The Walking Dead, Season 8, Episode 3: Monsters
There was some attempt at introducing some philosophical debate in this episode. Granted, it's a debate that's all-too-familiar in this show, but at least there were some attempts to do it. Between Rick's conversation with Morales, to Maggie's conversation with Gregory, to Jesus trying to save the Saviours from the blood-thirsty Morgan, Tara and later on Gregory, there's some sort of flimsy, unifying theme of second chances and on whether people can change. It's just so fucking muddled and the delivery is just so boring. It doesn't help that the episode feels so similar to the previous one, except with things moving forward slightly, that I'm genuinely baffled why episodes 2 and 3 aren't shunted together into one.
Oh, and Morales and Eric die, but I genuinely cannot give a shit. Aaron crying is sad, I suppose, but if a character death makes me, the viewer, feel sad because another character loses a loved one, then that character that died is a pretty shit character. Morales? Morales is barely a character then and barely a character now. There was a relatively weak attempt between Morales and Rick where they sort of quasi-reminisce about how much they've changed since season one, and then Daryl shows up, plugs a crossbow bolt into Morales' neck, and Rick complains "I knew that guy!" and Daryl's basically "eh, don't care." It's rather sad that they went through all the trouble to bring Morales' actor back from season one, and the most impact he did was my hoot of laughter at Daryl randomly showing up and shooting him without any questions. Like, I'm sure it's supposed to be abrupt and horrifying, but for me it was more comedic.
Obviously, this all is a ploy at getting Rick to think about how far he's became, how he's basically became a Negan-we-root-for, because in addition to Daryl killing Morales, Daryl also shoots some random dude they negotiated a surrender for. But honestly, the episode doesn't do a terribly good job at it. The bare bones of what could've made for a pretty philosophical and solid episode is here, but the execution is absolutely boring.
Ezekiel and Carol's subplot, as much as I enjoy Khary Peyton's acting, is repetitive of the previous episode with the whole 'trust in your king' stuff, and, of course, because this is the Walking Dead, things end depressingly for them because after an episode of 'not a single one can die', they get caught in an ambush. Jesus and Morgan continue the argument that Tara and Jesus have last episode, but it devolves into a kung fu fighting sequence as Morgan has a bit of a psychotic break and regresses to his old pre-monk-training insane psycho mode. It's... entertaining, I guess? But there's so little weight and so little substance to it all, and it's prolonged for so long, that I genuinely find it hard to care.
Morgan doesn't even get to kill... Jared, I think? The long-haired dick who killed his little apprentice buddy in the previous season? I dunno. The show tries to give us a reason to care whether these prisoners of war deserve to be executed or not, but they're all faceless goons, or, in the case of Jared, a smarmy bastard. I felt like the show has given us this 'execution or mercy' dilemma so many times in the past and crafted in such a way that the audience would care whether our characters choose to kill these prisoners or not, but I just don't. The episode, I think, is made much worse by the fact that neither Negan nor the lieutenants we care about (Simon, the dude that bullied Gregory all of last season; Arat, the lady with the fancy hair, and Gavin, the 'sigh I'm just doing my work' dude that liasoned with Ezekiel) are present, so the entire Saviours faction is just faceless and boring. Add that to Jesus' arguments being pretty trite and it's just a formula of 'yeah these just happened'.
And honestly? Other than the few characters we care about, I also don't really care about the armies of the Kingdom or Oceanside or Hilltop, who just blur together into a huge pile of 'Rick's mooks' for me.
One caveat that this episode has is Gregory, who's insanely still fun. He's groveling to Maggie, and the actor is just both so fun yet not overdoing it. And the smash-cut to talking about how people can change to "ABSOLUTELY NOT THE SAVIOURS WILL KILL OUR PEOPLE!" when Jesus returns with the prisoners. It's hilarious. It's the type of comedic beat that works well, and is clearly intended to be comedic, unlike Daryl shooting Morales.
Other than that, though? The episode is just so fucking dull. Even huge character moments that some of our main characters have end up feeling forced and repetitive, and I don't think it's been since season two on the farm that I've been mind-numbingly bored with Walking Dead, because most of the time even at its worst there's still some cool action scenes or character development or good acting. Not here.
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