The Walking Dead: Look at the Flowers (10x14)

I don't know how I feel about this episode. It kind of... passed me by. It felt like filler, even though some very important things happened.

Cons:

Carol has what she wanted - Alpha is dead. But predictably, that doesn't solve all of her problems, and she spends the episode alone, with the ghost of Alpha haunting her. "Alpha" tries to convince Carol that she is a danger to her loved ones, that she's lost so many important people because of who she is, and that if she goes back home to her remaining family, she'll be dooming them as well. It's all very Psychology 101, and frankly I'm annoyed with how Carol's behavior and motivations have shaken out this season. Of course she's going to be all screwed up because of losing Henry. And I don't mind exploring the nature of her grief. But her reckless behavior that has nearly gotten people killed (we still don't know Connie's fate), coupled with the fact that she had a secret plan with Negan all along... these things don't match up. They tried to explain it by having Carol ask Negan "what took you so long," but ultimately it just doesn't make sense to have Carol setting up a man on the inside and then also running after Alpha and trying to kill her personally.

Ezekiel gets this little subplot about whether he can contribute anything now that he's sick... it was just kind of bland, and Yumiko giving him a pep-talk felt unmotivated.

Also, I'm glad people finally responded with some trepidation to the news that Eugene has been talking to someone on the radio, but it highlighted again how weird it was that Rosita wasn't worried when she first heard about it!

Pros:

The speech that Eugene gives about having hope for future friends and community was really beautiful. If this long-winded and occasionally convoluted show has a central theme, I think that's it. Hope in the face of overwhelming odds. And for Eugene specifically, a character who has cynically looked after his own self-interest time and time again, to have that kind of mindset, is really quite lovely. It's not just that he has a crush on the girl he's hoping to meet. It's the hope he feels, for what she represents for the future of humanity.

And that cliffhanger, with the town, and all the Walkers dressed up to imitate real life... chilling. The longer you go, the more little tableaux you see, and just as Eugene and co are trying to process this, a manic pixie insane girl shows up and says hello. This is the thing I'm most looking forward to exploring for the remaining two episodes of the season!

Meanwhile we get a Daryl and Negan team-up, where Negan manages to explain his status as a double agent, enough so that Daryl at least kind of believes him. And then some Whisperers show up to declare their allegiance to Negan as the new Alpha, since he killed the old one. There's a sort-of fake-out where Negan acts like he's about to kill Daryl and then turns the gun on the Whisperers instead. I liked this because they didn't drag it out all that much, and afterwards Negan admitted that he does still crave that power and control, even if his motivations are not what they used to be.

Negan's "redemption" if that's what we're calling it, is a very hard sell for me. There's the murdering, yes, but mostly I get grossed out whenever I think about his harem of wives and the fact that he's a serial rapist. I'm not going to ever feel a positive affinity for Negan. I just can't. But, in a wider sense, I like the fact that Negan does seem to be sticking to his plan to rehabilitate and join society. He doesn't want to be stuck in that jail cell anymore, but he does want to be a part of the community that Rick helped to build. That's interesting, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives a nuanced performance when he's given more down-to-earth dialogue and less show-boating. I'm glad, for those reasons at least, that he's still sticking around.

Beta continues to be disturbing as hell. I loved the moment when he found Alpha's head on a spike and another Whisperer says that Beta is the new Alpha, and Beta is immediately horrified - "she can hear you!" He brings the head with him, acting as though it's still alive, before mercy-killing Alpha by sticking a knife through her skull. He's just so intensely weird and I love his strange brand of zealous evil.

I think a lot of stuff is still up in the air moving forward into the last few episodes of the season. I like that. I like not knowing exactly what the big endgame of the season is. Killing Alpha was a really smart move, because now the Whisperers are still this nebulous threat but there's less focus and less intensity. We still don't know where Lydia has run off to! I'm definitely still invested, and even though there are aspects of this season that I haven't enjoyed, on balance I think it's one of the better ones the show has had in recent years.

7/10