never see him?)

I like that Michonne is getting back to the spirit of the constitution that she helped to craft. She thinks going to the fair is a stupid risk and a horrible idea, but she's come around to giving the power back to the people and letting them decide their own fate. I like that we got to see the different facets of this debate play out. Aaron, who was all about sharing among the communities, did a 180 after Jesus died. He agreed with Michonne about isolating Alexandria. Now, although Michonne agrees with Aaron personally, she's starting to back off of her harsh stance a little bit. If something awful happens in the next couple of weeks, as it almost surely will, it will be interesting to see if it causes more of a rift between Michonne, Aaron, Gabriel, and some of the others who have been hotly debating this topic.

Daryl and Connie spend the episode tracking down Henry and rescuing him (and Lydia). We didn't get a ton of screen time with them, but I actually really liked the sense of relationship they were building. Connie helps Daryl learn how to communicate best with her, and we see Connie's amusement about Dog fetching arrows back for Daryl. I hope we get more instances of seeing the new crowd of characters interacting with some long-running established folks. This cast is so bloated that it's easy for characters to get lost in the shuffle.

That's it for now. Not a terrible episode, but certainly a dull one for the most part.

7/10