*Spoiler warning courtesy of Buzz Lightyear*

Hello again everyone, Kevin here bringing you the analysis on this week’s episode of The Walking Dead. I just wanted to let people know that the reason I always open up with a “filler” paragraph is so when I post these reviews to Facebook the text doesn’t bleed over and reveal any spoilers for those who didn’t want to see them. I like to consider it an extra insurance policy to prevent people from getting upset over spoilers.

Speaking of filler, I often hear comic book Gatekeeping fans get upset at the show every season due how slowly the story drags on. These people need to remember that these are two different mediums, and television shows need to reach syndication (100 or more episodes). It’s especially worth mentioning that lately The Walking Dead has returned to referencing the source material at a rate that I find to be appropriate. My main complaint about the show is that they add unnecessary story arcs that turn into filler arcs (source material aside) such as the corrupt police officers in the hospital from season 5A. Now then, onto the show.

This week’s episode really had no way of topping last week’s episode, so we can consider this the calm after the storm has settled. That being said, a lot of awesome things still happened in last night’s episode of The Walking Dead. For starters, we finally got to meet the comic book character Raul Rovia (nicknamed “Jesus”). We saw Spencer put down Dianna’s walker with help from Michonne, and we also saw that Carl has no idea how to talk to women with how rude he was being to Enid. Lastly, I’m happy to see that Rick and Michonne are together now as a couple as I’ve recently been “shipping Richonne” (as the kids on Tumblr are saying these days). There were some things that bothered me about the episode, but I rather enjoyed it overall.

What I enjoyed:
It was great seeing how the characters interacted in this episode, Michonne helping out Spencer with his personal task of putting Deanna out of her misery (after being reanimated) and helping Spencer find out he still has a family with the people of Alexandria. It was awesome seeing Jesus interact with Daryl and Rick throughout most of the episode, and how they kept Jesus true to his comic counterpart at how skilled at sneaking and hand to hand combat that he is. I also enjoyed a lot of the dialogue as this was definitely a story driven episode, not an action driven episode. Lastly, it was amazing to see Rick and Michonne together, and amusing to see them both draw their weapons on Jesus while naked at the end of the episode. Some fan service for Walking Dead fans? Hell, I’ll take it! Now onto the things that bothered me.

What I didn’t enjoy:
I really felt like the writers had Rick and Daryl acting out of character this whole episode, I’m pretty sure Rick and Daryl should have been smart enough to know that they should have just driven straight back to Alexandria with that supply truck before stopping anywhere else. Yes they found Jesus (not biblically), but they also lost all of the supplies in that truck because they kept messing around to try and locate soda for Denise, and kept struggling to deal with Jesus. The truck wouldn’t have fallen into the lake (which was painful to watch) if Rick and Daryl had just done the sensible thing and gone straight back (which Daryl is usually known for in this show). I feel like that whole part of the story focusing on Rick and Daryl was just wasted time where they stopped acting their normal selves. Other than that it was a satisfactory exposition episode (that was unfortunate enough to have to follow the act before it).

So I’m looking forward to seeing next week’s episode of The Walking Dead and how the whole story with Jesus will play out. I should also note this is just about the part of the comics that I stopped reading at so I will either need to play catch up with the source material (I own Walking Dead compendiums one and two), or just ask that people not spoil the major story arcs that are coming up in the future. I’m also super curious to see what they do in the show with Negan.

For today’s featured song I was tempted to leave “Jesus Take The Wheel” by Carrie Underwood in honor of Jesus stealing the food truck, but musically it doesn’t scream “Walking Dead” to me. Instead I will leave you all with the Johnny Cage song “When The Man Comes Around” as the appearance of Jesus (Raul) means that bad things are going to happen this season when Negan finally appears.

-KCard