*Spoiler warning: in this day and age people act like there’s a show spoiler around every tree corner, and here we have quite a few ahead of us.*

Hello again folks, Kevin here reviewing the midway season finale of The Walking Dead. But before I do, let me say Happy belated Thanks Giving to all of my US readers (which is most of the five readers out there), I had a good Thanks Giving aside from a minor argument I had with my siblings about Television spoilers. It’s become evident to me that even potential spoilers such as show theories have become forbidden to be talked of in person or on Facebook. I agree we shouldn’t ruin the mystery for people, but there’s a witch hunt now for amateur TV critics such as myself for talking about spoilers. The whole thing’s getting to be “political correctness” debate levels of rediculous, and it annoys me to no end. Enough with my ranting though, onto the show.

This episode mostly brought us the payoff we’ve been waiting for in that the heard has finally infiltrated the safe-zone of Alexandria. What it didn’t do was give us the scene all of us comic readers wanted to see: how (in the comics) the heard gets cleared out. Being that the show’s writers don’t want to copy and paste from the comics, I can see their point of view; it’s just rediculous that we had a 90 minute flashback for Morgan and only an hour of this episode. If we use the comics as a reference point, then half the scenes in this episode were just filler material. For once, I agree with comic only fans that stuff and things were too drawn out in this episode. However, there were still awesome moments in this episode.

What I liked: First off, Carl is clearly an underrated MVP in this episode. The microphone dropped when Carl told Ron, “I get it, my dad killed your dad. But you need to realize, your dad was an asshole.” Carl kept his head cool through everything while Ron basically screwed over everyone hiding in Jessie’s house. While the fight scene between Carl and Ron was unnecessary, the following scene with the previously mentioned quote made the Carl vs Ron fight worth it. I’m sad that Deanna had to die after being bitten, but I’m happy she went out fighting and screaming in defiance rather than killing herself. It was also cool to see the various tensions between Carol, Morgan, The Wolf Leader, and Denise. Of course, the brawl between Morgan and Carol was damn intense, and we see how little it accomplished in how the Wolf leader successfully escaped with Denise. The idea of the camouflage zombie guts was taken directly from the comics, and it’s a nice touch adding it to the show. Lastly, I loved seeing the ants swell over Carol’s cookies in Sam’s room to the tune of “Tip Toe to the Window” by Tiny Tim, the symbolism of that comparison of the being the walker heard was well placed. Now then, I’m worried about Sam…

What I didn’t Enjoy: I sincerely hope that Sam doesn’t get killed off since he’s clearly on some kind of borderline psychotic state, and that could spell trouble for the group next season. I hated that the Wolf leader got away with Denise, and how the show has painted Morgan as an inept pacifist for that oversight of keeping the wolf leader alive (I can still respect what Morgan was trying to do though). Lastly, why do we have to have so many damn cliff hangers? Jesus, Dragon Ball Z didn’t have this many cliff hangers in one episode. Oh well, at least we get to look forward to how Negan will be portrayed, and this will give me enough time to catch up on the current issues of The Walking Dead comic (I stopped after finishing the second compendium).

Tonight, I leave us with the ever atmospheric sounds of Tiny Tim. This song just added such a great undertone of terror to this episode for Rick’s group.

-KCard