Greetings fellows and fellettes.  For this week’s recap of The Slowest Show On Earth…errr The Walking Dead, I’m filling in for the lovely and talented BeerGuyRob.  Because apparently traveling with Ms. Rob is more important to him that we are.  I know I feel important in his list of priorities.  I hope you do too.

Fortunately for me, and for all of you probably as well, AMC apparently decided to take the night off from having anything happen, in spite of needing an extended episode in which to do next to nothing.  I could literally sum the episode up in three sentences.  But I won’t.  I’ll make you sit thru the entire thing, just like AMC did.

And, as always….

But in all honesty, this week there’s not much to spoil.  AMC already spoiled it.

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Last week, middle American female types wept uncontrollably as their favorite dirty post-apocalyptic badass biker boy, Daryl Dixon, was systematically tortured to break his will.  This week, the psychological torture continues, to no one’s surprise, in S7E4 entitled “Service”.

Everyone (almost) is back home this week, licking their wounds and trying to recover from the beatings, both literal and figurative, they’ve sustained over the past few episodes.  Just to keep tabs on everyone…here’s who’s still “missing”….

• Daryl (as already mentioned, in the custody of the Saviors)
• Morgan and Carol (making new friends at The Kingdom)
• Maggie (whereabouts unknown, more on this later)
• Glenn and Abraham (they still ded)

Everybody else?  Well, they’re back home, behind the walls in the relative safety of Alexandria.

The episode opens with a lovely scene of Rick and Michonne asleep in bed, still doing the jungle fever thing in spite of all that’s happened.  Good for them.  And then we see that Michonne isn’t asleep at all.  Nope, she looks pissed.  She sneaks out of bed, leaving Rick asleep.  Then she goes to the fireplace and…Voila!!!  She pulls a sniper rifle out of the chimney and exits the premises.  Unbeknownst to her though, Rick wasn’t asleep either.  He sees her and the rifle go out the door and says nothing.  Why am I telling you this meaningless tidbit?  Just because….

Anywhoo, she goes to an open field and has a seat on the roof of a burned out SUV to meditate, apparently.

Back in Alexandria, guess who’s also pissed?  Yep, you guessed it, it’s a woman.  Rosita and Spencer prepare to go out on a scavenge trip.  As they roll by Eugene at the gate, who is trying to fix a music player to use as an offering to the Saviors at some point, Rosita says some mean shit to him and to his credit, he takes it.  Eugene never had much spirit to begin with, other than when he tried to bite off Dwight’s dick last season, and what little he did have seems pretty much gone now.  But he is at least thinking.  At some point that working music player will come back into play perhaps.  We’ll see.  But not soon enough because….

Knock Knock.

Who’s there?

Negan.

Negan who?

Shut the fuck up, I’m here to take your shit.

Yep, fucker showed up early.  Nobody’s ready.  That’s the mark of a good, even if psychotic, general.  And Spencer being the halfwit we already know him to be asks him “Who are you?”.  Seriously, dude’s that big of an idiot.

Rick shows up, defuses that little faux pas, and with little choice the Alexandrians let Negan and his band of merry men inside.  But not until after Negan kills a walker approaching the gate.  This is his “Service” to them, hence the title of the ep.

And as a little added extra screw you, guess who Negan brought along for the trip?  Our favorite hostage, Daryl.  And when Rick tries to talk to him, Negan shuts that down immediately.  Fortunately, the silver lining here for Norman Reedus (Daryl) is that he didn’t have to learn any lines for this episode.

So most of the rest of the episode drags on seemingly incessantly.  Negan makes Rick hold Lucille, thereby asserting his dominance once again via the implication of…Here, hold my killing stick because I already know you’re not man enough to use it against me you pussy.  Which he’s right about.  In spite of the many close up shots of Rick’s hand tightening on Lucille’s handle (throughout the episode) you know he won’t do it.

Then Negan makes Rick personally show him around Alexandria to see what kinda shit they got which he might want to take.  The merry men then pillage and plunder each and every house and building taking whatever is there to be taken for the most part, while Rick abides and gives Negan the grand tour personally.

Which of course treats us, the home viewer, to multiple staring contests and Negan one liners….over and over and over.

Dwight then takes all the weapons that Rosita and Spencer were carrying for their little scavenge trip and tells them to go get Daryl’s bike for him.  Which they do.

Then we cut back to Michonne sitting on her SUV.  She spots a walker which is when we learn that she’s there to practice her shooting.

And boy oh boy does she need the practice.  Wow she sucks.  After wasting a shitload of ammo trying to take out a walker starting from about 200 yds out, she ends up having to pull out the katana and bisect his head once he’s up on her.  Oh, and the whole thing about the sound of gunshots attracting more walkers apparently was forgotten last night.  Nice continuity producers.  Yes, I and everyone else noticed.  But it turns out the wasted ammo was not for naught.  One of her shitty shots happened to catch a deer in the neck she learns.  So we got venison for din din tonight.

The best part of the episode for me was when Father Gabriel shows up.Negan’s best one liner of the night ensues…

This happens as Negan is asking about Maggie.  Where is she, what happened to her?  The ruse begins when we are shown a gravesite and allowed to believe, at least for a short while, that Maggie died.  Negan talks some shit about killing Glenn, then implies that he wanted to take Maggie back with him.  Ah, now we get it.

Then Carl goes all simmering teenage angst and threatens one of Negan’s men.  Negan threatens him, Carl backs down.

In truth, it all gets very boring.  Until we reach the armory, that is.  Negan informs Rick that he’s going to leave them all their food, and makes him say thank you for that favor.  But he is planning on taking all their guns.  So he and his peeps go about the task of doing so.  A little bit later, one of his toadies informs him that they’re two guns short of what the inventory states in the little book thingy.  More staring contests and one liners and then another hostage…sort of.

Poor Olivia, the heavyset mousey girl in charge of the inventory of food and weapons suddenly finds herself in some deep shit.

Everybody scrambles to find the two missing guns, while Negan basically keeps Olivia close by so he can kill her if the guns aren’t found.  It becomes stressful for everyone knowing Olivia’s life is on the line, but no more so for anyone than for Olivia herself.  She’s not built for this shit, no doubt.

So while Negan holds onto poor whimpering Olivia, Rick convenes the townspeople for a meeting.  Amongst other things, he admits he’s not in charge anymore, Negan is.  And whomever took the guns better give them up pronto before they all have to clean and Olivia sized stain off the sidewalk.  Nobody fesses up, then Eugene points out that not everyone is there.  So a house by house search begins.

But of course the guns are found.  Spencer had taken them and hidden them in his house.  Along with food and booze.  What a chucklefuck.

So anywhoo….

Guns are found, Negan turns Olivia loose, even though her PTSD is probably already in overdrive.

Having taken pretty much everything from Alexandria other than food….furniture, guns, beds, mattresses….oh the mattresses….the Saviors pack up the shit which is now theirs, including Daryl by the way, and prepare to leave.  Then Rosita and Spencer return with Daryl’s bike, Dwight takes possession.

Rick spots Michonne hiding in one of the burned out houses outside the gate.  He asks permission to talk to her, more or less.  And he then takes the last gun they have (as far as he knows) from Michonne, the sniper rifle, and gives it over.  They also take the deer Michonne mistakenly shot.  So much for not taking any food.

For this favor to Negan, Rick asks a favor.  Can Daryl please stay.

Negan SEEMS amenable, almost.  The keyword being “seems”.  Let’s ask Daryl.  Daryl stays silent.  He knows the deal.  If he speaks up, if he says yes please let me stay….somebody dies.

Daryl ain’t broken.  Daryl is playing possum.  Daryl has read this script (even if he has no lines), the costume fits, and he’ll play his part. (hat tip to the Lumineers).

And then everybody gives Spencer some deserved shit for being such an assclown.  Spencer tries to defend his assclownishness, but he backs down.  As expected.

Then Rick and Michonne have a heart to heart.  Rick tells her it has to be this way for now, or people will die.  He’s right.  They’re outmanned, outgunned.  Michonne doesn’t like it, but says she’ll try.  Then the next day, while walking along the roadside, she spots their pilfered mattresses in a smoldering pile.  The Saviors didn’t need them.  Didn’t even want them.  They dumped them by the roadside and torched ’em.  Just one more fuck you.  Predictably, Michonne likely isn’t happy about this.

Rosita isn’t happy either.  And while she and Spencer were out and about, she took a gun off a walker and got it back inside the compound without the Saviors knowing it.  It didn’t have any bullets, magazine was empty.

But the episode closes with her going to Eugene, and asking him to be useful in a different way than just a peace offering.

“Make me a bullet”.

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Next week appears to be a mostly Hilltop Centric episode.

Which is where Maggie probably is I suppose.  Those folks are….well, odd.

Might be interesting to get another look into that world, and also Jesus.  I kinda like that dude.

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