Swerve swerve swerve. I can't say I'm surprised, it's what Westworld is known for however this felt less organic then before and more like we were intentionally lead down the wrong path just to have the big revelation in the end that we were wrong. Problem is none of it was surprising or inspiring, it didn't make you go "oh what???" like in season 1 when we found out William was the man in black, it just made you go oh whatever...
Maeve switched sides, saw that coming. Dolores wanted to save humanity now? Please... There's a man in black robot? Already knew that, don't care what comes from it. Don't believe Dolores is really dead, don't care if she isn't, don't believe William is either, don't care if he isn't. William didn't end up saving anything, Hale is a bitch again. The only real emotional part of the episode was seeing Bernard visit Arnold's family and that still wasn't even that spectacular. Bernard has the key... to what exactly? Everyone got their catch phrase in. This episode just showed the show's gone on too long and the story is all over the place. To think it's going to keep going feels more like a chore then something to be excited for. With any mercy they end this thing with a 3 or 4 episode arch in season 4 and be done with it.
Alas Westworld, this pain is all I have left of you.
I honestly don’t understand how this episode gets so many good reviews here. I’m not sure how I would rate it, but I wouldn't say it’s a good episode.
First of all it was 40 minutes of Negan holding a monolog. I’m not even exaggerating. At the end we had a few sentences spoken by Maggie and Rick, but that’s it. 40 minutes of a monolog. That’s ridiculous. I do like the actor and I think Negan has potential, but at some point I just wanted to mute that episode because I just didn’t want to hear him talking anymore. It dragged on and on and on and on.
Second of all, Glenn. If they hadn’t pulled that dumpster shit in the last season than it would have worked as a shock effect I guess. But everyone was so freaking angry at the writers for that dumpster scene and I read so many rants during the last few months where people didn’t want to believe that they would kill Glenn “again”, but here we are. I’m just speechless. Yes, it was pretty similar to the comic from what I've seen, but that doesn't matter because they don't really stick to the comic anyway.
Thirdly, the general video quality and special effects. I already noticed that in the last season - The quality dropped so badly. The video quality is awful. I’m not sure if they use this grainy and grey effect on purpose, but it looks like this series was filmed 15 years ago. And the special effects (e.g. the gun fire) looked ridiculous again.
Fourthly, the gore. Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely have no problem with gore and it’s a freaking zombie show, so of course there will be blood and guts, but this episode seemed so over the top with the blood and brain pieces and guts. This whole episode didn’t feel like TWD, but more like SAW or some other gory horror movie. Yes, Negan is supposed to be batshit crazy (at least from what I’ve heard), but for me it was unnecessary bloody. And yes, Negan wanted to break them all, but somehow… It just seemed so over the top to me. How will they ever recover from that?
Maybe I need to accept that this show is different now. It's not how it used to be. Some people like it, but I don't. I'll probably keep watching, but I'm not happy where this is going.
Everything just went so abrupt and rushed in this episode.
This episode shows up the determination of two most weak (combat abilities speaking) characters in Walking Dead, trying to prove themselves that they are able fighters like their comrades are. As the usual cliche, this went into disaster. I usually would "pardon" such attempt on cliche plot (weak people trying to prove themselves), but this episode is really difficult to find excuse for. Especially in the case with the person Daryl and Rosita is guarding: Denise. They know Denise is far from an able combatant--so why do they seem so reluctant to, in Rosita's words, "babysit" her? Not to mention how Denise is such an important asset to Alexandria for her actual skill: medic and surgery.
Another one, the very rushed and abrupt decision of Carol to leave Alexandria. We've seen her psychological dilemma of killing people in previous episode, questioning if her ruthlessness and pragmatism is right. We've seen the dilemma through her action, her emotion. It was one of a great episode. But in this episode? We see almost nothing of Carol and suddenly she left Alexandria! We only get to see her kissing Tobin for a few seconds, sitting on a bench lamenting of something, regretting something after Denise was killed, and then BAM! "Sorry guys I can't kill people anymore, I'm leaving Alexandria." This makes the usual calm, calculating Carol look like a teenager in emotional mood-swing. Even worse, we don't even get to see her mood-swing.
Credits where its due though: the part where Eugene bites the Survivor's dick is so unexpectedly hilarious. Eugene really got into the next level with that move. Still--that doesn't save this episode of its clumsiness.
After last week's great episode, this episode is really a disappointment.
