Once upon a time Rick was a farmer, and when he encountered other wandering survivors he wanted to know how many walkers they had killed and how many people they had killed. The reasoning behind this wasn’t completely understood but I always assumed it had something to do with trying to discover if someone was psychotic or had some shred of moral code left.
Fast forward to the latest episode of the Walking Dead and Rick now seems to be den mother, suburban commando, strike first, kill all, ask questions later, over confidant as the Governor was a few seasons ago and we know where he ended up.
But we begin with Carol, a character that the show has largely neglected of late. She is wading through the very depleted contents of the Alexandria compound pantry, and not finding what she needs we next find her foraging in the woods outside the gates picking up acorns. Of course a walker stops by and is quickly dispatched, but unfortunately there is a glint of regret on Carols’ face. Which I take as an ominous sign that the stone cold, logical killer that was able so recently to dispatch a psychotic child (while telling her to look at pretty flowers) has developed an unfortunate case of conscience. Next thing we know she is dispatching batches of cookies to the townsfolk, flirting with the creepy old guy (Tobin) who likes her, and leaving a single cookie on a grave marked for dearly departed (read: whiny annoying kid who got his whole family killed by walkers) Sam. Morgan confronts her about why they haven’t talked since their big fight over the Wolf he was hiding and why no one else has “ratted” him out to the rest of the group either, and she tells him that she told the other witnesses not to. Which 
Morgan takes as a sign she is coming around to no kill line of thinking, but she tells him basically to put a cork in it. Still we are left to wonder where the Carol we have come to know and love (the woman who put down the living sick to avoid spread of a bad virus, and was the only one strong enough to free Rick and Company from becoming certain cannibal BBQ in Terminus) has gone.
Rick rolls into town in his RV and lays out his pretzel logic reasoning for a full on attack of Negan and the Saviors in a town hall meeting. I’ll spare you the illusion that this is the exercise in democracy Rick is pretending this to be. Morgan makes his case that they should go and talk to Negan and tell them they are so battle ready he should leave them alone, and Rick tells everyone that they have the element of surprise, and Negan will find them the same way the Wolves found them and Jesus found them. Micchone, Carol, and several others seem skeptical, but hey Rick is leader…long live Rick…and food doesn’t sound bad either.
Denise sees Tera is a million miles away and confronts her about it. Tera tells her that she loves her, and wants her to come along on a multi-week supply run, Denise says she will say I love you to Tera when she returns because she cannot leave her post as town doctor. Later we find out that Tera just said the “I Love You” because she didn’t want Denise to know that she had done an attack like this before.
Maggie and baby are determined to go along (I know the writers are telegraphing how poor a choice this is.) Abraham turns out to be a real Jerk dumping and moving out on Rosita and telling her that she was his choice when he thought she was the last woman on earth. Gabriel insists on going along to use his new fighting skills and both he and Glenn are wrestling with the fact that they have never had to kill the living before (which I really had to think about because I thought Glenn was more hardened than that.)
They get their intel about Negan’s compound (which has satellite dishes on top of it….satellite compound….not main compound…the writers are not even hiding the clues well anymore) from the same guy who had his hand broken by Darryl last week. The details are so sketchy that anyone reasonable would say “Hey maybe we should send Darryl on some reconnaissance missions first!?!?”, but hey we have the element of surprise right?
Rosita is pissed that Morgan is going on the mission after the crap he pulled, while Carol is pissed that Maggie is risking her baby to go along, and all of us viewers are in general, pissed that everyone is blindly following Rick again.
They do however, come up with a somewhat ingenious plan to find a head that looks like the leader of the hilltop compound on a walker and deliver it as if the assassination attempt (from last episode) was successful. When the head they pick doesn’t quite match nose wise, Rick brutally punches the nose in, reminds the broken hand guy that his hand had to break somehow, and off we go to the “satellite” compound in the middle of the night.
The plan works for the most part. They get the hostage released, they kill a bunch of people in their sleep, and the only one who seems to feels good about it appears to be Rick, then one of the Saviors manages to pull the alarm and suddenly it’s a battle. Usually we love battles but this one just doesn’t feel right especially as Glen has overcome his “don’t kill the living” reservations multiple times.
As dawn breaks, the group emerges victorious, wondering which one was Negan, until a survivor comes riding out a side door on Darryl’s lost motorbike. They take him down and are about to take him out when a female voice comes across a walkie-talkie conveniently laying on the ground. Rick demands they come out. The voice tells them they have captured Carol and Maggie….Uh Oh!!! The Saviors aren’t all in the compound they just attacked, they aren’t as weak and simple to kill as Rick thought they would be, and now they have hostages….didn’t see that one coming a mile away.
The review of this episode is simple, and I know I have been very critical of building episodes this season, but this one was necessary for many reasons I will outline below. It was also a very unsettling and unsatisfying episode and it was supposed to be. I liken it to professional wrestling, where there are faces (heroes) and heels (villains). Rick and his small band of inexperienced Alexandria compound commandos had to turn heel. They had to believe they were bad ass, and we had to be a little disappointed in them as they mount their midnight sneak attack, because as we are about to discover with them, there is real evil and a real villain just around the corner, and everything they thought they knew about themselves and their future is about to be turned upside down.
