The plan, never explained, was just to keep everyone in the building bottled in and unaware of the zombie horde that was being led through the building defences, so that everyone in the building would be unable to respond and be neutralized while the Savior outposts were all isolated and destroyed.
Trying so hard not to go full-on P&R…
Hey, that could have been a cool episode. Too bad they shot the one we saw instead.
And, yeah, until you explained it, I had no idea what the plan was. I thought they were just luring the zombie swarm to the Negan factory to finish off anyone they couldn’t kill. Oh, and then lets go mop up that outpost afterwards.
As for the bleary-eyed “mercy” Rick and the future goofy haircut Rick, I had zero idea what the heck that stuff was supposed to be. I did like the possible ambiguity of the graves, but I figured I was giving the show too much credit to infer a couple of major deaths.
At this point, the only thing Walking Dead could do to regain my respect is have Rick inadvertently shoot himself in the thigh while holstering his stupid cowboy gun. Then he would bleed to death from the femoral artery while everyone looks on, horrified.
-Tom
Thanks for the explaination @Desslock, I needed the clarification. Like Tom, I wondered why the hell they were wasting precious ammunition on breaking windows. It makes sense if the object was never a direct assault on Sanctuary, but just a diversion to keep people inside while the horde got into place. Divide and conquer makes perfect sense as a strategy, and would have taken them 60 seconds to explain in the form of “let’s all go over the plan one last time!”.
I do wonder though, is the horde enough? I mean, there were A LOT of Saviors in that “Let’s go to war!” shot of Negan addressing the troops. If all those guys are in Sanctuary, plus their armory is intact, and they have all the workers who have melee weapons, technically they should be able to clean up the horde in a few hours or a day max. We already saw Rick and Co. do something similar in Alexandria when it was overrun. So does that 24 hours buy them the time to wipe out all the other Savior outposts, allowing them to then take the fight back to Sanctuary? Or do they think that all of this will enrage Negan enough to come looking for revenge at Alexandria? Guess we will find out.
I also agree that this seems like it should be the best storytelling of the entire series at this point, so much potential and so many moving parts, and yet it feels incomplete, even botched with the whole “hey look, it’s future Rick, or is that vision Rick, or dream sequence Rick, who the fuck knows!” scenes.
Well, that was awful.
An hour of a bunch of people we don’t particularly care about trading gunfire with another bunch of people we don’t particularly care about, except we’re supposed to root for the first group since they’re “Rick’s people”. Is this what we have to look forward to for the rest of the season?
And why aren’t more of the gunshot victims turning?
What are they shooting at?!?
I’ve had that happen to me in XCOM :)
Probably a 95% to-hit chance, too.
Having seen how effective their gunfire was in this episode, maybe they weren’t actually shooting at the windows last week.
This episode was like deleted scenes from last week’s crappy episode.
-Tom
Based on last season’s final episode, I didn’t expect much this season as the violence increased. The way the other groups magically appeared in that finale, stupidly out in the open, and Rick’s people all magically got loose yet again and started fighting back. . .the production team apparently has no one on-board who knows how to block action scenes.
I was thoroughly confused by last night’s events.
I get that the faux attack on the main Sanctuary in last week’s episode was a feint designed to blow a hole in the outer defenses and then bottle up all the Saviors inside by using the horde. This in turn would make it impossible for the Saviors there to roll out and respond when the outposts were attacked. Goofy execution on screen last week, but still a fairly sound plan overall.
Now this week we have the three attacks on three outposts that is supposed to be happening either simultaneously with the Sanctuary attack or within a couple of hours of it.
Attack 1 looks like a mix of Hilltop and Kingdom folks led by Jesus, Morgan and Tara all assaulting the exact same base they assaulted way back when they first encountered the Hilltop folks. Other than some very poor decision-making by Jesus (really, we’re taking prisoners now knowing what the Saviors do to people they capture?) and Morgan suddenly going all John Wick…this one appears to have gone according to plan.
Attack 2 seems to be mostly Kingdom folks going after some unknown outpost. At the end of last episode they had a lookout cornered, but an explosion apparently allowed him to escape briefly (until becoming a tasty tiger treat) during which time he was able to radio in to warn the outpost. Results of this plot twist will be shown next week presumably. In the meantime, we got lots of King Ezekielisms. “What hath befallen this creature?!” Yawn.
Attack 3 is a fucking mess. The plan seemed to be to roll up on the courtyard drive-by style, then pen the defenders in until enough of them were dead and turned that the remaining ones had both walkers and attackers to deal with. Meanwhile, Rick and Daryl were breaking into the compound from the back? It was hard to tell if both these plotlines were happening at the same location. The idea seemed to be that this outpost was some kind of armory. This makes little sense though, as why the hell would the Saviors have a huge stash of weaponry located OUTSIDE of the Sanctuary? Especially after already losing one such stash to Rick and Co. a season and a half ago.
In any event, Attack 3 seems to be going well until all of the sudden the Saviors, despite losing their leader and what seems like most of their people, and having to contend with walkers in their midst, seem to discover how to aim and begin picking off several of Rick’s people. Eric is hit, and he and Aaron make the ultimate TV battle rookie mistake : You NEVER look at the wound, as it only starts to gush blood when you look at it. This is known. Meanwhile Rick discovers that instead of weapons, the Saviors seem to be caching babies and Season One minor characters at this location.
I’m going to assume this can only lead to one thing…just as things look most dire for Rick and Co. in their battle against the Saviors, Guillermo and Los Vatos will arrive and save them all. Season One for the win!
Oh man, what a mess. I don’t really appreciate how bad these episodes are until I read @SlainteMhath’s explanation of what he thinks the show is trying to do!
-Tom
I’ve watched this show from the beginning, but I had zero recollection of Morales. So I just watched some season one clips featuring Morales and I still have zero recollection of Morales. Maybe those clips were deleted scenes.
I mean, did anyone see Morales this week and shout “Oh, hell, it’s Morales!!!” or “Morales!!! This show, man!” or “Boy howdy, now it’s on! Morales!!” I feel like that’s what the show was going for. Me, I whispered “Who is Morales?” into my empty family room, shrugged, and went back to playing on my phone.
sadface.gif
Same here except I screamed it at my cat, gulped another swig of whiskey and passed out.on the floor
Substitute wife for cat and vodka for whisky.
The series works better if you with just join me in assuming that they all lived happily ever after in Alexandria at the end of season five. Or all died horribly in a zombie attack soon after that. Your choice!
That is a great choice. That’s exactly when all the great moments in the show had already happened. I think I’m going to use that when I’m recommending the show to other people.
I am so glad i stopped watching this.
I am so sad I started watching this and didn’t stop earlier.
We should have a “when did Walking Dead go off the rails” thread. Death of the governor?
Like everyone else, I watched the last season more out of fatalistic interest, than anything. I won’t be bothering to watch the new season.