Maggie's been trolling Hilltop's "President" since she got there. Rick's initial plan, back when he thought Alexandria was going to be the capital city of *his* empire, was for Maggie to serve as the ambassador to his new vassal state. That's why she demanded his favorite painting last season- not because she actually…

You'd think so. . . but if there's a trap (which I think there is), it would have to be something pretty subtle. Perhaps an infectious disease?

In this scenario, the dramatic function to be served by all these sympathetic communities is to be the unexpected collateral damage caused by Rick's plague attack on the Saviors.

I'm still hoping that Rick digs up one of the Plague corpses from the prison and drops a piece of one in the Saviors' water supply. I don't want to see Negan die because the people he's oppressing all rise up against him. That's trite. I want to see Negan die because Rick Grimes finds a way to sink even lower than…

True; but the 1918 treaty that ended it was so poorly drafted and so punitive that even at the time many people predicted (correctly) that its terms would make a second Great War almost inevitable.

Are you visibly shaken now?

People should also know that in America, in 2016, a—-

How do you like it now?

That was then, Tjardus. . . . welcome to the horrible now.

Sadly wrong:
And yes, of course "Waldo" as he was presented would probably be little more than a fad- funny to the lowbrow at first, but quickly discarded as most fad vulgar pop culture icons are. Funny at first, but quickly cloying.

Wait. The pig thing happened too???

I can't bring myself to rewatch the scene to check on that, but I know I've never seen such terrible writing. We know Negan is violent and unpredictable, but were we seriously supposed to just assume that there's a chance that he's about to hurt Judith? No way. Riggs is being asked to sell the unsellable.

Exactly. Negan's stock in trade is the fear of mayhem and death, not the reality. But he can't afford to carry through on none his threats, any more than he can afford to carry through on all of them.

That's uncannily close to what Maeve actually did in the finale. Good analysis!

I hadn't thought of #2, but I'd still go with Possibility #1. Ford is a control freak, and Hosts don't even completely control their own minds.

I agree that the CW here is judging Riggs too harshly (that's 2016 shorthand for "conventional wisdom", in case any of his grandchildren should happen by). For my part, I think Riggs is doing as much as anyone could possibly expect him or anyone else to do with the paper-thin writing (and negligible thought) that his…

In retrospect, it actually seems pretty reasonable that Negan would want to be somewhere close by when the truck full of valuables was unloaded. . .and it even seems reasonable that he'd react to Carl's burst of gunfire by walking directly into Carl's field of view like a man without a care in the world because. . .…

Good question. I haven't really thought about them, but now that you mention it, it strikes me that they seem to coincide with aberrant behavior in the hosts. One possibility is that they're tiny Host robots themselves, designed by Arnold to impart tiny fragments of code in accordance with some mysterious design of…

That was my favorite moment of the episode. Maybe the season.

I think the Host was the Ford we saw get shot. There's no way someone as narcissistic as Ford would ever actually sacrifice himself. Also, there's no way he'd voluntarily forego the pleasure of watching the opening scene of his "new narrative" play out, any more than Cersei could have foregone watching the Great Sept…