The Walking Dead: Service

November 15, 2016 5:31 AM - Season 7, Episode 4

Alexandria gets a sobering visit.
posted by LizBoBiz (21 comments total)

I think the fact this FanFare was posted so late says it all.
posted by agregoli at 7:26 AM on November 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

Absolutely....also, what was the point of this episode being extra long. What an awful slog.
posted by mmascolino at 7:45 AM on November 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Agreed, that this was a long, boring episode. However, they sure taunted Daryl a lot about talking - "Maybe Daryl can defend himself", "Just say the word" etc. Have they done something terrible like cut out his tongue, or did they break him with sleep deprivation/solitary confinement?

We probably won't find out until February -_-
posted by torisaur at 9:29 AM on November 15, 2016

Oh I bet they cut out his tongue. After he said his name was Darryl instead of Neagan in the last episode.

Agreed that this episode was tedious and definitely did not need extra time. And now we're probably in for a whole season of this? Ugh.

I did like the little fake-out with Maggie though. They had me worried there for a second!
posted by LizBoBiz at 9:39 AM on November 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

They've just committed full-on to making us look back on the Governor arc with fondness, haven't they? I mean, at least ol' Gov had some kind of coherent motivation and was believable as a leader of people.

Then again, what the fuck do I know? Trump's our goddamned President now, and at least Negan can swing a fucking bat.

If the show were smart, it'd lean hard into the idea that Negan's iron-fisted rule is fueled by pandering to toxic masculinity, but the show isn't smart.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:46 AM on November 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

Thanks to you folks who take the time to watch these episodes, as I enjoyed the diversion into The Kingdom, and I'll skip all the episodes that don't have anything I deem to be of worth based on your comments.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:05 AM on November 15, 2016

I'm surprised this turned out to be 90 minutes - it could have easily been 60 minutes long and gotten just as much across.

I'm starting to wonder about Daryl myself - he didn't even look up when Negan addressed him. It makes me think either they've broken him emotionally, or he's biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to do something - to strike back at Negan's people or at least escape back to Alexandria.
posted by Roger Pittman at 11:16 AM on November 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm surprised this turned out to be 90 minutes - it could have easily been 60 minutes long and gotten just as much across.

It could have been fifteen minutes and still gotten everything across. Not much actually happened.
posted by FallowKing at 3:01 PM on November 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I could not stop thinking how easy it would have been to have someone outside the gate at the treeline with a scoped rifle, and just pop Negan in the dome when he walked up. His army of Henchmen? Alexandria has a rocket launcher! I mean, how hard could it possibly be? Poof! Negan storyline conveniently wrapped up, with explosions and mayhem to boot! Best episode ever!

But yeah, these are the people who decided to let a horde of walkers out of the quarry they were safely contained in.

And why hasn't Dwight, or someone else similarly aggrieved, just poked Negan in the kidney with a pointy object while he's gloating about something or other? Or just poisoned him?

I did enjoy the Kingdom episode, that could get interesting. And the last episode wasn't terrible.

The dark apocalyptic entertainment is a little less entertaining since last Tuesday as well.
posted by natteringnabob at 3:45 PM on November 15, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah, hated all of it, although at least Negan finally admitted that he's basically just a rapist. So there's that.

Remember that Daryl blames himself for Glen's death, and now has "learned" that Maggie is dead too. He's doing penance, and mow it's twice over. He needs to spend a few months with Morgan and work through it, but in the abesence of that, he is exactly where he wants to be. In the most brutal,prison ever. So, no, he won't be escaping. He doesnt't want to.
posted by Mogur at 3:50 PM on November 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

The staging made it seem like assassinating Negan would be ridiculously easy, which I'm sure was not the intent. The only way not killing him at the gate would have made sense was if he had brought a small legion of Saviors, rather than a relative handful of dudes.

Negan overplayed his hand. He has a tendency to try to rub in his victories, but doesn't seem to grasp that Rick is only accommodating him because Rick thinks playing along will win Negan's respect, and thereby keep his people safe. Rick knows better on the first part now. Their guns are gone because Rick's an idiot, but there's still the Hilltop and a fantastic shitload of people (how many I'm not sure because -- see above -- the show isn't good with displaying scale, but clearly a whole lot), and good reason to believe the Saviors aren't as invincible as they act like they are.

I thought the episode wasn't terrible, but there wasn't much to it. Was it really 90 minutes, or did they just double the ads?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:12 PM on November 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

Turns out the apocalypse isn't very entertaining when you are living in a real one. Need more Kingdom, less Neagan, less Rick, less Deana's Son, more HilltopJesus, more Eugene.

Gabriel is so weird, i don't even know what to say about him. I did sort of enjoy Neagan mocking him. Boring episode overall.
posted by gatorae at 9:33 PM on November 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Darryl torture sub-arc is cheap emotional blackmail. I can't think of a better description, but it's par for show and now turned to 12.

It's tedious.

Gabriel? I thought he died?! Or maybe I just wished it that hard.

I don't think I remembered the 'alternate universe/timeline' being so annoying. Ugh, nevermind, it was a lot of crap issues since Glenn until it was just merely boring with Coral arcs until #155 (June 2016) or so and then something actually interesting starts to happen.

(I think they meet Negan in #100, which came out Aug 2012)
posted by porpoise at 10:05 PM on November 15, 2016

Rosita was bad ass in this episode and I loved that they gave her something to do.
The scene with Rick confessing that Judith isn't his baby did not land at all. What did it have to do with anything Michonne was talking about? And Andrew Lincoln is just the worst and I could not care less about any emotional upheavals Rick is experiencing. That was a prime example of the writers totally misjudging what the viewers are interested in.
posted by areaperson at 6:55 AM on November 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

But yeah, these are the people who decided to let a horde of walkers out of the quarry they were safely contained in.

Huh? They were not safely contained, and this was discussed within the episode extensively.
posted by agregoli at 2:22 PM on November 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

And Andrew Lincoln is just the worst

Sad to see that I have to say. Loved him in This Life and thought he had a great career in front of him in either light or serious drama. I only even took a look at The Walking Dead because "Egg" from This Life was in it and I was surprised at how well done the show was. Haven't watched a second of this season however, and never will. Battlestar Galactica level of slide into mediocrity.
posted by juiceCake at 4:30 PM on November 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't know if it's Andrew Lincoln or just the bad writing. IMO the writing is 90% of the problem, and maybe Andy just tries to compensate for that by overacting? I don't know, I lay far more blame at the writers' feet for his clunky lines, especially since the worst monologues tends to get assigned to Rick. I was also confused why Rick chose that moment to tell Michonne about Judith; it was basically a non sequitur and felt like it was jammed into to give some emotional weight to an otherwise worthless episode.

It's also kind of hard for me to believe that Shane has never come up before in conversation. It reminds me of the complaints that people have made on FanFare before about how the characters never talk to each other about problems onscreen (i.e. not telling Deana that there are cannibals and Governors and shit out there) and it's unclear that they ever convey such information to each other offscreen. The fact that Rick has apparently never mentioned Shane before indicates that no, the characters literally never talk to each other except what is shown on TV. It's ridiculous.
posted by gatorae at 5:57 PM on November 16, 2016 [7 favorites]

I think Andrew Lincoln, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, etc. are just trying to make the best of the shit sandwich the writers are giving them. I know that JDM can be genuinely charming, because he pulled that off on Gray's Anatomy, so I'm fairly certain his utter failure to be charming as Negan is down to the fact that Negan as written is just a boring-ass bully with no interesting hooks for him to play off of. So he substitutes scenery-chewing instead.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:50 PM on November 16, 2016 [5 favorites]

Turned off about fifteen minutes in, don't feel I missed much.
posted by Iteki at 9:07 AM on November 17, 2016

I liked Andrew Lincoln in Love Actually just as much as anyone, but I think he's awful as Rick. I do agree with you both that the writing is terrible and Rick's monologues are terrible, but don't you think a better actor could pull it off a little? Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a good comparison. His dialogue is also pretty bad, but I still think he has a presence and energy to him that makes his Negan believable and somewhat interesting to me. Like maybe he's not great now, but he will be eventually? I guess I'm truly an optimist. Here's hoping we see the Hilltop and Jesus this week.

Did anyone hear the theories that Darryl was blinking in morse code to Rick? Sounds far fetched to me. How would Rick know morse code? If only Carol was there to help decipher Darryl!
posted by areaperson at 10:58 AM on November 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Rick does have a huge Morse code poster on his kitchen wall... (Chekhov's poster?)
posted by KateViolet at 4:30 PM on January 11, 2017 [2 favorites]