The Walking Dead Season 9 Episode 4 Review

This episode starts off with Michonne living a normal life. She is taking care of Judith, planning for the future, and taking care of issues within the community. She then sees her sword on the wall, a reminder of her former life, and heads out into the night to kill walkers. She seems to be enjoying herself and goes out multiple times.

This brought back memories of one of my favorite moments from Skybound's The Walking Dead comic series. It was a panel of Michonne hanging up her sword on the wall, and she remembers all the zombies and people she hurt with it.

This wasn't quite what happened in the show, but it gives us a good understanding of the internal struggle of identity that Michonne is going through. Will she be a leader or a warrior?

Finally, the bridge that the communities have been working on is complete. However, it doesn't look like it was last in the long run. As the camps get ready to go home, Rick realizes he has to come to terms with the Saviors and their decision to be left alone.

Rick then gets a message from Jesus that Maggie is on her way to Alexandria to kill Negan. Rick tries to alert Alexandria, but his messenger agrees with Maggie so the messenger decides to do nothing.

Daryl overhears what happening and offers to take Rick to Alexandria with a hope to delay him. This scene made me very tense. I didn't know what lengths Daryl would go to in order to stop Rick from getting to Alexandria, but I knew it would be an emotional encounter.

Once Rick realizes what Daryl is up to, he makes him pull over. Rick tries to radio for help, but Daryl attacks him, and they tumble and fall into a deep pit.

This was pretty annoying because I really wanted to see what happened next and it totally killed the tension between the two characters. It felt like a bad cliche, and I knew from the start that the two of them would have to put away their differences and work together to survive/get out of the hole.

After stopping things to a dead halt and watching Rick trying to jump out of a hole like a cartoon character, things finally picked up again. Daryl and Rick had their long-awaited argument about the war and the results of their differing ideas. During their argument, Daryl reveals that it was Oceanside who killed the Saviors for revenge.

During this scene, we got some emotional acting from Andrew Lincoln, and it makes me sad that he is leaving the show soon. Norman Reedus didn't impress me with his performance, but it was definitely a step up from his usual acting.

I loved seeing Daryl plea with Rick instead of turning to anger and violence like he so often does. It's a rare side of Daryl that we don't see often.

I appreciated the tension that has been building up, and I like seeing the closely-knitted group we have been following for nine seasons start to fall apart and fight each other.

Back at Alexandria, Negan is refusing to eat so Michonne decides to try and make him herself. It turns out Negan is just lonely, and Michonne agrees to talk to him in exchange for him eating.

Negan talks about his wife and how she died of cancer. Michonne briefly talks about her son Andre and Negan plays with her emotions until she leaves in anger. She eventually comes back and Negan tells her they are the same. He then requests his bat back and when his request is denied, he swears his revenge like a one-dimensional villain.

During all of Negan's encounters, he is displayed entirely in the shadows. I like this as it makes him more mysterious, like an urban legend of what once was.

Anne and Gabriel are back at the junkyard, and Anne is about to feed Gabriel to a walker until he talks about forgiveness and she suddenly stops. Gabriel awakes later to find Anne gone and she leaves him a letter in his coat pocket.

These were obviously filler scenes, and I wish I didn't have to watch it when there are much more exciting things going on in the episode.

For example, the Saviors finally find out that it was Oceanside who has been killing them. They steal guns in retaliation and want to start a new war with Oceanside. Carol is caught in between this conflict and tries to stop it, but it ends in gunshots.

Daryl and Rick head the gunshots, and of course, the two of them now need to put aside their differences and work together to get out. As they try to escape, walkers start falling into the hole.

The two of them make it out, of course, and they even get a chance to acknowledge the fact that they are brothers to each other. Once they get out, Rick decides to lead away the oncoming herd of walkers while Daryl goes to help the camp.

As Rick is leading the walkers, he finds himself surrounded and is thrown off his horse onto a pile of rocks. He is impaled as walkers slowly begin to surround him.

This episode had awful pacing. Dramatic scenes were cut short, the editing killed all tension, and there seemed to be no reason for the order we saw the scenes.

I would have enjoyed this episode so much more if scenes were in a better order and the momentum didn't stop every time minutes. It seemed that every time I got invested in the show it would switch scenes.

The conflicts were also all over. At first, I thought the central conflict would be Rick trying to stop Maggie from killing Negan. However, that got sidelined and instead, we got Rick and Daryl stuck in a hole. Instead of focusing on that exciting conflict, the scenes are then switched to Gabriel in the junkyard, Michonne dealing with Negan's hunger strike, and the Saviors rebelling.

The writers didn't even explain how the Saviors discovered it was Oceanside killing them. The writing was so weak and jumbled that I was just frustrated by the end of the episode. After a solid first 15 minutes, I thought this episode would be different and the one to finally catch my attention, but I was wrong.

I am curious to see how Rick's death will be handled in the next episode. I really don't think he will die alone, but who will come to his rescue?

The Walking Dead will be undergoing it's most significant death and change to the show yet, and regardless of how it turns out, I'm sure plenty of viewers will be tuning in to watch Officer Friendly's goodbye.

6/10