‘The Walking Dead’ season 7, episode 10 review: Daryl – Carol reunited; the Oceanside decision

When we last saw Rick on “The Walking Dead”  he was surrounded by a large group of people training their weapons on him, but for some reason he had the biggest grin on his face. Has he finally gone crazy or is there something he knows that we don’t know like this is an army that father Gabriel has been building for him?

We expected tonight’s episode to really kick off with getting a chance to see the follow-up to Rick and Michonne visiting a new land — instead, we kept things reasonably close to The Kingdom, which is a good thing mostly because we got to see Daryl completely lose his cool … and for good reason given that Sir Richard conjured up the new Carol when he told him a thing or two about what could happen to her. This is not something that Daryl took particularly well, to put it likely. The two basically came to blows — Daryl is NOT gonna be down with letting Carol be sacrificed.

This was fun, mostly in the way that all things Daryl are fun. Also, Daryl as the voice of reason for Morgan to fight back in equally outstanding. It’s one thing to be a pacifist; it’s another thing altogether to allow yourself to get hurt without fighting back.

Rick attempts a good speech – Eventually, we found ourselves back with Rick, Michonne, Aaron, Tara, and Rosita in their new group, which we were tempted to call Garbageland because of all the junk these people had seemingly used as fortification. This was the group that also had Father Gabriel — who, as you recall, took the majority of the group’s stuff last week.

Well, Rick did his best upon arriving to Garbageland to make a good stump speech for getting the new group to join him in his quest to destroy Negan. His argument was pretty darn rational — if this group wanted more stuff, they can get it from the Saviors. Alexandria doesn’t really have any stuff. Interestingly, this group responded just as well to Gabriel threatening a life with a knife as they did Rick. Also, throwing Mr. Grimes down into a pile of junk seems to be their way of initiation. After Gabriel’s speech, a garbage toss, Rick fighting some terrifying zombie with spikes all over his head, and then a tense negotiation, the new group was on board. Credit to Rick for this showdown — it was probably one of the cooler zombie takedowns ever just because it was man vs. walker in a trash pit. Also, how good is Andrew Lincoln?

(We gotta say, if there was ever an episode of the show that felt like a mission in “Borderlands,” this was probably it. Heck, Spiky Zombie Head even had a name — Winslow.)

After the negotiation, Rick passed along the good news to Michonne, and the two can celebrate in the fact that they’ve cleared one more hurdle. Also, we learned that Father Gabriel didn’t exactly take all of that stuff willingly, and he did a good job of making sure that he would be found.

Even though Rick could count this new alliance as a victory, that didn’t mean that the rest of the group was in a celebratory mood. Tara and Rosita clashed, which really is part for the course given that she’s been incredibly grumpy for most of the season so far. Where things get interesting is that one of the things Garbageland wanted was guns, and Tara knew precisely where the guns were. She had to determine whether or not she wanted to spill the beans on Oceanside and run the risk of violating her deal.

Here’s the reunion you’ve been waiting for – Of course Daryl wasn’t going to let Carol be out there alone by herself! This reunion scene was short, but also rather lovely … at least at first. Things got rather sad when Rick had to be the bearer of bad news and tell her everything that went on with the Saviors. He told her “everyone’s alright” — not sure that’s entirely the truth, but clearly Daryl didn’t want to be a Debbie Downer. Instead. he was more curious about Ezekiel and how she was doing in her isolated life. Of course, he wants her to come back and rejoin the group, but he’s clearly slow-playing this as best he can. He didn’t force her to do anything other than give her an epic hug at the end.

In the closing minutes, Daryl spent a little bit of time hanging out with Morgan, and he made one thing rather clear: He had to grab himself by his bootstraps and make it clear that The Kingdom needed to join the battle against Negan. Otherwise, there will be no peace. (Morgan did call Daryl out on what he conveniently left out of his chat with Carol.)

Overall – A really great episode that accomplished quite a bit. You had some fun, crazy scenes, but also some that were a little more sweet and emotional. Episode grade: B+.

What did you think of this episode of “The Walking Dead”? Leave us a comment below and share your thoughts on the season so far.