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The Walking Dead Gets Back To Action In Time For Midseason Finale In 'Hearts Still Beating'

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It took a while to get things moving in The Walking Dead, which has been par for the course thus far in season 8, but the episode Hearts Still Beating finally nudged things back into gear. It's one of the better episodes this season (not that it'd be saying much), but sadly only one real zombie sequence to speak of. We do get a few deaths chalked up before it's all said and done.

So yea, it was good, and it the main story arc has finally started moving along again.

That said, it's spoiler time, so after the next image from the evening's episode, we're going to be talking episode particulars so bail now. If you read on, you wave your right to complain about plot reveals.

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Alright – still with us? It seemed like adding in the picture of Carol was as innocuous the scene at her house with Morgan and Richard. It's just an exposition scene of Richard trying to recruit them to join him in convincing Ezekiel to rise up against Negan and the Saviors. She says she wants no part of their war and sends them packing. The scene serves no purpose, and even if it's really deemed necessary because we want to keep Carol in the picture, it could have been easily trimmed to half it's length.

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Daryl finally decides that it's time to fly the coop, and manages to escape the Savior's compound and steal a bike to get back with. Though in the end he's not really that much in a hurry to leave; he lounges around in a few rooms of the compound, cleans out a peanut butter jar, and flips a table. All before he goes a pretty solid Negan impersonation with a pipe on one of the Savior's heads.

Rick and Aaron are out on a scavenging mission to "provide" for Negan's next tithe and find a houseboat floating on a lake. The water is infested with zombies which for whatever reason don't seem to be very interested in coming out of the water after the two tasty humans on the show. They uncover a fishing boat which has been riddled with holes, but they figure they can use it to get to a canoe floating solidly about halfway between the shore and the houseboat. So yea, after a bit of dramatic music courtesy of Bear McCreary, they make it first to the canoe, but not before Aaron falls into the water.

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This is one of those times that it highlights that there's always at least two or three times each half-season where the characters manage to trundle through what should be a zombie munch-fest without really much of a scratch. The lake has a healthy number of zombies, and they've killed a few, but Aaron falls out into the midst of several (without a weapon) and still manages to thrash around long enough to get to the boats. It's like last season in the zombie hoard rolling through Alexandria. They always drag out the "cover yourself with zombie guts and walk through thousands of them," only when the story needs to build up a dramatic moment but then needs our heroes to get out of it. If that really worked as well as it does in those scenes, every scouting party would always suit up in guts and go for a stroll without a care in the world.

So Aaron and Rick make it to the boat and manage a large weapons haul (though without any ammo).

Negan brings Carl back to Alexandria for a nice family dinner with spaghetti. Spencer gets all clean-shaven and dolled up to try to win over Negan with some scotch and billiards, telling him that Rick is a risk to the community and the Saviors and just can't be trusted. Negan, points out that while Spencer has been sweet-talking him, Rick is eating his rage and out scavenging rather than staying safe behind the walls. Negan says he has no guts and pulls his bowie knife and calmly splits Spencer's abdomen open. Spencer falls, vainly trying to put his insides back into his chest.

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Negan apologizes for calling him gutless since his guts were clearly inside the whole time. Rosita finally loses her cool and pulls her gun and fires. The most effective cut-to-commercial moment of the season happens right then, with the audience all checking their watches to see if that was going to be the cliffhanger. Whew, still about 10 minutes to go.

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Back from commercial, Negan rolled a natural 20 and the bullet struck his beloved baseball bat, Lucille, keeping him safe. Arat takes Rosita down, holding a knife to her throat. He examines the bullet and realizes that it was homemade. He asks her who made it, she tells him a few feeble lies, and Negan tells Arat to pick someone to kill. She quickly turns – tracking past Carl – and gets a headshot on Olivia who falls dead.

Before they can kill another person, Eugene calls out that he had made the bullet for her. Negan believes him, and decides to take him back as part of the tithe (along with all of Rick's newly found weapons).

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Exit the Saviors. Enter Jesus, Daryl. The Alexandria group decides to head to Hilltop. Reuniting with Maggie, Sasha, and Enid – nearly the whole band is back together (except for Carol and Richard). They do a hero walk up towards the mansion to recruit the Hilltop community into their war against the Saviors.

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Yea, Michonne is there as well, but her presence throughout the season has been one of appearing and disappearing on the spur of some strange whim. It's almost as if the writer's room is intentionally keeping her out of play so if they get themselves in too much of a bind, they can always play the Get Out of Crap Free card and have her save the day, but they otherwise really don't know how to work with her character where the story currently is at.

Yea, the episode was good. Given how lackluster most of the rest of the season has been to date (the first episode notwithstanding), it feels like it was incredibly eventful. Even though when you pause to consider that the past three episodes have all been 90 minutes each, it really should be further along. This isn't a case of a House of Cards slow-burn storytelling style. It's a series that's gotten used to padding out episodes with scenes with no purpose to characters or to the overall story arcs; if a scene were to be entirely removed and it make zero impact on the episode, it's a good candidate to be clipped.

But there was indeed finally some action this time, and we are getting closer to an alliance between Hilltop, Alexandria, and the Kingdom. Hopefully within the next episode or two they'll be ready to make their move. I just worry that at this rate they'll wind up burning all of the back half of the season just to get to the showdown. The series main fault has really been that the story feels like it's moving rather like a walker. One with no foot on one leg.

Let's see what happens in February…


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Bill WattersAbout Bill Watters

Games programmer by day, geek culture and fandom writer by night. You'll find me writing most often about tv and movies with a healthy side dose of the goings-on around the convention and fandom scene.
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