The Walking Dead S8E2 "The Damned" 10/29/17

I try to get my recaps of The Walking Dead up on Tuesdays:  the show airs Sundays (but late enough that I don't stay up to watch it); I watch the show straight through on Mondays; and I rewatch the show whilst recapping on Tuesdays.  This past Tuesday was Halloween and Mr. Mouse and I had gone out for dinner - we never get enough trick-or-treaters to make it worth staying home and handing out candy - and got back too late for me to want to drag out my laptop.  No big deal - it's not like anything happened.  I never thought that an episode of nothing but gun battles could be as boring as an episode of nothing but hanging around Herschel's farm, talking.  But yeah, it kinda was.

Extreme close-ups of:  Rick, Daryl, Aaron, Tara, Jesus and Morgan, all looking nervous and determined; Carol and Ezekiel, looking dazed and dusty.

Here's the thing, we now will spend the entire episode following several groups of our heroes as they execute various attacks on Savior installations.

Aaron, boyfriend Eric and a crew roll up behind their homemade armored cars and get into a shoot-out with a bunch of Saviors, some fighters and some workers.  There is much shooting of semiautomatic weapons.  Seriously, does no one reload?  Does no one worry about the finite amount of ammunition left in this world?  They shoot and shoot and shoot and no one tries to gain any ground.  The Saviors advance a little and start picking a few good guys off.  Then, apparently this has been going on for HOURS because the dead Saviors become zombified and turn on the living Saviors, who just stand there and get bit.  Because they can only fight against living people?  And how long does it take for a corpse to get back up again?  Because that seemed pretty quick.  Also, boyfriend Eric gets gutshot and Aaron is sad.  Eric's only characterizations are (1) ginger and (2) Aaron's boyfriend, so I'm not that torn up about it.

Morgan, Tara and Jesus are attacking a Savior outpost with big satellite dishes on top.  I don't know or can't remember why this outpost is important (food? weapons?) other than it is held by the Saviors.  They work their way through the building, picking off Saviors.  Morgan has clearly moved on from his not-killing-people stance (which is too bad because it made him interesting).  Jesus and Tara find a dude locked in a closet: Tara wants to kill him, Jesus wants to spare him and it turns out that Tara was right because the dude grabs Jesus and almost kills him.  Our heroes finally get the upper hand and Jesus insists on tying him up.  I'm sure that won't turn out to be a bad idea.  Meanwhile, in another part of the building, Morgan and two redshirts open a door.  The Saviors inside open fire, dropping them all before scampering away.  Some time later, it turns out that Morgan is, in fact, not dead; the two redshirts either are or are about to be.  Morgan stands up, shakes himself and then moves through the building to rejoin his team, implacably shooting a hell of a lot of people.  When he meets back up with Jesus, Tara et als., they have - against Tara's better judgment - convinced the remaining Saviors to put down their weapons and surrender.  Morgan looks like he's about to gun down the lot of them but Jesus talks him down.

Carol and Ezekiel's team is dazed by an explosion that went off at the end of last episode.  A bunch of zombies pour out of a building and they have to deal with them first, before setting off after one Savior (who set the explosion) because if he gets back to base, he'll tell Negan that they're coming.  Carol: "If he tells them we're here, it's over before it's started."  But I'm pretty sure that the Saviors are already aware they're under attack, so I'm not sure what the big urgency is.  Still, they start tracking the guy, Ezekiel doing his rah-rah-king spiel which makes his men happy and makes Carol roll her eyes.  As they track their quarry through the woods, they encounter a particularly gross walker - droopy and gloppy and swollen, with shredded flesh - and Ezekiel asks, "What befell this creature?"  I'm guessing that this will come back again at a later time but Carol brushes it off.  They keep going through the woods, tracking the runaway Savior.  He almost makes back to his outpost when another group of Kingdom soldiers appear - with Shiva.  That giant gorgeous CGI tiger pounces on the runaway Savior and kills him.  Ezekiel gives another rah-rah speech whilst scratching Shiva behind the ears.  I wonder if I'm the only one worried that Shiva will get a taste for human blood and turn on the good guys - I'm not sure a tiger can be trained to only kill Saviors.

Rick and Daryl work their way through another building, looking for a cache of guns that Dwight told them about.  It takes them a long time, picking off people as they go, working their way up floor by floor.  Rick and Daryl split up to cover more ground.  It still takes a long time.  Daryl finds a cell that looks like the one Negan held him in and he gets feelings about it.  Rick gets into a brutal skirmish with a Savior and ends up impaling the guy on a metal shelving bracket.  Then he finds a baby in a crib ("Gracie" on the wall) and gets feelings about the baby.  Then a dude comes up behind him with a gun, saying he's already radioed the Sanctuary and the Saviors are coming back.  Rick recognizes this guy from Atlanta (i.e., S1) and it's supposed to be important, I guess?  The guy's name is Morales and maybe the comic book fans are excited about this but honestly, I don't remember him at all and am having a tough time caring.

Extreme close-ups of:  Rick, Daryl, Aaron looking sweaty and worried; Morgan, Jesus and Tara with blank looks on their faces; Ezekiel and Carol with confident little smiles.

So yeah, lots of bullets, not so much actually happening.

Previously on The Walking Dead / next time on The Walking Dead