The Walking Dead: Season 8, Episode 2

October 30, 2017

Note: The Walking Dead airs every Sunday on AMC. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s one of the most popular shows on television. And it’s especially popular among dads. So starting this week, we will be posting a review of the show from a dad’s point of view for the rest of the season. Obviously, this also serves as your spoiler alert for last night’s episode.

Last week’s season premier of The Walking Dead gave us what all dads want, and what all dads hate. Namely, a bunch of violence with the bad guy getting his butt kicked, but also a cliffhanger ending, which, come on, dads hate cliffhanger endings. So frustrating.

We ended last week with Gabriel trapped in a trailer surrounded by zombies along with Negan (booo Negan) while Negan makes his “brown pants” joke for like the fifth time in the series. This week, we get no resolution. Hell, we don’t even get any Negan.

So what do we get? After the successful attack on the headquarters of the Saviors, Rick and his rag tag band of alliances are continuing on in their war, taking out remote outposts and stocking up on weapons. The episode begins showing a woman who is bossy and attractive in a way a dad would definitely feel inclined to text his son about, who apparently works with the Saviors. She is then surprise-attacked by a force of the good guys led by Aaron.

Meanwhile, we see two different groups of Rick’s crew, but no Rick, as they go about their mission. Ezekiel (who dads love, like, best addition to the show last year. The whole tiger thing is cool) and Carol (who, along with Daryl, is easily one of the top 2 dad-favorite characters of the show) take down their own outpost, but soon have to chase after a Savior who got away and could radio a warning to other Savior facilities.

At the same time, Jesus, Tara and Morgan work on clearing yet another outpost, where the rest of their time is spent with Morgan being a badass, Tara wanting to kill everybody, and Jesus getting kind of preachy trying to stop Tara from killing everybody.

Finally, Rick and Daryl show up about halfway through the episode, looking for guns that they’ve been told will be used by Negan. Basically, the episode goes all over the place, but it has some fun things and some annoying things, which is pretty much how every dad feels about every episode of The Walking Dead. There are a lot of battles and fights, which is good. Lots of zombie deaths, which is also good. Aaron’s boyfriend (or wait, husband) gets shot, which is bad because he seems nice, even though it took most dads a while to remember which character was Aaron’s husband.

Also, Morgan was very badass and went Terminator on a bunch of bad guys, which was good. A Savior peed himself to pretend that he’s a good guy, and then turned out to be a bad guy, which every dad knew the moment the guy opened his bad guy mouth, which was annoying. That Mara woman from the beginning got killed, which dads were conflicted about, but you’ve got to respect Aaron’s plan (which was to shoot a bunch of Saviors and hang back and wait for them to turn into zombies that’ll attack the rest of the Saviors.)

And finally, everyone is going to talk about this episode for its ending, which saw the return of Morales, who we’ve not seen since Season 1. Which…okay, let’s be honest. Every single dad watching this show had to Google “Morales Walking Dead” as soon as the episode was over.

Anyway, this was an episode where a lot happened, but also not a lot happened? We give it a Dad Grade of a B.

Unnecessary Philosophy Rating: 7/10

Jesus spends a lot of time on that “we can’t kill the bad guys or we become bad guys ourselves” kick, which most dads don’t really care about. Give us more gunfights, baby!

Zombie Gore Rating: 6/10

Decently high; there were a lot of zombie deaths in this episode, which is awesome! But none of the really gross ones that dads cringe at but secretly love. Jerry uses a giant ax on a few zombies, which was definitely satisfying to watch.

General Gore Rating: 7/10

A lot of nameless people get killed, and Aaron’s boyfriend or husband or whatever got shot in the stomach, and we saw a few good guys who existed just to get gunned down while Morgan lives, so it definitely was an action-packed episode. But it wasn’t crazy gory. The closest we got was the one-off Savior, Mara, who got chomped on in the neck real good by a zombie. R.I.P. Mara. You were attractive and spunky.

Any “Oh Hell Yeah!” Moments?

Definitely Morgan’s killing spree towards the end. You see, he’s with these two jittery guys, the aforementioned gunned down guys, and at one point he just says, real badass, “I don’t die.” And when all three of them got gunned down right before a commercial break, every dad was on their DVR trying to figure out what they just saw. Only, it turns out they missed Morgan, who simply played dead, waited a while, collected himself, and went on a one-man rampage, taking down Saviors left and right. It was literally a scene designed to make a dad pump his fist in excitement.

What Comes Next?

We have to go back to Negan next episode, right? So that should be dealt with first. Otherwise, we have Rick being held at gunpoint by Morales, a minor season 1 character who apparently is a Savior now? They’ll probably explain that pretty fast too. And Ezekiel and Carol are planning on knowingly going headfirst into a trap, which might not be the best idea. And finally, Aaron’s husband or whatever has been shot, so we’ll probably see a real frantic doctor scene for that. We just hope that they keep up the body count, because it’s a lot more satisfying seeing the Saviors getting their butts whooped than it was last year when Rick and the gang were taking loss after loss.

We’ll see you next week!