SPOILERS FOLLOW!!
By: Tyler Miller
After having caught up on the past two weeks of The Walking Dead, I went right on into this week’s episode “Service,” and was actually a bit let down. The episode wasn’t bad per se, but it could’ve been better.
Right after the brutal season premiere, we got to catch up with Morgan and Carol in an episode that was far lighter in tone, and meet some of the residents of the Kingdom. King Ezekiel made a big splash alongside his trusty tiger Shiva, and it was just great. The story that we got in that episode was fun, and more importantly, it was pretty interesting too. Seeing how the people of the Kingdom dealt with the Saviors and how Carol developed a nice relationship with Ezekiel was good stuff that left me wanting some more.
Then we got an episode that was all about Daryl and the torture that he was being subjected to at the Sanctuary, home base of Negan’s group of Saviors. It was a pretty depressing episode, but it showed just how hard Daryl was taking things. On top of that, we got some nice insight into Dwight’s character and got to see that there was more to him than just an evil version of Daryl. He was someone that was conflicted about being with the Saviors and he had given up so much just to keep himself and his wife alive.
That brings us to this week’s episode. Negan and his crew come on over to Alexandria earlier than expected to take half of the supplies that the Alexandrians have, and things are pretty tense throughout. The Saviors are taking everything from furniture to medicine, and the Alexandrians can do nothing but sit back and watch. All the meanwhile, Negan has Rick showing him around town and carrying Lucille too, all as a way to show him that he’s at Negan’s mercy. Of course things don’t go perfectly though. Carl decides to threaten Negan and his men when they take all the medicine, causing him to decide to take all of the guns that Rick’s group has. This then leads to a bigger issue when it’s revealed that two guns are missing and nobody has any idea where they are, forcing Rick to scramble and find them or else Olivia was going to die.
Rick calls a town meeting and asks everyone if they have the guns, and of course no one knows where they are. On top of that, they still aren’t totally clear on the fact that Negan is in charge now, not Rick, forcing him to basically spell it out for them. Eventually the guns are found though, in Spencer’s house of all places, along with some food and alcohol. Once Negan has them, he starts to head out with his people, but not before Rosita and Spencer return with Daryl’s motorcycle to give to Dwight, and Rick gets a rifle from Michonne that she had been using to hunt with this whole time.
The main problem that this episode had was that it was longer than it should’ve been, running for 90 minutes as opposed to the usual 60. This resulted in the episode seeming to drag on some and ultimately feel more like filler than it actually was. We end up getting more of Negan putting Rick down and asserting his dominance over him, which is fine, but we already had an episode full of that with the premiere. I get that they wanted to further drive that point home in this episode, but if the episode was shorter, it would’ve been a bit more bearable than it was. Instead, it become redundant about halfway through. In addition, the events that transpired became a little less interesting as time went on because of the episode length. Not even the whole search for the missing guns that had Olivia’s life in jeopardy made things more interesting, even though it was supposed to.
The best moment of the episode came at the end during a conversation between Rick and Michonne. While she’s insistent that they fight back and not just let Negan run their lives, Rick tries to tell her that they have to accept their current situation in order to live. In order to get her to understand, he tells her about Shane and Lori, and reveals that Judith isn’t his baby. Ever since season two, it’s been a mystery who was Judith’s father, and to be honest, I thought the show had just decided to move on and let it remain a mystery. I was in no way expecting them to bring this back up in a way to contributed to the current story, give us an answer, and give us some meaningful character development as well.
Other thoughts:
- I’ve said this multiple times before already, but damn does Jeffrey Dean Morgan absolutely kill it as Negan. Even when he’s being evil, he still manages to bring some charm and humor to events that makes me love him when I know I shouldn’t.
- Spencer bringing up Glenn and Abraham’s deaths the way he did was such a dick move on his part. I wanted Rick to knock him out and make him regret saying what he did, but putting Spencer in his place verbally was definitely the better way to go.
- Negan meeting Gabriel was one of the funniest moments the show has had, and got a good laugh out of me. I do have to admit though, Gabriel does have a freaky smile.
- I wonder if Negan’s going to find out that Maggie’s still alive, and how he’ll respond since Rick and Gabriel led him to believe that she died after he last saw her. Things probably will not be pretty though, that’s for sure.
- It’s a shame that after the previous episode where we got to see Dwight shed some layers and understand that he truly isn’t happy being with the Saviors, this week he was back to being a jerk and nothing more than that. Yeah it’s probably just to appease Negan and intimidate everyone else, but it’s such a jarring difference from last week.
- Although her outing with Spencer wasn’t that interesting, it was great to see Rosita become more active in the story. She isn’t just going to lie down and let the Saviors walk all over them, and she’s taking matters into her own hands which is great. Getting Eugene to make bullets for her is a nice start.
While this week’s episode wasn’t the greatest, it also wasn’t the worst either. Next week looks to be taking things over to the Hilltop, which will finally bring Maggie and Sasha back into the story. Plus we’ll be getting some more of Jesus who we haven’t seen since the attack on Negan’s compound last season, so that’s great too. I wonder how the people of the Hilltop are taking the news that Rick’s group couldn’t stop Negan. Probably not too well if we’re being honest here.
TheComfySpot 