Warning:

Life’s a treat,

and it feels so sweet,

when you’re living on spoiler street.

Hello again world of WordPress, Kevin here bringing you my brief thoughts on Walking Dead episode 7.4, “Service”. I missed reviewing the last two episodes just because I’ve been busy with work and accepting the outcome of the Presidential Election last week. Here’s to hoping we can get “Negan Lucille” into office someday, candidates who will take care of the deficit by “shutting that shit down, no exceptions!” As for the two previous episodes, I know some people might have found them boring, but I’m rather enjoying how much dialogue and plot driven things are becoming in The Walking Dead again. These eipsodes were a breath of fresh air from the season premiere. It’s like the creators are trying to Make the Plot Great Again. Terrible political jokes aside, I rather enjoyed this episode as a whole.

What I enjoyed:

I rather like the direction they are taking with Rick’s character development since Negan is working to break Rick like a whipped dog. I don’t mean to say that Rick deserves to be treated this way, but I’m curious to see where things will go with how Negan is treating Rick. Such as if Rick ends up breaking completely, or just becomes a worse person than he was in the middle of season five. I enjoyed seeing the tense air between the members of Alexandria and the Saviors with how the actors played everything out. The scene where Carl confronts the Saviors and stands up to Negan was well made. Same goes for the scene where Dwight was creepily taunting Rosita.

Speaking of Dwight, if Negan is the big dog around the yard, Dwight is the simpering little hound dancing in his shadow for Negan’s approval. It seems that the writers are actually trying to make us hate Dwight more than Negan, and it’s working for me. I think Dwight is losing his humanity becuase of Negan’s actions, and Dwight sees parts of his old-self in Daryl that he now hates. IE, the scene where Dwight takes Daryl’s bike and then purposely taunts him over it saying, “You can have it back Daryl, just say the word!” Which I think was a reference to last week where Daryl refused to call himself “Negan”.

As for Negan himself, I am falling in love with how Jeffery Dean Morgan plays this psychopath. I find myself quoting Negan in my head all of the time with how he goes from being funny to dead serious in a heartbeat, he’s the kind of villain that’s “so bad he’s good.” I’m finally starting to catch up on the source material, so I will incorporate how the show version of Negan compares to the comic version of Negan in future reviews. Here’s to hoping the writers don’t screwover Negan like they screwed up the Governor’s story arc. With all of that said, I still had a few bones to pick with this episode.

What I didn’t enjoy:

Am I wrong for thinking that this episode didn’t have to be be 90 minutes long? I feel the episode itself became a lot worse once Negan left Alexandria. Negan was really the person who made this episode pop for me. With that said, I didn’t feel like Negan needed to take every single gun from Alexandria, as it decreases their chances of survival in the now zombie infested world they live. Negan said he didn’t want Rick’s group starving to death, but God forbid another Walker heard needs to stroll through Alexandria again. I know what these plot points stood for though, it was to demonstrate how much control Negan has over Rick now vs who Rick used to be, as Negan even mockingly pointed out to Rick with that scene where Negan was holding Deanna’s camcorder. Lastly, while I thank Father Gabriel for buying Maggie more time, I don’t like the idea of her being found out at the Hilltop colony later this season by Negan. This season will prove to be a bitter sweet symphony of writing if so.

I look forward to see where things will be going this season, while last season gave us a lot of action, I’m thinking this is going the season where Walking Dead comes back to plot over action, like a better and darker version of season two. I pretty much gave away my song for this review, so here’s your moment of zen:

-KCard