The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 5 Review: Go Getters
Sean McKenna
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The Saviors don't just favor Alexandria when it comes to dropping in unannounced.
The Hilltop received that special surprise on The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 5, but the hour unfortunately lacked the intensity and danger when Negan and his crew showed up on The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 4.
And by the end of the hour, I really wished that we had either skipped through this episode or followed Rick and Aaron when they decided to go on their little expedition.
It was certainly important to show how much power and control the Saviors have over various communities, and the way the Hilltop handled the Saviors was vastly different than Alexandria.
So it made sense that Negan would show up at Alexandria, to double-check to make sure his message to Rick was clear, but not show up at the Hilltop, a community that has been pretty subservient so far.
And Negan's henchman Simon taking the lead role for the Saviors during the visit to Hilltop was fine. He's certainly got a killer mustache, but he doesn't have quite the same swagger that Negan does.
I don't think he'd hesitate to kill anyone to get the message across, after all, we saw what the Saviors did with a little music and fire to attract the walkers. But he also wasn't facing off against someone like Rick, someone who has been a real leader.
Gregory just seems like he happens to be in charge because no one else would step up. And he's got no problem kneeling before the Saviors.
Don't worry, Jesus may have tricked Gregory into not giving up Maggie and Sasha, but I smell a betrayal coming from Gregory.
Clearly this episode was trying to establish that Maggie has the capacity to be a leader, and be the one to take control of Hilltop as a better leader than Gregory.
Frankly, it really only felt like four people were even living at the Hilltop with the way this episode was filmed.
I think it's great to see Maggie striving to push forward after Glenn's death, taking up a new mantle. And it's a positive that her child is still OK after everything she went through recently.
But the episode taking time to follow Maggie and Sasha around felt like it was bringing the show to a screeching halt. I wound up not caring as much about what they were even up to.
I was at least glad to see Jesus again, and it was nice watching him stand up for Maggie and Sasha even if he didn't want to be a leader himself.
And was it me, or did he display some awesome karate kicks during the zombie attack? It's too bad that scene where Jesus, Sasha and Maggie used their sweet skills to clean up wasn't more exciting. It just felt like the show wanted to try and make walkers scary again, and then got more focused on how to find a new "cool" way to kill the undead.
I wish that Jesus' mission to track down Negan started the episode off rather than ended it.
Then there was Carl and his B story with Enid, which was just uninteresting.
Good on Carl for getting some romance in, but his interactions with Enid seemed like they were from a different show. The silly one-liner when Carl crashed the car to save Enid (though, seriously, she wasn't able to move out of the walker's way on her own?) or the over-dramatic "good bye/don't go" scene was just tiresome.
Again, great that the two are connecting (though, I guess with Ron out of the way, it makes the options a lot smaller), but it's not a story I'm invested in. And this hour didn't change that.
I wanted to care more about Maggie taking on that leadership role and diving more into the Hilltop as a community, but really, I was left bored by most of it and eagerly ready to just get on to the next episode.
Did you enjoy following Maggie and Sasha's story? Are you looking forward to Jesus and Carl on the hunt for Negan? Sound off below, and be sure to watch The Walking Dead online at TV Fanatic.
Sean McKenna was a TV Fanatic Staff Writer. He retired in May of 2017. Follow him on Twitter.
