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• Fear The Walking Dead

‘The Walking Dead’ offers up a fresh dose of ultra-violence in ‘Guardians’.Sunday evening’s episode of The Walking Dead gave us one of the most gruesome deaths this show has offered up since Negan murdered Abraham and Glenn at the very opening of Season 7.The death came shortly after Alpha brought Lydia and Henry back to the surprisingly large Whisperer camp. Two of her thugs challenge her, telling her she’s no longer fit to lead. Alpha’s right-hand man, Beta (Ryan Hurst) subdues the man; Alpha uses a wire to decapitate the woman. It’s a gruesome moment, but since we don’t know the character who is killed it lacks the impact some of this show’s other gruesome deaths.The rest of the episode was a bit on the slower side, which surprised me. I was expecting a bit more action, but I guess that’s coming soon enough. With Daryl and Connie rescuing Henry, who refuses to leave without Lydia, we can expect the pot to boil over soon enough.

The Whisperers want blood, and once Alpha discovers her daughter is missing again, and surmises that Henry’s people caused the walker attack, it’ll only be a matter of time before the two groups clash.There will be blood. Ryan Hurst as Beta, Samantha Morton as AlphaThis all comes on the eve of Ezekiel’s fair, an event designed to spark trade and togetherness between the three communities.

Up to this point, it looked like Alexandria would not be part of the festivities, but that’s all about to change with Michonne suddenly—almost inexplicably—deciding not to use her veto on the council’s vote. So Alexandria and Hilltop will be sending delegations to the fair. Something will happen on the way to the fair or, more likely, during the fair. A surprise attack while everyone is having a good time would be pretty crazy.Something needs to happen because we’ve spent the last few episodes slowly inching the plot forward with not a lot to show for it.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t care about the weird love-square between Rosita, Siddiq, Gabriel and Eugene. I don’t buy Rosita and Gabriel in any way whatsoever and the show insisting that they’re an item now, despite the lack of chemistry or believability there, appears to be solely so that they can add this character drama to the mix. Siddiq and Rosita make way more sense, partly because they don’t go as far back and partly because Gabriel is just not great in any way and should just be the priest/council member guy not constantly in some relationship.Eugene is worse, but at least Rosita doesn’t love him back. That would be even more preposterous, though perhaps not outside the realm of possibility given how the writers just pair people up willy-nilly like this. (Rick and Michonne’s relationship was rushed, popping out of nowhere literally one episode after Rick’s obsession, Jessie, was eaten by zombies.The Walking Dead has a really hard time writing believable relationships and romance and that continues into this season despite many other improvements. We lost a potentially very interesting relationship between Aaron and Jesus since they had to go kill Jesus off just when he was getting interesting. Enid and Aldan isn’t terrible, but.

Cassady McClincy as Lydia, Samantha Morton as AlphaMeanwhile, Henry and Lydia’s budding teen romance is. Well it has potential, except that Henry is becoming more and more infuriating. Going after Lydia was brave but stupid. Insisting that he stays with her if she doesn’t come with him and Daryl—despite knowing that Alpha was just about to have the two of them killed unless Lydia killed Henry—was a noble, but incredibly stupid, gesture. I’m not sure this kid has what it takes to survive such a harsh world, though I guess he’s got lots and lots of luck.We got our first Negan scene since he returned to Alexandria—actually our first Alexandria scenes since the midseason break—where he tells Michonne that he’d like to help her out, keep people in line, that sort of thing. She rejects his offer (of course) but softens on the whole dictatorship thing when she realizes she’s being a bit too much like the man in the cage.

She tells Judith he’s a monster and she shouts back “No he’s not, he’s a human being!” which I thought was cute. Judith thinks he’s changed, but Michonne says people don’t change.“You’ve changed,” Judith says, cutting close enough to the bone to get sent to her room. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as NeganScattered Thoughts. Beta is pretty awesome. Ryan Hurst was a great casting choice and I have high hopes for his character. That zombie-skinning scene was pretty gross also. I didn’t realize just how many Whisperers there would be.

Why do they all follow this psycho? Why do all these groups have such psychotic leaders? I’d really like to see conflict with other groups that aren’t ruled over by crazy murderers. Something like Season 2 of The 100, where the bad guys aren’t all bad, but do some very questionable things to survive, and then the only way to fight back is for the “good guys” to do some very questionable things in return—sorry, I don’t want to spoil details—anyways, that’s what this show needs. It needs its very own Season 2 of The 100 (or Season 1 of The Flash, where the villain is deeply likeable and awful all at the same time.).

I like that Dog fetches Daryl’s arrows. Good dog!. Alpha is, so far, a pretty good villain. She’s very creepy. I like her, but I absolutely hate the whole “strong vs weak” nonsense. It’s too Martha from Fear The Walking Dead. It’s literally the same character motivation.

But Martha was more realistic because she didn’t have dozens of followers! Danai Gurira as MichonneVerdictAll told, this was an okay if largely uneventful episode that’s obviously just setting the stage for bigger and more dire episodes to come (I hope.) While the show is never as painfully bad as it was in Seasons 7 and 8 it’s having a hard time finding its feet in 9B. There’s very little momentum. A lot of it feels like filler.

This is the problem with running 16-episode seasons. The writers have to pad everything out way too much.Meanwhile, the cast remains too bloated with too many characters I just don’t care about. As the older veterans die off or leave the show, the more recent veterans—Tara, Eugene, Gabriel, Enid, etc.—are left to fill rather large shoes.

Fear The Walking Dead

They rarely are able to. I don’t care about any of these characters the way I once cared about Glenn and Rick and Hershel. And the newer characters, even ones I really do like, have to share the screen with so many others that we never get to know anybody very well, and so it’s hard to care about anybody.I’ll have more thoughts on that in a future post. For now, what did you think of ‘Guardians’? Let me know on or.I’d love it if you followed me on and and subscribed to my channel on. Also feel free to. Thanks for reading.