11x08 For Blood

[7.3/10] This is a quasi-season finale (mid-season finale?) so it’s time to break out the fireworks. Maggie’s crew of semi-Whisperers is bringing a horde to the doorstep of the Reapers, which turns out to be a literal minefield. Meanwhile, in Alexandria, a brutal storm is rolling through that threatens our heroes holed up in a home as walkers breach the walls. There’s little time for quiet reflection here, or at least there theoretically shouldn’t be, as The Walking Dead pulls out various stops to go out on a big note (and cliffhanger).

And it’s all...fine.

“For Blood” builds to a crescendo for a lot of the things TWD has been setting up this season (sans the events in The Commonwealth, which are missing amid their own cliffhanger from the last episode). Maggie’s crew makes their approach to what used to be Meridian in an attempt to get food. The people of Alexandria have to band together to withstand another hardship in their already battered community. Double Agent Daryl has his moment of truth with Leah and The Reapers.

None of it’s done poorly. There’s a few too many speeches and grand colloquies, but after eleven seasons, you pretty much have to make peace with that or otherwise give up on The Walking Dead. Structurally the episode largely snaps into place. And I even like a lot of the story choices here. The episode just doesn't amount to much more than the sum of its parts.

Nothing exemplifies that better than the culmination of this part of Daryl’s story. I have to admit, I am so glad that Pope’s dead. He’d only been with us for less than half a season, but he’d already grown tiresome. Ritchie Coster’s cheek-chewing faux-southern accent started to grate, and we’ve had so many philosophizing, half-insane leader guys on this show that hearing more and more of his standard spiel made me cheer when Leah took him out, and not necessarily for the reasons the show intended.

Still, I like where things go with her and Daryl. As setup in the “bonus section” of season 10, Daryl’s long been conflicted when forced to choose between Leah and “his people.” There’s too many loaded conversations about “family” and other navel-gazing ideas in service of that, but ultimately, he tries to have it both ways and fails. He comes clean to Leah, asks her axe Pope, spare his friends, and come with him. When she does the first part, he thinks it’s all going his way.

But it doesn’t. Leah had enough of Pope, thinking he’d gone too far in his callous disregard for the lives of her fellow soldiers, to where she was willing to stage a coup. But like Daryl, her loyalty is to her people over any one person, whether it be Pope or Daryl. She bristles at Daryl’s lies and blames Pope’s death on him to her allies. I like that. In a weird way, Daryl and Leah are both good guys in their stories, doing what they need to do, betraying people close to them, in service of their brothers and sisters and what they believe is the greater good. The dramatization of these ideas isn’t the best thing in the world, but it works.

Granted, it’s a little silly how Maggie and Gabriel are mostly able to sneak in without being seen, or how Daryl’s able to sneak off to help them without anybody knowing. And it’s unclear what exactly Maggie and company’s plan for getting the food back to Alexandria is. But you know, if plausibility is what you’re after, you’re probably watching the wrong show, so best to make peace with all of that.

I did like the mirroring with Negan here, where he helps Maggie’s compatriot after the guy’s hit with mine shrapnel, much as she helped him in the last episode. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it feel like a moment meant to convey that Negan can be compassionate to, and maybe it’s meant as another “not so different” thing between him and Maggie.

The business in Alexandria is equally bombastic and not fully successful in the smaller emotions it tries to inject. But again, I like what it’s going for. It’s nice to see Rosita get a big hero moment for the first time in...well...maybe ever? Her defeinding her friends and family in a selfless, bloody, but ultimately successful manner, replete with a dry cool “We should stay away from the windows” kicker of a line was fantastic.

I also appreciate what the show’s trying to do with Judith here. Once more, it’s all very clunky, but Virgil telling her that she’s got Michonne’s spirit every time she carries her blade or looks out for others, and vice versa, is a sweet reassurance and payoff to the young Miss Grimes’s story in this half (third?) season. Her going out of her way to help Cassie and being trapped sets up the usual cliffhanger drama, but I’m more into the show making the effort to explore what it’s like for a kid, even a precocious one like Judith, to experience all of this.

The storm itself is a good setup. We’ve seen such things a time or two before, but not in a while, and watching the usual suspects fight a natural disaster at the same time they have to fight the dead makes for a tense scenario. The show leaves most of that on the table for whenever we get the next installment, but the Night of the Living Dead-esque action of trying to keep the walkers out of the house is well done.

Overall, this is a perfectly cromulent way to end this batch of episodes for The Walking Dead. For something clearly intended to be dramatic and momentous, “For Blood” falls short of truly blowing the roof off the place (although that may be in the offing in a more literal sense), but it does just enough to pass muster and get a few nice moments in there.