Spoilers ahead!
This episode was supposed to be 90 minutes long. I say supposed to because it wasn’t. In the UK, it was 1hr and 15 minutes, INCLUDING adverts. That’s not 90 minutes. That’s cheating! I class an episode a certain length by how long the ACTUAL episode is…
Anyway, that’s beside the point. The point is, this episode was so tense. Rick and his group are given a week to gather their crap together and get stuff for Negan, but when Negan appears at Alexandria’s doors a couple days early, it’s a bit of a shock. I hate how much I love Negan – actually, it’s more the actor I love. They seem to come hand in hand at the moment. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a fantastic actor and a menace as this villain whom you want to kill. So. Badly.
He announces to Rick that he ‘missed’ him when Rick wonders why he’s early. Negan smiles a lot and tells his men to go ransack the houses in search of…well…anything. They take pretty much everything, save for their lame stock of food and a few bits of furniture. Also, the guns. See, if Carl hadn’t been an idiot and pulled one on Negan’s men, maybe they would have been able to keep some guns. (Also, is it my imagination or did Carl go from a regular eye patch to another bandage?)
I seriously worried at one point for Olivia – I think that was her name – because she’s in charge of the guns and food stock, and when they discover two are missing, Negan threatens to kill her. I thought that those were the guns Michonne had taken at the start of the episode, but apparently not. Turned out that Spencer had been hiding them all along. He’s a whiny little git, he is. So naive about the whole situation, and mouths off to Rick who promptly threatens him. Good on you, Rick!
Rosita goes out with Spencer to get Daryl’s bike, but what confused me was I thought Dwight had the bike all along. She goes looking for a gun – getting bombarded by walkers in the process, but she’s got skills with a knife – and though she finds one, there are no bullets. It’s interesting – I’m wondering what she’s got planned since at the end she finds the shell of a bullet and asks Eugene to make one. She’ll only get them all killed.
As for other characters, we finally get to see that Enid has been let out of that closet! Haha. Remember, before Carl went with his father to help Maggie, he locked Enid away because she was threatening to leave? Yeah. We also see Gabriel again, who is acting kind of dodgy, with his whole preacher attitude again when he meets Negan. After he asks about Maggie, Gabriel asks if he’d like to pay his respects. Yes, Negan thinks she’s dead. If I were him, though, I’d have asked to see the body.
Eventually, Michonne returns from shooting practice and brings back a deer along with her guns. She gives it all to Negan, much to her disgust. When Negan leaves, he’s all smiles. Actually, for a time, he gives his bat ‘Lucille’ to Rick to hold, and for one second you can see Rick wants to bash his brains in. Obviously, that wouldn’t be smart.
I really really hope someone decides to fight back because right now it’s a little one-sided. I mean, yes Negan and his lot are evil, but in terms of conflict, there isn’t any. It only works if the other side is ruffled and acts against them. But right now, Rick and his group are subdued and are taking it. I want someone to just…lose it. Next weeks episode looks interesting, as we see the Hilltop once again, though most of them people I’ve forgotten about.
What about the end, though, with the burning of the mattresses? Is that some…I don’t know…Godfather reference? Haha just kidding. It’s rude is what it is. They did it just to piss them off. Makes me so angry.
So that’s it for this week. An hour and fifteen minutes of pure stress inducing craziness. I hope next week is calmer.
I doubt it.
