The Walking Dead: Mercy

October 24, 2017 8:51 AM - Season 8, Episode 1

Rick and his group, along with the Kingdom and Hilltop, have banded together to bring the fight to Negan and the Saviors.
posted by LizBoBiz (17 comments total)

I checked in after deciding to pass on last season. I didn't feel lost at all. They're getting the band back together to kill Neagan, with the help of a few wild and crazy neighbors. The show is really not about zombies at all at this point.
posted by skewed at 8:58 AM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

No, it isn't, strangely. Yet I still care! I hope it gets back to some of that horror though at some point.

The recreation of the opening scene of the entire series but with Carl instead was weird, it gave me a creepy feeling. I didn't like any of the Old Man Rick parts but the start of the plan unfolding to take down Negan was cool as hell. The 4 simultaneous gunshot "knocks" on his door? Awesome.
posted by agregoli at 9:30 AM on October 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I remarked to my kid, fifteen minutes to this episode, "I forgot there were zombies on this show"
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:56 AM on October 24, 2017

I wanted a worse end for Gabriel.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:24 AM on October 24, 2017

Who doesn't? I hope Gabriel goes quick.
posted by agregoli at 12:56 PM on October 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

How could they have missed Neegan and his minions with all the firepower they had? HOW?!?! It is ridiculous.
posted by lyssabee at 4:25 PM on October 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

How could they have missed Neegan and his minions with all the firepower they had? HOW?!?! It is ridiculous.

Remember last season where there was a multi-episode arc devoted to getting a single bullet and then they opened this season by spending a thousand rounds to shoot out some not-even-ground-floor windows?

Isn't it weird that Rick can use a single bullet to reliably headshot a walker while running from half a football field away, but he can't manage to hit any of the four people lined up in front of him while he's stationary and firing a fully automatic weapon?

This show is deeply stupid about guns.

And cars. And agriculture. And politics. And how people talk to one another. And haircuts. And. And. And.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 5:02 PM on October 24, 2017 [9 favorites]

Why didn't they just shoot them instead of yammering at them endlessly? Ugh. I don't know if I can do this much longer, it's just too stupid. That was a very elaborate way of accomplishing not as much as they could have if they had just shot Negan in the first half hour when Rick had endlessly clear shots.
posted by gatorae at 5:42 PM on October 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm not gonna denounce it until I see the whole implementation of the plan. I can't help it, I'm diehard for this show. You all make sense. But they got me.
posted by agregoli at 6:16 PM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

This felt like a filler episode about a third of the way through the season, not a season premiere.

Tara was a highlight, though.
posted by neilbert at 6:23 PM on October 24, 2017

Yeah can we talk about Tara? I'm awfully surprised how much I like her character now. I was never a huge fan but the swagger feels real from her at this point.
posted by agregoli at 6:36 PM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think I appreciate it because the show needs to feel FUN again after all this oppression. Or it really can't sustain much longer.
posted by agregoli at 6:57 PM on October 24, 2017

I enjoyed 90% of the episode (the 90% that Negan was off-screen). It was a pleasure watching Carol, Tara, and Daryl working together, and also watching stuff blow up. I could even stomach Rick for most of it.

Not sure why they had colour-coded armbands - I can see why they have armbands, yes, but not why they have three different colours.
posted by Mogur at 6:56 AM on October 25, 2017

Different teams...team red does this stuff, team green does that...altho I'm not sure why everyone couldn't remember their team without it.
posted by agregoli at 7:21 AM on October 25, 2017

Todd VanDerWerff is *out*: I have won victory over myself. I no longer give a shit."

Suddenly, The Walking Dead seems as if it’s outlived its moment, as if it got stuck somewhere in 2015 and left us all to sail on by, waving.

While “Mercy” is probably a better episode of The Walking Dead than most of the show’s (truly enervating) seventh season, it also underlines how futile it is to care about the series any more now that it’s succumbed to the gravitational pull of Negan.

Theoretically interesting moments and character beats — like, say, Maggie embracing her new role as the leader of the Hilltop community — are crushed beneath the heel of the Negan story, which has dragged on so long, with so obvious a conclusion, that even the show has leapt ahead to assure us that, yes, Rick, Michonne, and probably most of the others are going to survive this current struggle.

posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:25 AM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also, I found Future Rick's terrible fake beard distractingly Cartmanesque.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:29 AM on October 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Trying to get caught up a full year and change later. I was pretty on board with the episode until I saw how their plan played out. These characters, who can nail headshots all day long, should've easily been able to kill all of those people up on the balcony. That's not even accounting for their normally superhuman accuracy. I think an average person could have hit any one of those people, if not all of them.

The characteristics of the offense are surprise, concentration, audacity, and tempo. The characters had three out of the four and should have met with resounding success, yet failed.

I mean, I'm still going to keep watching just so I can figure out what happens, but goodness gracious.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 2:49 PM on December 9, 2018