I don’t recall Rick melting anyone’s face off, or slicing anyone open during an argument after pool. Nor throwing anyone into an oven. Nor asking anyone to cut their child’s arm off, or threatening to make anyone eat their child’s remaining eye.
They killed the Savior outpost because they were demanding tribute from Hilltop.
I hope they merge some of the plot lines after the big climax. I really don’t like it when these shows have so many different plot lines that you can go weeks without seeing some of the characters.
As someone said in a recent thread: Hey, that was Enid. I forgot she was still alive!
Even Corl made an appearance in this episode. (I wonder if they’ve renewed Chandler Riggs’s contract?)
It seems that all of the episodes this season have been taking place almost simultaneously. Based on Maggie’s pregnancy, it looks like it’s only been a month, or two, since Abe Ford and Glenn met the working end of Lucille.
It occurred to me that Negan might have been trying to bluff Sasha into believing that he knows something about Rick’s plans to see how she reacts. Oh gosh Mr Negan. As long as you already know Alexandria’s plans, I may as well tell you the rest, sort of thing.
Is Sasha just another lone wolf, is she part of an advanced guard, or is Negan too horny to think clearly?
Dwight has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. However, no one else is aware of Dwight and Shelly’s relationship, or how that affected Dwight’s decision to join, escape, rejoin, and obey Negan without question. It’s also not yet public knowledge that Shelly twice helped with Daryl’s escapes.
A group that was extorting Hilltop and had turned one of its own citizens into an assassin by holding his brother hostage. And Rick & Company had already had an encounter with Negan’s people as you note below.
Negan’s people were robbing them and were about to murder either Sasha or Abraham before Daryl launched an RPG at them. They weren’t just told to give up their truck. Negan’s folks explained that it was their standard operating procedure to kill one person in the group and have the survivors take them back to their settlement.
Negan didn’t kill them as retribution. Negan killed Abraham and Glenn because that’s his standard introduction to new groups. He killed them to establish dominance over the rest of the Alexandrians.
Spencer was stealing food that belonged to the group as a whole when their stock was low. Most societies consider that a serious breach of etiquette.
From Daryl’s limited perspective, anyone in Saviour City could have helped with Daryl’s escape. Except Fat Tony, and Negan. Sherry helped steal Daryl’s bike and crossbow, and abandoned him in the middle of nowhere without a weapon. Daryl later discovered Sherry was one of Negan’s wives/girlfriends. Unless Daryl had discovered that Sherry was using him as a diversion for her own escape, it’s unlikely he would think she would help him escape.
Besides stealing Daryl’s bike and bow, Dwight reappeared later to crossbow Denise who was standing in front of/next to Daryl. Did Dwight hit the person he was aiming at, or the one next to him? And, of course, Dwight was in charge of Daryl’s time on Easy Street. Unless Dwight, or the Saviour’s extra-crisp ex-doctor, told Daryl about Sherry’s hopes for the future, Daryl is clueless.
Corl was babysitting Judith during one of Negan’s visits, but anyone in Alexandria could be babysitting Judith.
I don’t think we’re supposed to think of our primary protagonists as “good guys” in any conventionally moral way. They readily admit that, in the name of survival, they’ve done things since the ZA that they never would have before. Part of what makes their journey compelling is their constant teetering on the brink of the complete loss of their humanity. We stay with them because they (usually) pull themselves back.
No, certainly not the good guys in a conventional sense. Few television shows are going to have the protagonists kill defenseless foes in a church. Though, in that case at least, I found Rick’s actions to be both just and pragmatic. Even if the Terminus folks went away and never bothered our group again they would have continued to waylay and cannibalize other survivors.
But I lot of what Rick & Company have done that some argue shows they’re just as bad as Negan. Wiping out the savior outpost, killing the Terminus survivors in the church, threatening to kill Dwight are a few examples I can think of off the top of my head. But most of those seem pretty reasonable to me. But there was a time when they came across a survivor and just left him out there even though the dude was clearly overjoyed at finding other living people, there Oceanside and the theft of their weapons, and even his threats against the people of Alexandria shortly after they arrived.
I’m not sure why this is being brought up multiple times. The Terminus ‘survivors’ were in the church because they wanted to kill and eat Rick’s people. It’s not as if they were seeking sanctuary.