The Walking Dead: Monsters

I beat up last week’s episode pretty badly. There was all kinds of action but little context to the action, very little was explained, and there were some serious logic flaws. Well, this episode didn’t get much better. It was chocked full of many of the same problems. After a strong opening episode, this season is turning out to be pretty disappointing. Adding to the fact, there is no coherent strategy among the Allied forces. If the trio of Rick, Ezekiel, and Maggie are going to be calling the shots, then they also need to let their people know about how they are supposed to combat the enemy and what they’re supposed to be doing with prisoners. And not only do both the Allies and the Saviors have inexhaustible supplies of ammo, apparently they never have to reload their weapons, or they just discard them for a new weapon.

Morgan and Jesus
Out of everything that was bad about this episode, the sequences between Morgan and Jesus were the absolute worse. Regardless of what their differences are, the two of them battling it out while hauling a chain gang of prisoners is utterly ludicrous, as evidenced by the fact that the prisoners fled while they were fighting. It would take two complete morons to actually have a raging battle in this situation. For the record, Jesus and his stance of pacifism and mercy is ridiculous, and I side with Morgan, but both of these characters need to be flogged.

Maggie
Whoever thought that the Hilltoppers could possibly have a worse leader than Gregory. Well, they just might have one in Maggie. I don’t know if she’s smoking crack over at the Hilltop, but she made two unimaginably awful decisions. The first is letting the aforementioned Gregory back into the fold. How long is it going to take Gregory to betray them? I would wager the very first opportunity that presents itself. Then, she signs off on the Jesus plan of keeping the captured Saviors as prisoners in a couple of trailers. They don’t have holding cells or prisons. How long is it going to take for the Saviors to try to break out. What are they going to do about feeding them? Do they have bathrooms for them to use? Do the writers actually think any of this through?

Ezekiel and Carol
First of all, this is a show about zombies. The director needs to keep it simple. There’s no reason to get all artsy by showing a scene followed immediately by a flashback and slowing it all down. They also telegraphed the disaster that was going to come when Ezekiel kept gloating how nobody had gotten killed (it was also preposterous that they got into a gun fight with about twenty armed Saviors and didn’t suffer a single casualty). Ezekiel was being so smug in this episode that I was almost hoping something bad would happen to him.

Daryl and Rick

This was yet another dichotomy in character philosophy. Whereas Rick was willing to show mercy to Morales and the lone Savior at the end, Daryl was not. He was going to destroy anyone in his path. If they want to beat the Saviors, they need to be more like Daryl. I like this new, dark version of Daryl. His character has evolved throughout the show. He has always had a dark edge to him, but he’s going full out Dark Knight Avenger here. I think there is a conflict that is going to come to blows between he and Rick.

Aaron
This episode saw the first death this season of a somewhat important character in Aaron’s significant other. But it’s hard to feel too much sympathy. Eric has barely had any screen time, and for the most part has been kind of useless. But I thought the two actors playing these characters delivered strong performances and made it work.