This show has always had the GIANT problem of clumsily explaining it's themes and having characters deliver heavy handed exposition rather than just letting art speak for itself, so the almost wordless cold open was a very welcome change of pace.

If someone performs a magic trick where the secret is obvious but still plays it off like there's a chance in hell that I'd believe it, then, yeah, I'm going to assume they think I'm stupid. No paranoia involved, that's just… basic fuckin' human logic.

"You don't know shit about shit."
"You're right."

That makes sense, but it's such an unbelievable way to go about it, if you know what I mean. During that scene with the ridiculous, sad, "he's really dead guys" music playing in the background, I was thinking "why do the writers think we're stupid" rather than "wow Michonne really loves Rick".

I really liked this episode a lot, but the SECOND they started playing Rick getting eaten by zombies straight, as if they would ever seriously dream of killing him at this point, I groaned out loud.

It's always been because they had to. The time you mentioned is because they had tracked Beth there.

Carol's transition from abused houswife to hardened badass has always more or less made sense to me. It's the regression from the badass into something else that we've gotten in the last two seasons that's been harder to swallow.

I'd like to give a special shoutout to the unnaturally poor green screen when we see first see Rick standing up against the junkyard backdrop. The next shots of it were better, but jeez. CGI Shiva must've taken a bite out of the budget for this one (pun maybe kinda yeah totally intended)

The minute Jadis said "Show Rick the Up-Up-Up," I knew this episode was going to border on being flat-out ridiculous.

You're missing the part where that guilt turns into "I have to leave everyone I've ever loved and live by myself and tell no one to follow me even though I know everyone's gonna follow me" over the course of a single episode.

Sometimes Carol's "leave me tf alone I can't kill people" arc makes sense, until she drops lines like that and you remember the long, poorly written road that took us where we are with her and how it never really made any sense in the first place. Still baffled at how it only took them a few episodes to break down 5…

"It shouldn't have been you."